The following article was written by my dear friend Andrew Mikel. He is a true patriot, a real hero, and a soldier of Lord God Most High.
Tyrants who claim regal authority to rule over a kingdom cannot receive the conscientious subjection of Christians. a. Christians can no more submit for conscience sake to a tyrant who sits upon the throne (by God's providence) than they can submit for conscience sake to the beast (Rev. 13:1-8) or to Satan who both rule by God's providential will.
b. In fact, tyrants ought to be actively resisted for conscience sake by the following means: not granting to them conscientious subjection, not acknowledging them to be the ordinance of God, not honoring them as the minister of God to thee for good, disobeying their unlawful commands, testifying against their wicked rule, praying for the demise of their throne which is established upon wickedness, fleeing their wrath when necessary, and as a last resort revolting against their tyrannical rule when force is necessary for self-defence.
c. This is not sedition, treason, nor revolutionary anarchy, unless one is also willing to condemn the approved testimony of saints in biblical history and in extra-biblical history of these crimes (yea even willing to condemn God Himself for approving such civil resistance), for such a view of lawful resistance against tyrants is neither foreign to Scripture nor to our Christian forefathers.
d. Consider the following incidents of lawful resistance against tyrants in Scripture (this list could easily be multiplied so as to include many more examples, but this should suffice to demonstrate the biblical warrant of lawful resistance against tyrants).
(1) Abraham resisted the wicked alliance of kings who had conquered Sodom and Gomorrah, and did not acknowledge them to be "the minister of God" merely because they had gained a military power to rule (in God's providence), but rather Abraham defeated them and rescued Lot from their clutches (Gen. 14:13-16).
(2) Moses did not recognize Pharaoh as "the ordinance of God", but resisted his tyranny and delivered Israel from servitude in Egypt (Ex. 7-14).
(3) Judges such as Othniel (Judg. 3:8-11), Ehud (Judg. 3:12-30), Shamgar (Judg. 3:31), Deborah and Barak (Judg. 4), Gideon (Judg. 6-8), Jephthah (Judg.11-12), and Samson (Judg. 13-16) resisted tyrants who ruled over Israel rather than granting to them subjection for conscience sake.
(4) David did not subject himself for conscience sake to Absalom as a "higher power" to whom honor was due as "the ordinance of God", but resisted him even though Absalom had won the hearts of all the people of Israel and had gained military control of Israel (2 Sam. 16:15; 2 Sam. 18:6-8).
(5) Elijah did not honor Ahab as "the minister of God" for good, but resisted him by fleeing from him and his wicked queen (1 Kgs. 17:3; 1 Kgs. 19:3), and by taking the sword from the hands of Ahab so that he and the people slew the prophets of Baal (1 Kgs. 18:40).
(6) Elijah did not acknowledge the lawful authority of king Ahaziah to rule over Israel, for he resisted the king by not obeying the king's order to compear before him and even brought God's fiery judgment upon the representatives of Ahaziah's authority (2 Kgs. 1:9-13).
(7) Jehoiada did not subject himself for conscience sake to the tyrant Athaliah, but put her to death even though she accused all those who resisted her of treason (2 Chron. 23:12-15).
(8) God Himself resisted the idolatrous kings of Israel by not acknowledging them to be ministers whom He appointed (Hos. 8:4).
(9) Jesus instructed His disciples that when they were delivered up to gentile kings for Christ's sake, rather than acknowledging them to be "the ordinance of God", they were to testify against them (Mt. 10:18), and to flee their tyranny rather than submit to them for conscience sake (Mt. 10:23).
(10) God gives wings to the church to flee from the persecution which Satan brings against her by means of tyrannical civil and ecclesiastical government rather than commanding the church to render conscientious subjection to such tyranny (Rev. 12:14).
(11) "The prince of this world" (Jn. 14:30) is to be resisted by Christians (Jms. 4:7). If Satan (who grants power to wicked tyrants to rule) is to be resisted, should not tyrants who rule by Satan's wicked power also be resisted? If we cannot be subject for conscience sake to Satan, how can we be subject for conscience sake to those who rule by his power ? Semper Fi
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Prepare for Sticker Shock at Supermarket
While drinking my morning coffee and browsing the news. It was this article on Americans being prepared for sticker shock at the supermarket that caught my attention. The article like the majority of things proceeding from the mouths of the MSM is horse manure. Not that I disagree with the premise that food prices are about to skyrocket, what I disagree with are the reasons they give as to why. The thinking is illogical, and if I am nothing else I am a logical thinker. I enjoy doing logic puzzles in my spare time, when I am not reading, just so you know how this little brain operates.
So what is my problem with the reasoning of this article. First of all from the year 2000 - 2007 the worlds money supply doubled, yes doubled. We should take note this was before all the spending, bailouts and stimulus occuring after this period. This means an even larger increase in the money supply. You should notice the chart in the article showing the upward trend in food prices. You will notice at the beginning of the chart it is pretty much level, but it begins to rise upward as the money supply is increased. Now when money is printed at the astronomical rate it has been over the almost ten years, it has the effect to make your dollar worth less, this means it takes more dollars to buy something than it did before. This has to do with a very simple economic fact-the more scarce a thing the more valuable it is, the more abundant the cheaper it is. Paper money is over abundant, therefore it is cheap! Compare it to another currency today and look back a few years and you will see the loss of the dollars value.
Next the article states that the reason prices are going up is because we are recovering from a recession, while at the same time telling us that there is an"unemployment rate that's expected to linger near a three-decade high for at least another year." Now how does one know that they are in a recession or a depression? One of the major indicators is the unemployment rate. Notice the present rate is at a three decade high! Next you will notice that the reason food prices are going to rise according to the writer of this article is because "that's the reality of supply and demand in the global marketplace" and "in part, to growing demand from emerging markets like China and India and rising oil prices". Let us see if can translate this newspeak. Prices are going to soar because of the demand for food, especially in areas like China and India and because of rising oil prices. Did you get that? This makes sense with a greater demand for food we have more scarcity, which elevates the cost for food, oil is a factor in the production of food so this also makes sense. Unfortunately, what the article does not say is that prices will increase for Americans because Americans are demanding more food. In fact with unemployment at its highest rate in decades and being expected to stay there for some time Americans will buy less. This will be even more exasperated due to the devaluing of the dollar and the global demand for food commodities in places like China and India. Now the article says we are having a global food crises. I wonder why? While Americans will see the price of food soar, while they are buying less of it, Americans will continue to pay through taxation farmers not to farm (CRP). This of course artificially increases the cost of food by making food more scarce than it would naturally be if the government was not paying farmers NOT TO FARM!
