Musing on Our Times with The Ol' Grey Ghost

Fighting Terrorism By Boiling Frogs

2012-02-08T18:55:00.003-06:00

There is a lot of consternation (here's some and some more and more and more and even more) on the Internet about a new advisory poster being distributed by our benevolent government officials on what suspicious activities some persons might engage in that regular citizens should be on the lookout for in order to help in the "War Against Terrorism". It is surprising how much innocuous activity is no longer to be considered innocent. What is even ironic is how much of these actions were once recommended - like protecting our computers from eavesdroppers or stocking up on food and medical supplies in case of disasters - by those same officials in order to protect us mundanes from becoming the victims of some type of crime or catastrophe. Well, I'm here to tell you that soon all those activities that are currently listed as just "suspicious" will one day be violations of the law.

"But Mr. Wickham," you say, "what legislative body in its right mind (that's a mythical creature) would dare to impose restrictions against individuals doing these things? The people would raise such a protest that something like this would never see the light of day."

And you are right. To get around the legislative process, the executive branch of the several governments of these United States will call upon prosecutors at all levels to come up with new and creative uses of older, established laws that are completely outside any legitimacy these laws may have once held when they were first passed. This is similar to medicine where an old drug is found to have benefits outside of its original use, like aspirin used to prevent heart attacks and strokes.

"But Mr. Wickham," you say again, "no jury of reasonable persons (another mythical creature) in this country would ever convict someone based on a law that clearly doesn't apply."

I'm sorry to tell you that that happens all the time. You have to have a better understanding of how the Criminal Justice Systems really works in this country. It's a lot like a magic act. A good magician works to have you focus only on that which he wants you to see and not pay attention to anything else that might be happening on stage. By providing you with a limited view of all the facts pertaining to the trick he is performing, when it's done you have to draw the conclusion that it must of been "magic." If you saw everything he did, then it would be one giant, ho-hum whoopteedoo.

That jury of your peers are not allowed to know all the facts of any case nor are they allowed to judge the merits of the law as it is being applied in the trial before them. Those decisions have been made by the prosecution and the court (read: trial judge). The jury, just like the audience to the magic act, are only allowed to make their determination of guilt or innocence based only on the limited amount of evidence presented to them.

"But Mr. Wickham," you keep saying over and over, "there has to be some rational person in authority over the Criminal Justice Systems (you're really chalking up on the mythical creatures today) who would consider this action by the prosecutors to be ludicrous and a miscarriage of justice."

Okay, maybe some mythical creatures really do have a basis in truth and someone steps up and says this case will go no further. What have our benevolent government officials gained by the police conducting what is essentially a "false arrest?" They've got:

Your full legal name and citizenship status.

Your Social Security account number.

Your Driver's License or government-issued Identification number.

The address of your residence and a phone number.

The full legal name of your spouse and and his/her citizenship status.

The full legal names of other family members that reside with you and their citizenship status.

The full legal name of your parents and their citizenship status.

Your date of birth.

The place of your birth

Your age.

Your height.

Your weight.

Your hair color.

Your eye color.

A listing of all your scars, missing limbs or digits, and any tattoos.

A listing of all your chronic illnesses and the medications you take to treat them.

Your treating physician's name, office address, and phone number.

Your place of employment, its address, its phone number, and your supervisor's name.

Your spouse's place of employment, its address, and its phone number.

Your photograph (possibly now taken 3-dimensionally).

Your fingerprints.

And even a sample of your blood to test to see if you are HIV positive from which your DNA can be obtained.

All this information will be duly and digitally recorded and stored away in a government database in order to protect your privacy and will be accessible to absolutely no one except for every government employee in the world who has some connection to the world-wide "War Against Terrorism," which essentially is every government employee anywhere at any time. Though they have not earned as much money from you as they would have with a conviction, they will certainly obtain nearly as much power over you, and over those you know, just the same.

"But Mr. Wickham," there you go saying that again, "freedom-loving people (now that's an endangered species) all across this country will not stand for this. It can't happen here. This is America; the "Land of the Free!"

That objection I will just put in that file I have titled, "They can make 'em put safety belts in our cars but they can't make us wear 'em!" This is the process of evolution - one small change at one small interval of time always Progressing farther and farther until, just like the tortoise in the race with the hare, someone gets what they want by wearing down the resistance.

The pot is starting to boil. Frog soup anyone?

Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes

2012-02-04T09:24:00.004-06:00

In the comments section of my column "The 'Great Correction,' The 'Great Recession,' The 'Greater Depression' and Coming Soon: 'The Great Disruption'," Anonymous wrote:

"Very concise and informative, thanks. Scary but exactly what I've come to see as inevitable. Will you write an article on exactly how the collapse of the Euro will affect the average American?"

Now there is evidence aplenty (here's more and more and more and etc.) that things are going pretty bad for our cousins across the pond. It could be said that Europe is suffering through another "Great Depression" due to the excesses of the socialistic policies of many of the governments throughout the continent; policies that ran up a lot of debt that is supposed to be paid back with "other people's money."

In my honest opinion, and that of a few others, the European Union, at least the government part of it and its fiat currency the Euro, will not collapse but like a caterpillar to a butterfly will go through a certain metamorphosis. The peoples of Europe will clamor for relief from this government imposed depression and demand that somebody do something and somebody, as if on cue, will. There will be greater concentration of all political power in a central government that will become more totalitarian and oppressive of individual liberty. This will be similar to what Lincoln did to America with his war against the Southern States when they tried to secure their independence.

The peoples of Europe will be led through hell just to arrive at a worse destination. Many Americans are concerned, and rightly so, how their lives will be impacted by the problems the Europeans are suffering over there. Time for another one of those thought experiments I like to drag you all through.

Imagine that you are a baker who owns his own little bakery shop. Since you've been at it awhile you've had time to pay off all your start-up debt so that you own your building, with your home in an apartment on the upper floor, and your tools of the trade out right. You do a pretty steady business with a familiar group of loyal clientele who return time after time for all of their bakery goods. Business has become so routine that you know exactly how much perishables (flour, milk, eggs, etc.) you need to order so as to restock your supplies and keep things running smoothly. You may never become a millionaire but you earn your and your family's daily bread (that was a pathetic pun).

Suddenly your customers, and a lot of their friends and relatives, are showing up and placing orders for large lavish cakes and pastries along with more of their usual amount of baked goods. They tell you that they intend to start throwing a lot of big parties and festive banquets. You going to need a lot of supplies to fill these orders so you get a loan from the banker by putting your shop up as collateral so as to buy twice as much as you normally do.

With the assistance of some employees you have to hire you fill those orders and everybody has a great time. You're even invited to a few of those parties. To keep your employees busy (and get the your money's worth out of them) you have them double up on the loaves, cookies, and doughnuts that you put out for sale everyday.

Then, just as suddenly, your usual bunch of customers stop buying all those extra goods. They even cut back on the normal amount they purchased before the rush. You ask one why he doesn't buy as much as before and he tells you that now he has to make his payments on the loan he got to buy the goodies he needed to throw the party he had. He barely makes enough to cover the payment per month and hardly has any left over to buy bread.

Now your business begins to suffer. With everyone cutting back you no longer need your employees and let them go. With less money yourself you have trouble buying anything else for your family to eat other than the bread you bake and man (and women and child) cannot live on bread or cake or doughnuts alone. You even start to have trouble making your own loan payments.

With everyone spending less and less with each other and sending all their money to the banker to pay off their loans pretty soon commerce comes to a standstill. Then the banker decides to foreclose on your shop and evicts you and your family from it. You find yourself penniless, destitute, and homeless.

This how a depression can spread from one part of the globe to another like a bad head cold. And how governments and central bankers can cause a misallocation of assets by passing out too much easy money, usually taken from other people. As commerce slows in Europe due to a depression over there the economic interaction between them and the U.S. will slow down. As commerce slows down in the U.S. then a temporary setback begins to take on some permanence as things enter a vicious whirlpool of people trying to earn a living at the same time carrying way too much debt. It's only a matter of time before problems over there become a problem over here and then they start circling the planet. Things are going to get pretty rough here in America and there are three factors I have noted that I am pretty sure are going make things downright crazy.

The first factor is the reduced value of human life in this country. In discussions (usually quite passionate on the other side's part) that I have with persons who believe they have the God-given authority to interfere with a woman's right to choose to have an abortion say that they must protest because, "Abortion cheapens life!" I have to explain to them that they are confusing cause and effect.

The value of human life, like that of any other commodity, is affected by the economic law of supply and demand; when supply exceeds, or appears to exceed, demand then the value attributed to that object is reduced. The more life of other humans that a person comes across in one's daily adventures the less value that life has to them. This is one of the reasons that "city folks" can be more callous towards others than their "country cousins." Abortion, or more correctly, society's ready acceptance of it is a symptom of the disease and not the underlying infectious agent.

When people begin to perceive that a certain commodity is detrimental to their continued existence, like all the other humans they must compete with to obtain all the necessities of modern living which some government propaganda might lead them to believe is becoming scarce, then that commodity begins to take on a negative value. When a commodity has a negative value people will expend energy, time, and resources to make it go away.

The second factor is the reduced amount of life-altering guilt in this country. In other discussions, sometimes with the same people as before, I am told that violent video games "cheapen life!" Again I have to point out that though they have picked up on the right process, they have unfortunately come to the wrong conclusion. The only thing that cheapens life is too much of it. What engaging in killing repeatedly over and over again, whether in a virtual world or reality, does is to reduce the guilt that individuals might feel from engaging in that activity.

Criminologists and psychologists who have studied people who have killed another human being have determined that, except for a true sociopath, most of us are very reluctant to take another person's life. The guilt one feels afterward can be overwhelming even if the killing was a justifiable act of self-defense. But if one happens to kill again, then the guilt over that death will be only half as much as the first and the guilt will decrease exponentially with each new killing until there is hardly any worth noticing.

We have youngsters in this country now that kill 50 or more people in a virtual world every evening after completing their homework and another large group that have been doing so in the real world for some time with government approval. Some of these folks might have reached the point that they will kill for a "twinkie" (tm).

The last factor that I have noticed is the growing perception amongst an alarming number of people that life is just inherently unfair in this country, regardless of the reality of that situation for the majority of Americans. Nature has done a fine job on its own in the planting the seeds of discontent and resentment through the disparity of blessings and curses that it has imposed on different peoples throughout the history of human civilization. What is unfortunate is that President Obama, who recently suggested that Jesus would approve of stealing, and other political pundits and civic leaders have been doing an exceedingly extensive job of watering and fertilizing those young plants so that they can grow to become strong and invasive weeds of possibly violent contention between the different races and socioeconomic classes of America.

These three factors alone and individually could be dealt with and handled by any mature individual, working alone or in partnership with others, but coming together during these desperate times will lead many to lose all degrees of composure and begin to suffer from xenophobia. It will quickly become a recipe for disaster. At this point I am reminded of something that one of my police counterparts from the island country of Japan had once told me.

He had noticed that when we American police officers came across a fight (not an assault but a true mutually agreed upon duel of unarmed combat) in progress, we would, as the macho fools we were, rush in and try to break it up. This would result in more injuries for the combatants and officers alike and more charges would have to be filed to justify police intervention in the whole affair.

He explained that where he worked, if he and his fellow officers came across two persons fighting they would cordon off the area to protect any onlookers and let the couple of imbeciles slug it out. After the two combatants were finished and exhausted then officers would step in and make the necessary arrests for a disturbance of the public peace with very little fuss or muss or injuries to the officers.

Sometimes I have to wonder (occasionally even out loud) if Americans are not being steered to slug it out amongst themselves until everyone is exhausted and then someone can step in take over and start to run everything as they see fit. There is the old adage, "United we stand, divided we fall." Certainly there is the possibility that while everyone's attention is diverted elsewhere, somebody with evil intentions might be sneaking up from behind. They could want us to enter into "Bellum omnium contra omnes" so as to "divide and conquer."

The phrase, "Bellum omnium contra omnes," ("the war of all against all") was coined by the English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, to describe what he considered to be the natural state of man without civil society, or what others might call Anarchy. Hobbes considered the institution of government to be legitimate in that it should intercede to prevent this war from happening. Anarchists, such as myself, would suggest that Man can form a good social order through voluntary interactions and exchanges through a free and open market without the intervention of government since the overseers of government are themselves mere, fallible humans and not angels shepherding the Lord's flock.

"The war of all against all" will not be a "just war" and it might just be another "war to end all wars." How ironic that such a war should not be averted by government as Hobbes had hoped but instead foisted upon America by government and those who run it. The basics always bear repeating:

"Si vis pacem, parabellum."

"If you want peace, (be) prepare(d) for war."

Buckle your belt and gird your loins. It's going to be one hell of a ride...

Schoolyard Bullies and U.S. Foreign (War) Policy

2012-01-12T18:44:00.006-06:00

If there was anything good about my father's military career it was that my family got to move around the world a lot. Every year or two the service would tell my father where it wanted him to be and the family could follow or find somewhere to stay until he got back from where ever the service had sent him. For most of my time I attended at least two, and sometimes three, different public schools for each of the school years between Kindergarten and the 12th grade. Needless to say I got to be the new kid in the class quite a few times and that always led to my being greeted by the local "Welcoming Committees" more commonly known as bullies.

After a few of these meetings I started to catch on to their usual bag of tricks. The first one was for the bully to stand in my path, sometimes with assistance from a few of his friends, inducing me to politely say, "Excuse me," in a normal conversational tone. The bully would respond in a voice that could be heard by anyone within a mile radius, "What did you say about my mother?!?"

Of course I hadn't said anything about his mother and I would point that out to him and his snickering band of miscreants. At this point the bully would turn to his entourage and ask them if they had heard me say something disparaging about his mother to which they would all bob their heads in unison and let out a few guffaws. What would really bug me about such situations were those innocent, uninvolved third parties who would later testify that they had heard me say something insulting to the bully when the most they could have ever done was see my lips move when I first spoke to him.

The U.S. Federal government uses this technique sometimes in its attempt to lead up to causing a war without it being obvious that it started the whole thing. It's even easier when the person accused of saying something derogatory said it in a foreign language that most Americans are not familiar with. Take the case of the leader of a certain Middle-Eastern country that is often quoted with an English translation that puts a genocidal tone to what he actually said that cannot be farther from the truth.

It is this mistranslation that is quoted again and again in the American media and sometimes embellished with remarks from other genocidal maniacs of history by certain political pundits who obviously have some kind of agenda. I am reminded of something about Nazi propaganda and telling Big Lies with a large amount of repetition as a way to sway public opinion in the direction certain parties would want it go.

Another tactic of the bully was for him and his friends to spend a great deal of time insulting me and making fun of some of my physical attributes that I had no control over, like my diminutive stature or my wearing of corrective lenses. When my agitation would become obvious on my face the bully would taunt me with suggestions that I was getting angry at him and might want to hit him. He would then offer his chin and challenge me to strike him there as hard as I could.

This was a sucker play on his part. Since he had proposed the target, he was ready to defend it and then counterstrike. He could then justify his actions to anyone interested in judging his behavior that I had thrown the first punch and he was simply defending himself against my aggression. If I was fortunate enough to land a hit with sufficient force to cause him injury then he could complain to whatever authorities existed that I had attacked him, which would get me in trouble and that would make him and his motley crew just as happy. I found the best course of action in such matters was to ball up my fist, coil my arm, and then kick the bully in the groin. I still would get in trouble but I had got my message across that with me, the bully should always expect the unexpected.

The U.S. Federal government has often used this tactic in the past to start wars and then accuse the other party of being the aggressor in the whole affair. Lincoln goaded the South in firing on Fort Sumter, which was a U.S. military base posted on what was foreign soil at the time, and FDR was able to nudge the war faction of the Japanese government into attacking U.S. bases located in the Philippines and the U.S. territory of Hawaii, most notably Pearl Harbor. The only real surprise for FDR about the attack was the efficiency of the Japanese Imperial Navy in crippling the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed there.

The U.S. Federal government is now conducting the same campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran. With warnings and threats of sanctions, siege, and pre-emptive strikes against strategic targets, it is no wonder that both the government and the people of Iran are getting a little agitated and might want to do something to strike back at what they perceive to be unjust bullying.

And the U.S. is providing them with a target-rich environment at which to strike. U.S. combat forces are stationed in neighboring countries. U.S. spy drones are flying through Iranian airspace and mysteriously falling from the sky. The U.S. Navy is conducting joint exercises with Israel in the Persian Gulf (understand that what they are "exercising" is to practice at conducting a war) and neither of those two countries, at least the last time I checked a map, has a coast bordering that body of water. It is only a matter of time before someone, possibly a mentally imbalanced person, does something out of a sense of self-defense.

The last and possibly most desperate tactic of the bullies I have known is the intentional "accidental" shoulder bump. No matter how far I would walk to one side or the other of the school hallways, the bully would always maneuver in my direction so that our shoulders would collide with a high magnitude of momentum on his part. He would then announce loudly, if not proudly, to everyone within earshot that I had struck him and the fight, or more correctly, the mugging would be on. Since the bully attacked from a position of superior force, either through the number of accomplices he had helping him or the relative difference in our body sizes, the most I could do was to block anything that could cause me some form of serious bodily injury.

The pummeling would continue until some member of the school's faculty or staff would intervene to stop it. Then to add insult to any injury I had recently received, this adult would send me, along with the bully, to the principal's office for some form of disciplinary action for my "fighting" on school grounds. It has always astounded me of the general incompetence of public school employees to distinguish the difference between an assault-in-progress and a mutually agreed upon duel of unarmed, hand-to-hand combat.

On the world stage, at the same time that the U.S. Navy in engaged in the aforementioned exercises, the Iranian military is also conducting exercises of its own, along with the testing of new weapons. With all that ordnance flying around, any reasonable person can only wonder how long before one of those missiles, torpedoes, or bombs "accidentally" bumps into one of the several parties involved. And we know that some people are certainly not against turning an honest accident into an "Act of War" on the part of the group that caused it.

In a tussle with a bully in the schoolyard, one could expect, at least in my day, a bloody nose and/or a black eye. In international affairs, bullying of this type could lead the World War III. The good thing about the bullying that I was on the receiving end of over all those years was that it drove me to take up the study of the Japanese martial art, Shotokan Karate-Jutsu. Along with learning how to protect myself in physical confrontations, Karate also helped me to deal with my extreme shyness and the other social phobias I suffered from as a child and is the primary source of my philosophy on life and the world around me. The only people who could consider WWIII to be good are those who would like to see a serious reduction in the Earth's human population.

One of worse things about being an American citizen and having to deal with a Federal government that is transitioning from the World's Policeman (a role it should never had held) to the World's Schoolyard Bully is that it is a lot like having an Evil Twin. The Evil Twin runs to and fro causing all sorts of destruction and mayhem and when his victims come looking for him to take revenge for his evil deeds, they attack the Good Twin in a serious case of mistaken identity. So if you are out to punish the Evil Twin, please make sure you get the right one and leave the rest of us alone...

Rick Santorum: Compassionate Conservative or Socialist?

2012-01-06T10:08:00.004-06:00

While perusing through Michael Gerson's column today, I came across a quote from Presidential candidate Rick Santorum that I considered particularly disturbing:

"Someone always gets hurt when masses of individuals do what is only in their own self-interest. That is the great lie of liberal freedom. . . . Freedom is liberty coupled with responsibility to something bigger or higher than the self. It is a self-less freedom. It is sacrificial freedom. It is the pursuit of our dreams with an eye towards the common good."

This philosophy is at the very root of Socialism where the good and the will of the individual must be sacrificed for the good of society as shaped through the will of the state. This one of the underlying tenets of totalitarian forms of government like Communism, Fascism, and the Nazis of Germany. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it.

"It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity."

"The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative."

Benito Mussolini

"The day of individual happiness has passed."

Adolf Hitler

It seems that Mr. Santorum has never met a "Bigger Government" program he didn't like and he seems to have a problem with the individual "Right to Keep and Bear Arms." If he doesn't trust you with a firearm than you know my philosophy about trusting him. And we all know where the real power of politics come from:

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

Mao Tse-Tung

Compassionate conservative or Socialist? At this point I am reminded of something about roses and the way they smell. For some reason Rick doesn't seem to smell very good to me...

The "Great Correction," The "Great Recession," The "Greater Depression" and Coming Soon: "The Great Disruption"

2012-01-01T15:59:00.008-06:00

If you have visited any of those locations where wildlife is still allowed to roam freely, you may have noticed those signs that warn you to please NOT feed the animals. There is a reason for this beyond some busybody wanting to interfere with your chance to commune with nature. Animals tend to become habitual freeloaders and can become violent when they believe someone is trying to block their free lunch.

There are those who object to such an analogy being applied to human beings whereas to them, "Humans are not animals and it is degrading to suggest they are!" Those of us who prefer to deal with reality as it presents itself to us will politely point out that humans are primates and primates are part of the animal kingdom. Yes, even humans can react violently to those they perceive are interfering with their "free lunch."

Now the U.S. is currently going through several historical phases that it has experienced before but not necessarily endured at this magnitude of adversity. We've recently had the "Great Correction" which was not allowed by the U.S. governments to correct itself naturally so the "Great Recession" then developed. Historians and economists in the future will probably look back on this time period and label it the "Greater Depression," if there are persons who are permitted to enter those professions as the years go by. I would like to take this opportunity to warn you of the "Great Disruption" that is coming soon to not only the U.S. but the rest of the developed world that is controlled by some form of government.

Today there are millions of Americans dependent on the governments of the U.S. for their very sustenance and continued survival. Wealth redistribution programs like food stamps, welfare, and unemployment, and contractual obligations like retiree pensions, veteran programs, and social security/disability payments, are bleeding the governments' financial reserves dry. And since we know the government creates no wealth but only steals it from those who rightfully own it, then the People's capital as well is being destroyed.

Then there are those who receive their medical care indirectly, through programs like Medicare and Medicaid that make payments from the governments to their healthcare providers, and those who receive care directly through government hospitals and clinics like the military and VA facilities. The truly frightening point is that many of these patients are on anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, and other psychogenic medicines that one has to be weaned off slowly to prevent a psychotic breakdown that would occur if one was forced to go "cold turkey."

The governments of the U.S., and the rest of the world for that matter, have overextended themselves into debt and have made promises to the People that they can never be expected to keep. A day will come, that like battlefield triage, a prioritization will have to occur to determine who will get what of what little resources remain and everybody better believe "We the People" will be low on the totem pole of payoffs. Which also means all those who are expecting their promised checks will have to go "cold turkey."

Imagine a "Zombie Apocalypse" movie plot where some really smart scientist has invented a ultra-sonic transmitter that is heard only by all the zombies and it pacifies them into a state of suspended animation. They are still there, drooling uncontrollably while decomposing softly to the music only they can hear, but they have all stopped moving and none are chasing after the living. Then consider what would happen if some nimrod sweeping the floor in the transmitter room accidentally unplugs the transmitter and all the zombies come awake. That's what we have to look forward to.

With the "Great Disruption" being a logical, if not a realistic, certainty then the next question on everyone's mind is "When will it happen?" Some suggest that it will never happen as those great minds that work for the governments will pull a proverbial rabbit-out-of-a-hat and solve the whole problem. These people suffer from a certain selective amnesia in that they forget it was these great minds that got themselves into this situation in the first place.

Others, suffering from a certain amount of alarmist paranoia tell us that it will happen tomorrow. Of course it could happen tomorrow but these people said the same thing about the day before yesterday. We must sort through it all with a finely tuned grain of salt and with that I will venture out to make my own guess of the timing of all this (please don't hold me to it as I am only human and I don't have the gift of prophecy or any inside information from any government agency). I do hinge my timeline on the outcomes of certain political races as they have the key to slow the rate of deterioration but not stop it entirely.

If there is a legitimate regime change in 2013, such as if Ron Paul or another libertarian-minded candidate should be elected President along with a libertarian majority in the Congress, then this catastrophe could be held up till 2021, which gives the more prudent among us the time to prepare to survive it. It can not be stopped because there are too many powerful people who make large profits off of the decline of the U.S. and they will do everything in their considerable power to thwart a single man like Ron Paul at every turn, possibly including turning him into the next martyr for the cause of liberty like "John, Bobby, and Martin."

If there is regime change in appearances only, such as one of the top-tier Republican candidates besides Ron Paul wins the election, the downhill slide will continue but at the slower "G.W." pace (which is not that slow) instead of the Obama lightspeed pace. This might stretch things out to 2017 which still leaves some time to get ready for it.

If Obama is re-elected, then he will take this as an affirmation of his current destructive policies and will proceed at multi-warp speed driving the U.S. economy over the cliff. If this should happen I propose that the "Great Disruption" could occur as early as the last day of "Black History Month" in 2013 (which happens to be the shortest month of the year). If one wants to prepare, time is getting shorter by the second squared.

When contemplating such scenarios, I am reminded of two old adages. The first is:

"Prepare for the worst and hope for the best..."

This usually includes the modern addendum:

"...And learn to be happy with something in between."

The next comes to us in Latin:

"Si vis pacem para bellum"

Which best translates as:

"If you want peace, (be) prepare(d) for war."

We can all be assured that this what the U.S. governments are planning and preparing for. Only now We the People are both the victims and the enemy.

Happy New Year everyone and I hope to see you all on the other side...

One Has To Wonder...

2011-09-19T16:56:00.005-05:00

When the U.S., U.K., E.U., or the U.N. does it, it's called, "Promoting Peace," and when Linus does it, he gets a "C." Hmmm?

Religious Radicals and Radical Religions

2011-03-07T18:25:00.004-06:00

Rep. Peter King is going through with his threat to weed out all the radical Muslims in the United States so, as I like to point out absurdity through absurd extrapolations, let's see if I can help Rep. King find all the "radical" members of other religious groups in this country.

Let's start with the Mormons, a nice quiet group of people who hang out in the western State of Utah after being run out of town in points a little farther to the east. In our more enlightened times, shouldn't it be considered "radical" for a religion to teach that wives are supposed to submit themselves to their husbands, even to the point of sharing him with other wives? Even though the Bible doesn't teach that polygamy is wrong and the Mormon church no longer advocates polygamy for its male believers, mostly because it is illegal, isn't the very idea "radical" and go against the grain of our modern society?

Then we have the Roman Catholic Church. With all this talk, mostly from government types, about excessive human population and its destructive affects on the Earth, wouldn't it be considered "radical" to teach people that not only should they avoid getting an abortion but to avoid using any birth control whatsoever? The rise in the Hispanic population in this country is partly from immigration but a great deal is because the majority are Roman Catholic. They seem to be trying to out-breed "Los Gringos." That sounds pretty "radical" to me.

And what about the Pentecostals? Instead of depending on the state-sponsored health-care/pharmaceutical monopoly to take care of their medical problems, these folks have a tendency to wait upon their God to cure the sick and heal the lame and if He doesn't, they have the faith to accept their fate, which could include death. Can anyone get any more "radical" than that?

