The number of people in the world who take issue with American exceptionalism and American power are many and varied. They seem to come from all walks of life and live in many countries around the world, some even complaining here at home while sleeping safe in their beds because of it. The root of this view seems, in my opinion, to be planted in western Europe- where vast cadres of intellectuals in their walled off libraries and ivory towers write their idiocies while completely protected from the intrusions of reality.
This pisses me off on so many levels I find it hard to enumerate them all.
To understand anything, one must begin by understanding the history and origins of the thing; and American power, with all its wailing and whining enemies in Europe has a very interesting history indeed.
Let's look back to the early 20th century as before that time America, though vast in land and rich in resources, was not a real power to be reckoned with. By mid-century it was a superpower with military influence in every corner of the globe. So what happened?
Short answer? Those European intellectual's forbears happened. In terms of size, the American military was 17th in the world prior to WWII, in terms of size against population and area defended we ranked with around 50th. But in Europe trouble was brewing in the form of a disaffected nation still reeling from the consequences of the aggression it displayed, a nation with a highly educated workforce, keen engineering minds and great and growing anger over the penalties imposed upon it's citizens for the crimes of it's leaders.
Throughout western Europe, there was a general hue and cry, as Hitler's forces swept through the nations, of appeasement- peace at any cost, withdrawal, and general abdication of the responsibilities any powerful nation naturally must shoulder. By the time those intelligentsia were proven idealistic and suicidally naive the last remaining democratic power in Europe was Great Britain.
And still, we stayed away.
We suffered casualties by German U-boats and Japanese ships. Still we stayed out of the war. We sent material aid to Britain, our former enemy, but took no military action.
Only when directly attacked, when the world was on the brink and the free peoples of all nations sounded a cry for aid did we join the war. We turned our industries to war, sent our sons to die for them, created military technologies the world had never seen; not only for our own nation did we go but for the survival of human dignity in the face of an implacable enemy. And together, we won.
And the world took a nap.
Those once mighty nations had grown tired of war, of keeping the peace in far off places, and so they left a vacuum of power the world had not seen since the fall of Rome. The world had a new choice of powers: the totalitarian state of U.S.S.R. or the Republic called America. As abandoned nations cried out for help against the new Soviet onslaught American power, made possible and necessary by European indolence, came to be.
So whine, complain, tear out your hair in frustration all you who believe that Europe has the answer in their lesez faire foreign policy and massive welfare state. Just know that it is because we took up the mantle of responsibility that they shirked that allowed them to become so comfortably insignificant to their former glory.
The day may come, and soon, America too will cast off that heavy load and go quietly into the night. But know that nature abhors a vacuum and ask yourself this: Who would you have take our place?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
History and Family
Thus far I have kept my posts on topic and I have only written about things of a political nature. But tonight, as I sit here with too much Ambien in my system and too hard a day behind me I feel compelled to speak out about my own life, about what has created the person writing the things you have read thus far.
Once upon a time, I had siblings. My older sister was my constant nemesis through my youth, due to the fact that somehow she grew up honest and forthright whereas I was the one always on the margins and in the dark places. I do not know why we were so very different, coming from the same parentage, and only 2 years apart to boot, but things sometimes work out that way.
My brother was my best friend, a light in the shadows where I had set up my life. He was a constant check on my darker natures- though everyone has them, mine seem particularly strong- He, too was forthright and honest. But in a different and more elegant way. I remember thinking about how to train him, how to make him into a person who could appreciate the differences between people and yet bring them together and except them as they were. In essence, how to create the perfect person; one of great strength and personal honor but with great understanding and acceptance of those who differed from him. He turned out, in spite of all of my teaching, to be exactly that and so much more.
They are both gone now. I speak, and although I believe they listen, I cannot hear their replies. I love my siblings, but they are gone now, their memories the only thing connecting them to my life. I miss them terribly. I ream about them all the time and I cannot sleep for it. It is almost 2 in the morning and I am exhausted yet I know if I go to sleep the dreams will be there waiting for me. And I cannot handle any more of them right now. Better to go for months without sleep than that!
I have a pretty keen political mind, if you couldn't tell that already. But, as with all people, I have enough issues to qualify for a subscription. My issue is loss. Full disclosure time, folks. I suck, really and truly, at loss. Loss of feelings, loss of confidence, loss of those people who share my history and help make me who I am. But contrary to what major media would tell you, a person does NOT have to be perfect in order to have valid ideas, good points, or interesting discussions.
But I miss them. My sister is the latest to go. This winter has been too short a time, though hard and long for me at once. I wish my boys would have known them, the hard righteousness of my sister, the soft, accepting nature of my brother.
But they are gone, relegated to a place I do not know and have little hope of attaining. I am a spiritual man, I believe in a heaven perhaps because I must, because without it I would have no hope of reuniting with them. I remember teaching my brother about balance and good, about accepting the things one has no hope of changing. I remember teaching him letter sounds until he read and teaching him the value of EVERY person, no matter how different.
I am uncertain about if I ever taught my sister a damn thing; though I loved her dearly, especially at the end, she was a better person than me- older and wiser. Perhaps I taught her that the rewards can sometimes outweigh the risks, that taking a chance can be its own reward. Probably not, but I can never know. Leukemia took her from me as a minivan on the ice took my brother away.
Neither one was my fault, but I still can't stop the dreams from coming. After My brother died, I must have killed him a hundred different ways in my sleep. each time thrashing and awakening crying. Every time I sleep nowadays I do the same to my sister. I do not know why. But I would give everything I own to not sleep ever again.
I go to the gym, I punish my body to exhaust it so I can maybe fall into a dreamless and dark sleep. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn't. The harder I push the more I have to push the next time so I can sleep at peace. On the upside I am getting into pretty good shape. On the downside I feel sick and exhausted when I do not have a spotter. I need to push as hard as I possibly can EVERY time or I can't sleep through the night. Without a spotter I can't do it. My father is training for a marathon so he cannot help me. I know nobody else who can. And so I stay awake and drugged, till I pass out exhausted. I wish he would stay with me, I need his help but don't know how to ask for it. He is my father and I love him, but he has to deal with his problems in his own way, and for now it seems that running is the answer. Not running away, he is training for a marathon- just to be specific.
I am with my toddler son and my infant son all day every day now. They do not offer the best conversation, but we teach each other quite a bit. I revel in their successes and do all I can to make them self sufficient. But I have no job nor interaction with people of the same interests as I have and I am very lonely all the time in spite of the constant contact. I am rambling an messed up on too many sleeping pills, which my doctor promised would get me to sleep in 15 min. It has been 3 hours and my body is still terrified to sleep.
There is no accounting for pharmaceuticals vs. the human mind and the terrors within it. But if I am to raise my children well I have to swallow the fear and sleep again. Kill my brother and my sister and wake up in cold sweat to read the little critter books to my eldest and to laugh and smile with my youngest though I feel so tired and need rest from my mind. My mother was finally right: I have indeed outsmarted myself.
Once upon a time, I had siblings. My older sister was my constant nemesis through my youth, due to the fact that somehow she grew up honest and forthright whereas I was the one always on the margins and in the dark places. I do not know why we were so very different, coming from the same parentage, and only 2 years apart to boot, but things sometimes work out that way.
My brother was my best friend, a light in the shadows where I had set up my life. He was a constant check on my darker natures- though everyone has them, mine seem particularly strong- He, too was forthright and honest. But in a different and more elegant way. I remember thinking about how to train him, how to make him into a person who could appreciate the differences between people and yet bring them together and except them as they were. In essence, how to create the perfect person; one of great strength and personal honor but with great understanding and acceptance of those who differed from him. He turned out, in spite of all of my teaching, to be exactly that and so much more.
They are both gone now. I speak, and although I believe they listen, I cannot hear their replies. I love my siblings, but they are gone now, their memories the only thing connecting them to my life. I miss them terribly. I ream about them all the time and I cannot sleep for it. It is almost 2 in the morning and I am exhausted yet I know if I go to sleep the dreams will be there waiting for me. And I cannot handle any more of them right now. Better to go for months without sleep than that!
I have a pretty keen political mind, if you couldn't tell that already. But, as with all people, I have enough issues to qualify for a subscription. My issue is loss. Full disclosure time, folks. I suck, really and truly, at loss. Loss of feelings, loss of confidence, loss of those people who share my history and help make me who I am. But contrary to what major media would tell you, a person does NOT have to be perfect in order to have valid ideas, good points, or interesting discussions.
But I miss them. My sister is the latest to go. This winter has been too short a time, though hard and long for me at once. I wish my boys would have known them, the hard righteousness of my sister, the soft, accepting nature of my brother.
But they are gone, relegated to a place I do not know and have little hope of attaining. I am a spiritual man, I believe in a heaven perhaps because I must, because without it I would have no hope of reuniting with them. I remember teaching my brother about balance and good, about accepting the things one has no hope of changing. I remember teaching him letter sounds until he read and teaching him the value of EVERY person, no matter how different.
I am uncertain about if I ever taught my sister a damn thing; though I loved her dearly, especially at the end, she was a better person than me- older and wiser. Perhaps I taught her that the rewards can sometimes outweigh the risks, that taking a chance can be its own reward. Probably not, but I can never know. Leukemia took her from me as a minivan on the ice took my brother away.
Neither one was my fault, but I still can't stop the dreams from coming. After My brother died, I must have killed him a hundred different ways in my sleep. each time thrashing and awakening crying. Every time I sleep nowadays I do the same to my sister. I do not know why. But I would give everything I own to not sleep ever again.
I go to the gym, I punish my body to exhaust it so I can maybe fall into a dreamless and dark sleep. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn't. The harder I push the more I have to push the next time so I can sleep at peace. On the upside I am getting into pretty good shape. On the downside I feel sick and exhausted when I do not have a spotter. I need to push as hard as I possibly can EVERY time or I can't sleep through the night. Without a spotter I can't do it. My father is training for a marathon so he cannot help me. I know nobody else who can. And so I stay awake and drugged, till I pass out exhausted. I wish he would stay with me, I need his help but don't know how to ask for it. He is my father and I love him, but he has to deal with his problems in his own way, and for now it seems that running is the answer. Not running away, he is training for a marathon- just to be specific.
I am with my toddler son and my infant son all day every day now. They do not offer the best conversation, but we teach each other quite a bit. I revel in their successes and do all I can to make them self sufficient. But I have no job nor interaction with people of the same interests as I have and I am very lonely all the time in spite of the constant contact. I am rambling an messed up on too many sleeping pills, which my doctor promised would get me to sleep in 15 min. It has been 3 hours and my body is still terrified to sleep.
There is no accounting for pharmaceuticals vs. the human mind and the terrors within it. But if I am to raise my children well I have to swallow the fear and sleep again. Kill my brother and my sister and wake up in cold sweat to read the little critter books to my eldest and to laugh and smile with my youngest though I feel so tired and need rest from my mind. My mother was finally right: I have indeed outsmarted myself.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Immigration: The American Promise
Immigration is a touchy subject. Nowadays when you turn on the TV or radio and immigration comes up as a topic it seems as though the only people contributing to the discussion are wing-nuts of both sides, one arguing for no restrictions and full amnesty and another for shooting illegals as they try to gain entry. Both sides fail on every level to provide for America and her people the basic ideals of the nation.
True, illegal immigrants are a massive burden on our systems, taking an incredibly disproportionate amount of social services without contributing. Also true that most people are coming here to try to better their life and pose no real threat to the rest of us natural born citizens.
The problems I see are those of multiculturalism versus the melting pot. The people who come here are fighting to get away- putting everything on the line to escape the life they came from. Yet they are lauded and coddled by the left when they refuse to leave that nation behind them- refusing to learn the language (no law against speaking it at home) or expecting the other citizens of the country to conform to their beliefs. When one comes here it is with the tacit expectation that they will do their level best to fit in, that they will leave their past behind them and start fresh with opportunity limited only by their willingness to work hard and strive for the dream of freedom.
These are the people we want, and need, at all costs. Those who wish to set up little versions of their old countries should stay there and make a go of it. Those who wish to impose their belief systems upon us can stay in the hell-holes from whence they came. Citizenship here needs to be the entire package: the great opportunities and freedoms offset by the agreement that they are Americans now, and will live by our laws and our standards. Case and point: this means you are free to open a Mosque but you cannot expect to bind others to Sharia Law.
Regardless of the color of their skin or the nation they were born in, there are those we want, and those we cannot accept. It has nothing to do with creed or education or wealth, in fact I would venture that the majority of the ones we want are very poor and have little formal schooling. The ones we want are those who are Americans already- the ones who are free in their own hearts and minds without ever having been exposed to what freedom is. They are the ones who strive and dig in and push themselves past the breaking point to be greater than they are; they live the American dream of productive prosperity oftentimes better than those born here by good luck.