So here is a brief summation of the article in plain old fashioned english. Americas economy is going down the toilet. We are in a depression but we will not experience deflation at the supermarket because China and India are doing well enough that they will demand enough of Americas food supply to make demand high while the loss of the dollars value will likewise cause the amount of dollars Americans will need to buy food to rise significantly (Inflation).
So what is my problem with the reasoning of this article. First of all from the year 2000 - 2007 the worlds money supply doubled, yes doubled. We should take note this was before all the spending, bailouts and stimulus occuring after this period. This means an even larger increase in the money supply. You should notice the chart in the article showing the upward trend in food prices. You will notice at the beginning of the chart it is pretty much level, but it begins to rise upward as the money supply is increased. Now when money is printed at the astronomical rate it has been over the almost ten years, it has the effect to make your dollar worth less, this means it takes more dollars to buy something than it did before. This has to do with a very simple economic fact-the more scarce a thing the more valuable it is, the more abundant the cheaper it is. Paper money is over abundant, therefore it is cheap! Compare it to another currency today and look back a few years and you will see the loss of the dollars value.
Next the article states that the reason prices are going up is because we are recovering from a recession, while at the same time telling us that there is an"unemployment rate that's expected to linger near a three-decade high for at least another year." Now how does one know that they are in a recession or a depression? One of the major indicators is the unemployment rate. Notice the present rate is at a three decade high! Next you will notice that the reason food prices are going to rise according to the writer of this article is because "that's the reality of supply and demand in the global marketplace" and "in part, to growing demand from emerging markets like China and India and rising oil prices". Let us see if can translate this newspeak. Prices are going to soar because of the demand for food, especially in areas like China and India and because of rising oil prices. Did you get that? This makes sense with a greater demand for food we have more scarcity, which elevates the cost for food, oil is a factor in the production of food so this also makes sense. Unfortunately, what the article does not say is that prices will increase for Americans because Americans are demanding more food. In fact with unemployment at its highest rate in decades and being expected to stay there for some time Americans will buy less. This will be even more exasperated due to the devaluing of the dollar and the global demand for food commodities in places like China and India. Now the article says we are having a global food crises. I wonder why? While Americans will see the price of food soar, while they are buying less of it, Americans will continue to pay through taxation farmers not to farm (CRP). This of course artificially increases the cost of food by making food more scarce than it would naturally be if the government was not paying farmers NOT TO FARM!
So here is a brief summation of the article in plain old fashioned english. Americas economy is going down the toilet. We are in a depression but we will not experience deflation at the supermarket because China and India are doing well enough that they will demand enough of Americas food supply to make demand high while the loss of the dollars value will likewise cause the amount of dollars Americans will need to buy food to rise significantly (Inflation).
Friday, July 24, 2009
Obama Care it's a Lemon
Obama turns health care focus to families, voters
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA?SITE=VTBEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Of course, we would expect no less. No good used car sales man would sell his lemon any other way than directly to the buyer. Obama’s Health care is just that a lemon! No! We cannot make lemonade out if it either. This lemon is rotten.
The biggest problem with healthcare is that government is already controlling a major portion of this industry. Surprise America, YOU DO NOT HAVE A FREE MARKET HEALTH CARE SYSTEM! We are just taking the next step, because government is not efficient at running anything, but very good at ruining things. All of its interference has led to a system that is of course failing, government is going to fix it, the problem is; it is the mess that government created. Government being a use of force, has little incentive to let loose of power once it has confiscated it, and it never admits that it in fact caused the problem in the first place! Our present health care crisis, if there is one, was caused precisely because of government interference, Medicaid and Medicare and 136, 000 pages of government rules and regulations upon the health care industry. That is more pages than even the all powerful IRS has which requires business and industry to hire full time legal staffs and accountants to deal with. So what is the answer! Get government out of healthcare! It is certainly not to hand them more power to screw up the system even worse than they already have, and add another 136, 000 pages!
The reason people are losing their health insurance should be obvious; “It’s the economy stupid”! The list of businesses that have closed their doors is rather long and it is growing, most people are insured through their employers. The best way to obtain insurance is through your employee, it is non taxable income, a free benefit, an added bonus! Those who purchase their own insurance have no such luxury. That is of course government policy at work as well. Those who are insured through their employer pay no tax on the amount paid for their health insurance. Those who buy their own insurance are taxed on their income with which they buy insurance. Such laws are unconstitutional, but hey what’s a piece of paper. I mean it is only the rule of law. If any one knows that laws are meant to broken, just ask those who are making them. Unlike ordinary Americans those who make Law are somehow now above it. Or are they?
That businesses are closing is quite simply because the government by interfering with the market has created an economic crisis through the Fed and its monetary policy as well as GSEs like Fannie and Freddie, which is much too lengthy to detail here. It is sufficient to say when the government takes money from one area and gives it to another; it is not creating any thing new it is merely taking something from one person what belongs to them and giving it to another to whom it does not belong. In the case of bail out and stimulus it takes it from the productive and working taxpayer and gives it to those who have failed and have proven themselves unable to compete in the free market, which means those who have performed well or done their jobs well are the losers, it penalizes the successful. They take scarce resources from one sector and allocate them to proven losers, or to government projects, which is always a proven loser!
Why government wants nationalized healthcare is really simple it is a way to confiscate more of your income, while pretending to give you something in return. Government is in fact broke; it can’t afford Medicaid or Medicare. Thus a new scheme or in reality an old one; take from the healthy productive sector to fund the unhealthy unproductive sector. The problem is this will ultimately lead to rationing. The free market rations but it is blind, no one is making value judgments. Under a centrally planned healthcare system men will ration. They will set criteria and place value on life.
Mr. Obama in his appeal to the people, the voters does what politicians do best he appeals to fear as his words display, “14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day” and "If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket," Yes that is what happens when the government causes inflation, that hidden tax which devalues the dollar. It means we pay more because our dollar buys less! Of course those who have their healthcare paid for by others, don’t think about the fact the resources are scarce; after all they aren’t paying the bill. Only those who pay for it-not government- understand that tough choices have to be made.