There's the Baptist, particularly those of the Southern Convention, who write and print all those informative tracts and pamphlets that explain why every other adherent to every other religion in the world is going to Hell. Sounds like "Hate" speech to me. And the SBC could never find that part in the Bible where it says owning slaves is sinful, mainly because it does not exist, but to point that out seems pretty "radical."

Last but not least is those people who worship Caesar. Caesar-worship is a very pluralistic religion in that believers in other faiths are allowed to join in as long as Caesar comes before duty to any other god or deity. Caesar-worshipers have absolutely no problem in forcing others to recite the daily prayer they have chosen and to punish those who do not engage in acts of obeisance towards the venerated icons that the Caesar-worshipers hold in high regard. Sounds like what some people, mostly non-Muslims, describe Sharia Law to be.

As any reader can see, each and every religion has its nutcases and its points and tenets that others outside of that religion can find objectionable, but unless behaviors based on any particular belief system qualifies to be described as criminal, no one has a right or the authority to judge, condemn, or punish anyone for holding to a faith or collection of faiths. There is one way to create more radicals willing to use violence, though, and that's by creating the perception that they are being persecuted for their religion. In this way, Rep. King might be working against his stated goals, or he is possibly "serving a higher purpose" by fomenting dissension and religious tension amongst the People.

Of course the most radical folks to look into are those who penned those long-forgotten words in that archaic document of decomposing importance in our ever expanding world of government encroachment on our lives:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."

From the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Can't get any more "radical" than that...

Black Men Who Want More Slavery

2011-03-04T08:08:00.005-06:00

I was watching John Stossel's show last night on the Fox Business Network where he interviewed Rep. Charles Rangel about the latter's proposal for bringing back an updated version of the draft to the United States. Mr. Rangel's main impetus for making such a suggestion to be considered by the Congress is to see that more Americans have the "privilege" of serving their country and sharing the burden of the common defense, particularly for the upper socioeconomic classes.

Now the first question is whether "serving" one's country is a privilege? If by serving, Mr. Rangel means being employed by the government, then, yes, it is a privilege that the People bestow upon government employees through their elected representatives who act as managers of the People's public affairs. There is a vetting process to ensure that the applicant is capable of doing the job that the People are hiring him to do that includes a minimum standard for education, physical fitness, and emotional/mental stability.

The next question is whether the young people from the upper socioeconomic levels of the United States are somehow shirking their duty to serve their country. Mr. Rangel implied that most of that work was being done by the poor. Mr. Stossel showed him statistics that pointed out that roughly two-thirds of the current members of the U.S. Armed Forces come from families in the middle and upper classes. Mr. Rangel had a little trouble accepting these statistics as real (gee, I wonder why?).

The unfortunate fact of life for young people from poor families is there is a tendency amongst a large portion of them, but certainly not all, to have been in some form of trouble with the law before graduating high school which can disqualify them from government employment. They also have a higher drop-out rate than other groups which means they do not qualify for service in the U.S. military which has a minimum requirement of a high school diploma or equivalent.

Now Mr. Rangel did emphasize that his program didn't require people to just serve in a military capacity but that they could serve in a civilian capacity in some form of domestic national security positions. Let's look at that a little closer. A bunch of people between the ages of 18-42 forced to do a job they don't want to at a minimum wage they don't want to accept at hours of the day they may not want to work with people they may not want to associate with protecting our country from terrorists and foreign invasion.

I'm sure such people would be above such corruption as taking a bribe of $10,000 to look the other way as a strange man with strange accent carted a nuclear device wrapped in a bale of marijuana with a few kilos of opium thrown in for good measure past their guard station, wouldn't they? I'm sure they would also be above reproach for using their positions of authority to personally enrich themselves like those honorable types that work for the TSA, right?

When I was a police officer, I took a course in terrorism where I was introduced to a black militant group that had a certain political agenda. Now these militants were a radical minor (very minor) minority of the entire black minority population of America so there isn't much to fear from them but their ideas had to qualify as terrorizing. To these folks there is no reparations for slavery, no affirmative action, no welfare program, that satisfies them beyond the enslavement of every non-black citizen under the ownership and management, by the whip, of every black person in America.

We now have the President of the United States calling for the enslavement of all school age children through compulsory volunteering and the third-longest serving member of the House of Representatives calling for the enslavement of everyone after they graduate from school in a paramilitary conscription program. And both of these gentlemen happen to consider themselves as black. One has to wonder if the political philosophy of that particular terrorist group has gone more mainstream...*

* Please note my tongue is firmly stationed against the inside of my cheek.

Going Too Far And At The Same Time Not Far Enough

2011-02-28T10:57:00.006-06:00

Due to a request from a reader from out-of-state, I am going to postpone my regularly scheduled posting to comment on the proposed new law here in Texas that will allow college and university students to carry concealed firearms onto their campuses and into their classes. First let us examine the current applicable law in regards to schools and educational institutions.

From the Texas Penal Code:

Sec. 46.03. PLACES WEAPONS PROHIBITED. (a) A person commits an offense if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly possesses or goes with a firearm, illegal knife, club, or prohibited weapon listed in Section 46.05(a):

(1) on the physical premises of a school or educational institution, any grounds or building on which an activity sponsored by a school or educational institution is being conducted, or a passenger transportation vehicle of a school or educational institution, whether the school or educational institution is public or private, unless pursuant to written regulations or written authorization of the institution;...

Section 46.03 continues with other locations where firearms are also prohibited but this should serve our purposes for today. As one can see there is already a built in exemption to the law in that institutions could have "written regulations" that allow persons to carrying firearms on campus or they could issue "written authorization" to specific individuals. This is how the school district in Harrold, Texas was able to arm it teachers and staff so as to provide security for the students.

Now the new proposed law can be read here in its entirety. My impression at first is that it is another one of those "wonderful" laws that does not go far enough in securing the liberty of the people and goes too far in oppressing the rights of some for the benefit of others.

The law will only allow Concealed Handgun Licensees to carry their concealed handguns onto "institutions of higher learning" and does not include allowing licensees to carry their sidearms onto any other school - elementary, intermediate, or high school - or for that matter, onto any and all public property. Public property is that property that is, for lack of a better term, "owned" by the government (and subsequently owned by the people as a whole) and supported by tax dollars.

In this sense the law does not go far enough in providing more places that licensees can legally carry but then it goes too far by including "private" institutions. These institutions, by virtue of their being private, are not owned by the government by any stretch of a warped imagination and for the government to decide who can and who cannot carry onto the premises of these institutions is for the government to steal these properties from their rightful owners.

Private institutions of higher learning are businesses and like any other private business, the owner or owners have the right to decide who will be allowed to enter onto their property and by what rules and regulations these visitors must abide by to continue to enjoy this privilege of remaining on the property. Private institutions should have the legal option like anyone else to take advantage of section 30.06 of the Texas Penal Code if it fits within their choices for their local environment.

Sec. 30.06. TRESPASS BY HOLDER OF LICENSE TO CARRY CONCEALED HANDGUN. (a) A license holder commits an offense if the license holder:

(1) carries a handgun under the authority of Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code, on property of another without effective consent; and

(2) received notice that:

(A) entry on the property by a license holder with a concealed handgun was forbidden; or

(B) remaining on the property with a concealed handgun was forbidden and failed to depart.

(b) For purposes of this section, a person receives notice if the owner of the property or someone with apparent authority to act for the owner provides notice to the person by oral or written communication.

(c) In this section:

(1) "Entry" has the meaning assigned by Section 30.05(b).

(2) "License holder" has the meaning assigned by Section 46.035(f).

(3) "Written communication" means:

(A) a card or other document on which is written language identical to the following: "Pursuant to Section 30.06, Penal Code (trespass by holder of license to carry a concealed handgun), a person licensed under Subchapter H, Chapter 411, Government Code (concealed handgun law), may not enter this property with a concealed handgun"; or

(B) a sign posted on the property that:

(i) includes the language described by Paragraph (A) in both English and Spanish;

(ii) appears in contrasting colors with block letters at least one inch in height; and

(iii) is displayed in a conspicuous manner clearly visible to the public.

(d) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

(e) It is an exception to the application of this section that the property on which the license holder carries a handgun is owned or leased by a governmental entity and is not a premises or other place on which the license holder is prohibited from carrying the handgun under Section 46.03 or 46.035.

This new law would specifically prohibit the owners from exercising their own good judgment on how their property will be used. Some might consider this new law a victory for the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" but it is definitely a loss for property rights which is the basis for all of our Natural Rights.

The Texas legislature is merely throwing a bone to the masses so as to appear to be more libertarian but is instead trying to exercise more control over the private property of Texans. There must be a vain hope somewhere that this might improve Governor Rick Perry's future run for the White House by helping him capture the votes of the gun rights crowd and the Tea Party. Let's hope that a majority of registered voters can see through this charade...

Dear zenbillionaire:

2011-02-10T10:32:00.005-06:00

There was a comment to my "Important Political Announcement" that I would like to take a moment to post a friendly response.

zenbillionaire wrote:

"It'd be fun sometime to write up all the reasons a normal person wouldn't want to be President. Just imagine what might happen if Mr Smith went to Washington in the 21st century, all the power brokers and image makers that would land on him with both feet, all the people who'd try to tell him how the system works (and in no uncertain terms). I expect it would be a nightmarish experience."

Yes, indeed. I am reminded of something very funny I heard a comedian once say (darn it that his name escapes me at this moment*). He had this theory of what happens to those men who are elected President. When the President-elect first visits the White House before he is to take the oath of office, he is taken to a secure bunker where he gets to view a short video. It is much like the Zapruder Film of the Kennedy motorcade in Dallas but with no shaking of the camera and from a different angle than most people are used to seeing. There's even a close up of when the bullets begin to fly and strike President Kennedy. The implied threat for the new President is to not buck the system that is already in place.

zenbillionaire continues:

"Corruption in the political arena is endemic worldwide. There's no place in it for a peaceful person without desire to run the lives of others. A person like you or I wouldn't be able to change a thing even if we were elected President. The only folks who can really change this country are its citizens, and each of them will have to do it by themselves.

"There's a basic truth that few understand; you can't give a person liberty, if they don't have it, they must find it for themselves." (emphasis mine)

I agree with zenbillionaire wholeheartedly on this point. I even covered this in my important political announcement. It's also one of the main reasons I am NOT running for the office of President of the United States.

I am basing my non-campaign on the comedy of the late Pat Paulsen. Pat used to "run" for President as part of his act and later when the government started to complain about his facetious campaigning for office, as in any broadcaster that carried his act would have to provide equal air time for other candidates, he began to NOT run for President.

I am NOT running for the office of President of the United States but I do have some suggestions for those who want to try and repair this heavily damaged "Titanic" we call the Federal Government. My non-campaign is a literary device that provides me an avenue to present these recommendations and to point out the hypocrisy of those who call for cuts in some government programs while protecting their own favorites. Everything, every "sacred cow," every "third rail" must be touched and cut dramatically if there is even to slightest chance of saving this Leviathan as it is currently manifested.

Personally I think this monstrosity is not worth the effort and is beyond saving. My family and I are on a 5-year plan to get ourselves to the point where we can live in a "1984" world while using 19th century technology. And we are not moving back into archaic forms of everyday life for the ridiculous purpose of reducing our carbon footprint but because this is what a totalitarian government will force upon all of us and all of you.

I will give it one more "College Try" and let people know what I think and what I suggest but in reality the momentum is greater for more oppression because too many people are ignorant or complacent in securing their own liberty. Maybe this one little snowflake will start the giant snowball rolling in the other direction. At least someday in the far future when my grandchildren, or their children, ask me why didn't anyone save everything, I'll be able to say I tried...

* While visiting the Lew Rockwell blog later I was reminded that this was the late Bill Hicks.

If I Were President: The Overweight Federal Budget

2011-01-28T11:01:00.006-06:00

A lot of discussion of late of the President's State of the Union speech where he basically promised to cut spending by freezing it at current levels for some programs and spend more by "investing" it in some of his favorite pet projects. Of course this will only lead the Federal government deeper into debt. Some people have questioned whether the deficit can actually be reduced by freezing spending instead of reducing spending and the short answer is "Yes" which I can explain with the following analogy.

Assume we have a young child in Kindergarten who stands about 3' 9" with a body weight that can't even be considered to be healthy unless the child stood 4' 6". As Garfield the cat often describes himself, the girl is not overweight, she is just "undertall." Now the question is: is it reasonable to assume that the child would ever reach this height in a natural way?

If the child's mother stands 5' 4" and her father is 5' 9" then all statistics in this regard suggest the she will reach an adult height of 5' 5" which is a little taller than her mother (if she were a boy she could expect to be taller than her father). So it does become safe to assume that she will pass through the height of 4' 6" at some point during her growing phase.

Now many experts in the medical field that covers childhood obesity would suggest that instead of cutting the girl's caloric intake, they would freeze it at a point that would maintain her current weight (after scrutinizing her diet to remove all "junk" calories) and allow her to grow up and into that weight. This avoids the danger of the counter-intuitive malnutrition disorders that affect overweight children when parents try to reduce weight by reducing the amount children are allowed to eat.

Transferring this to the budget of the Federal government we can see that if the government can reasonably expect the economy, that it parasitically draws from, to grow, then revenues will hopefully increase to cover any deficit if the amount spent is kept at a rate that everything can grow into. The problem with the current budget is that our little girl weighs an amount that would only be considered safe if she was going to grow to 32 feet tall and that isn't going to happen.

Upon closer examination we see that the reason this little girl weighs so much isn't because of what or how much she is eating but that she has some very heavy sandbags strapped tightly to her body just under her clothing. And that extra weight is going to impede or distort her growth in a seriously dysfunctional manner.

The Federal budget doesn't need to just be frozen or slashed or reduced. The Federal government needs to be slashed or reduced if it is to retain even the slightest whiff of legitimacy. That means whole departments and programs need to be eliminated just like those sandbags need to be cut from that little girl's body.

What departments or programs you might ask. Stay tuned for details...

An Important Political Announcement

2011-01-06T08:33:00.005-06:00

Well, here it is another January of the year before an election year and in a few weeks, if not days, the usual suspects will step forward to throw their hats into the ring in a bid for the Presidency. So let me be the first to make a really important political announcement:

I am NOT running for the office of the President of the United States.

Occasionally some folks who have read what I have written or heard what I have said suggest that maybe I should run for President at which I usually answer that they haven't been paying attention to anything I've put out. Nobody needs a president as life is what one can make it and people who like to run for political office are usually authoritarian statist who just want the power and prestige of being the head thief or bandit. Oh, did I happen to mention:

I am NOT running for the office of the President of the United States.

They then explain that they understand what I meant but what they want is someone to lead the fight against such thieves and bandits and they figure a person like myself in the Oval Office would be a good start. What they are asking for is a St. Michael to slay the dragon, Leviathan. The only problem with that is that St. Michael is an Archangel and I'm just a mere (a very mere) mortal. And:

I am NOT running for the office of the President of the United States.

I can understand the point of these people. If one really wants smaller government and wants someone to shrink the darn thing then you really can't get much smaller than zero and that's my favorite amount of government. But under the Constitution the office of the Presidency is not supposed to be that powerful of a position and if I were to take an oath to uphold and the defend the Constitution then I would stick by that oath. Besides:

I am NOT running for the office of the President of the United States.

With that being said, I would certainly serve if called upon. So if anyone wants me to be President then on the next Election Day he or she can write my name on his or her ballot. It would be one heck of a "Protest" to vote for a nobody like myself. As I'm not a registered voter I certainly will not be voting for me either and the best reason for that is:

I am NOT running for the office of the President of the United States.

If I should be elected then I will take the oath of office in the Press Room at the White House. That would be one of my first steps to reduce the size and expense of government as there would be no sense in having millions of armed security personnel out and about to protect the thousands of citizens who brave the horrid weather to come watch the spectacle from the dozen or so really bad people living on the other side of the planet who might want to cause innocent people harm.

If you're interested in what other steps I would take to shrink the size of the U.S. Federal Government, then keep an eye on this blog as I will list a few other things I might do if I were the President of the United States. I would like to reiterate, though, so that everyone fully understands:

I am NOT running for the office of the President of the United States...

* My response to zenbillionaire is posted here.

Oil Changes and Government

2010-07-04T09:57:00.003-05:00

Imagine for a moment that you have taken the family in the family car to the local Supercenter discount department store to do a little shopping and when you get there, by the looks of the parking lot, you find just about everyone else in town had the same idea. You get lucky and find an empty space near the Automotive service department. This is not the area for vehicles needing service, mind you, but just real close to it.

About an hour and a half later when you all leave the store with your purchases and are walking towards your conveyance, one of the mechanics from the garage walks up and tells you that you forgot to pay for the oil change he performed on your car. You tell him that you did not ask for or authorize anyone to work on your vehicle and you do not owe him for any "oil change." He tells you that if you do not pay he will be forced to call the police.

As you approach your car you note outloud that you and your spouse are the only ones who have keys to get inside so how could the mechanic have "popped" the hood release to even perform an "oil change." He says he is a mechanic and he has his ways to get past such security devices so you must trust him that he performed the service and you owe him money.

You have a look under the hood yourself and mention that the same old oil filter is still attached and looks as dirty as the last time you saw it. He says he never said he changed the filter, which is technically correct, and that he only said he changed the oil. He muse to yourself what a stupid move that would be since the fresh oil would be come dirty just because of the old filter.

The mechanic reaches into his pocket and withdraws a cell phone. He warns you that he is prepared to call the police right now if you don't pay him what you owe him right now. Your spouse suggests you pay him what he wants just to shut him up and make him go away.

How would you feel? Incensed? Violated like you are the victim of some crime? How did you feel last April 15th?

This is how government works. It tells you that it has performed a service for you, usually some kind of protection for which you did not request or consent to them doing so, and then sends you the bill telling you that you owe it for "services rendered."

So the next time someone tells you that you have to pay taxes because its what you "owe," tell them you don't owe anybody anything and you just pay what they want to shut them up and make them go away...

Noctiphobia And The Winter Solstice: The Real Reason For The Season

2009-12-22T12:00:00.004-06:00

"It's the most wonderful time of the year" and the usual suspects are coming out with their complaints, again, that there is a "War on Christmas" in this country which is part of the greater battle against Christianity in general. One of their pet peeves is the habit of many retail businesses asking or telling their clerks to wish shoppers, "Happy Holidays" instead of the more traditionally preferred, "Merry Christmas" (some of these whiners also don't like the idea of retailers advertising that they "se habla espanol," either). With a certain amount of self-righteous indignation they point out to their "opponents" that there wouldn't even be a holiday season for them to turn a profit on if it weren't for the birth of Christ at this time of the year over 2,000 years ago. But is that part necessarily true?

Many scholars now doubt the probability, if not even the possibility, of Jesus being born in late December in any year between 4 BCE to 6 CE and the source of that doubt comes from the same source for the whole nativity story - the Bible. The accounts of the birth of Jesus in the books of Matthew and Luke provide us with both the common myths and some clues to the truth surrounding the mystery of the actual date of Jesus' birth.

First we have the decree from the Roman Emperor calling for a census so that all his subjects should be taxed accordingly. This is the reason for Joseph and his expectant wife, Mary, to be away from their home in Nazareth staying with what can best be assumed as probably relatives somewhere in one of the two Bethlehems in the Roman province of Judea. If the Emperor is more interested in getting the actual taxes from living subjects he most certainly wouldn't have ordered everyone to be travelling to and fro at a time of the year when the bitter cold could kill large numbers of them. Therefore it is more likely, without any actual written record to go by, that he would expect such a decree to be complied with at a more temperate time of the year, ruling out late Autumn and early Winter.

Then we have the story of the angels visiting the shepherds who were tending their flocks by night. No shepherd in his right mind would be tending his flocks at night out in open country in the early winter. The flocks would more likely be stored in stables during the cold nights where their combined body heat would keep them, and the shepherd tending them, warm. And the main reason any shepherd would be watching the flocks during the dark hours would be for the ewes and she-goats giving birth - an activity that normally occurs in the Spring.

We also have the story of Mary and Joseph having to stay in the stables because there was not enough room in the "inn." This part can be better understood when one keeps in mind the structure of Hebrew homes at the time and place that Jesus was supposed to have been born. The upper floor of the average home was where the humans lived and their animals were stored in a lower floor/basement arrangement. This area would be empty during the warmer times of the year making the room available for extra visitors, like Mary and Joseph, to stay in during an oppressive government program such as the census. Mary would also give birth in this section of the home because much of the bodily fluids released during delivery would be considered "unclean" explaining why the baby Jesus would be laid in a "manger" or food trough.

With so much evidence pointing to a vernal time frame for the birth of Jesus, how then did his birth come to be commemorated on the 25th of December? There appears to be an almost natural process in which as one human culture begins to dominate another culture, as much as the dominant forces the lesser society to submit to its norms and mores, the dominant also assimilates some of the traditions and religious practices of the lesser. From the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a fortnight of celebration running from the 25th of December through to the 6th of January, Christianity adopted it and converted it into the "Twelve Days of Christmas."

But the festival of Saturnalia itself was an adopted and converted holiday. The Romans had got the seedling for this festival from the Nordic peoples of Europe who celebrated the festival of Yule. Yule has been traced back in history to over 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus and is the source of the many objects that people traditionally associate with Christmas. Yule is a celebration of the Winter Solstice (December 20-22 depending on the year) which marks the beginning of the days growing longer once again and the threat of eternal darkness, one of Man's deepest fears, is defeated. Even though the worst three months of the year lay before our Northern ancestors they could take some comfort in the extra daylight and the promise of better times for the future.

The Tannenbaum, or evergreen tree, may have first been used as a makeshift door for any shelter that Man was using to brave the elements and then later used as firewood. Along the way ancient Man discovered the tree's medicinal value as an allergen filter and air freshener, particularly handy when a number of humans are crammed together in tight quarters. The large quantity of feasting that went on during this celebration may have grown out of the need to fatten up before retiring to a near-state of hibernation since sleep is an energy-efficient use of idle time for humans due to scarcity of food and other resources during Winter. Gift-giving probably grew out of the sharing that was needed to secure the continuity of the species.

Since the holiday of Christmas is an artificial construct and does not commemorate anything occurring at an actual point in time and space associated with this portion of the solar calender, then people are free to celebrate as they see fit and apply any religious significance, if any at all, as they choose. The only reason anyone would be at war against this holiday would be those who just want to claim some form of victimhood for themselves so that they are free to justify picking a fight with others who they claim to be the perpetrators. It's a silly way to celebrate the birth of a man that many people worship as the "Prince of Peace."

May you and yours celebrate a joyous Yuletide!

Slavery: Alive, Well, And Perfectly Legal In Modern America

2009-12-14T14:36:00.003-06:00

In the past I have often said that slavery and involuntary servitude still legally exists in the United States and a reader has asked me to expound on those statements. I'll have to restrict myself with just one avenue of proving my point as to cover them all would possibly take volumes. Let us first examine the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that allegedly outlaws slavery.

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Note right off the bat that this Amendment contains an exception where it does not apply as a protection against government oppression over the people. If one has "been duly convicted" of committing a "crime" then "as a punishment" the convicted can either be made a slave or be forced to serve some duty he has not voluntarily agreed to do. It comes from ancient times when convicted criminals used to be made slaves of their victims as a form of punishment and forced to serve them till some determined debt was paid off.

The problem develops with how "crime" is defined and by whom. Scanning across the whole of human cultures with regards to social norms and mores while dismissing those activities simply labelled as immoral or sinful we can come to the following working definition as to what constitutes a crime as being any act whereby a person intentionally and knowingly causes direct and measurable harm or loss to another person without the second person's consent (Malum In Se). This covers those common cases of homicide, rape, and theft.

The government has a tendency to go a little farther than most people to include what it labels "illegal" to be synonymous with being a true crime. Illegal can be defined as any activity, behaviors, conditions, circumstances, or situations that are declared prohibited by a person or group of persons claiming, and that the majority of people affected by the declaration acquiesce, authority to do so (Malum Prohibitum). Not all crimes are illegal, usually depending on who the actor is that is committing them, and all things illegal are not necessarily crimes. Some activities that have been deemed illegal are within the Natural Rights of the accused to engage in and it is the enforcement of the oppressive law that is the true crime.

This opens the door for a whole lot of mischief. During the first Great Depression in the 1930's a large number of County Road Commissioners would depend on their County Sheriff to drum up some slave labor to work on the roads that were damaged by bad weather. The Sheriff and his deputies would scour the countryside in search of persons travelling about looking for honest work. If these poor people didn't have the lawfully required minimum amount of U.S. currency on or about their persons they were arrested for the non-criminal, but illegal, act of "vagrancy." Upon conviction these poor souls were assigned to work in road crews. This was all legal and Constitutional by the 13th Amendment.

Today the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world and the majority of those incarcerated have been convicted of non-violent offenses that have not caused any harm or loss to others but are against the law written by our benevolent government officials. Most of these laws are merely attempts to force the religious moral code of one group unto everyone else in violation of the Natural Rights of those who are persecuted. Other laws are written to give one group of business entrepreneurs criminal, but lawful, advantage over their competition. There are so many "criminal" laws in the United States today even those who write them have trouble remembering them so that they can comply with them (or at least that's what they keep telling us when they are caught breaking them).

By writing more laws that restrict people in what should be considered the normal activities of life the government is always out to enslave more people through the "Criminal Justice" System. One day the government might even outlaw breathing. For those who think I might be pushing the envelope of absurdity to make a point through hyperbole, remember that the federal Environmental Protection Agency has now skirted the Congress to grant itself the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and carbon dioxide is a natural gas that we humans emit every three to five seconds during respiration.

This is just one of the many avenues that the government can lawfully take to enslave the people. There is the alternate route of using the tax code as a tool of wealth redistribution or as an agent of behavior modification instead of its legitimate purpose of gathering enough funds to finance the government as it performs its essential functions. And, of course, there is the most insidious form of slavery that the U.S. Supreme Court regularly bestows its blessing upon, military conscription.

It is easy to see that slavery has never left the shores of this country but has instead gone through a Marxist transformation whereby the ownership of the means of production - the slaves - has been forcibly transferred from the individual to the collective - the government. The worst part is that now all of us are the "means of production" and should we resist we will be breaking the law. "When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free."

What Is The Polarity Of Your Rights?

2009-12-07T13:04:00.002-06:00

A lot of us can remember back to those days of yesteryear when we first got to play with those colorful magnets in Kindergarten. This was where we learned about polarity. Some of those magnets were positively charged and some were negatively. We learned that magnets of the same polarity would repel each other and those that were opposite would attract each other. Now there is a socio-political theory that proposes our rights are also Negative and Positive just like those magnets.

In Nature when a man lives completely separate from all other humans, he can enjoy total liberty. The only constraints on whatever actions he may choose to engage in is the restraints placed on him by the physical universe. That man cannot flap his arms and fly to the moon is the natural limitation caused by gravity but he can choose to try as long as he likes. It might even be considered a good aerobic workout.

When that man chooses to enter into closer proximity with his fellow humans for whatever purpose that he finds beneficial to him, he must place a limit on his own freedom so as to avoid causing injury or harm to his neighbors or they may reject his continued company. If he were to try flapping his arms while standing next to another person he may inadvertently strike that person in the face and we can safely assume that person would become upset.