The ones we cannot take are those who wish to leech off our freedoms and economy; the indigent and lazy, the elite from another nation have no place here. This is a country founded on the dreams of farmers and blacksmiths and shopkeepers, not mighty lords and kings and aristocracy. We were the first nation to choose the path which might allow ANY person to be an aristocrat with hard work, and the will to develop their mind and manner to be so. Let princes of other nations stay where they are, we will take the people under their boots and be happy in that, because we know what they don't: the power of those individuals is greater than any army in the world, so long as they are free.
The hysterical fit of "multiculturalism" in this nation has turned what has historically been our greatest asset- the ideas and abilities of our immigrants- into a social cancer which threatens everything about our way of life. Yes, the Statue of Liberty says "...give us your huddled masses", but it makes the caveat that they are the ones "yearning to be free".
In order to facilitate the acceptance of those who would be Americans, why don't we open a new policy in immigration: all able bodied men and women seeking citizenship will be granted such after a term of 4 years in the military, preferably a combat unit. You wish to avail yourself of the opportunities here? You have to choose to put everything on the line, right down to your bones. In the military one can learn the lessons one needs to be an American that they may not have learned in the cultures they came from: The English language, modern sanitation standards, rule of American law, the value of freedom and what is costs to gain and protect it.
In the meantime their immediate family members would live on base with them, learning the same things in different ways and becoming, slowly and with care, Americans. Should the soldier be honorably killed in combat the survivors would receive standard military survivor benefits and citizenship after passing their evaluations.
Those who wish to have our opportunities must also obey our laws, and those who enter illegally have shown disdain for those laws and should be given the choice of long, hard labor imprisonment or service for citizenship, with all the familial benefits entailed. Those who hire illegals for pennies on the dollar wages should be prosecuted with prejudice. They take jobs from those who would follow our laws in order to make an underhanded profit and rob us all.
But for those politicians who seek to weaken us as a nation by robbing us of our culture and ideals, by making a mockery of the law- we must have no mercy upon them.
True, illegal immigrants are a massive burden on our systems, taking an incredibly disproportionate amount of social services without contributing. Also true that most people are coming here to try to better their life and pose no real threat to the rest of us natural born citizens.
The problems I see are those of multiculturalism versus the melting pot. The people who come here are fighting to get away- putting everything on the line to escape the life they came from. Yet they are lauded and coddled by the left when they refuse to leave that nation behind them- refusing to learn the language (no law against speaking it at home) or expecting the other citizens of the country to conform to their beliefs. When one comes here it is with the tacit expectation that they will do their level best to fit in, that they will leave their past behind them and start fresh with opportunity limited only by their willingness to work hard and strive for the dream of freedom.
These are the people we want, and need, at all costs. Those who wish to set up little versions of their old countries should stay there and make a go of it. Those who wish to impose their belief systems upon us can stay in the hell-holes from whence they came. Citizenship here needs to be the entire package: the great opportunities and freedoms offset by the agreement that they are Americans now, and will live by our laws and our standards. Case and point: this means you are free to open a Mosque but you cannot expect to bind others to Sharia Law.
Regardless of the color of their skin or the nation they were born in, there are those we want, and those we cannot accept. It has nothing to do with creed or education or wealth, in fact I would venture that the majority of the ones we want are very poor and have little formal schooling. The ones we want are those who are Americans already- the ones who are free in their own hearts and minds without ever having been exposed to what freedom is. They are the ones who strive and dig in and push themselves past the breaking point to be greater than they are; they live the American dream of productive prosperity oftentimes better than those born here by good luck.
The ones we cannot take are those who wish to leech off our freedoms and economy; the indigent and lazy, the elite from another nation have no place here. This is a country founded on the dreams of farmers and blacksmiths and shopkeepers, not mighty lords and kings and aristocracy. We were the first nation to choose the path which might allow ANY person to be an aristocrat with hard work, and the will to develop their mind and manner to be so. Let princes of other nations stay where they are, we will take the people under their boots and be happy in that, because we know what they don't: the power of those individuals is greater than any army in the world, so long as they are free.
The hysterical fit of "multiculturalism" in this nation has turned what has historically been our greatest asset- the ideas and abilities of our immigrants- into a social cancer which threatens everything about our way of life. Yes, the Statue of Liberty says "...give us your huddled masses", but it makes the caveat that they are the ones "yearning to be free".
In order to facilitate the acceptance of those who would be Americans, why don't we open a new policy in immigration: all able bodied men and women seeking citizenship will be granted such after a term of 4 years in the military, preferably a combat unit. You wish to avail yourself of the opportunities here? You have to choose to put everything on the line, right down to your bones. In the military one can learn the lessons one needs to be an American that they may not have learned in the cultures they came from: The English language, modern sanitation standards, rule of American law, the value of freedom and what is costs to gain and protect it.
In the meantime their immediate family members would live on base with them, learning the same things in different ways and becoming, slowly and with care, Americans. Should the soldier be honorably killed in combat the survivors would receive standard military survivor benefits and citizenship after passing their evaluations.
Those who wish to have our opportunities must also obey our laws, and those who enter illegally have shown disdain for those laws and should be given the choice of long, hard labor imprisonment or service for citizenship, with all the familial benefits entailed. Those who hire illegals for pennies on the dollar wages should be prosecuted with prejudice. They take jobs from those who would follow our laws in order to make an underhanded profit and rob us all.
But for those politicians who seek to weaken us as a nation by robbing us of our culture and ideals, by making a mockery of the law- we must have no mercy upon them.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Vestigial Conservatism: The Sanctity of Life
Sorry for the hiatus, busy busy. I had a conversation with my beautiful and intelligent wife the other day (yes, while I should have been blogging, but it got this one going) about health care, government, and religion. We went relatively in-depth about the problems facing us as a culture and tried to come up with a "unified theory" of what the hell has gone wrong in this country. The answer that was reached was not what you think: fear of death and the corruption of the idea of sanctity of life.
Fear of death has been covered in these blogs already, I know, but let me expand on these ideas, and I beg your indulgence of my indulgences.
It has become entirely apparent, as Einstein once said, that our technology has surpassed our humanity; that we have so many bells and whistles going off around us all the time and yet we cannot use them to good effect anymore. These technological marvels like life support, medications, complex surgeries, all of these things are not inherently good, but only good when applied with a view of humanity.
Is it a true good to keep someone on life support who will never wake? It is a true good to pay thousands on a medication that will only prolong your suffering, or undergo an operation that will drain what you would give to your children, grandchildren or a charitable cause so you can live easier for but one more year? I say no, that those who choose such things are not committed to the good of the people nor really the good of themselves. Prolonging suffering, wasting precious resources for small effect and destroying our own legacy is tantamount to lunacy and nothing more. But why, then, do we do it?
It all comes down to fear of death, that unknown equalizer we all MUST face, though we paint our faces an inch thick, though we get a hundred face lifts and botox injections, though we take a thousand drugs or undergo a thousand painful procedures. Once upon a time, and not really that long ago, religion provided the masses of people a way to face that fear, to believe there is something greater and better beyond this life. And so many of us were unafraid to go into that great night with our eyes open and full of hope. There was dignity and grace in the act of dying, of aging. Whatever evils religion has done, it has given us the ultimate tool to destroy the ultimate fear.
No more. We have become an irreligious society, placing our hope in science to take away what we perceive to be the bitter sting of death. And that is really fine, so long as our humanity and will can keep pace with the science we create. Yet we have not. As our technological power has become stronger, we find ourselves unable and unwilling to make the right choices regarding that unknown quantity. We have gone back to the days where all humanity was afraid of the dark. Rather than look upon our marvels and be at peace we have become more troubled and selfish; rather than using our knowledge to create something which will endure beyond us we have chosen to use our great abilities for selfishness and personal vanity.
But where is religion now? What has happened is not simply the fault of science, which is (real science, anyway) unbiased and simply IS, but the fault of religion for forgetting what IT is. The vestigial conservatism in the title of this blog is what is left of the belief in the sanctity of life that religion had given us. As with anything, everything has it's corollary, and in this case, the second half of that belief has been abandoned: the sanctity of life necessitates the dignity of death.
Pulling the plug is not murder, nor is removing the feeding tube of a person who has undergone a horrific tragedy. They are in fact truly celebrations of the sanctity of life. Life is not breathing, it is not simply existing; to a human being it is an amalgamation of hopes and fears and dreams and actions, of nobility and disgrace, of failure and triumph. Life is not sacred because it simply is, but because of the possibilities it gives to us. Many religions have forgotten that part of the equation, choosing to simply state that life must be preserved AT ALL COSTS, even if that cost is our humanity.
Religion, I believe, is mans interpretation of the will of God. And as such it is inherently flawed as all people are flawed. Things useful and necessary can be forgotten, altered, even warped into something it was never intended to be. This doesn't negate the good it has or yet can do, just as the good it has and can do cannot negate the evils it has perpetrated through the years. The same can be said of any human being.
But science, no matter how advanced, cannot advance us morally as a species, only technologically. The answers to when science should be used, and to what effect, cannot be quantified or given any greater value than already exist in our moral sense and, given the state of our world, I would say it is perfectly capable of turning us back on some of our greatest gifts.
We can measure the mass of a single atom, or a smaller particle still, but the greatness and possibility of the human experience is unquantifiable, and more beautiful than any machine that can be built. We as a people must remember what it is to be unafraid, we must look into that great unknown and realize that final thing is what truly gives the rest of our life meaning, and to be glad of it.
Fear of death has been covered in these blogs already, I know, but let me expand on these ideas, and I beg your indulgence of my indulgences.
It has become entirely apparent, as Einstein once said, that our technology has surpassed our humanity; that we have so many bells and whistles going off around us all the time and yet we cannot use them to good effect anymore. These technological marvels like life support, medications, complex surgeries, all of these things are not inherently good, but only good when applied with a view of humanity.
Is it a true good to keep someone on life support who will never wake? It is a true good to pay thousands on a medication that will only prolong your suffering, or undergo an operation that will drain what you would give to your children, grandchildren or a charitable cause so you can live easier for but one more year? I say no, that those who choose such things are not committed to the good of the people nor really the good of themselves. Prolonging suffering, wasting precious resources for small effect and destroying our own legacy is tantamount to lunacy and nothing more. But why, then, do we do it?
It all comes down to fear of death, that unknown equalizer we all MUST face, though we paint our faces an inch thick, though we get a hundred face lifts and botox injections, though we take a thousand drugs or undergo a thousand painful procedures. Once upon a time, and not really that long ago, religion provided the masses of people a way to face that fear, to believe there is something greater and better beyond this life. And so many of us were unafraid to go into that great night with our eyes open and full of hope. There was dignity and grace in the act of dying, of aging. Whatever evils religion has done, it has given us the ultimate tool to destroy the ultimate fear.
No more. We have become an irreligious society, placing our hope in science to take away what we perceive to be the bitter sting of death. And that is really fine, so long as our humanity and will can keep pace with the science we create. Yet we have not. As our technological power has become stronger, we find ourselves unable and unwilling to make the right choices regarding that unknown quantity. We have gone back to the days where all humanity was afraid of the dark. Rather than look upon our marvels and be at peace we have become more troubled and selfish; rather than using our knowledge to create something which will endure beyond us we have chosen to use our great abilities for selfishness and personal vanity.
But where is religion now? What has happened is not simply the fault of science, which is (real science, anyway) unbiased and simply IS, but the fault of religion for forgetting what IT is. The vestigial conservatism in the title of this blog is what is left of the belief in the sanctity of life that religion had given us. As with anything, everything has it's corollary, and in this case, the second half of that belief has been abandoned: the sanctity of life necessitates the dignity of death.
Pulling the plug is not murder, nor is removing the feeding tube of a person who has undergone a horrific tragedy. They are in fact truly celebrations of the sanctity of life. Life is not breathing, it is not simply existing; to a human being it is an amalgamation of hopes and fears and dreams and actions, of nobility and disgrace, of failure and triumph. Life is not sacred because it simply is, but because of the possibilities it gives to us. Many religions have forgotten that part of the equation, choosing to simply state that life must be preserved AT ALL COSTS, even if that cost is our humanity.
Religion, I believe, is mans interpretation of the will of God. And as such it is inherently flawed as all people are flawed. Things useful and necessary can be forgotten, altered, even warped into something it was never intended to be. This doesn't negate the good it has or yet can do, just as the good it has and can do cannot negate the evils it has perpetrated through the years. The same can be said of any human being.
But science, no matter how advanced, cannot advance us morally as a species, only technologically. The answers to when science should be used, and to what effect, cannot be quantified or given any greater value than already exist in our moral sense and, given the state of our world, I would say it is perfectly capable of turning us back on some of our greatest gifts.
We can measure the mass of a single atom, or a smaller particle still, but the greatness and possibility of the human experience is unquantifiable, and more beautiful than any machine that can be built. We as a people must remember what it is to be unafraid, we must look into that great unknown and realize that final thing is what truly gives the rest of our life meaning, and to be glad of it.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Liberals: Obviously Not Math Majors
It has come to my attention that many of the most "fun" statistics for liberal use these days are pretty stretchy. And I don't mean the amount of money in the budget, either. Lets look through a few "progressive" ideas over the next few days and see what the numbers say.