Now Mr. Obama wants us to believe that government can somehow afford to provide medical care to Americans better than they can themselves. To trust this would be ludicrous! I mean these are the same people who pay hundreds of dollars for a hammer or a toilet seat.
Obama is promising security and stability to you. The question we need to ask is at what cost?
How exactly is that, if Americans cannot afford it now? For some unknown reason people seem to forget who is providing for government in the first place. It is the productive; any one who makes a living that does not work for government and pays taxes. Now, when the government takes control it is not giving you a free service; for it cannot. Hospitals, clinics, equipment, doctors, nurses, housekeeping and maintenance all have to be paid, and pay for we will. But more important is the fact that by funding health care government will also take all the decisions concerning your healthcare out of your hands and put it into the hands of government agencies created for this purpose. These agencies bureaucracies are an addition to what we are already paying. Planning healthcare will require that government will have to make choices as to who will receive what, when and where. The very fact that as individuals we have to choose what is important concerning healthcare, what we can live with and without likewise reveals that government will be forced to make these same choices. Again we must ask; how will government allocate these scarce resources? What criteria will they use in determining who, what, when, where? Who will take and have priority under a government system. According to Mr. Obama the government, scientists and ethicists will decide. The government will ration healthcare according to standards set and fixed by government. Let us look to those who will be setting these standards. Mr. Holdren the new science tsar and what he promotes:
* Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
* The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
* Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
* People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
* A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force. Read the full article here: http://www.thecitizen.com/~citizen0/node/38012
Let us take a look Peter Singer the Princeton bioethics professor and philosopher. Mr. Singer like Mr. Holdren doesn’t quite view things like ordinary Americans do. He believes the government should ration health care, and that government and men like he are better able to judge which life has more value than another.
What are some of his criteria; “Governments implicitly place a dollar value on a human life when they decide how much is to be spent on health care programs and how much on other public goods that are not directed toward saving lives.” Now, I always felt that life was something that was beyond price; that was of infinite value. Mr. Singer does not believe in the sanctity of human life, it is a dead and outdated mode of thinking according to him.
“The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities.
I would think this depends on which one you are, and upon your loved ones. Of course Mr. Singer does not regard things in such a way. As a matter of fact, there is little which Mr. Singer believes or promotes that ordinary Americans could find any common ground on which they agreed with Mr. Singer.
“The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable”.
Excuse me Mr. Singer those of us who pay for their own healthcare in reality do apply rationing to the same. We have limited resources and we decide how to allocate the same. Mr. Singer wants the government to ration health care for all, and rather than the individual deciding, government will decide! The real problem here is that government should not be paying for health care at all!
You can read Mr. Singer’s defense of rationing healthcare here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1
“On the contrary, once we abandon those doctrines about the sanctity of human life that collapse as soon as they are questioned, it is the refusal to accept killing that, in some cases, is horrific.”
“Infants are sentient beings who are neither rational nor self- conscious. So if we turn to consider the infants in themselves, independently of the attitudes of their parents, since their species is not relevant to their moral status, the principles that govern the wrongness of killing non-human animals who are sentient but not rational or self-conscious must apply here too. As we saw, the most plausible arguments for attributing a right to life to a being apply only if there is some awareness of oneself as a being existing over time, or as a continuing mental self.”
http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1993----.htm
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0049.html
Mr Singer believes in infanticide, euthanasia for the disabled and elderly. Hmmm, this might make one think twice as to whether family and loved ones should be left with these decisions or government bureaucracies. Government run health care will remove these decisions from you and place them in the hands of those who have similar values to those quoted above.
Now that we have examined two very influential thinkers, who do you think should decide on where your scarce resources go? You or the government, those are your options. You make your own choices according to your worldview, or you allow others to make your choices for you. As far as what you spend, where, when, and how, you can bet that you will pay if you are productive under the government plan. If you are not productive, you might get some un-free care at the expense of someone else, but how long will the government pay for the unproductive at the expense and ire of the productive? Most certainly an appropriate value will be applied to you according to what government and men like Holdren and Singer feel your life is worth. Still sure you want government healthcare, if so you deserve it!
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA?SITE=VTBEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Of course, we would expect no less. No good used car sales man would sell his lemon any other way than directly to the buyer. Obama’s Health care is just that a lemon! No! We cannot make lemonade out if it either. This lemon is rotten.
The biggest problem with healthcare is that government is already controlling a major portion of this industry. Surprise America, YOU DO NOT HAVE A FREE MARKET HEALTH CARE SYSTEM! We are just taking the next step, because government is not efficient at running anything, but very good at ruining things. All of its interference has led to a system that is of course failing, government is going to fix it, the problem is; it is the mess that government created. Government being a use of force, has little incentive to let loose of power once it has confiscated it, and it never admits that it in fact caused the problem in the first place! Our present health care crisis, if there is one, was caused precisely because of government interference, Medicaid and Medicare and 136, 000 pages of government rules and regulations upon the health care industry. That is more pages than even the all powerful IRS has which requires business and industry to hire full time legal staffs and accountants to deal with. So what is the answer! Get government out of healthcare! It is certainly not to hand them more power to screw up the system even worse than they already have, and add another 136, 000 pages!
The reason people are losing their health insurance should be obvious; “It’s the economy stupid”! The list of businesses that have closed their doors is rather long and it is growing, most people are insured through their employers. The best way to obtain insurance is through your employee, it is non taxable income, a free benefit, an added bonus! Those who purchase their own insurance have no such luxury. That is of course government policy at work as well. Those who are insured through their employer pay no tax on the amount paid for their health insurance. Those who buy their own insurance are taxed on their income with which they buy insurance. Such laws are unconstitutional, but hey what’s a piece of paper. I mean it is only the rule of law. If any one knows that laws are meant to broken, just ask those who are making them. Unlike ordinary Americans those who make Law are somehow now above it. Or are they?
That businesses are closing is quite simply because the government by interfering with the market has created an economic crisis through the Fed and its monetary policy as well as GSEs like Fannie and Freddie, which is much too lengthy to detail here. It is sufficient to say when the government takes money from one area and gives it to another; it is not creating any thing new it is merely taking something from one person what belongs to them and giving it to another to whom it does not belong. In the case of bail out and stimulus it takes it from the productive and working taxpayer and gives it to those who have failed and have proven themselves unable to compete in the free market, which means those who have performed well or done their jobs well are the losers, it penalizes the successful. They take scarce resources from one sector and allocate them to proven losers, or to government projects, which is always a proven loser!