Our Natural Rights grow out of our substantiated claim to our original liberty that we can keep and exercise amongst our fellow humans after we have taken the precautions so that none of our neighbors are hurt. The man still has the right to flap his arms as long as no one is near or, if he is on his own real estate, no one is harmed except for uninvited visitors. Because these Natural Rights "negate" the justification, though not the possibility, of government or other social organizations interfering with an individual's liberty they are labelled "Negative."

Then there are some folks who have looked upon and studied the whole of Creation and found it terribly flawed. It is inherently unfair to them that should a person grow hungry that Nature does not provide a well-cooked nutritious meal from thin air. They believe that man is enslaved by his very biology and something must be done to lead to his liberation. They follow the old Russian proverb, "A man is not truly free if he must work for a living."

These people believe that man has a right to his subsistence being delivered to him and because this supposedly "adds" to a man's freedom, this type of right is called "Positive." Since genies in magic lamps are in short supply, they entrust a creation of man, namely government, to work the wonders of delivering the goods to each and every person based on their individual needs. If a man can't get to the moon by flapping his arms then, by gosh, the government should build him a rocket ship to get the job done.

The problem with "Positive" rights is that they are just basically demands for commodities. Commodities are goods and services produced and provided by individuals to sell to their fellow human beings so as to earn their livelihood. Since the government is incapable of creating anything of true value, what it has to give to some it must first take from others and that includes these commodities. Though some producers might be compensated in some form of money for their goods, the money to pay them had to be taken from others so this leads to a net zero gain for society if not a loss due to misdirected allocation of assets.

If a person believes he has a "Positive" right to have all his basic needs, wants, and a few desires - education, security, medical care, etc. - delivered to him at no cost (to him), then what he is claiming is a right to steal from and to enslave his fellow man. Just because the government is the one holding the gun to the head of the victim does not excuse him for his part in this act of robbery since the government does so at his request and upon his behest.

In the moral codes of many people the holding of such a belief is the very essence of evil and there is nothing "Positive" about it. They may choose to exercise their Natural Right to shun people who hold it and that can only be considered a "Negative" for those affected. So the question remains: What is the polarity of YOUR rights?

Losing 50 Pounds Of Dangerous Fat Through Secession

2009-12-01T10:41:00.003-06:00

The country is suffering another major financial meltdown that can be linked to meddling in the economy by the Federal Government and the Federal Government has promised to solve the problem - by increasing its meddling in the economy. This has led many to believe that our ship of state is taking on a lot of water and some are suggesting that it is time to start heading for the lifeboats.

What these folks are talking about is Secession from the Union by any of the several States or political subdivisions thereof. They have a long list of abuses that they claim the Federal government has and intends to inflict upon the American people that rivals the one the colonists brought against King George. From the abuse of civil rights and liberty under the police state of the Bush administration to the socialistic and forcible transfer of wealth from those who earned it to those who didn't under the Obama administration, the people are getting fed up.

They are also noting the inequities of how taxes are being collected from the whole of America and being dispersed in large payments from the public treasury to certain factions, regions, and districts in return for political favors performed by these location's elected representatives. One can reasonably ask how a Federal grant to the people of Belton, Texas to build a new school or fire station promotes the General Welfare of the good folks of Carterville, Illinois and the question is just as reasonable if the roles are reversed.

Naturally, as there are proponents of secession there are those persons who are adamantly opposed to the idea. They suggest that the very idea is un-American, glossing over the historical fact that the United States would not exist except for an act of secession. They counter that it is illegal, missing that the point of secession is to remove oneself from liability to obey oppressive laws that prevent one from exercising his Natural Rights - like the Right to secede.

They also suggest that it would be an exercise in futility since everyone would be trading one group of dictators and despots, the Federal Government, for another, the State government. They like to use that line from the movie, "The Patriot," where Mel Gibson's character explains to his fellows that he is more comfortable with one tyrant 3,000 miles away than to have 3,000 tyrants one mile away from his home. But is this necessarily true? That is the point for discussion in this article.

Here in The Republic, we Texans live under four layers of Fascism. We have the Local/Municipal, the County, the State, and then the Federal Government. Along with the abuse we suffer from each level individually, we have the abuse dictated from the level above unto the levels below on how those levels should dictate over "We the People." I am reminded of how a certain dark substance has a tendency to follow the force of gravity in downward travel across raised ground and I am not talking about snow.

Now if the State of Texas should secede from the Union, again, or for that matter, any of the others, then that is the removal of one quarter of the four layers or 25% of the tyrants we currently tolerate. That is the same as a 200 pound, overweight teenager losing 50 lbs. of dangerous fat. The 150 lbs. that the teenager now weighs, like the governments of the several States, already existed and will continue to exist. She has simply sculpted away the excess weight through diet and exercise.

And since the Federal Government can no longer dictate to the lower levels within the State, the stress of oppression on the people will be reduced. This will be the equivalent of that young lady sticking with her new healthy lifestyle which will help prevent her from suffering those afflictions associated with obesity.

Keeping political power close to home certainly has its advantages. When politicians know that if they should cause it to "rain" they are guaranteed to get "wet" along with everyone else, they are less likely to cause "thunderclouds." That is certainly preferable to being ruled from afar by men and women living and working away from the people they "rule" in some heavily fortified enclave like the District of Columbia. "Keep your friends close and keep your (Fascist Dictators) even closer."

Now the process of secession, like marriage or divorce, is not to be considered lightly or entered into hastily, but like the young wife trying shape up her errant husband by threatening to ship out and go back home to mother, it must be considered and held tightly as a viable option for dealing with a government running amuck with the people's liberty and property.

We, individually and collectively, must consider the risks, costs, and benefits of staying within the Union and the economics of compliance with the dictates of the Federal Government and compare them to the same for striking out in smaller units and the economics of resistance against those who might use force to keep us in the fold against our will. Secession might be a diet we all want to go on or we could be forced to do so as a matter of human survival.

Thoughts For Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T09:41:00.002-06:00

As you sit down before your Thanksgiving dinner and contemplate what you have to be thankful for this year, let me add a few more to your annual list that you may not have considered.

Be thankful that somebody, somewhere figured out a way that he (or she) could make his living growing or raising the food included in the bounty before you.

Be thankful that somebody, somewhere figured out a way that he (or she) could make his living transporting that food in a timely fashion to a location that was convenient for you to purchase the bounty before you.

Be thankful that somebody, somewhere figured out a way that he (or she) could make his living by merchandising that food in a way and at such hours that were convenient for you to shop and get everything on your list included in the bounty before you.

Be thankful that somebody, somewhere figured out a way that he (or she) could make his living by providing you entertainment on this day as you can sit down with the kids to watch a parade and later sit down with the guys and gals to watch a football game after consuming the bounty before you.

Be thankful that somebody, somewhere figured out a way that he (or she) could make his living by providing transportation or necessary supplies for those friends and relatives whose company you enjoy that have come from afar to join you in eating the bounty before you.

Be thankful that somebody, somewhere figured out a way that he (or she) could make his living by building the home that those people who grate on your nerves can return to after they are finished eating you out of yours beyond the bounty before you.

Be thankful that so many figured out the same way to make their living that in the competition with their fellows to underbid each other they provide the bounty before you at a price you can afford.

Be thankful that so many figured out a way to make a buck on your pleasure and enjoyment for without their entrepreneurial spirit there would be a short supply of both and probably no bounty before you.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Fort Hood, Gun Control Laws, and The Freedom Of Religion

2009-11-18T10:53:00.002-06:00

Another tragic shooting with a large body count and the usual suspects come out of the woodwork from both sides of the gun-control issue with the same, tired arguments. Gun-control fanatics cite the incident as proof that people can't be trusted with guns because they might hurt somebody with them and so they should be barred from owning them, except for the servants of the state who need theirs to push the rest of us around (but aren't public servants "people," too?).

The gun-rights advocates point out that the body count in this shooting, just like others, was so high because the lone gunman was the only one armed (at least until the police arrived) and everyone else had been barred from possessing firearms on their person so that they couldn't fight back effectively enough to stop the killer. They insist that if anyone else had been allowed to be armed that person could have stopped this whole affair before it got too far and that is why the people have a right to keep and bear arms. This is a valid argument but what makes it old is it keeps having to be repeated again and again and nobody ever seems to have enough sense to implement it.

The point that has me slightly perturbed though is the large number of those who believe in their individual right to own a firearm that have called for, in one sense or another, the banning of people in this country who are of the same religious affiliation as the shooter. These folks will tell you to your face (even shouting sometimes) that they have have a Constitutional right to own a gun and in the same breath demand that people of a certain faith, in violation of the Constitutional protection of the freedom of religion, have to prove their loyalty to the US and its central government before that government should be allow them to continue to live here. See the comments to this article for an example of what I'm talking about.

What seems to escape these people is that they hold the same totalitarian mindset as those who are in favor of more gun-control laws. Somehow and somewhere they have been invested with the authority to judge others different from themselves and punish them pre-emptively before they have a chance to commit a real crime. Here is a summation of how the argument for banning firearms could be stated:

"A lot of people own guns. Some of those people use their guns to hurt others. We do not and can not know which people will use their guns to hurt others, therefore we must take away everyone's gun, except for the servants of the state, so that nobody will get hurt, except those punished by the servants of the state."

Change the words a little bit and we have:

"A lot of people are Muslim. Some Muslims, but not all, cause harm to others in the name of their religion. We do not and can not know which Muslims will cause harm in the name of their religion, therefore we must force all Muslims to prove their loyalty beyond a shadow of a doubt before we allow them to live among us."

The arguments are the same and if one is dedicated to true "liberty and justice for all," then one must be opposed to both and resist temptations to give into prejudice and bigotry. For the suspicious there can never be enough hoops for them to force others to hop through and eventually they will become the aggressors committing crimes of retaliation against innocent people. The Romans didn't trust the Christians so they shipped them off to the Coliseum and innocent people died. Hitler didn't trust the Jews so he shipped them off to "Concentration" camps and innocent people died. FDR didn't trust Japanese-Americans and he shipped them off to "Internment" camps and innocent people died.

After some time has passed and more information becomes available, I will discuss the psychological underpinnings of the shooter's motives but until that time let us keep our wits about us and resolve to punish the guilty and let the innocent live in peace. If you want people to respect your right to live free, then you must learn to respect their right to do the same...

You Wanna Bet?

2009-11-07T11:35:00.002-06:00

I'm sure, particularly at this time of the year, just about everyone has placed a bet on their favorite sports team and, if you're like most people, you've lost some money already, but that's part of the spice that goes along with the joy of watching a good game (as long as no one does it to excess). Now imagine for a moment (here we go again) that all the star players on your team have come down with some inconvenient, though not fatal, communicable disease and are too ill to play in the next game. Their opponents are all healthy and ready to play but your team is depending on second- and even third-string players for this match-up. Some players are having to double-up by playing both offense and defense. You will probably not want to place a very high wager on this game or negotiate for a large spread in the final score so as to give you some resemblance of a fair chance of winning the bet. You might even choose to not place a bet at all.

The insurance industry is a lot like gambling. Your insurance company is placing a bet that they will receive more in premiums from you over the time they carry your policy than they will ever have to pay out to you. They also hope to invest that money you pay them so as to put it to work to earn more for them. By having as many policy holders as possible your insurance company tries to reduce the chances that any one customer suffering catastrophic losses will not drain all their reserves by having more paying into their system than that having to be paid out. You already know that you will pay more than you will ever get but because life and the future is unknowable and uncertain you have the assurance that if things go bad for you then that aspect of your life that you have insured is covered (that's why it's called "insurance").

Insurance companies like to hedge their bets with you just like anyone else. They write contracts specifically stating where, when, and how much they will pay out for what. If they consider a situation to be a bigger risk than normal, then they charge a higher premium so as to offset any potential extraordinary loss they may suffer. And if all the odds are set against them, then they may not even make a wager which means they will not enter into a contract with some parties.

There are folks in Congress who are preparing to mandate that the health care insurance industry, under penalty of law, have to accept all comers, regardless of the inevitable loss some customers will cause the companies forced to comply. This is like holding a gun to your head to force you to bet for your team when you already know that it is going to lose. It might even be like forcing you to bet that the sun will not rise tomorrow morning.

Some companies will play along and eventually go out of business as financial failures. Others will refuse to place bets on such guaranteed bad wagers and leave the industry all together. This will be just as some Progressives have designed it so that we either end up with a Free-market health care system where patients pay as they go (highly unlikely except for a black-market) or a Socialist system where the government becomes the single-payer mega-insurance carrier and begins to control that aspect of your life as to how much health care you get and for how long of your productive life you get to have some.

Of course, as I have already stated, the future is unknowable and uncertain and I could most certainly be wrong about the whole thing. You just have to ask yourself if you are willing to bet your life and your liberty on it. "Do you feel lucky, punk?"

Revisiting Public Schools and Property Values

2009-10-31T09:12:00.003-05:00

I have been asked to expound, or more correctly defend, my "proposition" that the higher tax rates needed to create the illusion of "good" government schools actually reduces real property values for average home and business owners instead of increasing them as is the usual rhetoric from those proposing to hike those taxes even higher. The opposing argument is that since people are selling their homes for prices higher than what they originally paid for them, can't some of that increase in apparent value not be attributed to improvements in the local public schools that the homeowner has been happily paying higher and higher taxes for all these years? The best way to approach this contradiction is to examine the value of the home more closely.

Let's say a young couple bought a home in 1970 for $50,000. They came into a little money from an inheritance and bought a little more home than they needed at the time but which they eventually filled with new family members. Now the children are all grown and have moved out and they want to sell and move into something smaller for just the two of them. They have kept the house up and modern but at the same time have made no actual improvements to it so it retains it's same intrinsic value as for what it was and what it is as a building. They sell it to another couple with young children who want to move into the neighborhood because these people have heard of the "good" government schools in the area. The agreed upon price is $250,000 or five times what the first couple paid for the home. Can't this $200,000 "profit" be attributed in some small way to the "good" schools?

At the time the house was bought gold was, by law till President Nixon released it, worth $35.00 an ounce. This means the home was originally sold for 1,428.6 ounces of gold. This year gold is reaching prices above $1,000 an ounce but let us round off at that price to make the arithmetic easier. That means the home should have sold for $1,428,600 to keep up with the price of gold. That $200,000 profit has become a $1,178,600 loss in the relation of the dollar to gold. By 1970 standards this couple sold their home for $8,750 (250 ounces of gold at $35 per ounce).

As one can see, it is not the schools or anything unattached to the home that has "increased" its value but instead the devaluation of the dollar that has created the illusion of that happening. And of course, the local benevolent government officials have been using this illusion to increase the tax liability of this couple over the years through the back door by assessing the "value" of their home higher and higher. One thief, the Federal government and the Federal Reserve, scratching the back of the other thief, the local tax assessor (and lifting his wallet at the same time).

Those who continue to try and sell the theory that the government can increase the "value" of one's property by forcing one to pay more in taxes on it remind me of the tailors in the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" who convinced the Emperor to "see" their magical new fabric from which they would make his new clothes. Wise is the person who follows the example of the young boy and just "call 'em as we sees 'em" without falling for the illusion.

Quote Of The Day

2009-10-29T13:36:00.004-05:00

"The State is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."
Frederic Bastiat, French economist of the 19th Century

In The Interest Of Full Disclosure

2009-10-27T20:25:00.003-05:00

In compliance with recent changes to anti-free speech regulations implemented by the Federal Communications Commission in regards to bloggers, such as yours truly, I must take a moment to explain about why, when, and even if I should ever recommend some products to you, my audience, for what purposes it may serve you now or later. If you're in a hurry, the short version is this: I don't make a darn penny off anything I do here at this blog and I don't expect to at any time in the future. If I recommend something, it's because I like it and have probably used it at some time in my life, and if I didn't like something, I'll let you know in no uncertain terms. If you're not in a hurry, please continue reading.

The first thing you might notice on my blog is a few banners to certain political organizations. I agree at least 95% with the positions of these organizations and therefore I have placed these banners for readers to "link" over to the websites of these organizations so the reader can learn more about them. I don't make any money if one should visit these sites, or for that matter, any website that I may link to for references or illustrative purposes. Those sites may have advertising on them and those sites may make money if one should purchase through those links to the retailer of the advertised commodity but I certainly do not.

I have recommended some books for my audience to read but that is for the purpose of learning the ideas that the author of those books are presenting to the world. I don't care if one buys, rents, or checks out the book from the local library as long as one gets around to reading the book. The author or the publisher does not compensate me in any way for my recommendation. I have also set up some links to Amazon.com as a suggested route for purchasing a book or two. My family uses Amazon regularly for books, DVD's, and other products and any problem we have ever encountered was quickly resolved to our satisfaction but I do not make anything if anyone should follow the link I provided.

I suffer from a very painful affliction that leaves me incapable of getting around as well as I would like to. One of the best ways I have ever found to deal with the pain instead of dulling my mind with large quantities of legally prescribed opiate-based narcotics is to distract myself from it and that is what this blog is all about. Its a form of mental and physical therapy that allows me to still make a contribution to the world at large. I like to watch a variety of sports but my favorite has to be the game of politics. Just about any competitive sport can be reduced to being understood as a form of less-than-lethal war and politics is no different except that the cheering crowd in the stands is as much a part of the game as the players on the field and has a lot more influence on the outcome of the match...

Suppertime In Texas

2009-10-21T17:20:00.003-05:00

A large number of political pundits with a libertarian leaning have been talking a lot about Texas lately as being the last Free state in the union and recommending that if one doesn't like the oppressive atmosphere where one lives now then one should move to Texas. Now Texas can use as many liberty-minded "immigrants" as it can get because "The Republic" is not exactly Fascist-free, or even Fascist-lite.

We have our fill of dictators and petty tyrants infesting the Statehouse, County Commissioner Courts, and the Municipal Councils of every incorporated city and town across the State. True freedom can still be found in the countryside and those little unincorporated towns and villages that dot the map but even they have groups of residents that are chomping at the bit to incorporate and then lord it over their neighbors. Two articles from the Sunday edition of our local paper (you know, the paper I have trouble reading on a regular basis) will give everyone an idea of what we are putting up with down here in "The Republic."

Cast your ballot: Temple, selling spirits
by Fred Afflerbach | Business Writer
Published: October 18, 2009

Temple residents also have a local matter regarding alcohol sales to consider: "City of Temple Liquor Option" is posted last on the ballot, after Proposition 11.

Approving the option would allow off-premise sale of hard liquor and eliminate local restaurants and bars from having to register patrons as private club members before they are allowed to consume mixed drinks.

Read the rest here.

The first election is for people to get permission from a majority of local registered voters to do that which they already have a Natural Right to do. It is the very embodiment of oppression to prevent people from enjoying life as they see fit because of a moral code based on a religion that not everyone in the community is a follower of and what makes it worse is the number of followers of that religion who can't live by their own moral code. The most painful way to harm your neighbors is when you do it for their own good. One has to wonder that if everyone has to act the same as the followers of a religion through the force of government, then how do people tell the difference between those who choose to follow a certain religion, regardless of personal sacrifice, from those in the world who are just obeying the law?

Then we have:

Cast your ballot: Belton bond election
by Dan Fearson
Published: October 18, 2009

For the second time this year, voters will decide if the Belton school district will get another middle school.

This time around, after gathering feedback from residents, the district has come back with a redesigned plan for a middle school at a cost of $29 million.

Officials said the plan would cost residents about 5.4 cents per $100 valuation. Someone with a $100,000 home would pay an additional $54 per year. The district will utilize $1 million in an interest and sinking fund balance for construction.

Read the rest here.

The justification for this new election is that the current buildings are overcrowded beyond capacity. I've made suggestions in the past of how to improve the public school system but this situation seems to be easily solved without resorting to building more schools. Of all the hours in a regular calendar year, public school children are only in their classrooms about 15% of the available time. Except for special events, the buildings generally sit empty the other 85%. Homeschooling parents are able to adequately educate their children with only four hours of class time a day for students at the high school level and in even fewer hours for younger children at the lower levels.

If the public schools would split their day between two halves of the student body - for instance, one half from 8 AM to 12 Noon and the other from 1 PM to 5PM - then the same buildings could service twice as many students. With less time devoted to being imprisoned and indoctrinated these young people would have more time for getting out to know and understand the world we live in. As Mark Twain said, "Never let schooling get in the way of your education."

There will of course be those parents who will complain of the hardship placed on them by this new schedule since they now must secure daycare for those times when their children are not in the school (these are the same parents who complain now that the schools don't babysit their children 24/7 for them). But this is a personal problem and not a collective problem of the general population and if we are to have some form of government (why?) that actually works then this is where that entity must concentrate its efforts. The collective problem in this situation is that the taxpayers are being robbed from more and more every year and this must come to a halt before there is nothing left to steal.

Elections like these always remind me of the Russian fable of a pack of four wolves and a sheep. The sheep and the wolves were all engaged in a heated debate over what (or more specifically, who) they were going to eat for supper. In the end they decided to be democratic about the situation and take a vote. I'm sure that I don't have to tell anyone the results of that election. Though not in the original story, I'm sure that when the sheep started to raise a protest the wolves replied, "Why are you complaining? You got to express yourself. Now we are just carrying out the will of the people."

As Thomas Jefferson pointed out, democracy is tyranny by mob-rule. It's a little different than that exercised by a single dictator or an elitist supreme council (oligarchy) but it is tyranny all the same...

Who Knew?

2009-10-13T16:09:00.006-05:00

First...

Fed: Economic activity has 'picked up'

Central bank leaves rates near zero. Says the economy is showing signs of improvement and inflation remains subdued.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Federal Reserve kept interest rates near zero on Wednesday and said the economy is improving. But the Fed also pointed out ongoing job losses could dampen a recovery...

Read the rest here.

Then...

Survey of top economists find most believe recession is over

By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer
On 10:28 am EDT, Monday October 12, 2009

More than 80% of top economists believe that the recession that started almost two years ago is finally over. But most don't expect meaningful improvement in jobs, credit or housing for months to come.

That's according to a survey released Monday by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE). The group asked 43 top economists last month if they believe the battered U.S. economy has pulled out of the worst U.S. downturn since World War II. Those surveyed include economists from leading Wall Street firms and major corporations, as well as from highly respected universities and research firms...

Read the rest here.

So...

Who knew that Lucy would grow up to be an economist working at the Federal Reserve?

Body Armor And Flu Shots

2009-10-12T19:11:00.004-05:00

Body armor has been around for centuries but has really come unto its own in the last 50 years in regards to it becoming lighter and more effective against stopping powerful rounds from firearms. It is a very passive form of defensive tool since one does not have to cause harm to others for it to be effective (unless you want to slap someone up side the head with your vest). It does have some drawbacks though that one must consider when one makes the choice to wear body armor or not.

Body armor comes in different grades of effectiveness usually based on the type of ammunition it is expected to stop. The lightest and coolest (meaning temperature and not fashion sense) provide the least amount of protection. If your enemy is using a weapon/cartridge combination that exceeds the protection level of your vest then you should just as well be wearing a virgin wool sweater for the fat lot of good that your vest will do for you.

The armor that can stop the "bigger bullets" is usually heavier and bulkier. If you dress like a tortoise, you will move like a tortoise and less like a hare. This can lead one to spending more time in the line of fire when one is trying to move from one point of cover to another. More time in the line of fire can lead to more hits on one's armor which can lead to the armor eventually being defeated (defeated armor can lead to the death of the wearer).

Also more weight reduces the wearer's physical endurance and can cause him to tire sooner than expected or desired. The armor traps heat which on very warm days can lead to heat exhaustion or even heat stroke. That heat combined with sweat and other forms of moisture can lead to bacterial and fungal infections on the skin of the wearer. As you can see there are a lot more considerations to make when deciding to wear body armor than just what size will fit.

Vaccinations are a lot like body armor. They can protect one from harm while causing no harm to anyone else (except maybe a few germs but that is what your immune system does naturally) and at the same time there are drawbacks in reference to their effectiveness and whether or not they can cause damage to the human body in and of themselves. Many people who suffer from the painful and mysterious neuromuscular disorder called Fibromyalgia Syndrome, such as yours truly, can trace the beginning down slide of their good health to receiving a certain vaccination (read more here and here on the risks of vaccinations). So it should be a personal choice after much analysis of the cost/benefit ratio as to whether or not one shall get his "shot."

Today we are hearing a lot of appeals from a collectivist side of the issue that we should get our shots to protect others who we might not even know and there is even talk of punishing people who choose for themselves to not get these shots. This leads, as usual when the government starts making decisions for people that the people should be allowed to make for themselves, to a lot of questions.

If the shot protects the other guy from the flu, why do I have to get a shot to keep him safe? If I am infected, he's already protected. If I have to get the shot, is it because he is not getting the shot and, if so, why not? I understand that there are some people with medical conditions that preclude them from receiving vaccinations but quarantine, like all cages, works both ways. The sick can choose to quarantine themselves to prevent spreading the infection and the otherwise healthy can choose to quarantine themselves from the sick so as to avoid becoming infected.

If the other guy is choosing to not get the shot because of the danger of ruining his health from the vaccination itself, why do I have to risk my good health to allow him to avoid the danger? Is my good health, and that of my family, worth less than his? And when did I become his slave? Why can't we allow everyone to study the good and the bad and decide for themselves?

Because of the risks involved, when someone says that we have to get the shot to protect him and his loved ones, he is saying that he and his are more important than our continued good health. When Big Pharma says their vaccine is perfectly safe and effective, when nothing in medicine is "perfectly safe and effective," then they are saying their profits are more important than our continued good health. When benevolent government officials demand that we all get the shots or else, they are saying our continued good health is not as important to them as their ability to teach us to obey.

Everyone must choose for themselves whether or not to comply when the government sets forth a "decree that all the world should be" vaccinated, but "as for me and my house, we will choose" to Live Free...

On Selling Teddy Bears

2009-10-07T16:03:00.005-05:00

"Across Europe, the embattled left loses its clout

By William J. Kole (CP) – 3 days ago

VIENNA — Pity Europe's Socialists. It's getting lonely on the left.

Just when you might think capitalism's global crisis would breathe new life into the left, it's looking increasingly divided and tired. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's re-election a week ago is highlighting a conservative surge in her country and Europe's other powerhouse economies - Britain, France and Italy - where the centre-right is either firmly in power or about to get there.

What happened?"

Read the rest of the article here.

Imagine for a moment that you have been tasked with selling a warehouse full of Teddy Bears. These aren't ordinary Teddy Bears. They are so ugly that most children are frightened by their appearance. Their stuffing is recycled saw dust once used in the cages of lab rats kept at a large pharmaceutical company and it gives the Bears a slightly disagreeable odor. But it's your job to sell them.

You might try that old line that "they are so ugly, they're cute!" You might appeal to every one's interest in protecting the environment since the Bears are made from recycled materials. But you already know you wouldn't want one for yourself or your family so you have a uphill job ahead of you if you ever intend to empty that warehouse. You might start to contemplate arson as a viable, though illegal, option.