Yes, I know it is so much more fun to have an emotional, visceral reaction to problems, but bear with me, as I have this somewhat crazy idea that Government should be based on what works, rather than what we really, truly, with sugar and spice on top wish would work.
Lets take, for today's example, urban blacks. You will see statistics one after the other about how destitute these poor souls are, how they are victimized by the police (hey, I'm not much of a fan either, just saying), endure higher prices than suburbs, crooked and racist business owners moving the jobs away to where the white folk are, and are generally the victims of heinous things perpetrated upon them by the evil, the greedy, and the hateful.
Problem seems to be, though, that the numbers just don't add up to those conclusions.
To really understand anything you first have to know that nothing happens in a vacuum, that there is a history involved in everything, and to know where things are going, you must know where things have been. You know the effect, urban poverty, and so rather than look at the history of the situation most people just lash out at what they perceive to be the "bad guys".
Do me a favor: look at the employment rates of urban dwellers in the 1930's and 40's. Now look at the 1950's; then go for the 60's, then 70's, and now today. Look at every ethnic group, family cohesion rates (families with 2 parents), income range and the violent crime stats. Now look at today. What you see is a gradual improvement up until the early 1960's, after which the situation for minorities, especially blacks, drastically worsens.
But how can that be? The 60's brought us the civil rights act, numerous laws on equality, robust unionization, the works. How can things have been better BEFORE all those wonderful things and worse AFTER? This is where history comes in handy. During the mid to late 60's all those wonderful things were done, yes, but businesses started moving out before that as crime was already gong up. A few riots thrown in for good measure and most businesses felt (reasonably) like the best way to protect their businesses was to get the hell out of Dodge.
The story the numbers tell is that prior to the unrest of the 60's, the urban minority population was experiencing a robust family life, with decent wages and relatively low crime. But leading up to the early part of that decade, the numbers waver. Not in employment on average but the crime rate and child abandonment rate. Shortly after these numbers began to rise, businesses started to move out. There were then riots in major cities, where urban blacks destroyed millions (hundreds of millions in adjusted money) of dollars of private and business property. More businesses moved for their safety. More rampant crime, more abandonment.
The problem is believed to be external, ie. businesses move so crime goes up. But in actuality the numbers don't support that story, but rather show businesses doing the smart thing to protect their assets when crime rates rise where they are located.
The truth is that the problem isn't external, but internal. The breakdown of civil society is the cause of woe, not someone foisting something upon them. Easy to prove that one too.
When you take into account not merely the "level" of education of blacks versus whites but take into account mean test scores, income is distributed in a funny way. We all know that 2 graduates are not equal just because they are graduates. Say one went to MIT and another went to Kalamazoo college. Or even if both went to MIT but one graduated top of his class with honors and another barely skirts by. So the only way to take into account these variables is to look at test averages and class placement. Here are what the data say: all thing being equal, black men get paid more than white men. Given the same basic measurement stick, black men out-earn white men by just shy of 6 percent. Huh.
What this shows, in stark numbers, is that those who choose to step out of the culture they are mired in have no greater limitations than anyone else, that those who try do, in fact, excel. The problem lay not in people holding others down but in people holding themselves down, people choosing the easy over the right, the quick payoff rather than the reward of the patient.
When the State, or a community organizer, or well meaning liberal steps in talks about "blaming the victim", the burden of proof upon them to show that there is in fact a victim of external abuses. When history and hard fact are in play- rather than platitudes and emotional reaction- it is pretty easy to say that in this case there is none. Oh, and I know some liberals will toss around that old hack about the "legacy of slavery", and I am fully prepared to throw hard data back in their smug and self serving faces.
Modern liberals have for too long held an entire people from their American birthright: to try as hard as anyone else and to go just as far. They have enslaved a people with their false promises and feel-good emotional blame games. They have given a man a fish at a time, rather that even allowing him to learn how to fish, and entire generations have been lost because of it. They have created artificial rifts in our nation by playing up non-existent problems and creating cures worse than the diseases that are in fact there. They have crushed the spirits of innumerable human beings by giving them the out: someone else is holding me down, I am a victim, I have no power, I must be taken care of, I cannot do anything on my own. They have robbed a people of true pride in themselves, the cornerstone of conservative thought, and robbed us all of the future we could have had.
Yes, I know it is so much more fun to have an emotional, visceral reaction to problems, but bear with me, as I have this somewhat crazy idea that Government should be based on what works, rather than what we really, truly, with sugar and spice on top wish would work.
Lets take, for today's example, urban blacks. You will see statistics one after the other about how destitute these poor souls are, how they are victimized by the police (hey, I'm not much of a fan either, just saying), endure higher prices than suburbs, crooked and racist business owners moving the jobs away to where the white folk are, and are generally the victims of heinous things perpetrated upon them by the evil, the greedy, and the hateful.
Problem seems to be, though, that the numbers just don't add up to those conclusions.
To really understand anything you first have to know that nothing happens in a vacuum, that there is a history involved in everything, and to know where things are going, you must know where things have been. You know the effect, urban poverty, and so rather than look at the history of the situation most people just lash out at what they perceive to be the "bad guys".
Do me a favor: look at the employment rates of urban dwellers in the 1930's and 40's. Now look at the 1950's; then go for the 60's, then 70's, and now today. Look at every ethnic group, family cohesion rates (families with 2 parents), income range and the violent crime stats. Now look at today. What you see is a gradual improvement up until the early 1960's, after which the situation for minorities, especially blacks, drastically worsens.
But how can that be? The 60's brought us the civil rights act, numerous laws on equality, robust unionization, the works. How can things have been better BEFORE all those wonderful things and worse AFTER? This is where history comes in handy. During the mid to late 60's all those wonderful things were done, yes, but businesses started moving out before that as crime was already gong up. A few riots thrown in for good measure and most businesses felt (reasonably) like the best way to protect their businesses was to get the hell out of Dodge.
The story the numbers tell is that prior to the unrest of the 60's, the urban minority population was experiencing a robust family life, with decent wages and relatively low crime. But leading up to the early part of that decade, the numbers waver. Not in employment on average but the crime rate and child abandonment rate. Shortly after these numbers began to rise, businesses started to move out. There were then riots in major cities, where urban blacks destroyed millions (hundreds of millions in adjusted money) of dollars of private and business property. More businesses moved for their safety. More rampant crime, more abandonment.
The problem is believed to be external, ie. businesses move so crime goes up. But in actuality the numbers don't support that story, but rather show businesses doing the smart thing to protect their assets when crime rates rise where they are located.
The truth is that the problem isn't external, but internal. The breakdown of civil society is the cause of woe, not someone foisting something upon them. Easy to prove that one too.
When you take into account not merely the "level" of education of blacks versus whites but take into account mean test scores, income is distributed in a funny way. We all know that 2 graduates are not equal just because they are graduates. Say one went to MIT and another went to Kalamazoo college. Or even if both went to MIT but one graduated top of his class with honors and another barely skirts by. So the only way to take into account these variables is to look at test averages and class placement. Here are what the data say: all thing being equal, black men get paid more than white men. Given the same basic measurement stick, black men out-earn white men by just shy of 6 percent. Huh.
What this shows, in stark numbers, is that those who choose to step out of the culture they are mired in have no greater limitations than anyone else, that those who try do, in fact, excel. The problem lay not in people holding others down but in people holding themselves down, people choosing the easy over the right, the quick payoff rather than the reward of the patient.
When the State, or a community organizer, or well meaning liberal steps in talks about "blaming the victim", the burden of proof upon them to show that there is in fact a victim of external abuses. When history and hard fact are in play- rather than platitudes and emotional reaction- it is pretty easy to say that in this case there is none. Oh, and I know some liberals will toss around that old hack about the "legacy of slavery", and I am fully prepared to throw hard data back in their smug and self serving faces.
Modern liberals have for too long held an entire people from their American birthright: to try as hard as anyone else and to go just as far. They have enslaved a people with their false promises and feel-good emotional blame games. They have given a man a fish at a time, rather that even allowing him to learn how to fish, and entire generations have been lost because of it. They have created artificial rifts in our nation by playing up non-existent problems and creating cures worse than the diseases that are in fact there. They have crushed the spirits of innumerable human beings by giving them the out: someone else is holding me down, I am a victim, I have no power, I must be taken care of, I cannot do anything on my own. They have robbed a people of true pride in themselves, the cornerstone of conservative thought, and robbed us all of the future we could have had.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Education: College Part II
In the State of the Union Speech, President Obama laid out a plan to cancel student loan debt after 20 years, or 10 years if they decide to work for the government. Great plan, if you want educational costs to skyrocket in ways you have never seen before and want the economy to crumble to ever finer ashes.
What incentive does paying off loans give to schools or students to try and make it affordable? All they know is that if they charge (or an institution costs) a student $100 or $100,000 a year that the government will be covering it so there is no reason to keep a single cost in line, no reason to be efficient with the money they take in. In fact, a University would be stupid NOT to raise tuition when, after all, a graduate of their institution simply has to work for a few decades, paying the minimum, and poof! all the debt magically disappears.
This is the type of perverse incentive modern liberals offer economies, from the ivy league to the Detroit projects. Why be more efficient if the cost of inefficiency is paid by someone else? To feel good? Bet that money you're raking in feels pretty good too, and with minimal work to get it. It's the New American Dream.
Meanwhile, as tuition- already divorced from any economic principles by government subsidy- goes to ever greater heights, graduates who would otherwise put their value into the private sector and employ more people would be going into government work, where the citizens have to pay for them. It is one of the most egregious liberal fallacies that the government can make the economy better by making government larger. Every single dollar paid to a state employee (who produces nothing and therefore is already a net drain on the economy) is a dollar YOU do not get to spend in the private economy.
Simple math: You make $40,000 a year. You spend about $20,000 on goods produced by other people, keeping them employed and therefore keeping the economy going. The state, though, makes certain you don't take home $40,000 even if that's what you and your employer agreed you would be paid. So really, after average income taxes, you bring home about $28,000. That means that they have robbed the economy of $12,000 to keep people employed, to produce goods to ship overseas and increase the value of our economy and our dollar. And that is just one person- imagine the net theft from our economy by doing this 100,000,000 times. Yet they do, every year.
Government expands by 20% and necessarily they have to take more of your income to keep those people (who produce nothing and are a drain on the economy already, did I mention that?) they hired employed. So now you are left with $26,000, an additional $2,000 out of the hands of those who produce what we need, an additional $2,000 that wont go to wages, making materials, providing health benefits to people working for them.
Now take even more college graduates, especially those with very expensive advanced degrees out of the economy, and pay for them with your money to produce nothing instead of having them out in the private sector where they could produce a net benefit to the country.
For those who don't understand what progressivism is, it is the gradual and progressive encroachment of the government into all facets of our life. But it is, as I said, gradual. And insidious- no huge steps to take away personal rights, just one case at a time, till progressives get the right judges to make the right rulings and presto- the state can now take your house and demolish it so a corporation can use the land instead. Or , even worse, so they can leave the lot empty for "natural space" laws and drive up housing prices by decreasing supply (therefore increasing net property tax revenue for fewer services).
Obama is not a Stupid man, indeed he is very intelligent, and very "progressive". So there is no possible way he has overlooked the long term impact of having the ever more high-end graduates out of the economy and into the government; just as there is no possible way he does not see what the effect a FULL government subsidy will do to tuition rates. If you think he hasn't, who is really the fool?
What incentive does paying off loans give to schools or students to try and make it affordable? All they know is that if they charge (or an institution costs) a student $100 or $100,000 a year that the government will be covering it so there is no reason to keep a single cost in line, no reason to be efficient with the money they take in. In fact, a University would be stupid NOT to raise tuition when, after all, a graduate of their institution simply has to work for a few decades, paying the minimum, and poof! all the debt magically disappears.
This is the type of perverse incentive modern liberals offer economies, from the ivy league to the Detroit projects. Why be more efficient if the cost of inefficiency is paid by someone else? To feel good? Bet that money you're raking in feels pretty good too, and with minimal work to get it. It's the New American Dream.
Meanwhile, as tuition- already divorced from any economic principles by government subsidy- goes to ever greater heights, graduates who would otherwise put their value into the private sector and employ more people would be going into government work, where the citizens have to pay for them. It is one of the most egregious liberal fallacies that the government can make the economy better by making government larger. Every single dollar paid to a state employee (who produces nothing and therefore is already a net drain on the economy) is a dollar YOU do not get to spend in the private economy.
