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.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
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.
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