This is the problem for modern Socialists. The people of the world are seeing Leftist policies collapsing all around them and they are waking up and demanding more fiscal conservatism from their elected officials. The author of the article above doesn't quite grasp the concept either.

"The left's slide began well before the global recession discredited the right's faith in free markets and light regulation. The surprise, to some, is that Europeans seem to have more faith in conservatives to solve the crisis."

There hasn't been a free market for Europe or the US for nearly a century now so the present global recession wasn't caused by a "free market and light regulation" but instead by a hampered market and heavy interference by the several governments of the world. The problem was caused by the same policies that many politicians are proposing as the solution to the problem. If a dead mule doesn't respond to some light taps on its head then try doing it with a sledge hammer and if he continues to not respond then he is just being muleheaded.

Some people ask me what is my guess as to when the economy will begin to recover and I always answer it should in about five years. Now that's not five years from now but five years after the government collapses under the weight of its own staggering debt. It will take about five years for people to get over the fear that the government might come around and steal what wealth they may have amassed for themselves and then they will begin to invest in a growing economy.

So let the Socialists try to sell those ugly Teddy Bears. When they come to you just let them know that you think those Bears stink pretty bad and they are so darn ugly there is nothing cute about them...

More Wisdom from the Peanuts Gang

2009-10-02T11:50:00.004-05:00

Sounds like the political philosophy of most politicians...

Dousing A Match With Gasoline

2009-09-28T10:42:00.005-05:00

Congressman Suggests People Will Don 'White Hoods' If Wilson Not Rebuked

Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst last week drew new recriminations from his colleagues Tuesday, with a member of the Congressional Black Caucus suggesting that a failure to rebuke the South Carolina Republican would be tantamount to supporting the most blatant form of organized racism in American history.

Making an obvious reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Tuesday that people will be putting on "white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside" if emerging racist attitudes, which he says were subtly supported by Wilson, are not rebuked. He said Wilson must be disciplined as an example...

Read the rest of the story here.

Let's take a moment to review History shall we. The Ku Klux Klan was not formed at the end of Lincoln's War as is often reported. It was instead transformed because it had already existed as one of hundreds of social organizations that Southern gentlemen belonged to at that time, much like the Lion's Club or Elk's Lodge of today. The white robes with the pointy hoods were not new or unique to the Klan either as these had been popular with many religious orders or cults down through the centuries. Other social groups had different colored robes to distinguish one group from the other. These robes were probably already hanging in the closet of many a home in the South before and after the War.

At the end of the War, the slaves were freed but since they were receiving no support from anyone, neither their old owners or their new owners, the occupying forces of the Federal government, they were mostly free to starve. They took it upon themselves to scour the countryside carrying farm implements, particularly the sharp ones, and committing what by today's standards would be considered "Home Invasion Burglaries." Federal forces couldn't or wouldn't do anything about these roving bands of Black raiders. "Whatever those Southern 'Rab-ble' (a play on the word "Rebel") get is what they deserve," was the prevailing attitude of the officers within the occupying Union Army.

Southern gentlemen, incensed that widows and their fatherless children were being slaughtered within the remains of their homes and at the incompetence or indifference of the Union Army to do anything about it, decided to break the law by arming themselves and forming into protective militias. They rode after the raiders and hung the offenders as they found them. They wore their white robes, which they already owned, to hide their identities since they were now lawbreakers themselves and the robes had the secondary terrifying purpose of creating the appearance of the Klan members being the spirits of the men killed in battle who would have been home to protect their families in the first place. In this sense of being a protective agent, and only in this sense, the Klan might be considered to have had a noble cause in its post-war rebirth. Unfortunately, like all innocent babes, it grew up.

Were atrocities committed by the members of the Klan in those early days? Most assuredly, yes, but atrocities were being committed by all sides to that conflict; the former slaves, the occupying Union forces, and the Klan. Does that excuse the atrocities committed by members of the Klan? No, but one must understand that that is the nature of war and that is why we must do everything in our power to avoid being involved in one.

Today the Klan is the most recognizable hate-group on the planet even though its membership has been on a steady decline for quite some time now. Some members of the Klan are infamous for some terrible crimes they have committed in the name of their hate of other people. But as the city of Chicago once pointed out, if killing young Black males was an Olympic event, members of the Klan would only rate a Silver Medal with the American Nazi Party bringing in the Bronze. Young Black males would win the Gold, hands down, for killing the most young Black males. That is the nature of crime.

Now Rep. Hank Johnson and the Congressional Black Caucus want to rebuke Rep. Joe Wilson (who would have been more truthful if he had yelled, "All of us politicians lie!") so as to avoid White people rushing to swell the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan. It seems they think that if any "uppity" White person dare rebuke the country's first (half) Black "liar-in-chief" and gets away with it, then we will once again return to the days of old when Blacks were hung from trees like Christmas ornaments. I would suggest that if anybody signs up to become a new member of the Klan it will break down this way:

One percent, if that much, will join because of Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst.
Nine percent will join because of Barack Obama's being elected President.
90% will join because they will interpret the actions of the Congressional Black Caucus as an attack on them, their race, and their way of life.

The Congressional Black Caucus will be engaging in the moral equivalent of trying to douse a lit match with a bucket of gasoline and, the last time I checked, that doesn't always work out quite so well. It could blow up in every body's face. With that being so, we have to ask a few questions: Are the members of the Black Caucus that ignorant of History and human nature to not realize that what they do may cause that which they purport to want to prevent or, if they are not that ignorant, why are they doing it and what is their true goal? Enquiring minds want to know...

The Most Insidious Form of Slavery

2009-09-24T20:22:00.003-05:00

There was a "Letter to the Editor" in our local paper today (you know, the paper I have trouble getting delivered to my house) that made another call for the re-institution of the Draft to help reduce the stress being inflicted on our military service members by having a larger pool of recruits for the U.S. government to send to its various wars around the globe. Let's take a moment to examine that issue more closely.

Historically, men have marched off to war for two main reasons: (1) To protect what one holds dear, and (2) to make a profit. The common man, if he truly believes it is necessary, will place himself in harm's way on the battlefield to protect his family, his home, and his way of life. He has a very dear stake in the outcome of any war he chooses to fight in and if he doesn't see himself having a stake in the fight, then he doesn't go to war. To him war is a major disruption in life that can lead to so much sorrow and loss.

The profit-seeking man will not care much who wins any war as the war itself is how he makes his fortune. He loans the capital needed to fund the war machine to both sides to hedge his bets and he even sells the weapons needed to destroy the most property and kill the most people (Eisenhower warned of the "Military-Industrial-Complex). The profit-seeking man and his servants, the politicians, will strive for the support of the common man in their push to war through jingoistic propaganda and appeals to patriotism but if the common man has his eyes open he might notice that there is really nothing that needs protecting and will choose not to support the effort. At times like these the profit-seekers will then fall back on what I call the most insidious form of slavery: Military Conscription.

I consider it insidious (there is no good form of slavery) because instead of forcing people to engage in some form of productive work (i.e. picking cotton) that benefits the slave owner directly and the slave indirectly (it was the profit from selling the cotton that paid for the food and clothes the slaves used), the slaves held in military conscription are forced to kill or be killed. If they refuse to expose themselves to being shot in the chest, they will most assuredly be shot in the back, in one form or another. In other forms of chattel slavery the slave is considered an asset that must be taken care of to ensure that the slave continues to be productive, while in the military the slave is a liability that needs to be trained, armed, and fed and then delivered to the battlefield where he is considered expendable.

Some do not consider military conscription to be slavery since the draftees are paid but pay, or the lack thereof, is not the only defining aspect of slavery (even the slaves on the old plantations were sometimes paid). It is the fact that the conscript cannot freely choose to not participate or to walk away when he decides he has had enough that determines his status as a slave. We can consider that a man who does not walk into a military recruiting office to sign up to have voted with his feet that he chooses not to support the government's war efforts and to force him to fight in a war he does not consider necessary oppresses his right to make this decision. Most people would object to some businessman using the power of the law to force people to work in his factory whether they wanted to or not but they see nothing wrong in the forcing people to serve in the military.

The draft also has a moral hazard for those power-hungry politicians. When they can consider every male (and in some instances, every female, too) of military age to be a potential expendable soldier then the politicians become a little more reckless in what wars they choose for the government and, to a lesser degree, the country to enter into. The Korean and Vietnam wars are good examples of conflicts the U.S. had no real need to be in and would have probably extricated itself from them a lot sooner if there had not been a draft to force our best and brightest to make themselves available to be chewed up and spit out in large quantities.

If people are really set on having a draft then why wait on the government? Let them just grab their baseball bats and pitchforks and start rounding up all the young people they can find and start pushing and shoving those young people towards the nearest recruiting office. Some people will object to doing this because that would be a crime and they are right. But it is no less a crime for them to ask the government to do the pushing and shoving for them. Instead of being the principals they will now be considered accessories before the fact...

Is It Really Racism?

2009-09-17T10:24:00.003-05:00

Ever since the election last fall, if not even before, there have been constant allegations that anyone who disagrees with Barack Obama has to be doing so because of the contending individual's personal racism against Black people. Now the venerable bastion of Southern Progressivism, former President Jimmy Carter, has spoken from his years of experience of living in the South, which supposedly makes him an expert on racism, and made it official: If you disagree with Barack Obama's politics and government policies then you are a racist. Wow. This leads me to ask a few questions.

If I am a racist for opposing Barack Obama's Socialist and Fascist attempts to "spread the wealth" of those who earned it unto those who did not, am I also a racist for using force to stop a Black man from breaking into my home and stealing my and my family's possessions? Yes, I already know there are people who will accuse me of being a racist just for using that hypothetical analogy but the first four letters of the word "analogy" seems to apply to their thought processes.

What about those Black people, and there are plenty, who oppose his marching the U.S. government toward Communism? Are they racist because they oppose his White Marxist side? If they also oppose his Black Marxist side then what does that make them? Cannibals?

Racism basically boils down to assuming that the personality traits of an individual, particularly those traits that most people consider undesirable character flaws (low intelligence, propensity to commit crimes, etc.), are determined by the race of an individual. That being so, is it not racist to assume that all Black people think the same as Barack Obama, who is not all Black, and if anyone disagrees with him they disagree with all Black people? If we consider that people who are truly racist suffer from a very disagreeable character flaw, then is not the assumption that since I am a "typical White person" who disagrees with Barack Obama I must be a racist, in and of itself, an act of racism? If that is true, then what does that make Jimmy Carter?

I know. He must be a cannibal.

Arguing with Progressives (alternately known as "Yankees") is a lot like watching a model train run around on its little circle of track. There's a lot of toots, whistles, and bells, but it just keeps chugging along over the same point again and again and again...

Let's Not Blame The Immigrants

2009-09-10T19:32:00.002-05:00

In response to my column titled "The President and Schoolchildren," an anonymous reader had the following to say:

Anonymous said...

The damend (sic) illegal alien mestizo wetbacks have been riding on our backs for a very long time. Nerly (sic) 1/2 to 3/4 of our paychecks are robbed from us each paycheck. Taxes are at an unbelieable (sic) rate. Having a telephone where it costs $13.50 to $20.00 + for just the line and then yet again another $10-$12.00 in Federal and State taxes and yet some have the gaul (sic) to blame the parents that either want NO taxation or if we can't get the govt (sic) hands out of our pockets demand something for what we are being taxed for. Hell yeah Free school lunch, Unemployemnt (sic) and all these other communist things - you European americans ought to load up and bleed the beast as much as is possible when all the mestizos and illegal aliens already are responsible for using the tax dollars that you typically get nothing for.

(Note: For those unfamiliar with the term, "Mestizo" is a reference to that mixed racial group that is a blend of Spaniards and Native Americans)

Anonymous seems to be of the opinion that people "immigrating" to the United States from those countries to the south are the main reason for all the problems involving Big Government and excessive taxation because they use a few "free" programs that are supposedly meant to be used only by citizens (people who got here a little earlier - a few generations earlier). Now I will have to admit that I have seen recent immigrants, of all races and former nationalities, using some government programs, like public schools, that are funded with taxpayer dollars, but can we really fault the immigrant for taking advantage of these "freebies" or should we place the blame on those who created these "giveaway" programs in the first place?

Regular readers to my blog know that I don't put much credence into the labels legal/illegal. There is nothing criminal about people moving themselves about the planet, regardless if they get permission from one government or another before they do so, as long as they do not trespass upon the private property of another person. It is ironic that the U.S. government has been persecuting private property owners for taking steps to protect their property from recent immigrants who were both trespassing and vandalizing. If an immigrant can contain his journey to traveling or staying on unclaimed territory, public property, or property he has permission to be on then no crime has been committed.

To cross a border from one country into another is usually a short journey involving about ten steps and at most times the traveller is not exactly sure when they have done it. For a government to claim the right of ownership for all the land that is within the jurisdiction it claims for itself so as to tell some that they cannot trespass within is the government that has stolen all the property within its borders from the rightful owners who might be citizens. Some of those citizens might have invited the immigrant to visit and live on their property and for the government to say "No!" is for the government to take control of that property. And the government that can say, "None shall enter!" is the same government that can say, "None shall leave!" if it suits its purposes (Berlin Wall, anyone?).

One of the largest complaints about "illegal immigration" is all the "freebies" the "illegal" immigrants take advantage of while they are here. Well, if they are "illegal" then they are not allowed to vote or run for office so they didn't pass the laws that force the rest of us to accommodate them on our dime. I don't remember many "illegal immigrants" working in law enforcement enforcing those laws that require us to pay our taxes so they can have the "freebies." This problem comes to us from within our own government and those benevolent officials are of all races and former nationalities. Why, some of them are "European americans (sic)."

So let's not blame the immigrants for "riding on our backs" so much as they are not the ones who put the saddle there. They are just pawns in this insidious game used as a distraction to keep us from noticing our king, Liberty and Freedom, are in check. Let's instead blame those who put it there without a blanket and let's put a burr under their saddle so that they change the laws that force the rest of us to provide for anyone who hasn't earned our support, including some of those benevolent government officials. And let's accept a little blame for ourselves because it's hard to saddle a skittish horse if it doesn't consent by holding real still...

Dear Billy Yank,

2009-09-07T16:10:00.006-05:00

Recently I've had an individual who calls himself "Billy Yank" post some comments to two of my columns. To save time and space I thought I would respond to both of them here in this one entry.

In response to my article titled, "Will Texas Secede...Again?" Mr. Yank writes:

kindredblood said...

That is funny...secession was used by the south when the south failed to carry a Constitutional election of one man to the office of the presidency. Secession is the result of a failure of a group of people to accept the decisions of the people in the Republic.

And why is it that neo-confederates like you and tommy dilusional (sic) always refer to the Revolution as some type of secession movement. The south seceded based on the fact that it believed it ratified the Const., thus creating the Federal Government and therefore could un-ratify it and return to as "state of nature" amoung (sic) the nations of the world. Funny, I don't remember the colonies creating the British Empire. Therefore the colonies or the United States could not secede from the empire. They surely could revolt and that is what they did.

Basic U.S. History....

Billy Yank...

Mr. Yank:

"Basic U.S. History..." - the seeds of dissension that eventually led to Southern secession can be found in political writings and newspaper editorials dating back to the 1840's. The election of Lincoln, and his bringing his cronies and cohorts to the White House with him, was merely the camel that broke the last straw.

Mr. DiLorenzo can defend himself (quite well I might add) but I am not a Neo-Confederate. Neo-Confederates long for the government of the Confederacy. I am an Anarchist. I don't like government and do not want government no matter whose brand is upon it. I just believe that it is the Natural Right of persons and people everywhere to secede from any government they consider oppressive. I refer to the U.S. revolution as an act of secession because that it what it was. By calling it a "revolt" you only engage in an argument of semantics. People on opposite sides of an argument often use different terms - Pro-Life v. Pro-Choice, Gun-control laws v. Gun-safety laws, etc., etc. - to describe their positions so as to influence objective third parties to support their cause. One man's "terrorist" or "rebel" is another man's "freedom-fighter" or "patriot."

Even to an Anarchist like myself secession is the most peaceful way that two peoples can break the bounds that bind them, particularly if one party or the other considers their continued engagement to no longer be beneficial and has gone so far as to become detrimental to that party's welfare. If Lincoln had removed his military outposts in the independent and sovereign Confederacy as requested there may never had been any war. Even Lincoln agreed to the secession of the Southern States if they were willing to continue to pay him Tribute (Tribute is a tax that one sovereign nation pays another so as to avoid being invaded). Alas, a needless war ensued...

Then Mr. Yank wrote in response to my article, "What Is A Yankee?" the following:

kindredblood said...

You do understand that your southern boys were soundly defeated 150 years ago by a bunch of Damned Yankees...right?

But then again, if you had it your way, via the Anarchist/Libertarian way, slaves would still work the fields of the south, segregation would still rule the day, and Europe would be worse off because the Yanks would have never been "Over There!" twice last century. I suppose that we Yanks do tend to put our noses in other peoples business...and in some cases that is a very good thing.

Billy Yank...

Mr Yank:

Though I might look it to some people I am not 150+ years old and therefore I did not fight in that war and those were not my "southern boys." I feel no sense of loss or defeat over the outcome of that war and concern myself more with the present and the future war yet to come. Then we must examine the definition of your term "soundly defeated." General Lee and others surrendered, yes, but since there were guerrilla skirmishes that grew out of that conflict well into the 20th century we really can't determine when and if that war ended. I doubt seriously if you are 150+ years old so I doubt you had anything to do with the outcome either. Victories, particularly hollow ones, that others accomplish are not something one should take pride in.

You should really do more research into what Anarchism entails before you presume to assume what I believe for some subjects. With no government to write and enforce pro-slavery laws there wouldn't be any involuntary slavery. Voluntary slavery (where the slave sells himself to his owner) would continue to flourish as it does today; we just know it as "employment." Instances where someone held somebody against his will would be few and far between and treated by the people for what those situations truly are: crimes. In an altered state slavery is still lawfully practiced in this country just as long as it is the government that is the master. Your hero, Lincoln, did not wage his war to free the slaves. He, like other Yankee abolitionists, wanted to end slavery so as to remove "the stain of Africa" from their "White nation" and not as a favor to the black race. Your hero was a racist bigot and that is not something to take pride in.

Voluntary segregation would exist in an Anarchistic society because that is what the people might choose for themselves. Some segregation actually leads to less animosity amongst the different races (if you consider the concept of "race" to actually exist). With no government there would be no forced segregation or desegregation. There were segregation laws in this country long before the war in all parts - North, South, Western Territories - and they were enforced in the Land of Lincoln well into the late 1970's. The segregation laws in the South in the 20th century were recommended by concerned Yankees in the form of good public health ordinances. That is not something to take pride in.

World War I would have ended on its own without the interference of President Wilson and U.S. armed forces and may have ended sooner and with more equitable terms for all the European countries involved. Instead Wilson got to throw his weight around and Germany was royally screwed. Because of the inequities, animosity continued to brew below the surface until they blew through the facade of peace and World War II began. Without U.S. interference in World War I there may have never been a second. The loss of life and destruction in that tragedy is not something to take pride in.

You seem to believe, like Presidents Bush and Obama, that you can gallop the globe interloping in other people's affairs, even when those people have not asked nor wanted your interference in their business, as long as you can convince yourself that you are performing helpful deeds. By your delusional insistence that you are doing good, you blind yourself to the evil you are actually committing. That makes you a dangerous person and that is not something to take pride in...

Schoolchildren and the President

2009-09-03T21:41:00.005-05:00

President Obama is prepared to address students in public schools across the country next Tuesday and some parents have gone livid with rage. "I'll keep my children home before I let them be brainwashed by a Marxist, Communist, Socialist, Nazi, Fascist, etc., ad nauseam." Now I can understand parents (I am one myself) wanting to protect their children from being brainwashed but if that is the case what are their children doing in the public schools in the first place?

The public school system by its very nature is a Socialist construct. The funds to run them are stolen from the many through taxes (that decrease property values and not increase them as many school officials would have you believe) to supply a free service to a select few based on that minority's need; a fundamental tenet of Marxist Communism. The required subjects and teaching philosophies are based on the decisions of politicians and professional bureaucrats and not on the choice of the customers which are the students and their parents. The children are led daily in a loyalty oath to the Federal government written by a Socialist which many parents have probably helped them to memorize.

From their first day in Kindergarten children are taught not to touch or steal other people's stuff but then they watch the school supplies that their parents dutifully bought for them to use in school gathered from them and put in a storage locker or closet where the supplies will be spread amongst the several children, including some that brought none. They do their best to hang unto their lunch money so they can purchase their lunch and then watch other children walk through the cafeteria line getting food without paying a thing. Then they have to carry government forms home to their parents so the parents can apply to do the same thing.

Throughout their time in the public schools the children will be taught that the beliefs, traditions, and moral codes their parents have taught them are archaic and need to be replaced with more modern trains of thought. Of course these trains are easily derailed as a new "truth' is discovered every year or two, sometimes in direct opposition to the preceding one. It is no wonder that young people graduate from high school with no clear idea of who they are or what they want to make of their lives except they have been taught to look to the government for guidance in such matters.

What do we get with one generation after another having been through this indoctrination and developing an "entitle-mental-attitude?" A man like Barack Obama in the White House and people looking to him as their saviour.

I can understand circumstances forcing some parents to have to rely on the public school system for their children's education because the cost of living, driven skyward by government policies and programs, makes it nearly impossible for them to hire a private school or to homeschool their children, but please understand the children are already being brainwashed into a Socialist mindset and one day home away from the President will not change anything. Parents need to fight the good fight everyday of their children's life and maybe, just maybe, they'll grow up knowing how to live free...

* My response to "Anonymous" is posted here

On Newspapers and Schoolchildren

2009-09-01T10:02:00.004-05:00

Around these parts the public schools are back in session and that means I'm having trouble reading my local newspaper again. The carrier delivers the paper to the curb at the end of our driveway in the wee hours of the morning and if we don't get out there to get it before the children start walking past our house on the way to the elementary school about a block away it has a tendency to disappear. We have a nice fence around our yard and we have asked the carrier supervisor to have our copy thrown over the fence (another six inches in linear distance from it's usual resting spot) so as to reduce the chance that one of the impulsive munchkins would walk off with it.

"Well, Mr. Wickham, our carriers have large rounds to make and are on a tight schedule so they don't have time to put the paper nice and tidy on every body's front porch."

I didn't ask for it to be put on the porch. I just want it over the fence. I guess that minimum altitude of 54 inches is a bit too much for y'all.

"Maybe you can get up earlier."

Maybe I can stay up all night and greet your carrier with a cup of coffee, too, but that might start to cramp my hectic social life.

"Well, is anyone in your home disabled?"

Yes. I am. I have to walk with a cane or crutches and occasionally I have to use a wheelchair, but what has that got to do with me not getting my newspaper?

"Since someone in your home is disabled we have to take the extra measures to make sure you can get your paper within the limitations of your disabilities."

How about taking the extra measures because I'm a paying customer who is not the getting the product I am paying good money for?

"I'll have a talk with your carrier and we'll see if we can get this worked out for you, Mr. Wickham. In the meantime you might want to report this theft to your local police so they can try to catch the bandit that keeps taking your paper."

What a novel idea! Calling the police to report a theft? Why didn't I think of that?

Oh, wait. I did.

"Well, Mr. Wickham, I've taken this report and I'll tell the patrol division to keep an eye out for the thief or thieves but those officers are pretty business with all the crime we have going on in our little town."

Yes, indeed. I've noticed your officers are always busy harassing the local drug dealers and checking on the safety of the prettier clerks in the numerous "Stop-N-Robs" around our sprawling metropolis.

"You know, in a way we really can't consider it YOUR paper that is being stolen since the carrier is not getting it into your yard before the thief takes it. Since its still out here by the curb we might just consider the thief to be picking up roadside trash. Maybe you should tell the carrier you want your paper thrown over the fence."

What a novel idea! Have the carrier throw the paper over the fence? Why didn't I think of that?

Oh, wait. I did.

And I still don't have my paper.

We are starting to wonder why we still get it. We get most of our "printed" news in a more timely fashion on the Internet and if we need something more up-to-date we watch Fox News for national and international affairs and our nearby NBC affiliate for local news and weather. I would have to say the main reason, beyond tradition, is for the advertising. We like to see what bargains and specials the local businesses are offering us to come shop at them. If there was only a way we could let them know that they can save their advertising money by taking another route instead of our local paper. Maybe I could make a posting on the Internet that they can all read.

What a novel idea! A single post on the Internet to get out this bit of news to our local businesses? Why didn't I think of that?

Oh, wait. I did...

Oodles of Anarchists

2009-08-28T21:23:00.006-05:00

Glenn Beck has had an interesting set of shows this last week where he has been explaining how the "Thugocracy" (his word) that began to grow under the Bush administration is now being topped-off by the Obama administration with assistance from the Democrat-controlled Congress. It is indeed a very unreasonable time we live in and Mr. Beck has had some very interesting and reasonable questions that all Americans should be asking of their benevolent government officials. But on Thursday's show Mr. Beck made one of those sweeping remarks that turn some people off to his message by saying that Anarchists want to do away with the U.S. Constitution and destroy the country. With my being an Anarchist - a proponent of Anarchism - I must raise a point of contention and ask for clarification.

Just as there many religions, and differing sects and denominations within those religions, there are many forms of Anarchism and different people who follow one school of thought or the other. There is the one group that most people are familiar with since they declare themselves to be Anarchists, and the powers-that-be label them as such, who strongly disagree with the Natural Right to own property. They propose that everything everywhere that anyone might want to own belongs to everyone and no one should be allowed to claim anything as one's own property. When they break some one's window, they consider themselves to have had as much right to do so as the actual creator and owner of the window had the right to prevent them from doing so because the window, by belonging to everyone, belonged to all parties involved in the incident.

In the Natural order of things they are partly correct in that the only things that people own are those things which they are willing to use force to maintain control over. These Anarchists call for the abolition of government because they believe most governments have been set up as an aid to property owners to help them maintain control over their property which these types of Anarchists are under the impression was unfairly gained or acquired. They call for a law banning the private ownership of property so that they and their friends and families can have access to other people's property. The irony is to have a law that bans anything requires a body to write and enforce such a law and we normally call that legislative body government. Since these folks believe that everything within the reach of a certain society should belong to every member of that society in a collective sense then they should more correctly be referred to as "Socialists" and "Revolutionists."