Why government wants nationalized healthcare is really simple it is a way to confiscate more of your income, while pretending to give you something in return. Government is in fact broke; it can’t afford Medicaid or Medicare. Thus a new scheme or in reality an old one; take from the healthy productive sector to fund the unhealthy unproductive sector. The problem is this will ultimately lead to rationing. The free market rations but it is blind, no one is making value judgments. Under a centrally planned healthcare system men will ration. They will set criteria and place value on life.
Mr. Obama in his appeal to the people, the voters does what politicians do best he appeals to fear as his words display, “14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day” and "If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket," Yes that is what happens when the government causes inflation, that hidden tax which devalues the dollar. It means we pay more because our dollar buys less! Of course those who have their healthcare paid for by others, don’t think about the fact the resources are scarce; after all they aren’t paying the bill. Only those who pay for it-not government- understand that tough choices have to be made.
Now Mr. Obama wants us to believe that government can somehow afford to provide medical care to Americans better than they can themselves. To trust this would be ludicrous! I mean these are the same people who pay hundreds of dollars for a hammer or a toilet seat.
Obama is promising security and stability to you. The question we need to ask is at what cost?
How exactly is that, if Americans cannot afford it now? For some unknown reason people seem to forget who is providing for government in the first place. It is the productive; any one who makes a living that does not work for government and pays taxes. Now, when the government takes control it is not giving you a free service; for it cannot. Hospitals, clinics, equipment, doctors, nurses, housekeeping and maintenance all have to be paid, and pay for we will. But more important is the fact that by funding health care government will also take all the decisions concerning your healthcare out of your hands and put it into the hands of government agencies created for this purpose. These agencies bureaucracies are an addition to what we are already paying. Planning healthcare will require that government will have to make choices as to who will receive what, when and where. The very fact that as individuals we have to choose what is important concerning healthcare, what we can live with and without likewise reveals that government will be forced to make these same choices. Again we must ask; how will government allocate these scarce resources? What criteria will they use in determining who, what, when, where? Who will take and have priority under a government system. According to Mr. Obama the government, scientists and ethicists will decide. The government will ration healthcare according to standards set and fixed by government. Let us look to those who will be setting these standards. Mr. Holdren the new science tsar and what he promotes:
* Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
* The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
* Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
* People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
* A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force. Read the full article here: http://www.thecitizen.com/~citizen0/node/38012
Let us take a look Peter Singer the Princeton bioethics professor and philosopher. Mr. Singer like Mr. Holdren doesn’t quite view things like ordinary Americans do. He believes the government should ration health care, and that government and men like he are better able to judge which life has more value than another.
What are some of his criteria; “Governments implicitly place a dollar value on a human life when they decide how much is to be spent on health care programs and how much on other public goods that are not directed toward saving lives.” Now, I always felt that life was something that was beyond price; that was of infinite value. Mr. Singer does not believe in the sanctity of human life, it is a dead and outdated mode of thinking according to him.
“The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities.
I would think this depends on which one you are, and upon your loved ones. Of course Mr. Singer does not regard things in such a way. As a matter of fact, there is little which Mr. Singer believes or promotes that ordinary Americans could find any common ground on which they agreed with Mr. Singer.
“The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable”.
Excuse me Mr. Singer those of us who pay for their own healthcare in reality do apply rationing to the same. We have limited resources and we decide how to allocate the same. Mr. Singer wants the government to ration health care for all, and rather than the individual deciding, government will decide! The real problem here is that government should not be paying for health care at all!
You can read Mr. Singer’s defense of rationing healthcare here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1
“On the contrary, once we abandon those doctrines about the sanctity of human life that collapse as soon as they are questioned, it is the refusal to accept killing that, in some cases, is horrific.”
“Infants are sentient beings who are neither rational nor self- conscious. So if we turn to consider the infants in themselves, independently of the attitudes of their parents, since their species is not relevant to their moral status, the principles that govern the wrongness of killing non-human animals who are sentient but not rational or self-conscious must apply here too. As we saw, the most plausible arguments for attributing a right to life to a being apply only if there is some awareness of oneself as a being existing over time, or as a continuing mental self.”
http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1993----.htm
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0049.html
Mr Singer believes in infanticide, euthanasia for the disabled and elderly. Hmmm, this might make one think twice as to whether family and loved ones should be left with these decisions or government bureaucracies. Government run health care will remove these decisions from you and place them in the hands of those who have similar values to those quoted above.
Now that we have examined two very influential thinkers, who do you think should decide on where your scarce resources go? You or the government, those are your options. You make your own choices according to your worldview, or you allow others to make your choices for you. As far as what you spend, where, when, and how, you can bet that you will pay if you are productive under the government plan. If you are not productive, you might get some un-free care at the expense of someone else, but how long will the government pay for the unproductive at the expense and ire of the productive? Most certainly an appropriate value will be applied to you according to what government and men like Holdren and Singer feel your life is worth. Still sure you want government healthcare, if so you deserve it!
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Just A Hobbit
Anyone who has read Tolkien’s, The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series knows Hobbits are just ordinary folk, who enjoy the simple things in life. They work, have gardens; and they love eating and gathering together with family and friends. They avoid all the confusion and power struggles of the world and its principalities, and for the most part they have no desire to leave the comforts and safety of the Shire and home.
That is until Sauron and the ring, both are incredibly evil. Sauron is the mastermind behind the ring, the ring is his means to control and enslave men and all the inhabitants of middle earth. Those places in allegiance with Sauron and under his power are dark and foreboding; they are the men of the east, the orcs and the like. The men of the west, the elves, the dwarves, cling to what remains of the areas not yet overcome by the darkness, although it is spreading and infiltrating the hearts of its great men.
Yet, it is not the great and mighty men which have the ability to destroy the ring, their greatness and ambition makes them especially vulnerable to the power of the ring. The heroes recognize their own weakness, and thus it is that Frodo with the support of Sam are entrusted with the almost insurmountable task of destroying the ring. This involves a long and perilous journey, one in which our heroes are often found longing for home and the simplicity of the Shire.