Simple math: You make $40,000 a year. You spend about $20,000 on goods produced by other people, keeping them employed and therefore keeping the economy going. The state, though, makes certain you don't take home $40,000 even if that's what you and your employer agreed you would be paid. So really, after average income taxes, you bring home about $28,000. That means that they have robbed the economy of $12,000 to keep people employed, to produce goods to ship overseas and increase the value of our economy and our dollar. And that is just one person- imagine the net theft from our economy by doing this 100,000,000 times. Yet they do, every year.
Government expands by 20% and necessarily they have to take more of your income to keep those people (who produce nothing and are a drain on the economy already, did I mention that?) they hired employed. So now you are left with $26,000, an additional $2,000 out of the hands of those who produce what we need, an additional $2,000 that wont go to wages, making materials, providing health benefits to people working for them.
Now take even more college graduates, especially those with very expensive advanced degrees out of the economy, and pay for them with your money to produce nothing instead of having them out in the private sector where they could produce a net benefit to the country.
For those who don't understand what progressivism is, it is the gradual and progressive encroachment of the government into all facets of our life. But it is, as I said, gradual. And insidious- no huge steps to take away personal rights, just one case at a time, till progressives get the right judges to make the right rulings and presto- the state can now take your house and demolish it so a corporation can use the land instead. Or , even worse, so they can leave the lot empty for "natural space" laws and drive up housing prices by decreasing supply (therefore increasing net property tax revenue for fewer services).
Obama is not a Stupid man, indeed he is very intelligent, and very "progressive". So there is no possible way he has overlooked the long term impact of having the ever more high-end graduates out of the economy and into the government; just as there is no possible way he does not see what the effect a FULL government subsidy will do to tuition rates. If you think he hasn't, who is really the fool?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Education: How to Make College Cheaper
So it took a few days to do the research on this, but I finally figured out why college is, on average, so expensive and what can be done about it. It is actually pretty easy, and the logic behind it points out one of the major failures of modern liberal ideology. Yes! Two birds, one stone.
Want to make higher education more affordable to the masses? End FAFSA, and rework accreditation standards. Though this may seem counter-intuitive, the economics of it is totally sound.
Imagine you own a business making widgets and whosits, and you want to make those widgets more affordable so more people can buy them and you make more money. How do you do it? You invest in greater efficiencies, economies of scale, and focus on driving down costs of production. Pretty easy, really. Now imagine you have some friends in the government instead of a decent brain. The answer then would be to lobby your buddies to subsidies widget production so more people can afford them. This drives the cost down too, right?
Wrong. The net effect is that costs and prices are now out of line. For you to sell a widget at a straight, non-susidized $30 you could make, say, $10. Now, though, imagine the government gives you $10 a widget. What do you charge? Most liberals would say $20, but those ones are not in charge of businesses, and for good reason. You would, of course, sell widgets for $30 and pocket the subsidy. Now that works until you decide to really push on your whosit production, which is more expensive, but gives your company greater prestige and justifies everyone's salaries. Easiest way to pump more money into that is to go back to the government and tell them that the cost of widgets is going up and they need to pay more in subsidies to cover it.
Then you take the subsidies and profits and split them down the middle into widgets and whosits, and your company becomes even more prestigious for whozits, so you can justify charging more for your widgets and giving yourself and your execs a bigger pay package...Then the cycle begins again.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Universities, where widgets are graduates and whosits are research. You take the subsidy out of the equation and costs have to come into line or widgets will just go to the colleges where whosits are not produced.
But, you may say, even non-research institutions are more expensive every year! And you would be correct. The reason: accreditation agencies. These places actually never take into account the quality of what is produced, just what goes into the machine. So a college that gives laptops to it's students with the entire Library of Congress on the hard drive to research from would not get an accreditation because it doesn't have enough books or libraries. Seriously. Essentially, they are saying you have to have no choice on the outlay for a massive library, all the books therein, and all the upkeep costs, so that your students can have less access to information at a higher cost. I am not kidding or exaggerating in the least.
And the reason they do this is simple: they are too lazy to look at the outcomes, which is difficult, so instead just look at the bells and whistles. Take a look at What happened to the University of Colorado Law School. 92% of their graduates could pass the Bar Exam on the first try, a higher proportion that either Harvard or Yale. But due to the fact they couldn't afford a new, larger library, the American Bar Association (the ones in charge of law school accreditation) threatened to revoke the school's accreditation. So in order to comply with a completely arbitrary wish, one with (obviously, based on Bar Exam pass rates) no bearing on quality of education. They spent over $40 million on a new library, then had to jack up yearly tuition from $6700 to $16,738 a year, and a whopping $30,814 for out of state students. This effectively priced out on of the best schools for under-privileged law students. Guess their dreams don't matter as much as the building does.
You want to know the average amount of time teaching students by a professor at an average university? 12 hours. The rest is filled in by graduate students so the lofty professors can do research and make their tee times. This means that prestigious institutions such as Harvard and Yale can charge exorbitant tuition rates to keep tenured profs on staff while they professors never actually see their students.
Remember that the next time a State University comes around for money and somehow says that tuition rates are to blame for them needing more money. The two are entirely disconnected. When a College President says that tuition doesn't cover the cost of educating a student, don't think for a second they are somehow noble or magnanimous, they are not. It's like Carl Pohlad saying that ticket prices don't cover the cost of the Twins (a nod to Tom Sowell), so he is being noble somehow. The majority of money comes to these places through outside channels such as research grants and contracts, the students are really just how they pay themselves more for just a few hours of work. Icing on the cake, as it were.
So when you hear about budgets coming up and Universities and Colleges start whining about how bad off they are, remember that it is all smoke and mirrors, and that the ones who are to blame for the skyrocketing costs are the same ones with their hands out.
Want to make higher education more affordable to the masses? End FAFSA, and rework accreditation standards. Though this may seem counter-intuitive, the economics of it is totally sound.
Imagine you own a business making widgets and whosits, and you want to make those widgets more affordable so more people can buy them and you make more money. How do you do it? You invest in greater efficiencies, economies of scale, and focus on driving down costs of production. Pretty easy, really. Now imagine you have some friends in the government instead of a decent brain. The answer then would be to lobby your buddies to subsidies widget production so more people can afford them. This drives the cost down too, right?
Wrong. The net effect is that costs and prices are now out of line. For you to sell a widget at a straight, non-susidized $30 you could make, say, $10. Now, though, imagine the government gives you $10 a widget. What do you charge? Most liberals would say $20, but those ones are not in charge of businesses, and for good reason. You would, of course, sell widgets for $30 and pocket the subsidy. Now that works until you decide to really push on your whosit production, which is more expensive, but gives your company greater prestige and justifies everyone's salaries. Easiest way to pump more money into that is to go back to the government and tell them that the cost of widgets is going up and they need to pay more in subsidies to cover it.
Then you take the subsidies and profits and split them down the middle into widgets and whosits, and your company becomes even more prestigious for whozits, so you can justify charging more for your widgets and giving yourself and your execs a bigger pay package...Then the cycle begins again.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Universities, where widgets are graduates and whosits are research. You take the subsidy out of the equation and costs have to come into line or widgets will just go to the colleges where whosits are not produced.
But, you may say, even non-research institutions are more expensive every year! And you would be correct. The reason: accreditation agencies. These places actually never take into account the quality of what is produced, just what goes into the machine. So a college that gives laptops to it's students with the entire Library of Congress on the hard drive to research from would not get an accreditation because it doesn't have enough books or libraries. Seriously. Essentially, they are saying you have to have no choice on the outlay for a massive library, all the books therein, and all the upkeep costs, so that your students can have less access to information at a higher cost. I am not kidding or exaggerating in the least.
And the reason they do this is simple: they are too lazy to look at the outcomes, which is difficult, so instead just look at the bells and whistles. Take a look at What happened to the University of Colorado Law School. 92% of their graduates could pass the Bar Exam on the first try, a higher proportion that either Harvard or Yale. But due to the fact they couldn't afford a new, larger library, the American Bar Association (the ones in charge of law school accreditation) threatened to revoke the school's accreditation. So in order to comply with a completely arbitrary wish, one with (obviously, based on Bar Exam pass rates) no bearing on quality of education. They spent over $40 million on a new library, then had to jack up yearly tuition from $6700 to $16,738 a year, and a whopping $30,814 for out of state students. This effectively priced out on of the best schools for under-privileged law students. Guess their dreams don't matter as much as the building does.
You want to know the average amount of time teaching students by a professor at an average university? 12 hours. The rest is filled in by graduate students so the lofty professors can do research and make their tee times. This means that prestigious institutions such as Harvard and Yale can charge exorbitant tuition rates to keep tenured profs on staff while they professors never actually see their students.
Remember that the next time a State University comes around for money and somehow says that tuition rates are to blame for them needing more money. The two are entirely disconnected. When a College President says that tuition doesn't cover the cost of educating a student, don't think for a second they are somehow noble or magnanimous, they are not. It's like Carl Pohlad saying that ticket prices don't cover the cost of the Twins (a nod to Tom Sowell), so he is being noble somehow. The majority of money comes to these places through outside channels such as research grants and contracts, the students are really just how they pay themselves more for just a few hours of work. Icing on the cake, as it were.
So when you hear about budgets coming up and Universities and Colleges start whining about how bad off they are, remember that it is all smoke and mirrors, and that the ones who are to blame for the skyrocketing costs are the same ones with their hands out.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Budgetary Woes: The False Choices of Obama's Budget
I was watching the Daily Show the other night, and one of President Obama's financial advisers was the guest. I am not going to lie, I was so irritated by his doublespeak and nonsensical assertions that I ranted for quite some time after. I will spare you the meanderings of the rant and, instead, give you the Cliff's Notes version.
The gentleman was under the impression that the "Stimulus" bill and Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) were unjustly under fire, and the new budget proposed by the administration, which is even larger than the last, is necessary to dig us out of this recession. This guy is an economics PROFESSOR. No wonder college kids these days are graduating so stupid.
The idea that government spending can have a net positive effect on the economy is true. IF that government is running a surplus. The State can then flush that money back into the system to free up liquidity in markets, employ in the short term many people for infrastructure projects to make the wheels of commerce run easier, even give rebates to the citizens to provide a short term boost in spending. Because, in the end, it is real money.
But we are so far in the hole that every dollar thrown down the rabbit hole of the recession is a net drain on our economy. The state needs to borrow much of it, which will need to be paid back. The rest of it, and in this case the majority of the money used, is worthless. Worse than that it actually makes each dollar you already have worth less. A modern dollar is a unit of currency that is an idea of the net value of the total assets of the united states. It is backed by what we have and what we produce within this country. So simply printing more money doesn't make more money, it just means it takes more of it to do the same things.
In the 1970's, the money supply was increased by about 17%. Ask around about how that policy worked then: the resulting inflation caused interest rates to skyrocket. This in turn caused people to stop buying houses, investing in businesses and so on. If you look at today, the Fed has increased monetary supply, backed by nothing at all, by between 130% and 150%. The only reason we are not awash in a sea of worthless dollars is that much of that cash is in banks right now, and they, selfishly or wisely, are not lending it out.
The Obama Administration is holding out a promise based on economic fallacy, and is simply kicking the bill down the road- the only hope he holds is that inflation will not swamp the nation on HIS watch. He sees the same thing that many Americans see right now, that the wide modern liberal grip on the House and Senate is very temporary, that his reelection is not a certainty, and that any problems he creates for the future will not be attached to him after he is gone. He has blamed his predecessor for everything, including what he himself has caused, but the same will not be able to be done to him if the legislature switches hands.
The false choice Obama gives us is this: Prosperity through greater debt or crushing economic failure. The truth of the matter is that through his own actions and those of the Fed he has brought on economic failure in any circumstance. The only question is when and how bad it will be.
We could choose to go down now, take our lumps and come out stronger on the other side, or we can choose to make this the next administrations problem (or the one after that)and become a third world country. The unemployment levels we see today are not the effects of bad banking regulation, but rather our economy resetting to where it realistically is. This has been caused not by bad mortgages or faulty derivatives but by how much our own government has unbalanced our capital systems.
When the State tells banks where they can loan their money and whom they can loan it to it sets a dangerous precedent. Banks have a vested interest in lending only to those who can pay the money back, and with interest. They loan to those people or companies who have that ability because that is the only way to make sure your own money is protected. If a loan goes bad at a bank, the bank is left holding the bag. But guess what? They have your bag, too, and the money you think is sitting in a vault somewhere is actually sitting in that house that went belly up because the government told the bank that had to lend to someone who claims food stamps as income. And they have the gall to call banks "predatory"? Who was looking out for your money? The banks. Who messed that up? Modern Liberal politicians who don't understand that not everyone can afford a house.
And this new Obama budget is more of the same, more financing that would make Enron executives squirm with joy. More robbing those who have earned for those who have not and telling people it is good for the country. Hell, at this point it is robbing those who have not earned because they haven't been born yet to give to people who haven't earned who have been. More money we do not have for false promises on pillars of sand.
The gentleman was under the impression that the "Stimulus" bill and Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) were unjustly under fire, and the new budget proposed by the administration, which is even larger than the last, is necessary to dig us out of this recession. This guy is an economics PROFESSOR. No wonder college kids these days are graduating so stupid.