I belong to the other popular group of Anarchists which some have taken to calling "Anarcho-libertarians" or "Anarcho-capitalists" to distinguish us from these more violent persons. Many of us have worked in government occupations at one level or another and, like someone who has watched sausage being made for the first time, have had our eyes opened to the white-collar organized criminal operation that government really is. We've studied the history of government (which is what most historians seem to concentrate on) and have found it wanting - excessively. Those contracts between the governed and the governing written to constrain the growth and abuses (i.e. Constitution) usually associated with government require the highest, if not heavenly, aspects of a man's character to have any effect which means that in most cases even a libertarian government will denigrate into an oppressive and despotic regime catering to the basest elements of Man's nature. As President George Washington put it, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

Like some gun-control advocates, we consider government to be a dangerous weapon that no one should be allowed to use against others, but unlike these same advocates we do not attempt to stop anyone from submitting themselves to any government of any form that they might choose. We just choose not to be ruled by anyone and don't remove ourselves from society but simply secede from government control. The problem we have is there are so many tyrants - Lincoln, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Obama - and their minions - Blue-coats, Brown-shirts, Black-shirts, Red Scarves, Purple-shirts - that strive to force us and others to live under their control and at times like those we can become a little testy. We are not wolves prowling in packs looking for something to kill but are instead more like porcupines; you'll get hurt if you press down on us.

We abhor aggressive violent force though we are not pacifists and are quite willing and able to use violent force to protect ourselves, our families, our homes, and our local communities. We disagree with government's indiscriminate use of violent force against people, particularly in War, and we protest the government's use of violent force to enforce it's monopoly over the use of violent force within the jurisdiction it chooses to use violent force to control and expands at will sometimes by the use of violent force. Also in opposition to those other "Anarchists" we respect the Right of people to own property and to use that property in any manner the owner chooses as long as no direct and measurable harm is caused to another party. We consider the government with its insatiable hunger for other people's wealth as the greatest threat to the free exercise of this Right. We also protest the government charging fees for licenses that allow people to engage in activities they already have a Natural right to do.

So Mr. Beck when you said that Anarchists are out to destroy the Constitution and the country, were you referring to peace-loving Anarchists like myself who choose to be no man's slave but allow others to live as they see fit or to those Socialist Revolutionists dressed in Anarchists' clothing who intend to use the remnants of the Constitutionally-created Federal Government of these United States to enslave every man, women, and child on the North American continent if not the World? Enquiring minds want to know and this is a reasonable question for unreasonable times...

"It Ain't Evil If It's Legal"

2009-08-26T10:00:00.003-05:00

In my discussions with communitarian statists (usually loud emotional arguments on their part and a simple statement of facts and principles on mine) they become incensed when I refer to their preferred method of raising funds for their pet projects as stealing or thievery.

"Mr Wickham, by stating it that way you are inferring that we are doing something illegal or unlawful and that can't be further from the truth. It is perfectly legal to expect or demand that everyone pay their fair share under our progressive tax system. It's the right thing to do and it's the Law."

As I've said once before, I don't put much into the labels of legal and illegal. To me, they are the same as a brunette bleaching her hair and calling herself a blond; give it a few weeks and the roots of her true nature will be showing. But for some folks the "Law," no matter it's source and by what process that it is formed, is the basis of their opinion on the absolutes of good and evil. Let's work with that for a moment.

Since I find most communitarians terribly disagreeable folks and believe the world would be a better place without them, then, if I could be so inclined to go against my own principles of non-aggression, I might want to kill them and therefore silence them forever. Now that is against the "Law" - or is it?

I could work myself, slowly but surely and legally, into a position of authority where I could have the "Law" changed so that it would be perfectly legal for me to destroy my enemies (for religious types, I would refer you to the story of "Esther" in the Old Testament). Or I could study the "Law" quite thoroughly to see under what conditions it is legal for me to kill them and then manipulate the conditions into the perfect scenario where I would be justified by the "Law" for my actions. Or I could have them declared "Enemies of the State" and then kill them and earn myself some medal for bravery and courage.

"But Mr. Wickham, it's not fair for you to manipulate the 'Law' for your own selfish needs or desires!"

Well, that's my point exactly.

If one is going to live by the "Law" determining what is good or evil, then one has to be prepared to die by the same standard. If one can steal when it is legal, then one can be stolen from. Under the law, innocent people can be aggressively punished for minding their own business if that business has been declared illegal. By my definition (which I have to admit to avoid an argument of semantics is still a form of human labelling) the aggressive party is the criminal and for a lot of people, being the aggressor is being evil - whether it's legal or not...

Snoopy On How To Live More Simply...

2009-08-22T14:01:00.007-05:00

Never Trust The Government That Doesn't Trust You With A Gun

2009-08-18T21:20:00.002-05:00

There's a lot of hullabaloo in the news recently over the president's nominee, recently sworn in, for an impending opening on the Supreme Court and her opinion of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "Is it an individual or a collective right?" some ask. As I have pointed out before the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a Natural Right and as such it is both an individual and collective right that can never be taken away but certain parties always try their best to oppress people in their exercise of it.

Now some like Wayne Lapierre of the National Rifle Association have studied the history of our country and found what the Founding Fathers had to say about the Right to own and use weapons to protect oneself. Others like John R. Lott have studied the statistics about gun ownership and violent crime and have noticed an inverse relationship between the two; having "More Guns" means having "Less Crime." I on the other hand as an amateur criminologist, a person who studies the psychological underpinnings of the personalities of people who commit crimes, prefer to delve into the minds of those benevolent government officials who try to outlaw people from possessing and carrying firearms. I have found at least three different personality-types that spend a good deal of their time involved in this endeavor.

The first group is those folks who I like to call the "Emotional-types" (we might say they have their heart in the right place though their brains are safely stashed away at some undisclosed location). They think with their emotions most of the time instead of taking a moment to apply rational thought to the problem before them or to even determine if there really is a problem to begin with. Most have been the victims, in one fashion or another and possibly even just vicariously, of some violent crime that involved the perpetrators being armed with firearms. To protect others from becoming victims of similar crimes they work to outlaw the possession of firearms by private citizens so, they hope, other violent criminals will never be able to get their hands on a gun and use it to harm innocent people.

One must understand that the persons who committed the crime that changed the life of these "Emotional" individuals forever were already breaking some serious laws at that time and so more laws will not deter them. Criminals understand the power of firearms and other weapons and have no problem breaking any laws that were written to prevent them from getting them if they want them, including stealing the guns they want from police/military personnel. These benevolent government officials act as if they consider all gun owners guilty of some offense, or should at least be treated as such, and they are happy to punish the hundred in order to stop the one who might use a firearm in a violent manner. Since these officials lash out at people based on emotions like immature children, they can be considered dangerous in their own light if invested with any power.

The second group is that lot I refer to as "Control-freaks" or, as others like to call them, "People-pushers." They like to push people around and, since they know that some people might object and physically resist, they work to set things up so that they always have the tactical advantage when it comes to any confrontation that might turn violent. With their minions heavily armed and the citizenry disarmed they can push through any government program, or pogrom, without any fear of effective reprisal from the affected population. They work well with members of the first group by appealing to their emotions and use the fact that people can be easily persuaded when they are frightened to achieve their goal of potential-victim disarmament.

The third group is the "Wheeler-dealers." They have an agenda totally separate to any argument over the Right to Bear Arms and otherwise could care less. But they do consider your Rights, at least to the point they think they have control over them, as a fungible commodity that can be traded back and forth with others whose support they need. "I'll vote in favor of that gun control law you want passed if you vote for my bill to make the alligator the national reptile of the United States." These folks think with their stomachs and are willing to do anything, Constitutional or otherwise, as long as they keep their bellies full.

The first type has a terrible mistrust of the American people. The second type can't be trusted to not commit some kind of crime. And the third type is not trustworthy with anything "We the people'' hold dear. No matter what might be the main issue that is important to you when discussing things with one of your benevolent government officials always ask them first what is their position on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (and don't fall for that old ruse about reasonable gun control). If they don't trust you with a gun, let them know in no uncertain terms that you don't trust them with neither your government or your Liberty...

Hello "Followers"

2009-08-15T16:45:00.001-05:00

Since my "Followers" list has nearly doubled this week I just wanted to take a moment and say "Hi." I try to put out something new, alternating between long and short (like this one) entries, at least twice a week, but because of commitments to family I cannot be consistent on what days of the week I post (you would be surprised at how many people who think that since I am retired I'm just sitting around the house bored silly and waiting for someone to think of some kind of work for me to do for them; that couldn't be farther from the truth).

If there is anything that you want to get my opinion on just fire me an e-mail and I'll post it with my response. If you want to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym just let me know. Ad hominem attacks or profanity-laced messages will be ignored as I don't have time for disgruntled toddlers or kindergarten drop-outs who haven't figured out how to hold an adult discussion (I have enough young children in my life). We can certainly disagree and debate the issues but we will do so civilly. Sardonic and sarcastic humor, though, will be accepted and returned as same if done tastefully.

So have a great day and, most importantly, live free...

*August 16th - Due to technical difficulties, the "Followers" list might not be showing and "Comments" appears to have been disabled. Google is aware of the problem and trying to fix it...

The Outlandish Claims On Obamacare

2009-08-13T10:31:00.005-05:00

Sarah Palin says there will be "Death Panels." Glenn Beck talks about euthanasia and eugenics. Peter Schiff and other economists say there will be rationing. People at townhall meetings are being whipped into hysteric frenzies. They're all talking about Obama's plan to bring socialized medical care to these United States and some say their claims are outlandish.

The proponents and supporters of Obamacare (this term is not my invention but I like to use it) say that none of these things are included in any of the several bills that are being bounced around in that echo-chamber we call Congress. Well, duh! Nobody in his right mind would specifically write these things into these bills if they intended to sneak them past the American people. It would have to be hidden behind more political gobbledygook for that to work and we all know that our benevolent government officials would never stoop to that level to get something they want, now would they?

What has to be the most outlandish claim that I see is that the people who want Obamacare are saying that the people who are preaching against it are making up lies about what is in the bills. I've watched some of these "talking heads" on the television and on the Internet and as far as I've seen none of them have claimed that what they warn us about is actually written in the bills but instead are just making valid predictions of the future with socialized medicine. And they make their predictions the same way that TV weather people do; by studying the past and the present to make their best guess on what will happen tomorrow.

If we look at foreign countries we see wherever that socialized medicine is practiced it is a dismal failure if you consider its goal to be delivering good medical care to the masses; if you consider its goal to deliver sufficient medical care to keep just the workers productive long enough to supply the rich and powerful with their needs and wants, then we might sing a different tune. In our own country we can look to the VA medical system where veterans with serious service-connected injuries and illnesses are forced to wait months, if not years, for what is considered "rushed" care. Veterans must always keep in the back of their minds that since the longer they live means the longer the government must pay them their pensions, then the incentive at VA medical centers is certainly not to prolong their lives one second more than financially expedient.

If an essential commodity is given away free by the government (the government can never give anything away without first stealing it from others), then demand for that commodity will rise amongst those who receive it for free. If there is a rise in demand, then basic economics tells us that the price for that commodity will also rise if supply remains the same. Of course, it is the rise in the price that might temper demand slightly downward while giving others the incentive to produce more so that the supply is increased. If those who receive the commodity for free never feel the rise in price, then their demand will never be sated. Those who are not receiving anything for free are forced to pay higher prices for what is left on the market, and even more than that if the government starts to steal the commodity from those who sell it in order to give it away because the sellers have to make up for their loss somewhere.

Obama and his minions tell us that they can control the cost increases in complete defiance of these basic laws of economics. If they place a price ceiling on how high anyone can charge for a commodity then we will have scarcity since there will be no incentive to produce or deliver more of that commodity and no one will have incentive to reduce their demand for that commodity. Most of us that have ever dealt with emergency situations like massive casualty (MasCals) scenarios know what happens when there is a limited amount of medical personnel and supplies to go around to all those who desperately need it and we call that "Triage." Someone has to "play God" and decide who will live, who will die, and who is already dead but may not know it yet.

When we are dealing with Marxists, Socialists, and Communists, which Obama has decided to surround himself with as advisers and "Czars," in charge of the "Triage" station, then we know that their priority will be to save what they consider to be the productive of society. Infants, children, the elderly and the disabled will be low on their lists. We might even include those who might be physically productive but mentally and morally resistant to being put upon by the "Masters of the Universe."

What we are seeing by these loud protests against Obamacare is that the current administration has guessed wrong that America is a "worker's paradise" but is instead a nation of fighters who value their liberty and freedom above anything a den of robbers can give them for "free." And the American people will be engaged in a lot more fighting in the years to come since it looks like their very lives, and the lives of those they care about, might depend on it...

Four Rules On Race Relations In Modern America

2009-08-09T13:16:00.006-05:00

These are based on my personal observations during my 50 orbits around Solaris Prime.

1. If a non-Anglo person accuses an Anglo person (generally called "White") of being a "racist bigot, " then the Anglo person is to henceforth be considered and treated as a "racist bigot" until such time that the Anglo person has shown deep remorse for his actions, no matter how innocuous, that led to his being accused of being a "racist bigot" and can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is not a "racist bigot" to the satisfaction of the accusing party.

2. If an Anglo person shall accuse a non-Anglo person of being a "racist bigot," then, because he is sensitive to acts of racial discrimination against himself and his race, the Anglo person shall henceforth be considered and treated as a "racist bigot" and the non-Anglo person that he accused of being a "racist bigot," regardless how compelling the evidence that proves the Anglo person's point, shall be considered a victim of the Anglo person's racial bigotry and will be due just compensation from the Anglo person, if not the whole Anglo race (suicide is considered a proper form of compensation if the Anglo person leaves everything in his "Last Will and Testament" to the non-Anglo person).

3. Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that an Anglo person is a "racist bigot" only requires the accusation of one non-Anglo person who does not have to actually exist in physical time and space.

4. Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that an Anglo person is NOT a "racist bigot" is impossible and his fervent attempt at vindicating himself is only further evidence that he is indeed a "racist bigot."

Recycling The Truth On "Recycling"

2009-08-06T11:33:00.002-05:00

I am often accused of not going into much details about anything I write or speak on and I will have to admit that is true. I have found that most people consider details to be boring and because they are boring they can be used to obfuscate the truth about the subject under discussion. I prefer to see the bigger picture (the forest instead of the trees) as a way to develop an understanding of the principles behind some popular movements and if the principles are bad then the whole movement is skewed toward failure, at least for obtaining what goal is supposed to be at the root of the cause (always follow the money into the closets). Recycling is one of those movements that is also "politically incorrect" to discuss in a negative light and therefore I must discuss it.

I'm sure just about everyone has tried to make a little extra money by selling "recyclables" at a local recycling center and was a little disappointed that the payoff barely covered the expenses of carting and carrying the materials to the site. There might have been an emotional high at working to "save the environment" or "save the planet" or you may have gotten the phone number of that cutie that was working on the same team with you but financially you are no better off than when you began...unless you were into recycling aluminum cans.

Aluminum is one of those natural resources that takes a lot of energy to mine from the earth and energy costs money. If those who use aluminum in their industry can find it at a lower cost then you can bet they are willing to buy it and that's why they are willing to pay so well for old soda cans. It takes less energy to recycle aluminum than to dig it from the Earth so they buy it from folks like you and "share the wealth" of the savings. And according to the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis this should "save the planet."

Those other "recyclables" are not as energy efficient to recycle as aluminum and that is why you are not paid as much for them. If one calculates in the costs of transporting these materials around and around the economic benefit becomes a loss. If there is an economic loss, then that means there was an over expenditure of energy which if you follow the AGW hypothesis means the planet is worse off than before you recycled. You are also worse off unless you have one of those lucrative trucking contracts and were paid by the mile and the ton for moving all this trash around until a buyer can be found (of course, the longer it's moved the higher the cost of buying it which reduces the number of people who will be interested in buying it so it has to be moved farther and farther...; now you know why the recycling logo appears to go in circles).

Now when people are offered a bargain that really isn't a bargain then they have a tendency to not want any part of it unless someone puts a gun to their heads and that's where government steps in. For all the faults of trying to recycle some items, the government mandates that we must try and it forges along in it bullheadedness regardless of the facts with special rules of what goes where into what colored bin and so forth. This leaves me with one question.

What do you call people that are required to do a ludicrous task that they are not allowed to refuse to do without being punished, physically if necessary, and they are not compensated in any form or fashion for their labor or expenditure of energy? I think you already knew the answer before I asked the question...

Three Common Phrases People Should Never Believe

2009-08-03T21:45:00.003-05:00

1. When your father tells you, "This will hurt me more than it will hurt you."

2. When your doctor says, "This will only hurt a little bit."

3. When a politician tells you, "I promise I will never raise your taxes."

Because...

1. If it really hurt him more than it hurt you, he probably wouldn't do it.

2. If it hurt only a little bit, why did they invent anesthesia?

3. His lips were moving when he said it...

They Are Coming For The Children

2009-07-28T21:19:00.003-05:00

"The third part of my plan will be integrating service into education, so that young Americans are called upon and prepared to be active citizens.

"Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously. Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I'm President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service.

"We'll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities."

Senator Barack Obama, December 5, 2007, Mt. Vernon, Iowa

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted 1865

servitude - 1. the condition of a slave, serf, or the like; subjection to a master, slavery, or bondage

Webster's New World Dictionary

The first African-American President of these United States appears to be planning to bring back slavery to our country. Or at least he intends to entice some by promise of monetary rewards into voluntarily serving (.pdf) the federal government while for others, especially the children, he intends to coerce local governments (read school districts) into enslaving the children for the federal government, all in the name of teaching them to "be active citizens." It's interesting how he uses language so that we all think we know what he is saying but somehow it's a little difficult to determine if he means what we think he means.

If you read the entirety of Mr. Obama's speech it seems he is under the impression that there are very limited opportunities for Americans, particularly the young, to serve their fellow man in a volunteer capacity. Just off the top of my head I can list the Cub and Boy Scouts, Brownies and Girl Scouts, Campfire Girls, 4H, The American Red Cross, Candystripers, and other youth organizations that require their members, who have voluntarily applied to join these private associations, to perform some form of charitable service for the less fortunate amongst us. Every church in my local area with a membership of at least 50 adults has a youth program and I've personally seen these young people mowing lawns and doing yard work for elderly persons who can't get around as well as they used to. I even see little ones scour their neighborhoods knocking on doors to raise money for charitable organizations like the Muscular Dystrophy Association. No, Mr. Obama, there is no lack of opportunity for young people to serve.

Mr. Obama refers to studies he says shows that children who serve are better students. I would posit that the reason these children serve is because of their personal moral code that also drives them to be better students. It is the personality traits of the young person that drives them to success. Their volunteer service to others is merely a symptom of their good character and not the cause of it. To expect compulsory service to change bad students into good is the same as expecting a mouse to turn into a fish just because you throw it into a lake. The mouse will expend the minimum energy necessary to survive and will spend all its time struggling to get itself back to dry land where it will emerge from the water soaking wet but still a mouse. The only thing the mouse will learn from the event is to never trust you again with carrying it in your hand.

There is still the question of what kind of service will be expected of these young people and whether they can choose to perform one type and refuse to perform another. Since taking over the education system, Liberals have been adamant in trying to break the emotional and spiritual bonds between parent and child so that the child will look to the state, run by the Liberals, as their new parents and this call for service could be just more of the same. Imagine the children of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim parents being forced to work at an advocacy center for homosexuals or at an abortion clinic for the poor in order to sensitize the children to the "plight" of others different from themselves and "help" them break the vicious cycle of "archaic bigotry" passed from one generation to another. An ironic aspect of Liberals is that their immediate assumption that someone's personal religious convictions are always based on "archaic bigotry" is itself a form of archaic bigotry.

Then there is the matter of the children's safety as they perform this mandatory service to the state. Private organizations that enlist volunteers have the incentive to protect those who work for them since any public report of persons being injured on the job will certainly cut into the number of people who might volunteer in the future. These organizations are also open to civil litigation if it can be proved that the administrators were negligent by not providing a safe work environment and there are a myriad of laws issued by the government that cover the same thing. The government can exempt itself from such laws if it determines that it is in the best interest of the government to do so and can go so far as to block anyone from filing a lawsuit against it for the negligence of its executives. During their forced labor the children can also be exposed to such fine examples of benevolent government officials like Congressman Mark Foley and President Bill Clinton. We all know how well they took care of young people assigned to work with them.

We can pretty well guess that with the number of hours a week students will have to perform this service, there will not be an accompanying reduction in the number of hours they are required to attend their classes so the time has to come from another important source, namely time with their families. It will also cut into that time that some young people can use for part-time gainful employment where they learn that valuable lesson of how to satisfy a customer, their employer, and the added education in how to live on a budget and how to invest their money so as to build up capital for larger purchases in the future or for lean times when there are no wages to be earned. The worst moral hazard is that our children will learn from this program that slavery and being a slave is a desirable state. Kind of turns the whole concept of "government serving the people" on its head.

Now some might think that their children would be exempt since they do not attend public schools but I think we should file that theory under the "They can make 'em put seat belts in our cars but they can't make us wear 'em" heading. As the government presently persecutes (but not aggressively prosecutes) young men who fail to register for Selective Service we will eventually see requirements for the presentation of certificates that attest to the fact that the young person has completed the required "service" before they are allowed to attend any college or university that accepts federal grants. We will probably also see it show up on applications for employment and assistance from government agencies, including Social Security, the IRS, FEMA, and we might even see it on the BATF&E form 4473.

Contrary to what Mr. Obama says there are plenty of opportunities for Americans to serve their fellow countrymen, and even fellow Earthlings, through hundreds of thousands of private charitable organizations without having to turn to serve the federal government, or any government for that matter. The rub for Liberal Marxists like Mr. Obama seems to be that these organizations are not under the thumb of he and his minions and the best way to destroy these groups and the ideology which they represent - that people can take care of themselves without government - is to take away the people they depend on for volunteers and leave everyone dependent on the government for their very existence.

It's high time to teach our children that to be a Patriot also means from time to time to resist an oppressive government even when and if it is your own. As Mark Twain pointed out when he quoted Czar Nicholas II: "...(T)he true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government (only) when it deserves it." They are coming for our children. Let us prepare to make them pay dearly when they have the audacity to try...

For further reading I would like to recommend Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream by Lerone Bennett and Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel.

Glenn Beck Has A Mouse In His Pocket

2009-07-26T21:23:00.003-05:00

I like to watch Glenn Beck's program on the Fox News Network. I don't always agree with Glenn's opinions. He is a Conservative with Libertarian leanings and I leaned over so far towards Libertarianism that I fell into Anarchism so we agree only about 65% of the time. But he and his staff concentrate on news stories that I want to hear about in depth and so that's why I watch his show and tolerate his "Rodeo Clown" antics.

This past week Glenn and his guests have been pondering on what direction this country, and more specifically the Federal government, is heading towards. There are aspects of the current administration that appears to be Fascist and other parts that look like good, old-fashioned Socialism. Some members of the White House staff and leaders in Congress talk like the heads of the former Soviet Union. Glenn suggests that it is hard to pinpoint which direction things are going because everything is in such a flux. Let's see if I can help Glenn out.

The Federal government of these United States is being dragged, pulled, coerced, bribed, and pushed towards becoming a Totalitarian Communist state. Fascism and Socialism are just steps on the long path towards this sometimes clandestine and sometimes explicit goal. What causes the confusion is there is no real historical precedent for a Libertarian-type government, which the U.S. government under the Constitution is supposed to be, to voluntarily convert, without an outside threat, to Totalitarian Communism.

When national governments have tried Communism in the past (Communism can only be "tried" because it never really works since it goes against human nature; it is one form of government designed to be administered by angels governing other angels) it usually follows the country having already been governed in another form of Totalitarianism, generally something along the lines of a Monarchy, so for the people affected it just becomes one group of anal-retentive types being exchanged for another. In that sense, and after the supporters of the old order are dealt with, the transition goes a lot smoother, if you consider the torture, imprisonment, and murder of millions and millions of people to be working smoothly.

When one is making frog soup one must increase the heat of the water very slowly or the main ingredient will hop away and this is how Communism is being implemented in these United States starting as far back as the 19th century. Things can go a lot more smoothly if the majority of the people are already convinced that Communism will provide them with more security when it comes to the basic needs of life. And the best place to start is with the young and their education.

First the Communists began infiltrating the colleges where the teachers of the next generation were being trained and after seducing their young minds into a preference for the "enlightened" state of a socially aware government sent them out into the world to pass along the message of the salvation of Man through the assistance of Communism. These new teachers also were taught to consider themselves less as experts of the fields they were going to teach about and more so as the experts of "education" itself as a field. They were taught to consider themselves superior in raising children, even more so than the parents of the children that were going to be placed in their care, though some have absolutely no experience in child rearing.

Education through a common school used to be a local concern where the parents could exercise the greatest authority over their own children but for one reason or another with promises and claims for more efficient use of funds with better results, control of education moved up through the rungs of Federalism and away from the influence of the family till it is now under the auspices of the central government and children all across the country are indoctrinated into obedience and obeisance of the state while receiving somewhat of an education taught down to the lowest common denominator of general human intelligence. The public education system is by its very nature a Socialist construct whereby the funds necessary are robbed from the masses based on their ability to pay and then used to benefit a chosen few based on their needs.

Secondly, to reduce any effective physical resistance, the proponents of Communism have worked their best to disarm the American people. The laws behind the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 were borrowed heavily from the same laws used in Nazi ("National Socialism") Germany. Once the people became acclimated to one law that "infringed" upon their right to protect themselves, it became easier to pass more, especially when their benevolent government officials told them it was for their own good and promised such laws would abolish violent crime. Even the professional "Educators" joined in by teaching young people that weapons are always dangerous unless handled by a trained professional working for the government and the desire to own one is a sign of a serious and potentially dangerous mental illness.

Thirdly the Communists began steps to take over control of the economy of the whole country, as if that is even possible since the Free-Market, black or otherwise, consists of billions of transactions that occur every second between private persons, but they just had to regulate and control everything for everyone else regardless of the catastrophic consequences (or maybe just to cause them). Their central planning has led from recession into stagflation into depression and back through the cycles again and again and all their struggles to "right the ship" have been in vain unless one considers garnering more power for the government over the tiniest concerns of the average human being as a worthwhile goal. For those who profess to believe in the Bible, I might refer you to the story of Joseph and the Pharaoh's dreams found in the book of Genesis for a history of a government taking advantage of a natural disaster to increase its power over the people.

This all leads to the current Federal government and those persons sitting in positions of leadership within it. They might deny they are Socialist or Communists but what they are in their little heart of hearts can be easily determined by reading the works of those they look to as their leaders and from whom they derive inspiration. It can also be determined by reading between the lines or listening really close to what they have to say for themselves. That they even ran for public office so they can rule the lives of others has much to say about their personalities and character. As in that memorable scene from the movie, "Independence Day," where Jeff Goldblum's character explains to his boss how one positions his pieces at strategic places upon the chessboard and then pounces upon his opponent's king forcing him into checkmate, the countdown for our time is "progressively" ticking away.

There are persons now working in the government that choose to gauge the relative worth of any individual in regards to what expenditure should be made towards the prolonging of that person's life, even if that person is paying the expense, as to how many more productive years that person has with very little explanation for what "productive" means and for who one is producing. Those of us who have lived or worked on a farm or ranch know this is the way to calculate the value for animals that are meant for slaughter. And if one studies the historical record, this was also the method for determining the value of slaves. That's what Communism breaks down into over the long run: Slavery. The Supreme Court and the 13th Amendment won't save us. The Court has made numerous decisions determining that slavery is all right as long as it is the government that does all the owning.