In the real world Sauron is the power of darkness, here in the West we call him the Devil and Satan and he is the adversary of men. The ring that binds them all is the system that we call government, it is unrestrained and unchecked and its goal and ambition is control of the whole world and the enslavement of its inhabitants. The men who have fallen under the sway of the ring are politicians, successful, wealthy, powerful, businessmen, professors and lawyers. They are ambitious and driven, they desire recognition and honor; they see themselves as higher, more intelligent, more enlightened, and more capable than ordinary humans. They do not recognize the evil of the ring; they see only the power and authority that it gives them, they are blinded to its very blackness and darkness, and the death and destruction it sows. They have lost the truth that life requires light, and that without it all living things die!
So what can a hobbit do? I am just a hobbit, I enjoy my simple life, my greatest joys and pleasures are found at home, and the work I do there, with family and friends, cooking and feeding the same, and in my garden. I am content at home in the shire. I have no desire for power, position or prestige. I have no yearning to control others or dictate the lives of others. I have my haven and am content there, but I am fully aware I can not force or control others to make them live it. Yet, I see the darkness and it is spreading, I see it in the hearts and minds of those who we have appointed as leaders, I see it in the system, I see the power of the ring and it is spreading and growing and encompassing the land, and its shadow is looming largely over the Shire.
So I ask again; what can a hobbit do to combat this darkness this evil that is spreading and threatening to destroy the Shire? Simple, foolish, not overly gifted, or extraordinary in any way, what can a hobbit do? Do we look to and depend upon the leaders, who because of their natures are especially vulnerable to the sway and hold of the ring? Can we use the power of the ring to gain control and force others to obey and live by what we believe is best? No, none of these will work. We must come out from the Shire and go off into the world and we must destroy the ring and its power, but we can not do this or achieve this alone, it will take many hobbit friends, for we will need to support and to sustain one another; for it is a long and perilous journey to the mountains and fires of Mordor. Yet, it is only we Hobbits who have the ability to resist the ring and its power, for in our hearts we only long for home, the simple things, and the bright light of day!
That is until Sauron and the ring, both are incredibly evil. Sauron is the mastermind behind the ring, the ring is his means to control and enslave men and all the inhabitants of middle earth. Those places in allegiance with Sauron and under his power are dark and foreboding; they are the men of the east, the orcs and the like. The men of the west, the elves, the dwarves, cling to what remains of the areas not yet overcome by the darkness, although it is spreading and infiltrating the hearts of its great men.
Yet, it is not the great and mighty men which have the ability to destroy the ring, their greatness and ambition makes them especially vulnerable to the power of the ring. The heroes recognize their own weakness, and thus it is that Frodo with the support of Sam are entrusted with the almost insurmountable task of destroying the ring. This involves a long and perilous journey, one in which our heroes are often found longing for home and the simplicity of the Shire.
In the real world Sauron is the power of darkness, here in the West we call him the Devil and Satan and he is the adversary of men. The ring that binds them all is the system that we call government, it is unrestrained and unchecked and its goal and ambition is control of the whole world and the enslavement of its inhabitants. The men who have fallen under the sway of the ring are politicians, successful, wealthy, powerful, businessmen, professors and lawyers. They are ambitious and driven, they desire recognition and honor; they see themselves as higher, more intelligent, more enlightened, and more capable than ordinary humans. They do not recognize the evil of the ring; they see only the power and authority that it gives them, they are blinded to its very blackness and darkness, and the death and destruction it sows. They have lost the truth that life requires light, and that without it all living things die!
So what can a hobbit do? I am just a hobbit, I enjoy my simple life, my greatest joys and pleasures are found at home, and the work I do there, with family and friends, cooking and feeding the same, and in my garden. I am content at home in the shire. I have no desire for power, position or prestige. I have no yearning to control others or dictate the lives of others. I have my haven and am content there, but I am fully aware I can not force or control others to make them live it. Yet, I see the darkness and it is spreading, I see it in the hearts and minds of those who we have appointed as leaders, I see it in the system, I see the power of the ring and it is spreading and growing and encompassing the land, and its shadow is looming largely over the Shire.
So I ask again; what can a hobbit do to combat this darkness this evil that is spreading and threatening to destroy the Shire? Simple, foolish, not overly gifted, or extraordinary in any way, what can a hobbit do? Do we look to and depend upon the leaders, who because of their natures are especially vulnerable to the sway and hold of the ring? Can we use the power of the ring to gain control and force others to obey and live by what we believe is best? No, none of these will work. We must come out from the Shire and go off into the world and we must destroy the ring and its power, but we can not do this or achieve this alone, it will take many hobbit friends, for we will need to support and to sustain one another; for it is a long and perilous journey to the mountains and fires of Mordor. Yet, it is only we Hobbits who have the ability to resist the ring and its power, for in our hearts we only long for home, the simple things, and the bright light of day!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Meltdown by Thomas E Woods Jr
I just finished reading meltdown. Great book, easy read! It gives a clear and concise explanation of our current economic crisis, and what caused it!
My favorite part of the book is as follows:"If spending on munitions really makes a country wealthy, the United States and Japan should do the following: Each should seek to build the most spectacular naval fleet in history, an enormous armada of gigantic, powerful, technologically advanced ships. The two fleets should meet in the Pacific. Naturally, since they would want to avoid the loss of life that accompanies war. all naval personnel would be evacuated from the ships. At this point the U.S. and Japan would sink each other's fleets. Then they could celebrate how much richer they had made themselves by devoting labor, steel, and countless other inputs to the production of things that would wind up at the bottom of the ocean."
I think we can take the point further and state that war does not bring prosperity, as real war is so much more destructive and involves the loss of human life and the creative potential of that life that can never be replaced as well as infrasructure and personal property that took years to acquire.
My next favorite is where he quotes Adam Smith (one of my personal favorites), on the diffference between consumptive expenditutre and productive expenditure. "A thousand ploughman consume fully as much corn and cloth in the course of a year as a regiment of soldiers. But the difference between the kinds of consumption is immense. The labor of the ploughman has, during the year, served to call into existence a quantity of property, which not only repays the corn and cloth which he has consumed, but repays it with a profit. The soldier on the other hand produces nothing. What he has consumed is gone, and in its place is left absolutely vacant. The country is the poorer for his consumption, to the full amount of what he has consumed. It is not the poorer, but the richer for what the ploughman has consumed, because during the time he was consuming it, he has reproduced what does more than replace it."