The idea that government spending can have a net positive effect on the economy is true. IF that government is running a surplus. The State can then flush that money back into the system to free up liquidity in markets, employ in the short term many people for infrastructure projects to make the wheels of commerce run easier, even give rebates to the citizens to provide a short term boost in spending. Because, in the end, it is real money.
But we are so far in the hole that every dollar thrown down the rabbit hole of the recession is a net drain on our economy. The state needs to borrow much of it, which will need to be paid back. The rest of it, and in this case the majority of the money used, is worthless. Worse than that it actually makes each dollar you already have worth less. A modern dollar is a unit of currency that is an idea of the net value of the total assets of the united states. It is backed by what we have and what we produce within this country. So simply printing more money doesn't make more money, it just means it takes more of it to do the same things.
In the 1970's, the money supply was increased by about 17%. Ask around about how that policy worked then: the resulting inflation caused interest rates to skyrocket. This in turn caused people to stop buying houses, investing in businesses and so on. If you look at today, the Fed has increased monetary supply, backed by nothing at all, by between 130% and 150%. The only reason we are not awash in a sea of worthless dollars is that much of that cash is in banks right now, and they, selfishly or wisely, are not lending it out.
The Obama Administration is holding out a promise based on economic fallacy, and is simply kicking the bill down the road- the only hope he holds is that inflation will not swamp the nation on HIS watch. He sees the same thing that many Americans see right now, that the wide modern liberal grip on the House and Senate is very temporary, that his reelection is not a certainty, and that any problems he creates for the future will not be attached to him after he is gone. He has blamed his predecessor for everything, including what he himself has caused, but the same will not be able to be done to him if the legislature switches hands.
The false choice Obama gives us is this: Prosperity through greater debt or crushing economic failure. The truth of the matter is that through his own actions and those of the Fed he has brought on economic failure in any circumstance. The only question is when and how bad it will be.
We could choose to go down now, take our lumps and come out stronger on the other side, or we can choose to make this the next administrations problem (or the one after that)and become a third world country. The unemployment levels we see today are not the effects of bad banking regulation, but rather our economy resetting to where it realistically is. This has been caused not by bad mortgages or faulty derivatives but by how much our own government has unbalanced our capital systems.
When the State tells banks where they can loan their money and whom they can loan it to it sets a dangerous precedent. Banks have a vested interest in lending only to those who can pay the money back, and with interest. They loan to those people or companies who have that ability because that is the only way to make sure your own money is protected. If a loan goes bad at a bank, the bank is left holding the bag. But guess what? They have your bag, too, and the money you think is sitting in a vault somewhere is actually sitting in that house that went belly up because the government told the bank that had to lend to someone who claims food stamps as income. And they have the gall to call banks "predatory"? Who was looking out for your money? The banks. Who messed that up? Modern Liberal politicians who don't understand that not everyone can afford a house.
And this new Obama budget is more of the same, more financing that would make Enron executives squirm with joy. More robbing those who have earned for those who have not and telling people it is good for the country. Hell, at this point it is robbing those who have not earned because they haven't been born yet to give to people who haven't earned who have been. More money we do not have for false promises on pillars of sand.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Compassion
It has been brought to my attention that some people who have read these posts do not think I have any compassion, that Conservatism has little to no sympathy for others. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Conservatism requires a personal sense of compassion, a deep sympathy for those who surround you- a sense of community and a feeling of shared pain. That it requires no governmental enforcement is a positive, not, as most on the far left today assume, a negative.
How can this be? Simple: Conservatism cares about people AS INDIVIDUALS, real people with real stories and individual problems and needs. A massive and top heavy government can never hope to provide the care for those people on an individual basis. So they are reduced to generalizations and social security numbers to keep them straight. Helpful, no?
Not really, as the data on poverty shows. The poverty rate of Americans in 1900 stood at 18.3%, with the federal budget standing at 6.4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That is 18.3% without Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Food Stamps, nothing. Opportunity was yours, your money could be spent on whatever you thought would make your life and the lives of those you loved better.
Fast forward a century. The poverty rate has dropped a whole 4.9 percentage points, while the programs created to supposedly end poverty altogether cost our people about 1.5 trillion dollars last year alone. That means that the State could have written a check to every one of those people below the poverty line for $37,688. But it didn't.
Instead all that money was taken from people with families, businesses with employees. The money that could have been used to increase the size of the production floor to hire more workers? Gone. The money a person could have used to help pay their child's tuition? Gone. Taken by a government who neither personally understands nor cares about you as an individual, but rather sees you as a number in the system or part of a line on a chart. Where is the compassion in that?
Compassion requires, by definition, that you feel the distress and pity for the suffering or misfortune of another. That requires one on one interaction, a true knowledge of the person you seek to give aid to. This is something a group of people a thousand miles away, who fly on military jets and bill it to the same people they are supposed to care for, simply cannot have the capacity to do.
But the mother watching her child hooked up to a respirator can. And so can all the child's aunts and uncles, their friends and neighbors. They feel it in a real, whole way; the pain of it, the fear, the need to help is automatic and noble. I know. I have been there.
But where is the nobility in giving if it is forced by another? Are you giving of yourself, or are you more interested in giving from some other person's pocket? And do you understand that by taking what that person has you have stolen their ability to do as much as they could have done? That is what the government now does- takes from someone's pocket, someone you do not know, who cannot possibly have any real sympathy for your plight, and giving it to you or someone else. There is no compassion there; and in doing so is there supposed to be some satisfaction, some sense of having done the right thing?
America has been the most generous giver, per capita, for quite a long time. It has been historically one of our greatest strengths, that willingness to give freely of what we have for the good of those around us. Especially among those at the high income levels. But now the amount of personal donations by middle class people and below are on a rapid decline. Even before the current economic fear took hold we had stopped much of that charitable giving. But why?
The only answer I can see is that the outrageous, inefficient and faceless giving by our own government has so damaged our culture that we feel it is no longer the responsibility of the individual to give to those in need. We count it as laziness that a person would not seek a government handout rather than a strength. The brave people who created this nation would be ashamed at our lack of personal care, our dearth of real sympathy towards our fellow man, and the very idea that we as a people have ceded our moral character to the will of an elite collective and those who would seek to save us from ourselves by taking what we have.
I know the thought, the idea, of giving from a nation is one that stirs pride in many people. But in the emptiness of compassion, the impersonal indifference to our growing indigence towards those around us and closest to us, we must ask: what cost does that pride come at- where has the compassion gone?
Conservatism requires a personal sense of compassion, a deep sympathy for those who surround you- a sense of community and a feeling of shared pain. That it requires no governmental enforcement is a positive, not, as most on the far left today assume, a negative.
How can this be? Simple: Conservatism cares about people AS INDIVIDUALS, real people with real stories and individual problems and needs. A massive and top heavy government can never hope to provide the care for those people on an individual basis. So they are reduced to generalizations and social security numbers to keep them straight. Helpful, no?
Not really, as the data on poverty shows. The poverty rate of Americans in 1900 stood at 18.3%, with the federal budget standing at 6.4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That is 18.3% without Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Food Stamps, nothing. Opportunity was yours, your money could be spent on whatever you thought would make your life and the lives of those you loved better.
Fast forward a century. The poverty rate has dropped a whole 4.9 percentage points, while the programs created to supposedly end poverty altogether cost our people about 1.5 trillion dollars last year alone. That means that the State could have written a check to every one of those people below the poverty line for $37,688. But it didn't.
Instead all that money was taken from people with families, businesses with employees. The money that could have been used to increase the size of the production floor to hire more workers? Gone. The money a person could have used to help pay their child's tuition? Gone. Taken by a government who neither personally understands nor cares about you as an individual, but rather sees you as a number in the system or part of a line on a chart. Where is the compassion in that?
Compassion requires, by definition, that you feel the distress and pity for the suffering or misfortune of another. That requires one on one interaction, a true knowledge of the person you seek to give aid to. This is something a group of people a thousand miles away, who fly on military jets and bill it to the same people they are supposed to care for, simply cannot have the capacity to do.
But the mother watching her child hooked up to a respirator can. And so can all the child's aunts and uncles, their friends and neighbors. They feel it in a real, whole way; the pain of it, the fear, the need to help is automatic and noble. I know. I have been there.
But where is the nobility in giving if it is forced by another? Are you giving of yourself, or are you more interested in giving from some other person's pocket? And do you understand that by taking what that person has you have stolen their ability to do as much as they could have done? That is what the government now does- takes from someone's pocket, someone you do not know, who cannot possibly have any real sympathy for your plight, and giving it to you or someone else. There is no compassion there; and in doing so is there supposed to be some satisfaction, some sense of having done the right thing?
America has been the most generous giver, per capita, for quite a long time. It has been historically one of our greatest strengths, that willingness to give freely of what we have for the good of those around us. Especially among those at the high income levels. But now the amount of personal donations by middle class people and below are on a rapid decline. Even before the current economic fear took hold we had stopped much of that charitable giving. But why?
The only answer I can see is that the outrageous, inefficient and faceless giving by our own government has so damaged our culture that we feel it is no longer the responsibility of the individual to give to those in need. We count it as laziness that a person would not seek a government handout rather than a strength. The brave people who created this nation would be ashamed at our lack of personal care, our dearth of real sympathy towards our fellow man, and the very idea that we as a people have ceded our moral character to the will of an elite collective and those who would seek to save us from ourselves by taking what we have.
I know the thought, the idea, of giving from a nation is one that stirs pride in many people. But in the emptiness of compassion, the impersonal indifference to our growing indigence towards those around us and closest to us, we must ask: what cost does that pride come at- where has the compassion gone?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Hot Button #3: On Afghanistan
I didn't like our last President. In fact for the last 8 years I devoted pretty much my entire political life to railing against his policies to anyone who would hear. Needless to say my wife, who was not interested in politics until recently, was irritated constantly.
I hated his policies on economics, cutting taxes while increasing spending. I loathed the Patriot Act, as it took many rights away from private citizens that are the price one has to bear to live in a free society. I despised his prescription drug plan, The "No Child Left Behind" bill, and numerous other insane policies that seemed bent on rupturing our country at its seams.
But what I had the biggest problem with was his administrations defense policies.
For a full disclosure, I admit I was all for the war in Afghanistan. The government of that country was harboring an organization that directly attacked us and caused massive, directed civilian casualties. In order to prevent another such event from taking place, our military might needed to be brought entirely to bear on the place. Our CIA needed to dig through the financial records to find out who financed it, no matter how inconvenient the answers that came up might have been. We needed to destroy utterly any threat to the continued peace of our civilization. We still do.
But even on the outset of this war, one I consider to be just, the policies of the Bush administration seemed designed to fail in a most spectacular fashion. We instituted the "Rumsfeld Doctrine", wherein it was believed that a small, technologically superior force could systematically destroy any enemy. That simply with small, mobile forces on the ground, air back-up and superior weapons we could win against an enemy entrenched on home ground, one that does not so much have a political problem with our nation as an ideological one. They do not believe we can be a friend or an ally. They wish us and our entire way of life destroyed.
But wars are not won on the cheap, they are won on the battlefield.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine took the place of two sensible, historically accurate one: The Powell Doctrine, which determines when force can be used successfully, and the doctrine of Overwhelming Force. Powell understood, through a lifetime of military and combat service and a dedication to the art and realities of armed conflict that the way to win efficiently and quickly was through not only superior technology, but through brutal, overwhelming, crushing force with the hearts and wills of the nation firmly behind the troops. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Move into a hostile area in overwhelming numbers, root out the people trying to kill you, secure the area with a base of operations, and move the rest of the forces not concerned with security to the next hostile area. Hold and move, hold and move.
But what the Bush Administration did was not only unconscionable from a humanitarian standpoint (abandoning people to a hostile force those who may or may not have helped you, the enemy doesn't know but is VERY interested in finding out, is frowned upon) but from a purely military one as well. What kind of strategy allows an enemy to constantly outmaneuver it's forces? To flank it, harry it, set traps both behind and ahead since nobody is minding the shop?
Then they simply moved on to another ENTIRELY UNRELATED country. I was no fan of Saddam, but we really needed someone in the halls of power to stop thinking with their testicles and spend some time in their brain. Saddam was the only leader on an Islamic country that didn't have some form of Sharia Law. He constantly waged an ideological campaign against the very types of radical Islam that had attacked our people. And yet, it seems, we had nothing more pressing going on than kicking over his little anthill. As dangerous as he was, or seemed to be, apparently nobody in the last administration had heard the adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
Once again we did it on the (relatively) cheap. The only reason there was any success of any kind was that they already had basic western systems in place. We didn't, and still don't, have that in Afghanistan. It is essentially a beautifully barren landscape of warring Islamic factions. And the only thing in common to all of them is a single unifying idea: If you aren't from around here, and have a gun, we will kill you. They have proven their mettle against some of the most aggressive and powerful armies in the world, throughout all of history. Sure, they are taking us on, but remember before us were the Russians. And before that the Persians were given a black eye. Before that the mighty Mongol Hordes were harassed, attacked, and eventually assimilated. These are not people to be taken lightly.