So now I get to the bone I need to pick with Glenn. Glenn and his staff have been dredging up stories warning the American people about the dangerous future facing them in the years, if not months, to come. He's covered it quite well and thoroughly. The problem I have is that he keeps using the term, "We." "Where are we as a nation heading?" "What are we doing?" It isn't "we," Glenn. You are identifying the victim with the perpetrator of the crime. "We' didn't steal from ourselves and "we" didn't mug ourselves. "We the people" are the same as usual; for the greater part we are a bunch of freedom loving individuals getting along with the business of living the way each of us considers best for ourselves. There is a minority that seems to want this future but there is also some people who think it's okay to shoplift at Wal-Mart because it has so much stuff. "They won't miss it..."

Socialism, Fascism, and Communism are labels we apply to this den of robbers generally called government based on their modus operandi, similar to how we would distinguish one common thief from another by saying this one is a pickpocket and that one is a burglar. It is often said that "people get the government they deserve," but I would have to disagree at the point that con men (and women) can gain the people's trust through lies and false promises and be elected into office. The people might be liable that after they learn about the lies they reelect these lice back into office but there are always so much room for more lies.

By the use of the term "we" you could be falling into an old trap. Our country has been led into war many times, even when the nation was not in peril, just to lead everyone into a state of being unified in our desire to be united ("You're either with us or you're with them" even if "Them" is an army of nuclear-powered gargantuan ants), regardless of the significant differences between and amongst us. Nothing brings people together like a common enemy except in this case the enemy is within the camp and we have trouble telling friend from foe because we are so united in our trained reflex to go along to get along.

So Glenn if you ever get a chance to read this I want you and your people to know I think y'all are doing a great job and I'll continue to watch your show. Just tone it down a little bit about the use of "we" when you are referring to the actions of those working in the government. That is a class of criminals wholly and unholy unto themselves. If you like to continue referring to yourself in the plural, you could always get yourself a pet mouse and keep him in your pocket. That'll really tick the people at PETA off...

Voting and Sharing

2009-07-20T10:16:00.006-05:00

A headline from our local paper:

Neediest areas not first for stimulus money

By April Castro - Associated Press

SABINAL - Under the Obama administration's economic stimulus plan, needy communities were supposed to be a priority when doling out money to rebuild highways and jump-start the economy.
It hasn't worked out that way...

The article then goes on to describe how the neediest areas are the lightly populated rural areas while most of the money being used so far are going for projects in the more densely populated big cities and other urban areas. It seems the State officials spending the money aren't paying attention to the standards set by Federal officials of how the money is supposed to be spent. One has to wonder if the reason for this is that the people on the ground, living in the area in question, have a better idea where the roads need the most fixin' than the folks in D.C.?

Tax-payer money going the "wrong way" is nothing new. During the reign of FDR at the height of the Great Depression the "Relief" money set aside by Congress to go to the poorest people hit hardest by the Depression was actually sent to locations that FDR needed to appease to get more votes at the next presidential election. The South which had the largest population of any portion of the country of those living at or below the poverty level was already securely locked into voting for anyone running on the Democrat ticket so, though it had some of the more famous government projects, it received the least amount of "Relief" monies. Most of the money went to Republican strongholds to persuade the people living there to become beholden upon the Democrat-controlled Federal government and to support their policies and politicians.

I always find it humorous when people become excited about some form of payment coming their way from the government since the money was mostly their's to begin with and they are only receiving a portion of what was stolen from them in the first place. Those who receive more than anything that was specifically taken from them are receiving only that stolen from their neighbors and should shamefully count themselves amongst the thieves. The benevolence of our benevolent government officials is only intended to purchase your votes and your support for the continued growth of their power and prestige.

But since we supposedly live in a "democracy," let us have a real election to settle the matter once and for all. If the proposal carries, then those who voted for it are allowed to murder and pillage those who voted against it. Of course, ballots will not be allowed to be secret so we can know how everyone voted. Not voting will be considered a "Nay" vote so any non-voters can count themselves amongst the pillaged, though the "Nay" will not be counted against the "Yea" votes so that the measure can carry if even just one person votes at all and in the affirmative.

Can you just see the chaos that will erupt with such an election? People whining that they didn't get a chance to vote, especially after they see the results. Certain people not being allowed to vote for one reason or another (probably because they have a lot of what people might be interested in pillaging from them). Constant calls for recounts. Protests and riots. Anarchy reigns...

But in a sense this is what all elections break down to be. Politicians promising you anything, particularly that which must be stolen from your neighbor, in return for your vote for them. This what Jefferson called the "Tyranny of the Mob." Maybe we could all get along a lot better if we lived by the "Inverted Golden Rule":

"Don't do unto others that which you would not want anyone to do unto you."

May you live in prosperity and peace, but most of all may we all live in liberty...

Recessions and Cavemen

2009-07-17T10:19:00.009-05:00

From the Associated Press:

"Recession 101" billboards started popping up this month on Interstate 95 in Rhode Island, which has one of the nation's highest unemployment rates. One billboard's message is: "Interesting thing about recessions...they end." The project is funded by an anonymous donor who was depressed about the country's reaction to the meltdown. The billboard designer says his client wants people to realize we've made it through recessions before.

Now I hate to burst any one's bubble of delusion, even though it seems that's something I've devoted the latter half of my life to, but recessions do not have to end. Recessions are a lot like fires. When our cavemen ancestors first learned to harness fire for their use, they learned that to keep a fire going they needed to keep adding fuel. If they wanted a fire to burn all the way through a cold winter's night then they needed to store up sufficient fuel, usually wood, the day before. If they no longer needed the fire then they would just stop throwing on the wood and it would go out.

Recessions will, like fires, continue to "burn" as long as they have fuel and the most popular form of fuel for recessions is government interference in the Free-market. Recessions are generally defined as periods of mass unemployment that feed upon themselves. The unemployed have less demand for consumer goods and less demand leads to lay offs of those employed to produce, transport, and merchandise the consumer goods which will lead to more unemployment and the cycle repeats itself. Government interferes in the market by artificially increasing the costs of labor above the market price.

I've already touched once before on how the Minimum Wage Law affects unemployment but now our government wants to force employers, who might be struggling to cover their payroll expense as it is, to purchase medical insurance for all of their employees or be fined at an amount equal to the cost of the insurance to help the government "purchase" insurance for these employees. Once again, and as sure as gravity, if one increases the cost of a commodity, in this case labor, then those who are wanting to buy it will be more choosier about what they purchase and how much, which will lead to less being bought and more unemployment.

The strangest twist in the ironic history of employer-supplied medical insurance was that it came about because of another faulty government program in the past. During the reign of FDR, there was a time that employers were prohibited from giving raises or offering potential new employees higher wages than they were making with their current employer. In order to entice good employees to stay or to come to work for them, employers started offering paid vacations, sick leave, and free medical insurance as fringe and non-taxable benefits. Times have changed as now some in Congress are considering taxing these benefits at the same time that others consider what used to be a reward for good work and high productivity as a human right.

The best way to end a recession is to take away the fuel that it burns and that means less government interference and letting market forces and human choice work out the contracts between employers and employees. That might just be too easy a concept for the members of Congress and the current administration to grasp. But I'm willing to bet that it's so easy (my apologies to Geico Insurance) that a Caveman could do it...

Another Bumper Sticker

2009-07-15T14:39:00.003-05:00

To err is human.
To really screw things up
requires an act of
Congress.

Government-Issued Morality

2009-07-10T19:03:00.002-05:00

Imagine for a moment (a lot can be taught by using hypothetical thought exercises) that it is the holiday season and you are at your favorite shopping center preparing to brave the crowds to get your gift list filled. You notice a man running around the parking lot with a gun in his hand. He is stopping several people as they head toward the stores and relieving them of all their cash. Of course, it makes sense that he hits them up before they have a chance to shop and spend all that money on themselves for their needs. You watch him as he then takes all his ill-gotten booty and puts it into one of those buckets that has a bell ringer standing nearby. He pats himself on his back for what he believes is a good deed and then starts to head in your direction with intentions of helping you make a large donation. Has this man done good or evil?

Today all over the news was the statement from President Obama that the U.S. has a "moral obligation" to help poorer nations on this planet. He did not suggest that Americans give more to those charities that help people in foreign lands. He hasn't called for a new government program that Americans can donate money to that will be forwarded to international relief organizations. No, as usual he was calling for more U.S. tax dollars to be sent to the governments of these impoverished countries to help them help their people (if these governments were really in the business of helping their people, do they really need our help?).

The talking heads on the tube were all over this one interviewing people who were in favor of and against such an idea and I haven't heard the Bible quoted so much on television since the last Billy Graham Crusade I got stuck watching. Many were using the words of the Nazarene to justify the president's plan and some were quoting him for lessons against the moral hazards inherent in such programs of giving away money. Some were even calling this idea the proper charitable thing to do based on the teachings of the Bible.

There was one verse that so far I haven't heard thrown into the argument. It comes from that portion of the Bible that is also the Torah so both Jews and Muslims will be able to relate with it. From the book commonly called Exodus, chapter 20, verse 15:

"Thou shall not steal!"

You cannot consider yourself charitable or generous by giving away other people's money or property, particularly when you have stolen their wealth from them. Depending upon your personal religious beliefs or moral convictions, you might feel an obligation to help others but you cannot transfer that obligation to others not involved in the matter through coercion, physical force, or deception. Taxes are essentially robbed from the people by the explicit threat of force and are only supposed to be used to support the government of the U.S. for a specifically limited number of essential services it is required to provide for the several States and for the American people in general. They are not allowed by the Constitution to be used for any other cause no matter the need of the recipient.

But if robbery, as long as the loot is given to charity, is the new morality then I have lots of charitable causes to give to and as they always say, "Charity begins in the home." So keep an eye out as I'll be coming soon to a parking lot near you...

For Fun On "Freedom Watch"

2009-07-09T09:41:00.006-05:00

The other day I received another one of those mass e-mailings from someone wanting me to vote for him to appear on Judge Andrew Napolitano's Internet show "Freedom Watch" (Wednesdays at 1:00 PM Central on FoxNews.com). Now since I agree with the position of the person who sent me the e-mail I went ahead and gave him my three votes. While I was visiting the site I looked into how much effort was needed to get oneself nominated and as it turns out it doesn't take much so here we go...

http://freedomwatch.uservoice.com/pages/16626-freedom-watch-guest-suggestions/suggestions/251654-the-ol-grey-ghost

If you want to see "The Ol' Grey Ghost" on the Judge's show you now have a place to vote, too. I'm not going to send out any mass e-mailings or such and I'm not expecting for a small-town schmuck like myself to end up on the show but we can have a little fun. If anything this gives me a chance to advertise one of my favorite news analysis shows. The good Judge and I agree about 99% of the time and the 1% where we disagree I think we can both get along and not worry about it. It's a great show that will keep you informed on how our Liberty is being whittled away just about everyday by an out-of-control government and it offers some suggestions on how to fight back. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Remember, it is your "civic duty" to vote and like the communists do, vote often and over and repeat and again...

Trees, Ivy, and Mistletoe

2009-07-04T09:30:00.003-05:00

One of the scourges around these parts for our friends of the flora and fauna variety is Ivy and Mistletoe. Many a good healthy Tree has been felled by these green parasites that suck the very life out of them. The bewildering point when dealing with some people is that they don't like it when one tries to trim back these leafy vermin. "If it weren't for the vine or the mistletoe, there wouldn't be any green on that old dead tree; leave it there!" Out of their ignorance they don't realize that it is those remaining "green" spots that killed the Tree in the first place and trying to remove them from the surrounding younger Trees is an attempt to save those Trees from the same fate.

America is a lot like that these days. There are a lot of little traditions and rituals that have crept into our modern version of patriotism that people think have been there all along since the founding and are somehow the right thing to do when celebrating our "Freedom" when in fact they are exactly the opposite of what we should do. And those who try to "trim" these little habits so as to preserve the original "Empire of Liberty" (Thomas Jefferson) are soundly criticized and ridiculed.

Today we have loyalty oaths and national anthems and codes that requires us to form our bodies into certain shapes while we recite or sing them. Though their roots are from earlier times, both the "Pledge of Allegiance" and the "Star-Spangled Banner" as they are currently constituted come to us through acts of Congress during America's Progressive (read: "National Socialism") Era of the 1930's and 40's. You'll never see a You-Tube video of Jefferson reciting the "Pledge..." because as a libertarian Anti-Federalist he would have adamantly refused to do so (regardless that the video camera had not been invented yet).

We have people who engage in worshipful acts of adoration of the members of the U.S. military. Now I can see wanting to show gratitude for someone who has rescued you from a dangerous situation but the last time that the U.S. military even remotely repelled a foreign invader from U.S. soil was World War II. "Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" is a poor excuse for throwing the first punch in a criminal assault and invading foreign lands to kill innocent people, who are themselves fighting to repel a foreign invader, has never made anyone safe.

And then we have people covering themselves and their property with images of the banner of the Federal government. They are free to dress as they wish but when one wears the "Stars and Stripes" on an article of clothing they are implying that they are employees of the Federal government and, if you aren't paid and you aren't allowed to resign, you're not really an employee either. When they stake the flag on their property they're saying that their property belongs to the Federal government (which our benevolent government officials at the Federal level seem to believe anyway).

So this day let us not celebrate the accident at our birth of which empire we were born into (immigrants are excepted) and instead let us trim away the misguided ultra-patriotism that the parasites of our society want us to waste our valuable time on. Let us celebrate and pledge to protect the fact that we are a nation of independent, freedom-loving, rugged individualists that can choose for ourselves the course and destiny of our own lives and let us extend this thought to all who would come and peacefully join us in watering the Tree of Liberty...

Happy Independence Day!

Going Green and The Rule of Sixes

2009-06-30T20:28:00.003-05:00

About a year or so ago I had looked into the possibility of getting some form of electric generator to bring power to the buildings on our farm property. I found a gasoline-powered model that fit both our energy needs and into the bed of our pick-up truck but our youngest son who is pretty big into "Bob the Builder" and Bob's "Project: Build It (Sunflower Valley)" suggested I look for something in wind or solar like Bob was doing. Interested more in saving money rather than the planet (the planet can take care of itself and does a pretty good job at it) I did some investigation on the Internet through some alternate energy retailers' websites and I found an strange little pattern amongst all the available information that I call "The Rule of Sixes."

For something in the solar/wind category that would fit into the aforementioned pick-up truck, I found the initial purchase price to be six times as much as the gasoline powered generator while at the same time it would only deliver one/sixth as much electricity and that was under optimal operating conditions (strong wind, bright sunlight, etc.). To get something that would deliver the amount of power we wanted, we needed six pick-up trucks to haul it all and it would cost 36 (six squared) times as much the conventional generator. On top of that just about everybody recommended that their alternate energy products be "professionally" (read: More money!) set up and installed before being used. And then there the "required" accessories: batteries, inverters, fuses, circuit breakers, etc., etc. Needless to say none of this fit into our billfold.

Now the House of Representatives has passed an energy bill to deal with global warming, as if anything needs to be done. The hypothesis of Anthropogenic ("caused by man") Global Warming and some of the skewed scientific data in support of it has been thoroughly discredited by real scientists (about 32,000 compared to the 3,000 politicians in lab coats that work for the UN) and since climate change is influenced by cosmic rays and solar activity there really isn't much any man or woman can do about it. But our benevolent government officials rarely let themselves be confused by facts, particularly when there is a lot of money to be made and power to be grabbed, so their minds are already made up and they blindly march onward and ever forward.

All of the politicians agree that there will be some increases in every body's energy costs; they just disagree on how much and how much everyone will find the increase disagreeable ("we are trying to save the planet here!"). Those who agree with the plan claim it will be a teeny little amount when compared to the number of green jobs that will be created (Spain's similar plan: For every one green job created, 1.8 jobs were lost in other industries). The doomsayers suggest that every one's monthly electric bill will go up 100% or, in simpler terms, it will double. I've got that nagging feeling in my gut that the actual increase will more along the line of the "Rule of Sixes." Yes, I'm saying six times as much as you pay now. I may be way off base but only time will tell.

One of the more onerous aspects is that all the utility companies must make 20% of the electricity they sell from renewable resources by the year 2020 (we currently sit at around 2%). There are two ways to get there. One is that there is a major breakthrough in technology spurred along by this law forcing everyone to rush (but I thought "haste makes waste...") or reduce the amount of electricity produced by other sources. In other words, magically increase the 2% by tenfold without depending too much on conventionally produced energy to do it or reduce the 98 units out of 100 currently produced by conventional methods down to eight units with the two units from alternate energy remaining the same thereby 2 units out of only ten units is 20%. And the best way to reduce the amount of electricity needed is to reduce the amount of people needing it.

Some people say that Greenzis (Green plus Nazi equals "Greenzi") are anti-human in that they want the whole human race to be removed from the planet and I have to disagree. Of the Greenzis I've met over the years they aren't really anti-human as much as they are "anti-humans-other-than-themselves." If you read some of the literature from the founders of their movement you will find some interesting theories that suggest the planet can't really support much more than 2 million humans (there's about 7 billion of us right now) and that figure is from the more generous proponents of these theories. They recommend that we start with voluntary birth rate reductions but of course if that doesn't work fast enough for them they don't have any problem with forced sterilization. Under their plans, only three in 10,000 couples would be allowed to reproduce and you better believe those three couples will be chosen from their own group.

So the Greenzis have brought out their number one weapon against the "other-than-us" human race and that is government. If there is anything History has shown us that government is good for, it is killing large quantities of people in a short amount of time. And I think my "Rule of Sixes" will apply here just as well as with this new law the government will beat its old body-count record by six times as much as before and do it all within one/sixth of the time...

What Is Socialism?

2009-06-27T09:27:00.006-05:00

Socialism is a socio-political and economical construct where the needs and Natural Rights of the individual are subordinated to the wants and desires of society as a whole. Since society consists of a multitude of voices expressing different and diverse opinions on a variety of matters it usually falls upon, or is usurped by, a minority of the affected populace to centrally plan and govern all the activities that all may, or must, engage in for support of the continued existence of the larger social organism. This minority group is normally called government.

Most people know Socialism as that condition where the government runs a business that competes with private entrepreneurs and this is partly correct. The government has an unfair advantage that it will always have the money it needs to run a business because it steals it from the people it governs in the form of taxes, including those who don't use the services offered, and has no need in satisfying its customers in order to make a profit. With no incentive from the potential loss of profit, it is no wonder that most businesses run by government are dismal failures at making any money, or at least breaking even, and usually continue to exist only for the political favors they can dish out to the crony friends of the politicians who run them.

But Socialism is much worse as a social philosophy. The worth of the individual is diminished to that point equal only to his contribution to the greater society. He is but a single "cell" in a larger "living" organism that can be cast off as it outlives its usefulness. All Natural Rights to life, liberty, and to accumulate property are stripped from the individual and given to the government for what "better" purposes it may find use for them. The worst part is that Socialism does not require the consent of the affected to be binding upon them.

Anarchists such as myself already realize that all forms of government are in effect socialistic in that governments usually take for themselves the monopolistic authority to engage in the business of writing rules and laws that all of the people, regardless of their individual plans or schedules, must obey or the government will punish them if they are not compliant. In a government-free environment people will individually consent and contractually agree to what set of regulations they will obey in their dealings with their fellow human beings and to what set of punishments will be meted out for breaching this contract.

There is a good synonym for Socialism that more people should learn to equate with this concept and that is "Slavery." Some people rush into Socialism believing it will solve all the ills of modern society without ever realizing that humans have not changed very much in the last 12,000 years and since Man prefers to live free, all attempts to chain and shackle Him in His Natural state will end in failure...

Another Parable

2009-06-25T16:00:00.005-05:00

The Good Mother

A long time ago in a faraway land there was a good mother who always complained about her station in life. She had a good husband who provided for her and their two children and they were never in want, but she would tell all those who would listen that she wanted more. She worked at a stand in the town market selling the crops her husband raised on their farm but she would often complain about the hard work this entailed and she had to keep up their house, too. Their two children were strong, healthy, and very smart learning the lessons well that their father was teaching them but the good mother wanted more for them. And most of all, she wanted cake.

When she was a little girl her grandmother would always bake a cake for dessert at Sunday dinner. Her grandmother had passed on and now that she was all grown with a family of her own to take care of she only got to have some cake on special occasions like weddings or at a Yuletide party. It would always make her mouth water when she thought back to those days.

One day in the market when she was griping in her customary fashion to the woman running the fruit stand next to hers a handsome young man who had been listening commented that her life appeared to be atrocious by what she was saying. The other woman quickly curtsied towards the young man and saying under her breath, "It's the king's son."

"Well, it's...it's not all that bad, good prince," said the good mother as she also quickly bowed her head.

"Nonsense! It sounds to me that your husband should be flogged for not providing better for such a lovely woman as yourself," said the prince as he took a bite from an apple he had taken from the fruit stand. "Where is the scoundrel and I shall see that he gets the punishment he so rightly deserves."

"No, my lord, please don't," pleaded the good mother. "My husband is a good man. It's just I always thought I deserved better than he seems to be able to provide."

"Maybe I can solve that problem for you," replied the prince. "I have a room in our castle that you can live in that everything you ever desire will be brought to you and you need never lift a finger as there will always be servants to handle any task you desire them to do. My best scholars and tutors will educate your children and they will have their own special rooms to live in, too. All this and all you have to do is leave your husband and your home and bring your children to live in the castle. Well?"

"Everything I ever desire?" asked the good mother.

"Everything," replied the prince. "You need only to hop in my carriage and we will retrieve your children and you can go live in the castle. What say you?"

"Yes!" and with that the good mother abandoned her stand and rode on the prince's carriage to her home. She gathered up her son and her daughter and without a single word to her husband, she and her children went to live at the castle.

At the castle the prince showed her to her room and the first thing she noticed were that the doors were a bit narrow. She could walk through them without any adjustment to her gait but just barely. She commented to herself that a larger person would certainly have a problem getting through there.

"Here is your room," said the prince with a wave of his hand. There was fine four poster bed with the thickest mattress upon it the good mother had never seen before in her life. There were windows looking out over the entire kingdom. There was a fireplace near the bed to keep the place cozy during the cold winter. And on the nightstand was a beautiful crystal bell. "All you need do is ring that bell and a servant will appear to fulfill your every desire."

"Let's see the children's rooms," said the good mother as she headed back toward the door.

"No, the servants will take your children and show them to their rooms," said the prince blocking her path. "You need not ever lift a finger again in regards to your children. They shall always be well taken care of."

"Oh," said the good mother, "well, then good night children and let's get settled into our new home."

"Yes mother," replied the children in unison as the servant dutifully led them off to their rooms down the hall.

"Remember, anything you want, you just ring the bell," said the prince as he stepped out the door.

The good mother picked up the bell and rang it and a servant appeared in the doorway. She decided to test to see how well she would be provided for so she placed a rather large order for a big meal to be delivered to her in her room but in less time she would expect, her order was filled. And for dessert she had cake. A moist delicious cake. She was going to enjoy her new life.

She no longer had to rise to help someone with the chores on the farm and could sleep in as late as she wanted. Anything she could think of to eat would be prepared for her faster than she could have ever made it for herself and delivered right to her room so she didn't have to wander the castle to find the kitchen. And she didn't have to wash the dishes. She gained a little weight (a little?!?) from the good food and the lack of activity, but she merely had to ring the bell and a seamstress would let out her clothes and, when it became necessary, sew her a new set of clothes to cover her expanding mass. And she had cake. Lots of cakes.

She would ring the bell on occasion and the servant would bring her children to her room for a visit. They would tell her about their lessons and she realized her children were becoming fine students of all there was to learn. She considered it a little disconcerting that the songs and poetry her children would sing or recite were all in regards to praising the strength of the king's army, but they were learning to read and write and could calculate the proper angle to fire an arrow into the air so as to strike an enemy soldier outside the castle walls. And she had her cake.

Then one day she rang the bell and told the servant to bring her children to visit with her. The servant told her that her children were with the prince but he would go and ask the prince if he would bring the children by the good mother's room. In a little over an hour the prince appeared but the good mother's children were not with him.

"Where are my children, kind prince?" she asked a little anxiously.

"Our kingdom is at war with the kings to the east and your children are now serving in the king's army," the prince replied. "Your son is a brave soldier in the infantry and your daughter works in the mess tents preparing the meals. She has turned out to be a fine cook."

"I never gave permission for my children to serve in the army! Bring them to me, now!" demanded the good mother.

"They have the education we provided them and they chose to serve as they were taught." the prince answered with a stern voice the good mother had never heard him use. "Your permission was not necessary as our kingdom is in need of their service. All good mothers are prepared to sacrifice their children to protect the kingdom."

"I will not stand for this!" said the good mother quite angrily. She walked past the prince and tried to go out the door but she had grown too large to fit through it. "I can't get out!"

"And why should you?" asked the prince. "I promised you that everything you ever desire will be delivered to you in this room and it shall, except for your children as we now have need of them. You have no reason to ever leave this room again."

"Wait till my husband hears what you have done with his children," threatened the good mother.

"Your husband has become a drunkard," snarled the prince. "After you left him and took his children, he had nothing to live for so he has spent all of his time and his money at the local tavern. He is useless now to anyone who would try to depend on him."

"You can't do this!!!" the good mother shouted desperately.

"We can and we have," responded the prince as he began to walk away down the hall. "If you need anything, good mother, just ring the bell," he shouted over his shoulder.

The good mother returned to the bed and sat on the edge. She thought long and hard about her predicament and then she reached for the bell and rang it. Shortly a servant appeared and asked what could he get her.

"I'll have some cake," said the good mother...

"Brute force is not the only way to enslave Man...or Woman."

* For further reading I recommend The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek.

"Read The Bills Act" Coalition

2009-06-23T21:23:00.003-05:00

In case you haven't noticed the little banner in the upper left hand corner of this page, I am a member of the "Read The Bills Act" coalition put together by the good folks at DownsizeDC.Org. As an Anarchist I am against all forms of government but one way to have a life with very little interference from the agents of government is to certainly start with a smaller government for those criminals to work for and that is why I support the work of DownsizeDC.Org.

One way to shrink the Leviathan on the Potomac is to reduce its growth and forcing our benevolent government officials to read the darn bills they write before they pass them into law is one handy way to get that job done. Hopefully if a rational human being (does a rational human being run for public office?) takes the time to carefully read what is written then there will be time to debate the issues and decide if any action really is needed to solve some problem that could be handled by another venue.

Another program I support is the "One Bill At A Time" movement. It is downright dumbfounding the number of bad laws that are passed into existence by elected representatives who would normally vote against them except some prized program they wanted worst than they opposed the bad law was connected with the bad law. As the old song goes, "A spoonful of sugar helps the (bad-tasting) medicine go down," but the tiny amount of sugar needed to get these people to swallow whole clumps of fecal matter is sickening.