Obviously the soldier is just one type of consumptive expenditure, all government and those who work for the same would fall into this category.
My favorite part of the book is as follows:"If spending on munitions really makes a country wealthy, the United States and Japan should do the following: Each should seek to build the most spectacular naval fleet in history, an enormous armada of gigantic, powerful, technologically advanced ships. The two fleets should meet in the Pacific. Naturally, since they would want to avoid the loss of life that accompanies war. all naval personnel would be evacuated from the ships. At this point the U.S. and Japan would sink each other's fleets. Then they could celebrate how much richer they had made themselves by devoting labor, steel, and countless other inputs to the production of things that would wind up at the bottom of the ocean."
I think we can take the point further and state that war does not bring prosperity, as real war is so much more destructive and involves the loss of human life and the creative potential of that life that can never be replaced as well as infrasructure and personal property that took years to acquire.
My next favorite is where he quotes Adam Smith (one of my personal favorites), on the diffference between consumptive expenditutre and productive expenditure. "A thousand ploughman consume fully as much corn and cloth in the course of a year as a regiment of soldiers. But the difference between the kinds of consumption is immense. The labor of the ploughman has, during the year, served to call into existence a quantity of property, which not only repays the corn and cloth which he has consumed, but repays it with a profit. The soldier on the other hand produces nothing. What he has consumed is gone, and in its place is left absolutely vacant. The country is the poorer for his consumption, to the full amount of what he has consumed. It is not the poorer, but the richer for what the ploughman has consumed, because during the time he was consuming it, he has reproduced what does more than replace it."
Obviously the soldier is just one type of consumptive expenditure, all government and those who work for the same would fall into this category.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Your Primary Civic Duty – A Call to Action
The following quotes are from the book; "Human Action" by Ludwig Von Mises.
“All present-day political issues concern problems commonly called economic. All arguments advanced in contemporary discussion of social and public affairs deal with fundamental matters of praxeology and economics. Everybody’s mind is preoccupied with economic doctrines”……. “Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories”……….
“There is no means by which anyone can evade his personal responsibility. Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a self-appointed elite of supermen. In such vital matters blind reliance upon “experts” and uncritical acceptance of popular catchwords and prejudices is tantamount to the abandonment of self-determination and to yielding to other people’s domination. As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake”.
“Very few are capable of contributing any consequential idea to the body of economic thought. But all reasonable men are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty.”
Why is it our primary civic duty to familiarize ourselves with economic theory?
“The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last century have been built. It rests with men whether they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to take the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings, they will not annul economics; they will stamp out society and the human race.”
If you don’t know where to start I recommend reading
“Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt (183 pages)
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232
“Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell (396 pages)
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-3rd-Ed-Economy/dp/0465002609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241803091&sr=1-1
For more in depth study read FA Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig Von Mises.
“All present-day political issues concern problems commonly called economic. All arguments advanced in contemporary discussion of social and public affairs deal with fundamental matters of praxeology and economics. Everybody’s mind is preoccupied with economic doctrines”……. “Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories”……….
“There is no means by which anyone can evade his personal responsibility. Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a self-appointed elite of supermen. In such vital matters blind reliance upon “experts” and uncritical acceptance of popular catchwords and prejudices is tantamount to the abandonment of self-determination and to yielding to other people’s domination. As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake”.
“Very few are capable of contributing any consequential idea to the body of economic thought. But all reasonable men are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty.”
Why is it our primary civic duty to familiarize ourselves with economic theory?
“The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last century have been built. It rests with men whether they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to take the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings, they will not annul economics; they will stamp out society and the human race.”
If you don’t know where to start I recommend reading
“Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt (183 pages)
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232
“Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell (396 pages)
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-3rd-Ed-Economy/dp/0465002609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241803091&sr=1-1
For more in depth study read FA Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig Von Mises.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
The Communist Agenda
The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which the communist agenda has in fact been implemented in the United States of America.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx leads up to his ten point plan with some interesting communist goals. I will cover but a few.
“The abolition of the family”; Marx says that, “the bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its compliment vanishes (the absence of family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution), and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”
The divorce rate in America for first marriage, vs second or third marriage
50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.” http://www.divorcerate.org/
“Destroy the family, you destroy the country” Lenin
This is because the family is the biblical cornerstone of a free society. A biblical home is refuge, and a biblical family provides all its members with stability and security.
When this relationship is destroyed, the state steps up and becomes the paternal surrogate. Thus government evolves into the nanny state, the paternal caretaker of the people. When people are isolated from family and without the support and encouragement of it; it is much easier for them to be manipulated into becoming good and obedient slaves of the state.
Marx said; “You charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? “To this crime we plead guilty.” Marx’s defense of this crime is as follows; “The communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention and to rescue education from the ruling class”. Please note the ruling class is bourgeois parents.
This is similar to Plato’s Republic and most Utopian writings, which also sought to take children from parents at an early age and indoctrinate them for the good of the state.
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted”. (Lenin)
Here is the real reason for public education.
“Communists would introduce the community of woman”, this again may be found in Plato’s Republic. In summary, Marx say’s that this is in fact already the case, it is just not practiced openly; and that the communists seek to “release women from the current system of prostitution both public and private”. According to Marx; “the Bourgeois sees in their wife a mere instrument of production.” Under the communist system a women is expected to work outside of the home, as well in the home. Of course she is released from a great burden because the state now takes responsibility for the raising of children.
“In the course of two years Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe did more to emancipate women and to make their status equal to that of the “strong” sex than all the advanced, enlightened, “democratic” republics of the world did in the course of 130 years.” (Lenin)
“You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman”. (Lenin)
Marx states; “The communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationalities.”
“I don’t care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only the road to a World Revolution.” (Lenin)
They want a one world communist government!
“The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them.” (Lenin)
Again this is one world communist government.
“There are, besides, eternal truths such as freedom, justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore, acts in contradiction to all past historical experience”.
“Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.” (Lenin)
It should be noted that our Judeo- Christian heritage is no longer even acknowledged. The Ten Commandments have been removed from schools and courthouses across the land. Christians are called ignorant, uneducated, bigoted, and intolerant. I cannot but help but be reminded of the words of J.S. Mill; “Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either.”