And yet the mistakes of the past administration (which the new President can't seem to tell people enough about) Has compounded the errors of the last. The general in charge of the theater requested 80,000 additional troops. President Obama decided to send 34,000. The necessary number by my (entirely amateur) estimation? 500,000 to 1,000,000 troops. And here is why.
There are about 28 million people in Afghanistan, spread over an area of 252,000 square miles with pretty sparse population density except in urban areas. In order to secure the urban areas (where about 70% of the population is) would require a pretty minimal force, say 100,000 people whose sole job would be keeping the area secure and letting life go on in a nominally normal fashion. That leaves 400,000 (at the lower end) to cover the rest of the territory, set up listening posts, map out caves, root out the enemy and destroy them.
That's around 2 people for every 3 miles by my count. The ability to force the enemy to abandon their positions would be absolute. The certainty of finding another hiding place in the face of such a force would dwindle to nothing pretty quickly. And with nowhere to run to, no place to hide, and no way to flank, the militants would be destroyed utterly. In the meantime, those security forces and administrative staff in the population centers could start to affecting the necessary changes which would prevent 9/11 from repeating itself.
Imagine the effect that would have on the global Jihadi movement. It would be a clear communication of national will, of the lengths we are willing to go to in order to preserve our way of life. Mess with us, and we will crush you. None will remember you but the sand.
There are those who say overwhelming force will not work against an army that refuses to meet massive troops head-on. This is true if the troops are kept massed and waiting for the opposition, but in a guerrilla war as this one has become forming smaller battalions that outnumber the enemy 50 to 1 would be a decisive advantage. Sun Tzu never said a smaller force always has the upper hand, just that it had options.
We applied all the military might we could muster in the World Wars, and the result was incontrovertible. Now, as then, we a re fighting an enemy who seeks to destroy our way of life. There was no quarter that could be drawn in the fight against the ideology we opposed in those wars and there is not here either. You cannot fight an idea with a gun, but you can make the outcome of supporting it so certain that none will dare try to harm you.
War is, indeed, Hell. But in some cases the alternative is far worse. The challenge for any free society is to see the difference between war's desolation and that which the desolation seeks to protect us from, then to commit to the course which is least damaging. It is not, as John Kennedy once said of Vietnam, like taking a drink, the effect wears off and you have to have another. War must be waged as an absolute; if the people of the nation that a war is protecting cannot find it within themselves to prosecute that war to it's final conclusion, then they must ask themselves if their own lives are worth living.
A conservative believes that war is a protective force, protecting our borders, our security, our way of life. War should never be taken on lightly, never preemptively, and never, never done in half measures.
War is the ultimate, naked force of the State- government in it's purest form. And as such it must be used judiciously and sparingly. But when it is used, it must, in order to be successful, bring to bear the collective might of the entire nation upon it's enemies. To do less is to invite at best a slow, painful destruction of all we hold dear.
I hated his policies on economics, cutting taxes while increasing spending. I loathed the Patriot Act, as it took many rights away from private citizens that are the price one has to bear to live in a free society. I despised his prescription drug plan, The "No Child Left Behind" bill, and numerous other insane policies that seemed bent on rupturing our country at its seams.
But what I had the biggest problem with was his administrations defense policies.
For a full disclosure, I admit I was all for the war in Afghanistan. The government of that country was harboring an organization that directly attacked us and caused massive, directed civilian casualties. In order to prevent another such event from taking place, our military might needed to be brought entirely to bear on the place. Our CIA needed to dig through the financial records to find out who financed it, no matter how inconvenient the answers that came up might have been. We needed to destroy utterly any threat to the continued peace of our civilization. We still do.
But even on the outset of this war, one I consider to be just, the policies of the Bush administration seemed designed to fail in a most spectacular fashion. We instituted the "Rumsfeld Doctrine", wherein it was believed that a small, technologically superior force could systematically destroy any enemy. That simply with small, mobile forces on the ground, air back-up and superior weapons we could win against an enemy entrenched on home ground, one that does not so much have a political problem with our nation as an ideological one. They do not believe we can be a friend or an ally. They wish us and our entire way of life destroyed.
But wars are not won on the cheap, they are won on the battlefield.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine took the place of two sensible, historically accurate one: The Powell Doctrine, which determines when force can be used successfully, and the doctrine of Overwhelming Force. Powell understood, through a lifetime of military and combat service and a dedication to the art and realities of armed conflict that the way to win efficiently and quickly was through not only superior technology, but through brutal, overwhelming, crushing force with the hearts and wills of the nation firmly behind the troops. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Move into a hostile area in overwhelming numbers, root out the people trying to kill you, secure the area with a base of operations, and move the rest of the forces not concerned with security to the next hostile area. Hold and move, hold and move.
But what the Bush Administration did was not only unconscionable from a humanitarian standpoint (abandoning people to a hostile force those who may or may not have helped you, the enemy doesn't know but is VERY interested in finding out, is frowned upon) but from a purely military one as well. What kind of strategy allows an enemy to constantly outmaneuver it's forces? To flank it, harry it, set traps both behind and ahead since nobody is minding the shop?
Then they simply moved on to another ENTIRELY UNRELATED country. I was no fan of Saddam, but we really needed someone in the halls of power to stop thinking with their testicles and spend some time in their brain. Saddam was the only leader on an Islamic country that didn't have some form of Sharia Law. He constantly waged an ideological campaign against the very types of radical Islam that had attacked our people. And yet, it seems, we had nothing more pressing going on than kicking over his little anthill. As dangerous as he was, or seemed to be, apparently nobody in the last administration had heard the adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
Once again we did it on the (relatively) cheap. The only reason there was any success of any kind was that they already had basic western systems in place. We didn't, and still don't, have that in Afghanistan. It is essentially a beautifully barren landscape of warring Islamic factions. And the only thing in common to all of them is a single unifying idea: If you aren't from around here, and have a gun, we will kill you. They have proven their mettle against some of the most aggressive and powerful armies in the world, throughout all of history. Sure, they are taking us on, but remember before us were the Russians. And before that the Persians were given a black eye. Before that the mighty Mongol Hordes were harassed, attacked, and eventually assimilated. These are not people to be taken lightly.
And yet the mistakes of the past administration (which the new President can't seem to tell people enough about) Has compounded the errors of the last. The general in charge of the theater requested 80,000 additional troops. President Obama decided to send 34,000. The necessary number by my (entirely amateur) estimation? 500,000 to 1,000,000 troops. And here is why.
There are about 28 million people in Afghanistan, spread over an area of 252,000 square miles with pretty sparse population density except in urban areas. In order to secure the urban areas (where about 70% of the population is) would require a pretty minimal force, say 100,000 people whose sole job would be keeping the area secure and letting life go on in a nominally normal fashion. That leaves 400,000 (at the lower end) to cover the rest of the territory, set up listening posts, map out caves, root out the enemy and destroy them.
That's around 2 people for every 3 miles by my count. The ability to force the enemy to abandon their positions would be absolute. The certainty of finding another hiding place in the face of such a force would dwindle to nothing pretty quickly. And with nowhere to run to, no place to hide, and no way to flank, the militants would be destroyed utterly. In the meantime, those security forces and administrative staff in the population centers could start to affecting the necessary changes which would prevent 9/11 from repeating itself.
Imagine the effect that would have on the global Jihadi movement. It would be a clear communication of national will, of the lengths we are willing to go to in order to preserve our way of life. Mess with us, and we will crush you. None will remember you but the sand.
There are those who say overwhelming force will not work against an army that refuses to meet massive troops head-on. This is true if the troops are kept massed and waiting for the opposition, but in a guerrilla war as this one has become forming smaller battalions that outnumber the enemy 50 to 1 would be a decisive advantage. Sun Tzu never said a smaller force always has the upper hand, just that it had options.
We applied all the military might we could muster in the World Wars, and the result was incontrovertible. Now, as then, we a re fighting an enemy who seeks to destroy our way of life. There was no quarter that could be drawn in the fight against the ideology we opposed in those wars and there is not here either. You cannot fight an idea with a gun, but you can make the outcome of supporting it so certain that none will dare try to harm you.
War is, indeed, Hell. But in some cases the alternative is far worse. The challenge for any free society is to see the difference between war's desolation and that which the desolation seeks to protect us from, then to commit to the course which is least damaging. It is not, as John Kennedy once said of Vietnam, like taking a drink, the effect wears off and you have to have another. War must be waged as an absolute; if the people of the nation that a war is protecting cannot find it within themselves to prosecute that war to it's final conclusion, then they must ask themselves if their own lives are worth living.
A conservative believes that war is a protective force, protecting our borders, our security, our way of life. War should never be taken on lightly, never preemptively, and never, never done in half measures.
War is the ultimate, naked force of the State- government in it's purest form. And as such it must be used judiciously and sparingly. But when it is used, it must, in order to be successful, bring to bear the collective might of the entire nation upon it's enemies. To do less is to invite at best a slow, painful destruction of all we hold dear.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Ecomonics 101, or: Why We are Pretty Much Screwed
Unemployment is over 10%. In actuality, the rate is about 15%.
Federal debt for each person stands at $40,000 and rising.
Our current load of debt is greater than the total economies of the United Kingdom, Australia, and China. Combined.
Combined Federal tax rate over all income ranges: approximately 22%
Combined ACTUAL tax rate, including excise taxes, previous sales taxes paid by end consumers, state and local taxes, governmental fees and property taxes: 58%
Let's look at what that number means for a moment: Say you are in the top 5 percent of income earners as a Senator (yes, those Senators railing against those evil rich people are among them). That means that your income of $162,200 has actual buying power, after taxes, of $68,124. But most likely you are not in those upper income brackets, so lets say you make $40,000 a year as a desk jockey. Total spending power? $16,800. Swirl that around in your mouth for a second to see how that tastes and then spit it out and tell me how we need more taxes.
The truth is that the numbers above are an average, and the ones at the top are paying closer to 70% all total. Make a cool million? Try $300,000. And those are the people who sign our paychecks.
What taxes really are amounts to lost opportunity, the amount of money we ourselves could be using to make our lives better. Now I am not saying that the effective tax rate should be zero, there are things which our society requires of all of us. Things like roads to get goods from point A to point B. There is the judicial system to apply simple laws to make certain no person or entity can behave in a predatory way towards us. A military and police force to keep us safe and see to it that all obey the rule of those simple laws. But other than that it is a scheme to take from one and give to another. And that other has not earned what you worked for.
And yet even at these tax rates, we cannot feed the beast enough to make ends meet. We are currently sitting upon a 12.3 Trillion dollar deficit, or to break that down to individual liability, just over $40,000 per man, woman, and child in the United States. With interest added in, try on $177,000 per person.
Think that sounds crushing? Just wait...
The total deficit when you take into account unfunded "entitlements" such as Social Security, Medicare, and the prescription drug benefits we have extended to our people, total debt obligation stands at $107.2 Trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, let's say we sold off everything in America today for market price to pay everything we currently owe and all those liabilities. That would leave us with about $32.4 Trillion dollars. In the hole.
That's right, if we sold off ALL the assets of the U.S. we would still be on the line for $32 trillion. And at our current GDP the entire weight of our economy, every dollar made in it, it would still take 100% tax rates almost 20 years to pay it off. Too bad for us we can't survive that long without buying food.
If you want to check the numbers on this, go wild. Just head to http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ,though by the time you see it, the numbers will be even worse. The site is not partisan, drawing from The Treasury Department, Fed, Census Bureau, and other official State organizations.
Remember this next time a modern liberal says taxes are not high enough, that we all are not "doing our fair share". Or the next time a politician tells you oh-so-suavely that we "need" another program. Ask that politician or talking head what their plans to pay for the ones we have are.
One of the elegantly beautiful things about true conservatism is that is costs so very little money. If you cannot do it alone, you rely upon your family, your friends, and your contacts built up through a lifetime of good behavior and honest dealings. The government doesn't pay a cent for it. If you choose to be a prick, to burn bridges or cheat people, you soon find yourself starving. It's a built in cultural safety mechanism that forces you to act in an upright and kind way to your fellow man.
Contrast that to today.
If you are a person from a poor background you have the option to completely disown yourself from your community, to treat everyone as a stepping stone or as a source for a possible handout. No genuine concern needed for your family or the people around you whatsoever. But after destroying all your options through your own selfish behavior, you can always apply to the State and sit around for a check on the 1st.
If you come from a well heeled segment of society, you can cheat others with impunity, treat your business partners and your customers like walking ATM's with no concern for their well being nor the damage your actions might cause others. And when that house of cards falls, when those tricky investments fall through and the people who depended on you for their livelihood have come with torches and pitchforks to your gates, don't you worry either. The State can come to your aid too, with millions or even billions of dollars to bail you out. Just tack it onto the bill we already couldn't afford (even if we sold off everything in the entire nation).