So when you have a chance hit the banner and take a little cyber-trip to their website. And while you're there sign up for their very informative e-mail newsletter...

Thoughts Of A Father...

2009-06-21T16:22:00.000-05:00

In some places of this world there are fathers who find themselves and their families in destitute conditions due to runaway inflation, oppressive unemployment, and excessive taxation. These fathers are approached by "Terrorist" organizations that promise the father that if he will strap a bomb to his body and blow himself up in an attempt to kill the enemies of these organizations his children will be taken care of, including receiving a good education. Government officials around the globe can't refrain from condemning these organizations for preying on these poor fathers.

Here in the U.S., under a new government program, if fathers (or mothers) will invade a foreign country to kill the enemies of our government and are themselves killed by those foreigners protecting that foreign homeland, the children of these fathers will receive a scholarship for a "free" (to them) education. Government officials are dislocating joints patting themselves on the back for coming up with this idea.

Happy Father's Day...

Stealing Is Stealing Is Stealing...

2009-06-19T21:09:00.003-05:00

In my former profession as a police officer I had many an occasion to talk to thieves about why they chose a certain victim to commit their crime against. One recurring theme was that the victim was somehow wealthy and therefore could afford the loss that the thief had just caused them. They still considered themselves to have some form of morality because, even though they were in the business of stealing other people's property, they weren't stealing from the poor. Stealing is stealing and it's always wrong regardless of the victim's socioeconomic status.

Today I heard some flunky from the White House saying that there is plenty of wealth out there in this country and it can be very easily shared so as to pay for some new government programs like socialized health care. These folks in the administration need to understand that this wealth is not like air in the atmosphere where anyone with a nose can breathe it in. All that wealth rightfully belongs to someone and for the government to get its hands on it to share it, the government has to steal it first.

Frederic Bastiat proposed in his book, The Law, that socialists want to plunder the wealth of others to use it for their own purposes but they don't want to do so unlawfully. First they must work themselves into positions of power so that they can rewrite the laws and then they can engage in "lawful plunder." They are still stealing and making it legal makes it no less of a crime.

So when we hear about government agents breaking up some ring of (private) thieves that prey upon the populace we need to understand that they aren't really do us any favors. When it comes to stealing from the people the government just doesn't want any competition...

How About A King?

2009-06-16T15:17:00.004-05:00

When some people hear me ranting about the criminal behavior of the U.S. government they seem to come under the misconception that I hate this country. I love this country! Of all the countries that I have visited or temporarily lived in this is the best. What I hate is the double band of thieves and robbers who have taken over the government and are trying to steal the country from the American people. But some enjoy asking sarcastically, "Would you prefer a king?"

Let's break that one down. All government contained in one person. That would certainly cut down on the amount of ammunition needed to force a real regime change, now wouldn't it? As far as I am concerned all governments eventually break down into becoming tyrannical and abusing the people they are supposed to be serving so one form is no better than the other. It is a choice as to being pestered by one individual or a mob.

If you can promise me a king who leaves me and mine alone and free to choose our own destiny then, Yes, I would prefer a king. But then again if he leaves us all alone, is he really a king at all or just another neighbor who likes to wear fancy headgear?

Loyalty Oaths

2009-06-12T20:40:00.009-05:00

Raise your right hand and repeat after me:

"I swear an oath of loyalty and obedience to the National Government of my homeland. What it says is the Truth I will believe without question. What it says is the Law I will comply without hesitation. I will openly engage in acts of obeisance of its venerated icons and will protect them from disgrace with a fervor bordering on religious fanaticism.

"Though all the citizens of my Homeland are from diverse ethnic origins we are bound by an Eternal Compact that does not require our consent to bind us. Talk of dissolution will be considered Treason. Attempts to break free will be quashed by overwhelming Military Force.

"Though all faiths are publicly tolerated only One is openly endorsed by the National Government and will continue to be so long as its ministers preach that service for the State is equal or more Righteous than service to one's neighbors.

"I live with my fellow citizens believing the Grand Illusion that we control our own destinies and we pray earnestly to be treated fairly by the National Government that actually does."

Did y'all say it? Why not? Oh, did it sound a little totalitarian for you? Communists, Socialists, and Nazis like the people they govern to recite loyalty oaths often and repeatedly. If people repeat a mantra long enough they begin to believe what they are being forced to say. If they don't then they begin to suffer a psychological malady called cognitive dissonance; the mind can't get along with what the mouth is saying so the mind starts to go along just to get along instead of going insane.

These government control-freaks like to start with the young. If children recite these "oaths" from when they are little then these oaths become the norm and refusing to recite them becomes the abnormal. When the children are grown into adulthood they might even react violently when someone comes along and suggests that they shouldn't have been taking these oaths all their lives. They will consider the aberrant individual refusing to recite the oath as being anti-social and unpatriotic. In a totalitarian regime this belief may be very true but in a Liberty-based society like we have here in America the unpatriotic one is the one who would recite such an oath to an oppressive government.

You say you wouldn't allow your children to be forced to recite such an oath? I hate to burst your bubble but you and your children may have been reciting such an oath written by a socialist for quite some time now. I want everyone to get a copy of "The Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. Flag" and a dictionary and start looking up some of the definitions of the terms used in the "Pledge." With a little license for dramatic purposes I have written the "Pledge" right up there at the top of this page. The original salute was not the hand over the heart but the hand extended forward in what used to be called the "Roman Salute." Since World War II most Americans know this hand gesture as the "Nazi Salute." Socialists and communists may argue amongst themselves but in their heart of hearts they are all little dictators...

Is There A "Reasonable" Gun Control Law?

2009-06-09T18:32:00.004-05:00

We often hear these days from people on both sides of the gun control issue that they are all in favor of "reasonable" gun control measures but each accuses the other side of being unreasonable by the positions they take. Is the "reasonable" gun control law a lot like Sasquatch, Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster - some sketchy evidence but no real proof of its existence? Let's take a moment and explore the situation once more.

Is a complete ban on the ownership of firearms "reasonable?" I have often joked that I would agree to a complete destruction of all guns and ammunition if everyone took everything they had and threw them into a volcano somewhere. The problem is I know humans and human nature and somebody somewhere would hold out and keep his guns because he thinks I am so I choose to hold onto mine in case he does (did I lose you?). When our benevolent government officials talk about a total ban, they are not being truthful because they make the exception for government employees to keep their's. In a land where no one owns a firearm, the man who does is king and can very easily become a ruthless tyrant. The best way to keep these persons in check is that all the people are armed and prepared to defend themselves. "But a police officer's/soldier's job is dangerous and that's why they need their firearms." I won't dispute that and will not bar them from access to the weapons they need to protect themselves but the reason their jobs are dangerous is because life is dangerous and if anyone hasn't noticed, I'm just as much alive as the average police officer/soldier and have just as much a right to protect my life, too.

Is a ban on certain types of firearms "reasonable?" Again this is another question of the equality between the agents of government and the people they supposedly serve but now in regards to the level of weapons technology. History shows that when two peoples have come into contact with each other, regardless of the disparity in the sizes of population, the group with the better weapons ends up annihilating or decimating and enslaving the less advanced civilization. The earliest gun control laws in America were in place to keep the slaves from fighting for and gaining their freedom. This situation only ensures the victory of the agents of government over the people and does nothing to make life any safer.

Is complete registration of all firearms "reasonable?" The usual justification for this is it's what the government forces people to do with their automobiles but remember this is only done to collect taxes on automobiles that people intend to operate on the public roadways and not for those motor vehicles kept at the homestead and only driven on private property. Registration is supposed to make it easier to trace a firearm back to its "rightful" (read "registered") owner but that's only if a firearm is left at the scene of a crime and the police find it. And like automobiles, firearms can be stolen and then used in crimes or used in crimes and the owner reports them stolen. What registration really does is give our benevolent government officials an inventory to look for when they get around to confiscating all firearms in the hands of non-government personnel. We merely need to study History again and see that confiscation always follows registration which is sold to the public as a crime control measure (ever wonder why History is not a top priority subject in the government schools?).

Is the licensing of all gun owners "reasonable?" Again the usual example of this is what the government does with people who drive cars but this analogy falls apart, too, because the driver's license only applies to the operation of a motor vehicle on the public roadways and not the ownership of the automobile being used. Many people have a driver's license who do not own a car and many own motor vehicles who don't have driver's licenses and you don't have to have a government-issued driver's license to drive on private property. The government, through its judicial branch, refuses to allow itself to be held responsible for the actions of any person licensed by it no matter the apparent incompetence of the licensee to engage in the licensed activity and the licensing of drivers was sold to the public as way to eliminate fatal automobile accidents (oops...). Licensing, like registration, only gives the government a nice list of persons and homes to begin with when they choose to confiscate all the guns in private hands.

Here we see that what our benevolent government officials consider "reasonable" is usually meant to give them and their minions the advantage and control over the governed. So are there any reasonable measures that might be of some use in preventing the misuse of firearms? I've come up with two.

I'm sure everyone can agree that children (nine years and under) and juveniles (10 to 17 years) shouldn't have unrestricted access to firearms. It is the position of authority and responsibility of a parent to decide when it is the right time for their child to exercise that child's right to keep and bear arms. The government shouldn't outlaw the possession of firearms by young people but only prohibit adults who are not the child's parent or guardian from providing, in any form or fashion, firearms to children without the consent and knowledge of the child's parent(s). Also I believe that most people will agree that we don't want firearms in the hands of persons who are mentally incompetent but I wouldn't leave it to the government to decide who is incompetent and who isn't (I think a lot of our politicians would qualify). History shows us once again that benevolent government officials like to use the power to diagnose psychiatric/psychological disorders to quash political opponents (the former USSR is a good example) so I would leave this decision up to the affected person's family. The government can affirm the family's decision through the due process of law in a court of competent jurisdiction. The power for both of these situations is not left to the government but to that basic building block of human civilization and good social order, the family.

We can see that most "reasonable" measures recommended by the government are usually designed to secure itself from any threat, foreign and domestic, and since it has all the pens and ink it needs to write the laws, it will probably get the "reasonable" restrictions it wants. We can argue and protest but we must resolve to resist at all costs when it comes to our lives and our liberty. One last note for those who might be sent to collect my weapons at some point in the future. When you step across the spent brass on the floor in my home and pry my gun from my cold, dead hands, mind the barrel. It will be red-hot and you might burn your fingers on it...

* For further reading I would like to recommend The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong and Straight Shooting: Firearms, Economics, and Public Policy both by John R. Lott, Jr.

All We Have To Fear...

2009-06-08T09:08:00.004-05:00

Throughout history more nations have gone to War against other nations under the control of the emotion of fear than they have for anger or vengeance. Man always seems to find it easier to destroy that which He fears through His ignorance than to build bridges of understanding with His fellow Man. The secret to getting someone to not attack you is not to prove that he has more to fear if he does but that he has less to fear if he doesn't...

Why Do We Need Licenses?

2009-06-04T21:19:00.001-05:00

You need a license to operate a motor vehicle on a public roadway. You need a license to enter into a marriage that the government will recognize. You need a license to enter into some professions or occupations. Why, even your dog needs a license to be allowed to live in some jurisdictions. But what is the real reason that the government requires everyone to get a license?

The government always likes to tell us that it is for our own good and it just wants to protect us from all those dangerous people out there who would endanger us all by engaging in licensed activities without a license. Interesting then that for a lot of licenses one must obtain from the government the main qualification is the ability to pay a fee.

When we hire an unlicensed person to perform a service for us (a plumber, for instance) if he causes us harm or loss while he does the job then we can file criminal charges if his actions were intentional or file a lawsuit if his actions were the result of negligence or indifference. If the person is licensed, we are usually restricted to filing a complaint with the licensing agency who will judge our complaint based on the ratio of dissatisfied customers to satisfied customers and the licensee is the party responsible for supplying the information on how many customers were satisfied (meaning basically that the other customers didn't file a complaint).

The quickest way to understand that no one is protected by government licensing is to try to sue the government for the behavior of a person it has licensed. The government will argue that it is only responsible for making sure the licensee is qualified for the license at the moment the license is issued/renewed and it will take no responsibility for his behavior afterwards. Therefore if the government will admit that a license does not insure that a person is competent for that activity he has received a license to engage in, then who really benefits from licensing?

The quick answer is the licensee, particularly in reference to professions and occupations. Licensed professionals are always the first to complain to the government about unlicensed persons engaging in their line of work. Due to licensing requirements, the number of persons who can enter the work force of a particular industry or service are restricted and when something is restricted the price of that object rises. Licensees can charge more for their labor because the amount of competition is reduced which is the real reason they are so quick to report unlicensed persons to the government.

In Colorado Springs, Colorado, an enterprising mother of school-age children tried to turn her "Mom's Taxi" into a money-making machine by offering a service where she would pick up students at their schools and then transport them to their after-school activities for a fee. One of the local cab companies complained to the city's cab and taxi licensing board that she was operating a taxi service without a license and the board agreed. She had to stop her business and was then allowed to apply for a license but one of the requirements was that she had to prove the city's economy could support another taxi service. Since she had already been running a business without the license, I believe that part was self-evident and if she kept running her business while one of the others went belly up, I believe she would have proved she was more competent at satisfying her customers...

Anarchism 101

2009-06-02T19:34:00.004-05:00

Anarchism - the theory that all forms of government interfere unjustly with individual liberty and should be replaced by the voluntary association of cooperative groups (Webster's New World Dictionary).

Recently some persons that shall remain nameless (though you know who you are) poked some good-natured fun at my preference for Anarchy. They used the term anarchy as a synonym for violent chaos which as one can see from further exploration in Webster's that this is a popular connotation for the word but the word anarchy at its root merely means the absence of government and law and not necessarily the absence of good social order. The world can "suffer" peace without having any interference from benevolent government officials and at times can become even the more violent because of government intervention into simple neighborly disputes that could have otherwise been worked out by the individuals involved.

Most of us live our everyday lives in a state of anarchy. Those of us who carry concealed handguns walk amongst an unsuspecting population with the capability of causing the death of a large number of people. That we do not go berserk and shoot up some rude salesclerk has more to do with our personal moral code (or the fact that the target might also be armed) than it does that it is against the law to do so. Most recent mass murders by lone crazed gunmen have such a high number of victims because the government decreed that the victims should be disarmed and incapable of defending themselves. The laws against murder never stopped anyone bent on committing it.

The first question that people ask of proponents of anarchism is if there is no government, who will take care of [insert "essential" government-provided service here]? This is one of those questions that is best answered by asking another question. Who is in charge of making sure that your local grocery store has the products that you want on hand when you show up to shop there? Who is in charge of making sure that some young person wants to go to medical school so that years later there is a doctor in the Emergency Room when you have need of one? Who was in charge of making sure the house you live in was built in the first place?

All these services are provided by private individuals who have decided to serve you in order to make their living. If they fail at providing the service you want at the quality you demand, then you fire them by no longer doing business with them until they improve. You can't expect this much from any service the government provides since you generally have no power to fire them and the government always gets its fee from you in the form of taxes. The government can also pass laws that gives it the monopoly over some industries and businesses, including the business of passing laws, with no concern for keeping you, the customer, satisfied. Just compare at how things work at Fed-Ex and UPS over the quality of service provided by the U.S. Postal Service, which has a monopoly over handling the mail because the Federal government says so.

In the last few years, people who believe as I do have been given a bad reputation mostly from a group of individuals who are self-described and also labeled by the government as anarchists. Now these folks do want to overthrow a government by violent means but then they want to replace it with one of their own that abolishes private property rights and is usually of Marxist leaning. It would be more correct to call these people, "Communist Revolutionaries." It is ironic that when their homes are raided by police officers holding search warrants, they complain of their property-rights not being respected.

As George Washington said, "Government is force; like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." As some people would strive to eliminate all weapons so that man, supposedly, could not harm himself or his fellow man, I strive to eliminate government which has proved itself to be the most deadly weapon ever devised. But I'm an easily contented man (some might call me lazy but that's only because they are not as easily contented as I am) and I accept just about any degree of shrinkage when it comes to Leviathan. If you work with me in this endeavor, even if you believe in limited government, then we have more to unite us than to separate us...

* For further reading, I would like to recommend Market Anarchy Explained: "But Who Will Build The Roads?" by Francois Tremblay.

Another Bumper Sticker I Want To See...

2009-05-27T10:12:00.003-05:00

To accuse me of being a racist bigot
just because I'm White
proves we have a racist bigot among us
but it's not me!

A Parable

2009-05-26T09:58:00.007-05:00

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;
persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
By order of the author."
Mark Twain's warning to readers of Huckleberry Finn

The New Shovel

A long time ago in a faraway land, shortly after the last Great Melting, there lived a man named Sard. Sard was a simple farmer and lived a happy life with his loving wife and their six daughters. As was his custom from time to time, Sard was on the path beside the creek walking towards the village at the other end of the valley to trade some wares since he was in need of a new shovel.

Sard looked up the side of the hill on his right and saw his neighbor and the neighbor's sons picking up stones in front of their home. They were piling them into a large heap just beside the goat pen. Sard's neighbor, Corth, was a goat herder, which was probably the best use one could find for the rocky and steep piece of land Corth had inherited from his wife's father.

"Hallooooo neighbor!" Sard shouted.

"Hallo back to your kind self!" answered Corth wiping the sweat from his brow as he took a break from his work. "And how are you on this fine day in the Greening Season?"

"Well and fit, fit and well, indeed. I'm headed into the village to see if I can trade for a new shovel as my old one finally gave out. Want to join me for the walk? I could use the company."

"Sorry no, I can't as my wife has been nagging me for weeks to get this job done and I don't want to disappoint her. I have a new shovel if you want to borrow it but I'll need it back real soon so I can finish here."

"Thank you, neighbor. Let me see if I can get one in the village first, and if not I'll borrow yours." With that Sard continued his journey down the path towards the village.

As soon as he got to the village, Sard went straight to the toolmaker's shop. "Greetings kind brother Sard," said Gaun the toolmaker with a big smile. "How might I be of service to you this fine day?"

"You are indeed the best toolmaker in the country, Gaun," said Sard, "as the last shovel you made for me lasted four harvests but I guess all good things must come to an end and I am in need of another."

"And that was two seasons more than I guaranteed," Gaun boasted, "but alas, I am all out of shovels at the moment. Your neighbor, Corth, got my last one and I won't have any supplies to make another for at least two or three days. But I'll rush one together for you as soon as I can."

"Well, that's how my luck goes sometimes," Sard said while shaking his head. "I saw Corth on the way here and he told me he had a new shovel I could borrow but I had to get it back to him as soon as possible so that he could finish something for his wife."

"What was he working on?" asked Gaun.

"I'm not sure," answered Sard. "He and his boys - and those are getting to be some big boys - were picking up all the stones in the yard beside their house and piling them up beside their goat pen."

"Piling up stones?!? That sounds suspicious."

Sard and Gaun turned to see who had spoken and there stood Flav. Flav was the mostly self-appointed night watchman for the village; at least that was the excuse he gave for sleeping through most of the day, but some villagers had to question this since they had been awakened some times at night by Flav's snoring. He also had a disagreeable odor about him that led some people to give him the nickname, "Flav the Flatulent."

"Uh-huh? And how is that suspicious, Flav?" asked Sard with a degree of impatience. Flav was not one of Sard's favorite persons.

"Something the Old Wise One said once," grunted Flav. "Let's go ask him and I'll...I mean, he will tell you."

"Oh why not?" Sard taunted Flav. "You might as well come too, Gaun. This could get interesting."

"Indeed," chuckled Gaun as he threw his apron upon his workbench and followed the two men to the Temple. At the Temple the Old Wise One was engaged in a council meeting but he took a second to hear Flav's report.

"And you saw Corth gathering stones at his place, Sard?" asked the Old Wise One.

"Well, yes, but I'm sure it's noth..."

"He's preparing to attack!" growled the Old Wise One, cutting off Sard.

"Attack? Attack who?" Sard asked with disbelief.

"Why possibly you, Sard, since you live closest to him," answered the Old Wise One. "Then he may have plans for the whole village. That man is not one of us. He comes from the valley to the west."

"But his wife is one of us," Sard quickly inserted. "Corth married her and moved here with her to help her father in his last days. After the old man passed on, Corth took over the farm and he and his boys have worked hard to make it a success. Quite well, in fact. What makes you think he wants to attack anyone?"

"The Holy Writings," the Old Wise One said sternly. "The Book of Elaph says when a man is gathering stones he is preparing to attack."

"Wait, I know that verse," said Sard. "It says 'Wise is the man who gathers stones in preparation should he BE attacked' not 'to attack' like you said." Sard saw the Old Wise One was staring at him in way that could surely melt rock and the other men had less than friendly looks on their faces.

"So the Lord of all the universe has granted Sard the gift of interpreting the Holy Writings, has he now?" scowled the Old Wise One.

"My apologies, Old Wise One, but I was just say..."

"Enough!" ordered the Old Wise One. "Flav, gather a War Council immediately. We must deal with Corth before he has much more time to prepare his assault upon us. Sard, you will stay by my side so I can keep an eye on you...to ensure your safety, of course." At this the village men made the necessary preparations to attack Corth's place first thing at dawn.

Sard felt dizzy at the way things were transpiring faster than he could think. Before he knew it, he was standing beside the Old Wise One on the hill behind Corth's home watching the village war party surround the house. At the first hint of light, there was a shout and the men rushed into the house. With some screaming from Corth's wife and the sound of a few sickening thuds, it was all over in a few seconds. Sard followed the Old Wise One down the hill and saw the bodies of Corth and his family laid out like so much garbage in the front yard. The men were patting each other on the back and congratulating themselves on the completion of another successful mission.

"Well done, men," said the Old Wise One. "You have all surely eliminated this threat to our very way of life."

Sard walked over the body of his neighbor and stood looking down upon the carnage.

"...why...?" came a quiet rasping from what remained of the body of Corth.

"Corth is still alive!" shouted Flav as he grabbed for his warclub.

"...why did you attack us...?" asked Corth in a hoarse whisper.

"Brother Sard warned us of your treachery and we 'threw the first punch' so to speak before you had a chance to attack us like you were obviously planning," pronounced the Old Wise One.

"I only told them I had seen you and your sons picking up the rocks," Sard quickly explained while nodding his head in the direction of the pile. As he knelt beside Corth he asked "Why Corth,... why were you gathering stones?"

Corth took as deep a breath as his broken ribcage would allow, "...a garden...I promised my wife I would help her plant a vegetable garden...we were clearing the plot when you walked by, neighbor..."

"And can you explain why you piled the rocks over there if not to prepare to attack?" demanded the Old Wise One.

"...wolves...the wolves had been bothering the goats...we were going to throw them at the wolves when they came around...'Wise is the man who gathers st...st...stones'...," and with that Corth breathed his last.

Sard rose to his feet and turned to face the other men. Some of them were beginning to have uneasy looks on their faces.

"The blasphemous fool!" spoke the Old Wise One.

"What?!?" Sard asked incredulously, forgetting for a moment that he was surrounded by heavily armed men.

"He was blatantly preparing to go to war against us all, including you, Sard, and then he has the gall to tell that lie just before he goes to meet his maker. He will surely be doomed to an eternity in Hell for that," pronounced the Old Wise One. "Leave their bodies where they lie as a sacrifice to the Gods and let the birds fill their bellies. You men have done a fine job at protecting your families and our village. Do not ever forget that. You all may take a share of Corth's belongings as long as you remember your tithes to the Temple. Flav, make sure that Sard gets something since he warned us of Corth's plans," and with that the Old Wise One headed back to the village.

"All right, men," said Flav while rubbing his greedy little hands, "let's start splitting the booty. Sard, I'll let you have first choice. What do you want?"

Sard took a moment to clear his head and solemnly said, "Corth has...had a new shovel. I have need of it. Give it to me."

"You mean this?" asked Flav holding up the shovel. "I mean its a fine shovel and all but are you sure you don't wan..."

"Give me the DAMN shovel!" demanded Sard.

"Alright, alright, you don't have to get in such a huff," replied Flav and he threw the shovel at Sard's feet. "Come on, guys, and let's hurry back to show everyone what we got for a hard night's work." The men hurried back to the village carrying their loot and laughing and guffawing the whole way.

Sard found himself alone in the yard in front of the house. Now that it was full daylight he could see the plot that Corth had staked out for his wife's garden. Sard bent over and picked up the shovel and hefted it in his hands. It was indeed of fine craftsmanship. He walked over to where the garden was to go and shoved the spade into the dark earth so that it stood by itself.

It was fast becoming a warm day, so Sard removed his cloak and then also his tunic. He tore his tunic into long strips of cloth which he used to bound his hands to protect them from the blistering work he was about to do. Sard grabbed his new shovel once more and, with the sun beating down of his bare back and tears welling in his eyes, he began the long tedious task of digging four graves...

* For further reading I would like to recommend War Is A Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier by General Smedley D. Butler, USMC. Along with Amazon, General Butler's book is also available online for free at www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm.

A Reflection For Memorial Day

2009-05-25T09:27:00.010-05:00

One of our local politicians, State Representative Ralph Sheffield, put an ad in the Temple Daily Telegram (Temple, Texas) for his restaurant in which he added a note to honor soldiers who were killed in combat. In his little prose he stated that soldiers "give" us our rights, "protect" our rights, and are the ones who "allow" us to exercise our rights. His philosophy turns the principle of Natural Law on which this country was founded on its head.

Beyond our parents who give us life, there are no humans who give us our Rights. If you are a theist then it is a god or supreme being who gives them to you and if you're not then you get them "Naturally" once you outgrow the parasitic stage of life (birth through puberty). If humans give them to you then humans can take them away and if they can be taken away then they are not Rights. They are yours and you need only exercise them to claim them.

The only person who can protect your Rights is you and you do that by exercising your rights through all forms of adversity that others might inflict upon you to get you to cease and desist. No one can take a Right away but they can try to suppress you in your exercise of it. Others may band with you to fight this oppression but the ultimate responsibility rests with you.

Now the term "allow" was a bit ironic since historically it has been soldiers who have been doing most of the dirty work when it comes to oppressing people in the exercise of their Natural Rights. If you must or are required to pay homage to the person who allows you to exercise your Rights then you are no longer free and are instead a slave to that person.

The practice of calling all soldiers and other military personnel "heroes" is also a little disturbing. A hero is someone who saves another person's life and a "real" hero is someone who risked their own life to save someone else. Soldiers have plenty of opportunities on the battlefield to become heroes but they don't become heroes just by enlisting to be a soldier. If we use something, like the label "hero," too often we cheapen its real meaning and weaken its appeal even when it really does apply.

The way for a soldier to achieve true greatness is that once the "War" is over and he (or she) has won the blessings of Liberty for himself and his posterity, he should return home and lay down his arms, hang up his tattered uniform in some dark closet, put the past behind him, and get on with the task of living life as a free individual in a peaceful society.

Let's take a moment today to thank those veterans who have achieved true greatness and take an extra moment to remember those who died in pursuit of that goal. Let us also resolve to not allow the foolishness that has cost so many people their lives and good health to ever be repeated in our lives as long as we have the power to stop it...