We will now look at the “The Ten Point Plan”.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
The United States government owns 40% of all land in this country. Land taxation, land use controls, and a variety of other regulations, should be considered as steps in this direction as well. Then there is Fannie and Freddie a mix of government and private entities who have provided up to 80 % and not less than 50 % of mortgages for homes in the U.S. which include land, and then let us not forget the 850 billion dollar bailout and the purchase of preferred stock of the most prestigious financial institutions in the country. This means that the United States government now holds a great percentage of the citizen’s mortgages and the property that is defaulted on, by holding shares in the banks.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
This is in fact the current tax system in place in the United States.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
The estate tax, better known as death tax is a positive step in the abolition of rights of inheritance. The new president elect wants to increase this significantly.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
This is being done to those labeled terrorists by the United States government. Through laws such as the patriot act, and others that grant government unlimited power; under martial law the government could do just about anything. Then we have eminent domain laws which have been tending of late to have less and less regard for individual property rights. In Kelo vs City of New London, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of New London. See: http://civilliberty.about.com/od/freetradeopenmarkets/p/kelovlondon.html “In a scathing dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) condemned the ruling as a fundamental attack on property rights. Justice Thomas argued that any plan to forcibly transfer property from one private owner to another under eminent domain violates the Fifth Amendment's "public use" standard”.
Lastly we should add search and seizure that falls into the category of the so called “War on drugs” “Civil asset forfeiture often takes place without proof of the origins of the asset and without a conviction of anyone for wrongdoing” See: http://www.drugpolicy.org/law/searchandsei/
“We do not have time to play at “oppositions” at “conferences.” We will keep our political opponents... whether open or disguised as “nonparty,” in prison”. (Lenin)
The fact is the patriot act could be used against political opponents, or any group that government deemed.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
This began with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The capstone was set in place when the bail out bill was passed, despite the objection of over 80% of American citizens. The United States government by purchasing preferred stock is now an owner of what were once private commercial banks, how many and which ones, well they haven’t shared an abundance of information but we know that 290 billion of the 350 billion dollar allotment has already been spent, and we know Goldman Sachs got 10 billion. http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs95.html
“The surest way to destroy a nation is to debauch its currency” (Lenin)
This began with the Federal Reserve, and the bail out is the finishing touch.
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” (Lenin)
We are selling our national debt to communist countries, such as China.
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” (Lenin)
Fiat money is easy to inflate .Inflation is a hidden tax. Cap and Trade will mean a significant increase in taxes.
“One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers and the disarming of the bourgeois. (Lenin)
Saddling the middle class with the present expense of government, a trillion dollar bail out, and the current deficit of $9,855,940, 486 will certainly lead to the demise of the middle class.
“First ascertain exactly the position of the various capitalists, then control them, influence them by restricting or enlarging, facilitating or hindering their credits, and finally they can entirely determine their fate.” (Lenin)
I think foreign nations owning our government’s debt puts them in an excellent position to do this.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
In the area of communication there is the FCC, along with all their rules and regulations, and let us not forget PBS and NPR; and we need to include the fact the radio and television broadcasting stations must get a license from the government.
Transportation this would fall under the ICC, which leads to the DOT, and FAA. Then we have public transportation systems, such as trains, subways, and busses in various cities across the country, you know the ones that never make any money. Then there are all the licenses for planes, cars, trucks, busses, and planes, and let us be sure to include the one you have to have to drive anywhere. As of yet we are not required to have one to walk or ride a bicycle, but there are places which now require a helmet and pads to ride a bike.
“The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy’s cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this. (Lenin)
The passage of the so called fairness doctrine should eliminate true freedom of the press. Hate crime legislation is also dangerous especially when applied to speech.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
America has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, so many have gone overseas, its cheaper there. The government has now taken part of ownership of GM. It has begun and it will not end here. If the government builds cars as irresponsibly as they manage their budget, we should all be bankrupt in no time keeping them from going bankrupt, and if they are as efficient at is as any other government bureaucracy and agency, well we had all better stay off the roads, they will be a very dangerous place.
For waste land and soil, we have the Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, and the National Park Service and I am sure there is more.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
We have minimum wage laws, and we know how many mothers have been forced into the workplace to help their husbands make ends meet, if they are lucky enough to have one. But it seems to me the only ones obligated to work, are those with a work ethic, everyone else is subsidized by those with the work ethic. So if you don’t work, don’t worry the government takes from someone who does so you don’t have to, this is called security, a safety net. Then if you happen to be an executive or business owner in the class of Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs who makes poor and foolish business decisions that lead to your demise, don’t worry that foolish middle class with the work ethic they will bail you out too! Please understand bail outs are not for small or independent business. You fall in the work ethic category, middle class. Don’t take it too hard, the government wants to take care of you too, they have promised some good free stuff. Although, free means you have to pay for it, just sign over your soul on the dotted line.
I believe the industrial armies are the illegal immigrants government wants to give social security, free health care, and free education too. Yes, since they are giving it to them for free; you the work ethic group, get to pay for these too!
I think the idea is once they have us as low as we can go, they will then eliminate those who don’t work. I know that is how they do it in honest and open communist countries; by that time, we will see this is a relief.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
This goal might explain why there are so few family farms. The United States government hasn’t accomplished this yet. That they haven’t tends to show up in elections as red states and blue states.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
This was instituted in the 1920’s and we have accomplished much, we have continually become less literate, and somehow actually less intelligent, despite more dollars spent consecutively year after year. How one can become more educated, more time per day and year; and less literate and less intelligent makes one wonder if that wasn’t the purpose in the first place? See: http://education-portal.com/articles/Illiteracy:_The_Downfall_of_American_Society.html http://www.heritage.org/Research/Education/WM134.cfm
Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at who it is pointed. (Stalin)
Elimination of child factory labor, we have accomplished that and more. Children today do not even have to do chores, imagine that! To have them do so would be politically incorrect.
Some further quotes by Lenin relevant to this issue.