At this point one of two things can happen. Option one is that the people as a whole, or at least a majority, will see what they have done in voting themselves an ever larger slice of the pie and say, for the lives of their children and grandchildren, "No More." It would be hard. There would be an actual body-count as those who fall off the public trough and have severed their societal ties cannot make ends meet and die horribly. Think hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Option two, the more likely option, is that we will see the train coming but think that some miracle will save us. We will continue to allow ourselves to be bought by crooked and cynical politicians who have their own re-election, rather than the actual good of the nation, in mind. There, as well, would be an actual body-count as our entire system falls apart and even people who did right and responsible things by their community are swept up in the times that follow. Think tens of millions.
This is not some end-times calamity rant, just taking lessons from history and applying the current facts. And the facts are not comforting. If anyone out there has any other options, I am all ears.
Federal debt for each person stands at $40,000 and rising.
Our current load of debt is greater than the total economies of the United Kingdom, Australia, and China. Combined.
Combined Federal tax rate over all income ranges: approximately 22%
Combined ACTUAL tax rate, including excise taxes, previous sales taxes paid by end consumers, state and local taxes, governmental fees and property taxes: 58%
Let's look at what that number means for a moment: Say you are in the top 5 percent of income earners as a Senator (yes, those Senators railing against those evil rich people are among them). That means that your income of $162,200 has actual buying power, after taxes, of $68,124. But most likely you are not in those upper income brackets, so lets say you make $40,000 a year as a desk jockey. Total spending power? $16,800. Swirl that around in your mouth for a second to see how that tastes and then spit it out and tell me how we need more taxes.
The truth is that the numbers above are an average, and the ones at the top are paying closer to 70% all total. Make a cool million? Try $300,000. And those are the people who sign our paychecks.
What taxes really are amounts to lost opportunity, the amount of money we ourselves could be using to make our lives better. Now I am not saying that the effective tax rate should be zero, there are things which our society requires of all of us. Things like roads to get goods from point A to point B. There is the judicial system to apply simple laws to make certain no person or entity can behave in a predatory way towards us. A military and police force to keep us safe and see to it that all obey the rule of those simple laws. But other than that it is a scheme to take from one and give to another. And that other has not earned what you worked for.
And yet even at these tax rates, we cannot feed the beast enough to make ends meet. We are currently sitting upon a 12.3 Trillion dollar deficit, or to break that down to individual liability, just over $40,000 per man, woman, and child in the United States. With interest added in, try on $177,000 per person.
Think that sounds crushing? Just wait...
The total deficit when you take into account unfunded "entitlements" such as Social Security, Medicare, and the prescription drug benefits we have extended to our people, total debt obligation stands at $107.2 Trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, let's say we sold off everything in America today for market price to pay everything we currently owe and all those liabilities. That would leave us with about $32.4 Trillion dollars. In the hole.
That's right, if we sold off ALL the assets of the U.S. we would still be on the line for $32 trillion. And at our current GDP the entire weight of our economy, every dollar made in it, it would still take 100% tax rates almost 20 years to pay it off. Too bad for us we can't survive that long without buying food.
If you want to check the numbers on this, go wild. Just head to http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ,though by the time you see it, the numbers will be even worse. The site is not partisan, drawing from The Treasury Department, Fed, Census Bureau, and other official State organizations.
Remember this next time a modern liberal says taxes are not high enough, that we all are not "doing our fair share". Or the next time a politician tells you oh-so-suavely that we "need" another program. Ask that politician or talking head what their plans to pay for the ones we have are.
One of the elegantly beautiful things about true conservatism is that is costs so very little money. If you cannot do it alone, you rely upon your family, your friends, and your contacts built up through a lifetime of good behavior and honest dealings. The government doesn't pay a cent for it. If you choose to be a prick, to burn bridges or cheat people, you soon find yourself starving. It's a built in cultural safety mechanism that forces you to act in an upright and kind way to your fellow man.
Contrast that to today.
If you are a person from a poor background you have the option to completely disown yourself from your community, to treat everyone as a stepping stone or as a source for a possible handout. No genuine concern needed for your family or the people around you whatsoever. But after destroying all your options through your own selfish behavior, you can always apply to the State and sit around for a check on the 1st.
If you come from a well heeled segment of society, you can cheat others with impunity, treat your business partners and your customers like walking ATM's with no concern for their well being nor the damage your actions might cause others. And when that house of cards falls, when those tricky investments fall through and the people who depended on you for their livelihood have come with torches and pitchforks to your gates, don't you worry either. The State can come to your aid too, with millions or even billions of dollars to bail you out. Just tack it onto the bill we already couldn't afford (even if we sold off everything in the entire nation).
At this point one of two things can happen. Option one is that the people as a whole, or at least a majority, will see what they have done in voting themselves an ever larger slice of the pie and say, for the lives of their children and grandchildren, "No More." It would be hard. There would be an actual body-count as those who fall off the public trough and have severed their societal ties cannot make ends meet and die horribly. Think hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Option two, the more likely option, is that we will see the train coming but think that some miracle will save us. We will continue to allow ourselves to be bought by crooked and cynical politicians who have their own re-election, rather than the actual good of the nation, in mind. There, as well, would be an actual body-count as our entire system falls apart and even people who did right and responsible things by their community are swept up in the times that follow. Think tens of millions.
This is not some end-times calamity rant, just taking lessons from history and applying the current facts. And the facts are not comforting. If anyone out there has any other options, I am all ears.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Hot button #2: Gay Marriage and Religous Freedom
Now it's time to annoy religious conservatives.
Conservative stance on gay marriage? Go for it, but separate Caesar and God first.
Gay people want the same rights as straight ones? Fine by me, though I do not agree with it on a religious level. But who cares? Certainly not our founding fathers who, though overwhelmingly Christian, wrote the following: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. If they had wished to create a Christian theocracy they could have done so, they were starting from scratch after all.
The genius of the founding fathers lie in being able to separate Caesar from God, however, and as Thomas Jefferson wrote "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Man I love that guy.
If one wishes to make the argument that our democracy was founded upon Christian beliefs, that is in part true. However it was also taken from Classical Greek beliefs and yet we are not forced to worship Zeus, it borrows heavily from certain native Indian tribes and yet we're not required to follow their animism. Ours is a system which was designed to keep the rights of all to believe what they will.
And therein lies the problem, and the elegant solution.
When the vast majority of people in this country were Christians or at least paid lip service to christian tradition, it made sense for the state to issue marriage certificates based on religious ceremonies. But today we have a different story altogether. Today there are so many schisms in personal belief that the very act of issuing a marriage license has become an endorsement of a specific set of religious beliefs.
In order to remove the hand of government from determining what is morally right, we need the State to stop offering licenses based on religious ceremony and return religious purity to the faiths that espouse it. It does not break my leg.
But right now it DOES pick my pocket. How so? Marriage benefits in social security. If we eliminate them, and expect each person to provide for themselves and, if need be, their significant other, then we return responsibility to those it should rest upon and at the same time remove any financial imbalance caused by religious rites. After that, the compromise is easy.
In a truly conservative system there should rightfully be 3 options which protect the state from the church, church from the state, and us from each others personally held beliefs.
1)Civil certification without religious ceremony. This gives all the legal rights to any people who wish to have them without costing anyone who does not like your beliefs a single penny.
2)Religious without civil certification. You wish to proclaim your love before your God and have your faith bless your union? Go for it. No legal binding whatsoever. Just remember this is rites without rights.
3)Religious ceremony and civil certification. This is the one I am pretty certain most people would go for. Pledge your love before your God, and receive that blessing of your union, then head on down and get your certification giving you all those legal rights.
Keep religion free for all, not just the ones you agree with. The tide always turns, and if you don't want the State determining what is right against YOUR moral beliefs, then keep the nation safe for all of them.
As Mark wrote: "And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marveled at him."
Conservative stance on gay marriage? Go for it, but separate Caesar and God first.
Gay people want the same rights as straight ones? Fine by me, though I do not agree with it on a religious level. But who cares? Certainly not our founding fathers who, though overwhelmingly Christian, wrote the following: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. If they had wished to create a Christian theocracy they could have done so, they were starting from scratch after all.
The genius of the founding fathers lie in being able to separate Caesar from God, however, and as Thomas Jefferson wrote "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Man I love that guy.
If one wishes to make the argument that our democracy was founded upon Christian beliefs, that is in part true. However it was also taken from Classical Greek beliefs and yet we are not forced to worship Zeus, it borrows heavily from certain native Indian tribes and yet we're not required to follow their animism. Ours is a system which was designed to keep the rights of all to believe what they will.
And therein lies the problem, and the elegant solution.
When the vast majority of people in this country were Christians or at least paid lip service to christian tradition, it made sense for the state to issue marriage certificates based on religious ceremonies. But today we have a different story altogether. Today there are so many schisms in personal belief that the very act of issuing a marriage license has become an endorsement of a specific set of religious beliefs.
In order to remove the hand of government from determining what is morally right, we need the State to stop offering licenses based on religious ceremony and return religious purity to the faiths that espouse it. It does not break my leg.
But right now it DOES pick my pocket. How so? Marriage benefits in social security. If we eliminate them, and expect each person to provide for themselves and, if need be, their significant other, then we return responsibility to those it should rest upon and at the same time remove any financial imbalance caused by religious rites. After that, the compromise is easy.
In a truly conservative system there should rightfully be 3 options which protect the state from the church, church from the state, and us from each others personally held beliefs.
1)Civil certification without religious ceremony. This gives all the legal rights to any people who wish to have them without costing anyone who does not like your beliefs a single penny.
2)Religious without civil certification. You wish to proclaim your love before your God and have your faith bless your union? Go for it. No legal binding whatsoever. Just remember this is rites without rights.
3)Religious ceremony and civil certification. This is the one I am pretty certain most people would go for. Pledge your love before your God, and receive that blessing of your union, then head on down and get your certification giving you all those legal rights.
Keep religion free for all, not just the ones you agree with. The tide always turns, and if you don't want the State determining what is right against YOUR moral beliefs, then keep the nation safe for all of them.
As Mark wrote: "And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marveled at him."
Hot button #1 :Social Security and Family Values
Refer to my inaugural post as to what a right is- A thing inherent to the human condition; The human condition is one of frailty. Those who seek the force of the state to ensure their health have abdicated their life to those who have no vested interest in keeping you alive.
But who does?
Many people nowadays from both sides of the aisle lament the loss of family values while seeking to entirely undermine them, to take the responsibilities of parents to their children, children to their ailing parents, the old from themselves.
How so? Look back a single century ago: Parents had to raise their children and pay for their education from their own pockets, instill their own system of values and beliefs in them, raise them to be responsible adults. The cost if they failed was enormous- when the parent became infirm the child would abandon them and they would most likely die a miserable, lonely death. A person had to be responsible enough to save part of their income if they wanted to be able to handle the rigors of old age and perhaps pass some of that on to their heirs. This fostered a steadiness and responsibility the likes of which are entirely foreign to most modern people, who look to others to pay for their retirement an average 17 years before they pass on.
People don't save, they risk everything on the roulette wheel of the stock market or depend upon the largess of their congresspeople so that they can hop in their Winnebago and head to Arizona. Don't get me wrong, some have earned this through careful management of their money and sacrificing today so they can have what they want tomorrow. Others have decided they can't be bothered with that kind of responsibility, that the government will fund their golden years and then whine when the money they get isn't enough. It's like people have forgotten Aesop's fairytale about the Grasshopper and the Ant: Labor long, save conscientiously, and you can live as you want- spend all you have on today and you will probably starve to death, and deserve it.
The responsibility was all on your shoulders, nobody made you buy that new car instead of a decent used one and pocket the rest of the money away. Nobody made you get the bigger house with a rec room, two living rooms and vaulted ceilings that drive your heating bills sky high, you did that all on your own, grasshopper, and now you wail to the high gods of the government that your check stayed the same this year and you can't afford food. Well, talk to your children.
Oh, wait, your children don't respect you? See you as a burden that someone else can take care of? That was all you, too. You raised your children how you saw fit and apparently forgot to teach them the value of family, that you sacrificed for them and now it is their turn.
I hate to break it to those business conservatives out there, but the truth is that actual conservatism requires a good dose of socialism. No, not on the marketplace, but in the basic family unit. From each according to their ability to each according to their need. Parents must provide for their children when they are young and strong, children must provide for their parents when they have become old and frail. The only place socialism works is in the family, since they actually know the people involved.
Yes, a century ago had poverty. We still do, so obviously that hasn't been solved. But the poverty of a century past was personal, we knew the risks of not having a family to take care of us, of burning bridges and severing ties.