What Is Fascism?

2009-05-23T12:55:00.006-05:00

Imagine for a moment that you own a business (if you already do then it will require less work on your part). You enjoy the privilege of making all the management decisions and you accept the responsibility for those decisions no matter how they work out. Your main job is to satisfy your customers for without them you don't have a business. You provide a service or commodity they want at a price they are willing to pay. You do your best to keep expenses down and income high for the difference between the two - profit or loss - is what you need to survive in our modern world.

Now imagine that one day a police officer shows up and says that a few customers, or persons who thought they might want to be customers except they disagree with the way you run your business, have complained. You tell the officer that these folks are not forced to do business with you and they are free to go to your competition if it makes them happier. The officer informs you that he will start making all management decisions about your business from now on and if you fail to comply he will place you under arrest for "disobeying a police officer." You resign yourself to your fate and hope for the best.

The officer knows nothing about running your business or how to satisfy your customers and seems to make most of his decisions based more on who he can cozy up to at your expense than on any particular management style. Eventually he runs off all your regular customers and leaves you with a new batch that make out better on each deal with your business than your business does. In the end you have to give up. You let all your employees go and as you close the place down and turn off the lights you tell the officer that this is all his fault. He shrugs his shoulders and says it was your business so its your fault. He suggests that you should have done a better job of managing it. This is Fascism.

When the government takes over the management of private businesses, either through passing laws or by investing regulatory bodies with the power to rule by self-manifested decrees, and do not accept the consequences for poor management skill and leave profit and, more likely, loss to be absorbed by the owners then we have Fascism. With Minimum Wage Laws, Gas Mileage requirements for automakers, Smoking Bans, and assorted other rules and regulations setting standards for all sorts of services and items available on the market, the U.S. government has been experimenting with Fascism for some time now and will probably continue to do so long into the future.

Now some people, most notably the occasionally humorous political commentator Bill Maher, believe that Fascism is when the corporations (read "Big Business") run the government and they are to a very small degree potentially correct. Some very large corporations can "hire" politicians (oh say it isn't so...) who will write regulatory laws that control the industries these corporations are involved in. The large corporations will publicly make some complaints about government interference in their business but will easily comply with the new regulations since their legal team is usually the group who wrote them. Smaller competitors will not be able to absorb the cost of compliance and will have to go out of business leaving the large corporations with a monopoly on their portion of the market. This could be considered the dark side of capitalism but it still isn't possible without the powerful entity of government to make it happen.

Fascism is one of the more oppressive forms of government and is another case of a minority living at the expense of the majority. The best synonym would be "theft" and to end this form of criminal enterprise we have to get rid of its number one weapon: the force of government. Man serves himself and his neighbor best when he is free to make all his own decisions...

I Would Like To Propose An Amendment

2009-05-22T09:48:00.005-05:00

In a recent column I alluded to the fact that the U.S. Constitution is a weak document when it comes to restraining the central government from growing into an oppressive oligarchy. The best analogy is that of a brahma bull being led on a dog leash by a small child; you better believe that the bull is going to make all the decisions about which direction they're going.

In the first place the Constitution does not really limit the power and scope of the federal government. It gives the government a few specific duties and delegates the authority necessary to get the job done but it does not stop it from taking on more power for itself when some of the People call for the government to handle problems that are not within its original mandates.

Secondly, unlike many modern statutes and penal codes, the Constitution contains no definitions of the terms used within it. What is a "Militia?" Who are the "People?" When is a person a "citizen?" Now just about anyone can get a hold of a modern printing of an 18th century dictionary and get a good idea of what the founders meant by the words they used but the federal government took it upon itself, through the judiciary branch, to explain to the rest of us what they think the founders meant which sometimes seems to defy all particulars of applied logic. "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."

But probably the worst aspect is that the Constitution fails to provide for any penalties for those persons who are elected to positions established by the Constitution and after swearing an oath to "preserve, protect and defend" it, go and violate the Constitution. Time after time, a bill is passed by Congress and signed into law by the President which is applied to the people who are punished for doing in large part what comes natural for them to do. A convicted party then enters an appeal to the Supreme Court, which may take longer than the rest of his life to be heard, and may eventually be vindicated by the court finding the law to have been un-Constitutional in its very construct. Nothing happens to those elected officials who came up with this disaster except to maybe watch their pet project go down in flames.

These officials once showed some respect for the restraint placed on them by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. When Congress wanted to outlaw the private ownership of machine-guns, they knew that would be in violation of the Second Amendment so they decided to heavily tax the purchase of such weapons to the point of ludicrous inconvenience (define "infringed") rather than impose an outright ban. When Congress wanted to restrict the people's right to choose what they could put in their bodies, they knew the Constitution gave them no such authority so they changed the Constitution the only way authorized by it; they added the 18th Amendment and created the catastrophe known as "Prohibition" (the 18th was later repealed by the 21st Amendment). With the archaic "War on (some) Drugs" and all the gun-control laws passed since the "Decade of the Assassin" (1960's), we can see that all pretense of restraint has gone with the wind.

Therefore, I would like to propose another Amendment to the Constitution. When an elected official suggests, proposes, or enters a bill to bring about a law that is clearly un-Constitutional on its face, anyone within earshot or who has a chance to read the document in question can call for a motion to have that official impeached immediately. With normal parliamentary procedure, there will have to be a second, and then a vote by all persons present with a show of hands as to determine the Constitutional standing of the proposal and the guilt of the person who made it. If a majority (50% plus one) determines that the proposed law is in fact un-Constitutional, then the person determined to have made it is sent home - directly home, do not pass "Go," do not collect $200,000,000 in retirement and other benefits. The governor of the State that the official is from can appoint another until such time as an election can be held. This will also apply to those benevolent government officials who voted for or signed into law something that is later overturned by the Supreme Court on the same grounds.

Now I haven't worked out all the details yet and I can see some room for abuse if this proposed Amendment ever became part of the Constitution but I think there will be some reluctance to use it as much as there is a reluctance to use nuclear weapons. There is an aspect of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) if anyone ever tries to abuse this power to eliminate political opponents. It will certainly give those officials that take their oaths lightly a reason to pause for a second and think before they act...

* For further reading I would like to recommend Who Killed The Constitution: The Fate of American Liberty from World War 1 to George W. Bush by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. and Kevin R. C. Gutzman.

Unemployment and the Price of Apples

2009-05-21T19:53:00.003-05:00

Imagine for a moment you are the owner of a small apple orchard. It isn't your main occupation but you make a little extra money at it to pay for some things around the old homestead. In years past you've simply sold your apples on the side of the road in front of your place but that has always been a little troublesome, particularly when the weather was disagreeable. You've heard of a new "Farmers' Market" that you want to try. They have a paved lot that keeps you out of the mud when it rains, the stands are already built with electrical outlets, and there are clean restrooms on site.

The owner/manager of the market charges you based on a percentage of your total sales; if you don't sell anything, you don't have to pay anything. But there is one catch. You have to sell your apples at a certain minimum price. You can sell them for higher than that price but at no time can you sell them for less. Since the price is greater that anything you ever gotten for your apples before you are quite agreeable to these terms and set up your shop.

Now there are plenty of folks walking around the market and looking but no one seems to want to buy your apples. When an older couple walks up, you ask them how many pounds would they like you to bag up for them. They mention they would like to buy two pounds but ask if you can come down on the price. You explain the rule about the price and they say they will just have to wait till the price comes down.

You continue to sit out in the warm Autumn sun and you notice that some of your apples are beginning to spoil. Then you see two guys in a pick-up truck parked just outside the fence of the market with a sign that says they are selling apples at a price half that of what you must charge and there is the old couple buying from these guys what appears to be four pounds. You complain to the owner about these guys and he calls the police who forces them to move their truck or be arrested for some parking violation. And you continue to sit. And your apples continue to spoil.

There is women who has a stand across the aisle from you who sells apple pies and other fruit-flavored baked goods. Thinking you might be able to make a quick deal, you approach her to see if she wants to buy any of your apples. She says she buys her apples at another orchard on the other side of town because they are a lot less expensive than yours. You mention to her that she has to drive a long distance to get there and you are closer but she responds that even with the transportation costs, she saves money by buying from the other orchard. She explains that if she had to buy apples at your price, she would have to raise the price on her apple pies and then she would lose customers. So you return to your stand and have a seat. And your apples continue to spoil.

When man defies the Law of Gravity there can be significant penalties if he makes a mistake. The Economic Law of the Market Price is as immutable as the Law of Gravity and carries the same inherent risks when man begins to interfere with it. Though the price for any individual item is determined solely between the buyer and the seller as they both determine what is beneficial for each of them and only for that exact moment of time when they reach a decision, the general rules of Supply and Demand help influence the Market Price over a longer period for a whole commodity that is placed on the open market. This is basic Economics for anyone who has been through high school but the basics always bear repeating so that everyone is on the same sheet of music.

When Demand is high and the Supply of a marketable good is what might be considered normal, the price will invariably go up. When the Supply is high and Demand is normal, or dropping, the Market Price will go down. When there is a Price Floor at which a good cannot be sold beneath, if it is below the Market Price then it does not have any influence and becomes an ineffectual curiosity. If it is above the Market Price, as in our example, it becomes a hindrance to buyers wanting to make a purchase and leaves sellers with an unsold surplus. When the commodity is apples, this means rotting fruit sitting in the baskets. When the commodity is labor, this means Unemployment.

The Federal government of these United States has a Minimum Wage law that many politicians say is meant to help workers just starting their employment history to obtain a "living wage." The problem is that, like many marketable goods, workers come in different grades. We expect to pay more for premium than we do for regular gasoline and we expect to pay more for a brain surgeon than we do for the teenager we hire to mow our lawn. When the Minimum Wage is set at a level that is equal to the Market Price for an elevated grade of workers, those workers at lower grade levels due to a lack of education, training, or experience are not hired. In this fashion, the Minimum Wage law begins to punish those it is purported to help.

Those workers who are lucky enough to have a job and receive a wage increase because of an increase in the U.S. Minimum Wage may have a moment of euphoria when they seem to be getting ahead but after an expected lag, since the costs of production, transportation, distribution, and merchandising of all goods has been raised across the board, the cost of living will eventually match the increase in pay so everyone is back where they started. The Minimum Wage Law is also a factor in inducing those who want to sell their labor to immigrate to this country, illegally if necessary, so they can make more here than they did in their homeland, even if they accept less than the "legal" minimum. It also contributes to driving those who purchase labor to look outside the U.S. for a better price so that they can keep their costs of production down so as to keep their American customers who demand low prices (Always) satisfied.

Politicians can always gather more votes by promising to hold a gun to employers' heads to force them to pay people more than they might be worth to the individual employer and since taxes are based on a percentage of wages, the more one earns the more one pays which always give politician more money to spend on their pet projects. Also having masses of the chronically unemployed leaves a large pool for the government to recruit from to find persons who will "volunteer" to serve the government in a military capacity.

Now for the bad news/good news scenario. The Republicans promise to consider raising the Minimum Wage but not as high as the Democrats. The worse news is that the Democrats promise to raise the Minimum Wage. The worst news is that the Minimum Wage is going to be raised when our country needs for it to quietly go away the most. In the future, people will begin to accept wages under the table and well below the minimum just so they can earn an honest living. The good news about that is when one works off the books, one doesn't have to pay any Income Tax.

So the next time that one of your Liberal Progressive or Compassionate Neoconservative friends tells you that the Minimum Wage helps the poor, look them straight in the eye and tell them you think they need more fiber in their diet and apples are a good source of fiber...

* For further reading, I would like to recommend Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises or for something a little lighter, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics by Henry Hazlitt.

If the Second Amendment was Repealed, What Happens to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms?

2009-05-20T14:40:00.006-05:00

This is another article I wrote for a friend who posted it on his Blog, "A Keyboard and a .45." I've posted it here for your reading pleasure. It was written before the last Presidential election...

Hey, want to win a quick bet with one of your friends or, even more fun, with one of your in-laws? Ask them to show you where in the U.S. Constitution that the Supreme Court is designated the final arbiter in deciding what is "Constitutional" and what is not. Oh, you're not sure yourself? Well, go look it up and I'll wait.

Back already? Find it? That's okay because the reason you didn't find it is because it isn't in there. In a case that came before it, Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court gave itself the power to question the Constitutionality of the statutes that particular case was filed under and for all government actions in the future through a process known as Judicial Review. So after that the government, or at least one branch, would decide how much power the government could have and, unfortunately, how much liberty could be taken from the people when they got in the way of the government exercising that power. This is like the coaching staff of the home team working as the umpires and referees during the game. If you're on the visiting team, don't expect a quick and easy victory.

Now one of the first points we must come to a common understanding of is this: Government does not actually exist outside the abstract concept in Man's mind. When everybody, and I as the author of this article, refer to government as a physical entity, we are referring to a group of people who have chosen to rule over others. It is the struggle between these two groups of humans - the governed "We The People" and the governing - that has shaped most of history. Judge Andrew Napolitano in his book Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When The Government Breaks Its Own Laws describes this conflict as:

"The positivist (government people) would say since the government gives freedom, the government can take it away. The Natural Law says only God gives freedom and the government can only take it away as a punishment for violating the Natural Law, and then only through due process.

To a positivist, the government's goal is to bring about the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people. Under the Natural Law, the only legitimate goal of government is to secure liberty, which is the freedom to obey one's own free will and conscience, rather that the free wills or consciences of others."

The Constitution was a contract of sorts between these two parties where the central government was given a few distinct duties and the authority was granted to perform these tasks. In return the people would obey a few laws that protected one citizen from being abused by another. All other powers, liberties, and rights were reserved to the people and their representatives, the separate States. But it seems some people, if you don't give them a specific list of things they can't do, will always stretch out for more power and that is where the doctrine of "implied powers" grew. There has been a cold war brewing ever since the beginning which has sometimes boiled hot and the Supreme Court has been an accomplice to the government train of abuses the whole time. There have been a few token decisions protecting the people's rights but at a ratio of three steps down for every two steps up, one can find one's way from the top floor to the basement in no time.

The recent Heller case showed that even though the Court affirmed that the rights protected by the 2nd Amendment belong to the individual citizen, they found the D.C. handgun ban was unconstitutional because it was "unreasonable" and not necessarily because it "infringed" as the 2nd Amendment is worded. Gun-control fanatics immediately picked up on this choice of language and they are working on the possibility that the District could impose a partial ban that is practically as effective at disarming the populace as a full ban that future courts might find reasonable. The other interesting argument they put forward is that the District is not part of the U.S. and is not bound to obey the Constitution (and you thought the secession issue had been settled). The Court has often allowed unconstitutional measures and actions by government agents as long as the actions were "necessary," "expedient," or "reasonable." Figuratively speaking, a reasonable man could go ahead and have sex with a women over her expressed objections as long as he did so in a necessarily expedient fashion. I think it's still rape.

We are now engaged in that great quadrennial mud wrestling contest known as the Presidential Election and the two major parties are offering us a geriatric warmongering fascist who will spread American values at gunpoint around the world using the U.S. military and an amateur egalitarian communist who will use our tax dollars to alleviate poverty everywhere in the world except the United States. The usual third parties aren't offering anything much better. Because the next occupant of the White House will probably get to nominate at least one Justice to the Court, there is a lot of hand wringing over getting the right man in place so he can make the right choice. The missed point of this anxiety is that all the candidates are positivists and any nominee they propose to Congress will be the same. Remember that part I said earlier about being on the visiting team?

Since you exist in nature, you have a natural right to perpetuate that existence, and that includes protecting your life and health from those entities in nature that can destroy both. Amongst living creatures, man is on the losing side when it comes to natural weapons inherent in his physical makeup ("My, what large teeth you have, grandma.") so he has to build them from the natural resources available to him. The right to keep and bear arms is a right derived from nature and man has a natural right to own, carry, and use these arms, of whatever degree of advanced technology that he chooses, as long as he does not intentionally cause unnecessary direct and measurable harm to another. The 2nd Amendment only recognizes this right and does not confer it on the citizen but only establishes that the government will honor it as part of its contract with the people.

The government is already in "breach of contract" on so many other issues, it is most likely it will break its promise on this one as well, but since this a natural right it will still exist even if the government does not recognize it. If you want to have it all you have to do is exercise it. If you have been thinking about buying a firearm or other type weapon, then now is the time to do so and practice how to be effective with them. If you have all the weapons you think you'll ever need (yeah right, that's what you told your spouse) then are you stocked up on the supplies you will need for them? It does not take a Nostradamus to see that the cold war between the governing and the governed might soon become hot again and we all should be ready.

When the British government started to oppress the colonists, there was a lot of grumbling, a little vandalism (tea anyone?), and elected legislative bodies sent some sternly worded letters to King George and the Parliament but not much in the way of war. But on April 19, 1775 when the British Army was sent to Lexington and Concord to confiscate "illegal" arms and materiel belonging to local militias, the people fought back and "fired the shot heard 'round the world." If only that our generation should be so bold and so brave.

Oh, who did the framers intend to be the final judges on how the Constitution should interpreted? Though they are not specifically listed for that purpose, one can peruse the collected works and writings of the founding fathers and see that the ones they chose to handle that job are mentioned in the document. The first three words, in fact...

* For further reading I would like to recommend along with Constitutional Chaos, Judge Napolitano's other two books, The Constitution in Exile and A Nation of Sheep. Also I would suggest reading The Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton and Hamilton's Curse by Thomas J. DiLorenzo.

Another Bumper Sticker I Want To See...

2009-05-18T11:06:00.002-05:00

I would rather have a smart shooter
with a dumb gun
than a "Smart Gun"
in the hands of an idiot!

Institutional Infantilization

2009-05-16T21:33:00.004-05:00

A bunch of college students have gotten themselves in trouble lately by abusing their credit cards. Not all college students, mind you. Not even a majority of them. But Congress believes it must step in to protect all these young people from themselves and those nasty, predatory credit card companies that seem to be dead set on ensnaring these youngsters into a lifetime of paying off debt. If these "children" would just learn to read contracts and control their purchasing impulses there would be a lot less of a problem to begin with.

This is just another case of how the members of Congress seem to consider that all we regular citizens are a bunch of idiotic infants and they must take care of us. Of course, by taking care of everybody instead of letting them grow up and take responsibility for their own lives they extend childhood and induce the spread of rampant immaturity. I consider this a form of Institutional Infantilization. Any grown-up knows that forcing children to do something is easier (most of the time) than trying to force independent-minded adults so it would be easier for our benevolent government officials if we were all, at least emotionally and mentally, a bunch of helpless babies (if all humans are idiotic infants, where do the members of Congress come from?).

There is also a great deal of hypocrisy in this whole matter on the actions of Congress. In the recent past, high school administrators and college boards of regents at the request and behest of the parents of students in their care, tried to ban a real group of predators that would try to influence the students into making a decision that could ruin their whole lives, if not drastically shorten them in a violent manner. I'm talking about military recruiters.

Members of Congress were incensed that anyone who had been charged with the care and protection of someone else's child would dare try to protect their young wards from military recruiters who would have unfettered access to influencing these inexperienced souls into making these life and death decisions. They threatened to remove any Federal funding and grants to such institutions and, desperately needing the money, these institutions broke down and allowed the recruiters back onto their respective campuses. One has to remember that when one becomes locked onto the teat of the Federal sow, she starts making all the decisions about where you're going and how far.

So the Federal government isn't really trying to protect our young people from a life of enslavement due to insurmountable debt. When it comes to enslaving people, the government is the expert. It's just trying to get rid of any competition...

On the Validity of Theories

2009-05-15T10:27:00.003-05:00

Have you all seen that new television show on the History Channel, "Life After People?" It's very interesting and gives me more evidence for a little theory I've been having fun with for some time. The show points out that if some cataclysmic event occurred that killed off every human being without destroying our buildings and other structures (a plague of some kind comes to mind) everything that modern man has built up over that last 2,000 years would all be nearly gone in about half that time and in 10,000 years there would be little evidence that man ever existed, at least at the level of technology we currently enjoy.

Now science has been teaching us for a while that the fossil record shows Man or man-like creatures have been inhabiting this planet for about 2 million years. Throughout that time the human species has faced extinction several times usually as the result of adverse climate change which is only fair since it was climate change that was detrimental to the survival of other species that made room for Man to flourish. Civilization as we know it took hold shortly after the end of the last Ice Age nearly 12,000 years ago. Many cultures throughout the world have myths and legends about men, usually Caucasians with blond, red, or white/grey hair, that came from the seas on ships and taught the nearly infantile primitive peoples the necessary essentials of agriculture and construction that would help them survive the warming climate. These men are often referred to as gods and some are even considered demons or devils based on one's theological opinion on the lessons they taught (the "Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge," anyone?). Some have postulated that these "gods" were in fact friendly aliens from outer space. In my theory, I suggest a more terrestrial source for these wise men.

Most of the advancement in technology which has led to our present pinnacle has occurred over the last 12,000 years and the majority of that occurred in the last 2,000 and the majority of that in the last 200. Some of us are still overwhelmed by what has happened in the last twenty. Man could certainly have reached today's level of technology sometime in the past but everything could have been destroyed by some tragic circumstance like, say an Ice Age or two. The evidence of all this past advanced civilization, just like the History Channel television show suggests, would have all been wiped away by the ebb and flow of the glaciers (some religious people might suggest a world-wide flood) and other natural forces of erosion and destruction. I think that a few surviving wise men from this civilization wandered the Earth passing along all their knowledge onto the primitive cultures that grew up from the children of the common people of that long ago time.

Now this is just a theory I like to have fun with. In the past I've written a few Science Fiction short-stories based on it but I don't hold enough validity to it to change the way I live my life and I certainly don't consider it justification for forcing others to change the way they live their lives. For a theory to have any air of legitimacy it must be able to predict. It should predict what might be found when the past is studied through examination of the fossil record, geological surveys, ice core samples, and even the written record of Man's history (my theory cheats by predicting that nothing will be found because it was all destroyed). It should be able to predict the results of laboratory experimentation and field studies. And it should predict what will occur in the future and a majority of these predictions must come true especially if anyone is going to stake his life on it.

There are a lot of theories out there these days that don't quite live up to this test of their validity and there are a lot of people who are trying to get everyone to change their way of living based on these weak theories. There are even a few people who are willing to use the force of law to kill those who don't make the necessary adjustments. When the adherents of these philosophies are presented with data with shows the faults of their theories, they choose to ignore the facts or even begin to change the data, instead of their theories, particularly when they present them and the policies they recommend based on them to the public and governing bodies. They always insist on quickly rushing ahead instead of allowing anyone to carefully examine the particulars which has always been the practice of charlatans and con men. The policies they promote are meant to save us all, they say, but are more likely to only continue to enrich the wealthy, increase the size and power of government, and force the not-so-rich and the poor to live shorter and even more miserable lives.

Of course all that conjecture is just another theory of mine and "the proof is in the pudding" as the old proverb goes. I've just got this sneaking suspicion that when this pudding is served we all going to be asking ourselves, "Is that chocolate or does the cat have diarrhea again?"

How To Really Improve The Public Schools

2009-05-14T10:06:00.004-05:00

This is an article I originally wrote for a friend that he published on his blog at A Keyboard and A .45. I have edited it for brevity by removing some outdated time-sensitive portions but the rest is posted for your reading pleasure.

I'm sure just about everyone has worked somewhere where there was an employee who was the boss' pet. This person was sometimes a relative of the boss. No matter how unproductive or how often he actually caused a loss for the company, he got to keep his job and get paid like everyone else on payday. Since this person always got his money, he had no reason to improve or otherwise do what was best to satisfy his customer, the boss. This is how most public schools operate.

Study after study keeps coming out about how the public schools are "failing the children" and some are graduating with "diplomas to nowhere" that the students can't even read. The usual response from administrators is that the study is faulty, that "our" schools are just fine, and you can continue to invest in "us." In other words, "Pay your taxes!" If they do in fact admit there is a problem, they will blame it on a lack of funding and always recommend that they receive more funding so they can fix the problem. In other words, "Pay your taxes!" My suggestion to permanently fix the problem is to take away the public schools' authority to tax and make them earn their money the old-fashioned way: By satisfying the customer.

In order to raise funds they will have to collect fees from those who actually use their services. If a parent/customer chooses not to send her child to the school, that school receives no money. When a business fails to accommodate its customers' wants and needs, it loses it customers. When the customers leave, they take their money with them. Without any funds coming in, a business usually goes out of business. The threat of starvation is as good a motivator as the desire for profit and will drive people to improve their service to others. This is what the public schools need and need badly.

When a parent sends her child, and her money, to a school she expects her child to receive an education and not an indoctrination in obedience and obeisance of the state. If the parent/customer thinks her child is not receiving the education she wants then she takes her child, and her money, out of the school and sends her child to another that gives her what she wants. If the first school wants her child and her money back they will have to do more to satisfy her. On a side note, there are always some people who can never be satisfied but under this program the schools can still improve. Whiners can be given a refund and told to take their silly problem and their children down the road. In this fashion, disruptive students who cause damage and commit crimes against other students can be permanently removed and never be a threat to good order again.

Want your child to have an education with a particular religious or socio-political leaning? Do you want your child to learn to play the violin along with the other basics? Do you want your child to be protected on the school grounds by trained and armed teachers or would you prefer they go to the school with big signs out front that declare this school is a "Gun-Free Zone" and nobody here is armed so as to protect us? Somebody somewhere will offer that to you at the price you can afford or you can choose to keep your money and educate your children the time-honored way of doing it yourself.

Many studies have shown that public schools spend more to educate their students then some prestigious private schools charge for tuition. This is because so many of them are top heavy with administrative bureaucracy. So as to turn a profit or at least break even and stay in business, these schools will have to streamline and get rid of some the deadwood cluttering the place.

Some politicians have suggested that public schools should be run like a business but since they are government agencies and can always depend on money collected at gunpoint, then they behave more like organized criminal enterprises than a business. Under the system I suggest then they can really be run with a priority of keeping the customer happy.

Will taking away their power to tax and making them dependent on customer payment not turn the public schools all into private schools? Yes and we will all be the better off for it. The children will get the education their parents want them to have and the schools will give the education the parents want if they want the parents' money. There will be no more arguing over required subjects, testing, or Evolution vs. Creation Science because the parents will choose where to send their children and by their paying the tuition, they will voice their approval of the school's curriculum.

Will this program ever see the light of day? I doubt it because there are powerful people who are becoming rich off the system as it currently works and they will fight tooth and nail to keep it the way it is. But I have taken the first step by writing this article and you have taken the next by reading it and hopefully this snowball can gain mass and momentum as it starts to roll downhill.

*For further reading on this subject, I would like to recommend The Underground History of American Education and Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto. For more information on giving your student a classical education at home I recommend The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise.

Unofficial Rules of the Road

2009-05-13T17:34:00.003-05:00

If you are the driver of the first vehicle in a line stopped at a red light it is your duty to keep an eye on the traffic signal and be prepared to move once the light turns green. If you fail in this regard then you have no right to complain when all of us waiting behind you begin to remind you of your responsibilty...loudly!