When you take away a person's responsibility to their family a funny thing happens: they accept no responsibility for themselves. After all, when you know someone else will take care of Mom, and someone else will take care of dear old dad, then someone will take care of me, I don't have to do it myself. What nobility!
It's an infection that has destroyed our society, made someone else responsible for everything, and so has created our "victim culture".
Who is a victim: The person who took a mortgage out for $300,000 when they're on food stamps? The African American who refuses to pull his pants up for a job interview? The mid-level manager who has a Mercedes but no furniture and no retirement savings?
These people aren't victims, they're idiots. They knew what was necessary and decided not to do it, they knew what they could afford and decided to be irresponsible. Their parents would be ashamed, but they are too busy whining that Timmy never brings the grand-kids over because he has to work all the time and the government isn't giving them a raise on Timmy and his kids' money.
Look, everyone makes bad decisions, I myself thought I could afford a house and lost everything when I didn't do my homework. MY fault, I was an idiot, not some evil bank following regulations the State forced on it. And though I don't like hearing about million dollar bonuses when I'm broke, I look at the big picture and realize it's not my say. My say is not giving my money to the banks that do that, investing in a local credit union instead of feeding the beast.
The chain of responsibility has been broken by laziness, pure and simple. We don't wanna, let someone else pay for it with their time and money. Well, the bill is starting to come due on that, and it is crushing us. Time for America to man up and sacrifice, or die out.
But who does?
Many people nowadays from both sides of the aisle lament the loss of family values while seeking to entirely undermine them, to take the responsibilities of parents to their children, children to their ailing parents, the old from themselves.
How so? Look back a single century ago: Parents had to raise their children and pay for their education from their own pockets, instill their own system of values and beliefs in them, raise them to be responsible adults. The cost if they failed was enormous- when the parent became infirm the child would abandon them and they would most likely die a miserable, lonely death. A person had to be responsible enough to save part of their income if they wanted to be able to handle the rigors of old age and perhaps pass some of that on to their heirs. This fostered a steadiness and responsibility the likes of which are entirely foreign to most modern people, who look to others to pay for their retirement an average 17 years before they pass on.
People don't save, they risk everything on the roulette wheel of the stock market or depend upon the largess of their congresspeople so that they can hop in their Winnebago and head to Arizona. Don't get me wrong, some have earned this through careful management of their money and sacrificing today so they can have what they want tomorrow. Others have decided they can't be bothered with that kind of responsibility, that the government will fund their golden years and then whine when the money they get isn't enough. It's like people have forgotten Aesop's fairytale about the Grasshopper and the Ant: Labor long, save conscientiously, and you can live as you want- spend all you have on today and you will probably starve to death, and deserve it.
The responsibility was all on your shoulders, nobody made you buy that new car instead of a decent used one and pocket the rest of the money away. Nobody made you get the bigger house with a rec room, two living rooms and vaulted ceilings that drive your heating bills sky high, you did that all on your own, grasshopper, and now you wail to the high gods of the government that your check stayed the same this year and you can't afford food. Well, talk to your children.
Oh, wait, your children don't respect you? See you as a burden that someone else can take care of? That was all you, too. You raised your children how you saw fit and apparently forgot to teach them the value of family, that you sacrificed for them and now it is their turn.
I hate to break it to those business conservatives out there, but the truth is that actual conservatism requires a good dose of socialism. No, not on the marketplace, but in the basic family unit. From each according to their ability to each according to their need. Parents must provide for their children when they are young and strong, children must provide for their parents when they have become old and frail. The only place socialism works is in the family, since they actually know the people involved.
Yes, a century ago had poverty. We still do, so obviously that hasn't been solved. But the poverty of a century past was personal, we knew the risks of not having a family to take care of us, of burning bridges and severing ties.
When you take away a person's responsibility to their family a funny thing happens: they accept no responsibility for themselves. After all, when you know someone else will take care of Mom, and someone else will take care of dear old dad, then someone will take care of me, I don't have to do it myself. What nobility!
It's an infection that has destroyed our society, made someone else responsible for everything, and so has created our "victim culture".
Who is a victim: The person who took a mortgage out for $300,000 when they're on food stamps? The African American who refuses to pull his pants up for a job interview? The mid-level manager who has a Mercedes but no furniture and no retirement savings?
These people aren't victims, they're idiots. They knew what was necessary and decided not to do it, they knew what they could afford and decided to be irresponsible. Their parents would be ashamed, but they are too busy whining that Timmy never brings the grand-kids over because he has to work all the time and the government isn't giving them a raise on Timmy and his kids' money.
Look, everyone makes bad decisions, I myself thought I could afford a house and lost everything when I didn't do my homework. MY fault, I was an idiot, not some evil bank following regulations the State forced on it. And though I don't like hearing about million dollar bonuses when I'm broke, I look at the big picture and realize it's not my say. My say is not giving my money to the banks that do that, investing in a local credit union instead of feeding the beast.
The chain of responsibility has been broken by laziness, pure and simple. We don't wanna, let someone else pay for it with their time and money. Well, the bill is starting to come due on that, and it is crushing us. Time for America to man up and sacrifice, or die out.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Why Modern Liberals Will Hate Me and Modern "Conservatives" Will, Too
Inaugural Edition-
People ask all the time. These days you simply can't get away from it, and if you refuse to answer they invariably believe the worst.
"So are you liberal or conservative?" Sometimes it's asked as "Democrat or Republican", but the base meaning remains the same. And I tell them.
"I am a real conservative."
As though programmed (though we will get into the educational system later), modern "liberals" see death camps with crosses above them, air choked with smog and ash, people living in hovels at the foot of grand palaces for the few lucky ultra-wealthy.
Immediately modern "religious conservatives" see an ally of Christianity, a holy warrior devoted to casting down sinning Homo's, creating a Constitutional Amendment banning abortion and carrying the cross to distant lands.
Then the "business conservatives" with visions of being the CEO of the company they work for, the ease of buying up or shutting down all competition, dumping their waste wherever they can buy land to do so, paying their workers the minimum they can without pushing them to leave. Dollar signs like sugarplums dancing.
These people are tools.
I don't really blame those who call themselves liberal for hating conservatives; the term has been prostituted by the so-called right for decades. What those examples truly are? Theocrats and fascists, both by actual definition: The Church as the State or the Business as the State, both seeking to undermine personal liberty just as much as modern progressive liberals seek to do.
Conservatism is neither of these things. To be a conservative requires a sublimation of what may be your most closely held personal beliefs so that we all may be free to do what we will as individuals; believing the governments sole role is to ensure the freedom of it's citizens so long an action by one does not harm another.
It is a system of perfect balance- for every right there is a commensurate responsibility. This means you cannot lay an argument before the State saying McDonald's is at fault for you spilling hot coffee on yourself, seeking millions for your own stupidity, rewarding a person's foolishness with other people's money.
It is a system in which you are allowed to do whatever boneheaded thing you wish so long as it does not harm another or take that which another has earned by either the sweat of their back or their brow. A system of non-interference in the daily lives of those under it.
This is the system for which our founding fathers bled and died, pledged their fortunes and honor. They realized the harm of a system in which one set of beliefs, even if matching their own, was allowed to dominate the lives of the unwilling; they saw the destruction wrought on the spirit of the people by oligarchs and aristocrats that had not earned their positions, coming by their titles by fortunate birth rather than individual merit, strength, goodness and self-sacrifice.
They did not wish to do away with aristocracy, but expand it to any who would be willing to go the distance, make the hard choices and painful risks associated with the chance at true individual greatness. An aristocracy open to all regardless of birth or station- the only bar to greatness being within ourselves.
They saw the truth of the world: that though all men are created equal, what one does after that is up to that person alone, and the best way for the state to support this is to get out of their way.
They knew that a people in awe of and in debt to their government could not be free. They saw that individuals were nobler and stronger only if they earned that nobility and strength, that the value of a thing is precisely equal to what one is willing to pay to get it.
A true conservative knows that a Right is something inherent to the human condition, that they stem not from the power of the State but from the power within every individual. A right costs nothing to any who do not exercise it: A person with free will has the right to speak their mind, even if that gets them killed in the process- it takes nothing from another. A person has the right to use lethal force to protect their life- but that is solely dependent upon that person buying a weapon or training their hands and no person must pay for another person's weapon by force.
And that is, in the end, what government truly is: naked force.
No matter how one wishes to soften it by providing "entitlements" to the people, no matter how many pretty speeches in great stone buildings, the government is organized coercive force.
When the State sets up a system by which money is taken from those who succeed to give to those who fail, it enslaves both those who succeed and those who fail; making the latter slaves to those who provide for them and the former by impoverishing them. Hunger is a great motivator- trust me, I have gone hungry enough to know this.
Conservatism comes down to one thing: Courage. Courage to let others live their lives though they do not do it by our own faith so long as they do not harm us, courage in the face of things we do not agree with so long as they do not take what we have earned, and always courage in the face of our own mortality. Know that you will die, and that it is the price of living, and that it is up to you alone to make that life worthwhile before the inevitable comes. No amount of government cash or health care or regulation will make your life one worth living- that is entirely up to you alone.
People ask all the time. These days you simply can't get away from it, and if you refuse to answer they invariably believe the worst.
"So are you liberal or conservative?" Sometimes it's asked as "Democrat or Republican", but the base meaning remains the same. And I tell them.
"I am a real conservative."
As though programmed (though we will get into the educational system later), modern "liberals" see death camps with crosses above them, air choked with smog and ash, people living in hovels at the foot of grand palaces for the few lucky ultra-wealthy.
Immediately modern "religious conservatives" see an ally of Christianity, a holy warrior devoted to casting down sinning Homo's, creating a Constitutional Amendment banning abortion and carrying the cross to distant lands.
Then the "business conservatives" with visions of being the CEO of the company they work for, the ease of buying up or shutting down all competition, dumping their waste wherever they can buy land to do so, paying their workers the minimum they can without pushing them to leave. Dollar signs like sugarplums dancing.
These people are tools.
I don't really blame those who call themselves liberal for hating conservatives; the term has been prostituted by the so-called right for decades. What those examples truly are? Theocrats and fascists, both by actual definition: The Church as the State or the Business as the State, both seeking to undermine personal liberty just as much as modern progressive liberals seek to do.
Conservatism is neither of these things. To be a conservative requires a sublimation of what may be your most closely held personal beliefs so that we all may be free to do what we will as individuals; believing the governments sole role is to ensure the freedom of it's citizens so long an action by one does not harm another.
It is a system of perfect balance- for every right there is a commensurate responsibility. This means you cannot lay an argument before the State saying McDonald's is at fault for you spilling hot coffee on yourself, seeking millions for your own stupidity, rewarding a person's foolishness with other people's money.
It is a system in which you are allowed to do whatever boneheaded thing you wish so long as it does not harm another or take that which another has earned by either the sweat of their back or their brow. A system of non-interference in the daily lives of those under it.
This is the system for which our founding fathers bled and died, pledged their fortunes and honor. They realized the harm of a system in which one set of beliefs, even if matching their own, was allowed to dominate the lives of the unwilling; they saw the destruction wrought on the spirit of the people by oligarchs and aristocrats that had not earned their positions, coming by their titles by fortunate birth rather than individual merit, strength, goodness and self-sacrifice.
They did not wish to do away with aristocracy, but expand it to any who would be willing to go the distance, make the hard choices and painful risks associated with the chance at true individual greatness. An aristocracy open to all regardless of birth or station- the only bar to greatness being within ourselves.
They saw the truth of the world: that though all men are created equal, what one does after that is up to that person alone, and the best way for the state to support this is to get out of their way.
They knew that a people in awe of and in debt to their government could not be free. They saw that individuals were nobler and stronger only if they earned that nobility and strength, that the value of a thing is precisely equal to what one is willing to pay to get it.
A true conservative knows that a Right is something inherent to the human condition, that they stem not from the power of the State but from the power within every individual. A right costs nothing to any who do not exercise it: A person with free will has the right to speak their mind, even if that gets them killed in the process- it takes nothing from another. A person has the right to use lethal force to protect their life- but that is solely dependent upon that person buying a weapon or training their hands and no person must pay for another person's weapon by force.
And that is, in the end, what government truly is: naked force.
No matter how one wishes to soften it by providing "entitlements" to the people, no matter how many pretty speeches in great stone buildings, the government is organized coercive force.
When the State sets up a system by which money is taken from those who succeed to give to those who fail, it enslaves both those who succeed and those who fail; making the latter slaves to those who provide for them and the former by impoverishing them. Hunger is a great motivator- trust me, I have gone hungry enough to know this.
Conservatism comes down to one thing: Courage. Courage to let others live their lives though they do not do it by our own faith so long as they do not harm us, courage in the face of things we do not agree with so long as they do not take what we have earned, and always courage in the face of our own mortality. Know that you will die, and that it is the price of living, and that it is up to you alone to make that life worthwhile before the inevitable comes. No amount of government cash or health care or regulation will make your life one worth living- that is entirely up to you alone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