“A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.” (Lenin)
This can be answered by another quote; “One man with a gun controls one hundred without one.” (Lenin)
Thomas Jefferson’s advice; “For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security” and “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
“While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.” (Lenin)
Albert J. Nock describes this from a different vantage point “It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”
“The goal of socialism is communism.” (Lenin)
Socialism is a soft form of communism; it has all sorts of nice warm fuzzy sounding words; like free health care, free education, free college, and free retirement. Socialism is the stepping stone to communism, it is a time to get you acclimated, and adjusted so you will be quite well adapted to servitude. Think of it like putting a frog in a pan of water on the stove and gradually increasing the heat, he doesn’t even realize and never attempts to escape. Etienne De La Boetie describes it in this way, “The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.” Thomas Jefferson describes how a people enslave themselves as well, “Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” Thomas Jefferson
“We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.” (Lenin)
This is the period where they come drag you out of your bed in the middle of the night and kill you, it serves two purposes, it terrifies everyone so they will behave as they should, and gets rid of anyone who could in any way be a threat. A threat is anyone who is a non conformist! Remember sameness, fixed conformity is the equality of the Marxist philosophy!
“How many Americans will die bringing this to a reality? Hitler 14 Million, Lenin –Stalin 60 Million, Mao 78, 860,000.
“One death is a tragedy a million is a statistic” Joseph Stalin.
At this point, the communists will have achieved utopia, pure communism. Where; “Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stands.” (Marx) Society is the bee hive, and you are simply a bee, your entire being and purpose is to serve the almighty god of state, the Queen. Marx believed in social Darwinism, the evolving of society and man to the perfect state. It is difficult for me to see how man evolves here; I see regression, the return to those systems of government in which the majority of men were always enslaved. It is interesting that Marx in fact places man in his first stage at barbaric communism, he has man end in an enlightened type communism. A full circle, but this is in stark contrast to the Judeo- Christian worldview which is in fact linear. The utopia, of which Marx dreamed, his heaven on earth, will in reality end with utter and total darkness, an abyss and hell on earth, with the decaying rotting flesh of dead men. I for one hold to a worldview in direct opposition to that of Marx, and while I live and I have breath, I will be a light in the darkness; and the salt that preserves and keeps flesh from rot and decay. I will declare that I was created with liberty. I will declare to all who will hear that my God reigns; and he is not a God of Force, that he is in fact the very author of Liberty, that I have been redeemed, and that whoever the Son sets free is free indeed! I will be a peculiar people and I will not conform!
Be Of good Courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.
Psalms 31: 24
Wildsways
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx leads up to his ten point plan with some interesting communist goals. I will cover but a few.
“The abolition of the family”; Marx says that, “the bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its compliment vanishes (the absence of family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution), and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”
The divorce rate in America for first marriage, vs second or third marriage
50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.” http://www.divorcerate.org/
“Destroy the family, you destroy the country” Lenin
This is because the family is the biblical cornerstone of a free society. A biblical home is refuge, and a biblical family provides all its members with stability and security.
When this relationship is destroyed, the state steps up and becomes the paternal surrogate. Thus government evolves into the nanny state, the paternal caretaker of the people. When people are isolated from family and without the support and encouragement of it; it is much easier for them to be manipulated into becoming good and obedient slaves of the state.
Marx said; “You charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? “To this crime we plead guilty.” Marx’s defense of this crime is as follows; “The communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention and to rescue education from the ruling class”. Please note the ruling class is bourgeois parents.
This is similar to Plato’s Republic and most Utopian writings, which also sought to take children from parents at an early age and indoctrinate them for the good of the state.
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted”. (Lenin)
Here is the real reason for public education.
“Communists would introduce the community of woman”, this again may be found in Plato’s Republic. In summary, Marx say’s that this is in fact already the case, it is just not practiced openly; and that the communists seek to “release women from the current system of prostitution both public and private”. According to Marx; “the Bourgeois sees in their wife a mere instrument of production.” Under the communist system a women is expected to work outside of the home, as well in the home. Of course she is released from a great burden because the state now takes responsibility for the raising of children.
“In the course of two years Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe did more to emancipate women and to make their status equal to that of the “strong” sex than all the advanced, enlightened, “democratic” republics of the world did in the course of 130 years.” (Lenin)
“You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman”. (Lenin)
Marx states; “The communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationalities.”
“I don’t care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only the road to a World Revolution.” (Lenin)
They want a one world communist government!
“The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them.” (Lenin)
Again this is one world communist government.
“There are, besides, eternal truths such as freedom, justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore, acts in contradiction to all past historical experience”.
“Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.” (Lenin)
It should be noted that our Judeo- Christian heritage is no longer even acknowledged. The Ten Commandments have been removed from schools and courthouses across the land. Christians are called ignorant, uneducated, bigoted, and intolerant. I cannot but help but be reminded of the words of J.S. Mill; “Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either.”
We will now look at the “The Ten Point Plan”.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
The United States government owns 40% of all land in this country. Land taxation, land use controls, and a variety of other regulations, should be considered as steps in this direction as well. Then there is Fannie and Freddie a mix of government and private entities who have provided up to 80 % and not less than 50 % of mortgages for homes in the U.S. which include land, and then let us not forget the 850 billion dollar bailout and the purchase of preferred stock of the most prestigious financial institutions in the country. This means that the United States government now holds a great percentage of the citizen’s mortgages and the property that is defaulted on, by holding shares in the banks.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
This is in fact the current tax system in place in the United States.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
The estate tax, better known as death tax is a positive step in the abolition of rights of inheritance. The new president elect wants to increase this significantly.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
This is being done to those labeled terrorists by the United States government. Through laws such as the patriot act, and others that grant government unlimited power; under martial law the government could do just about anything. Then we have eminent domain laws which have been tending of late to have less and less regard for individual property rights. In Kelo vs City of New London, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of New London. See: http://civilliberty.about.com/od/freetradeopenmarkets/p/kelovlondon.html “In a scathing dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) condemned the ruling as a fundamental attack on property rights. Justice Thomas argued that any plan to forcibly transfer property from one private owner to another under eminent domain violates the Fifth Amendment's "public use" standard”.
Lastly we should add search and seizure that falls into the category of the so called “War on drugs” “Civil asset forfeiture often takes place without proof of the origins of the asset and without a conviction of anyone for wrongdoing” See: http://www.drugpolicy.org/law/searchandsei/
“We do not have time to play at “oppositions” at “conferences.” We will keep our political opponents... whether open or disguised as “nonparty,” in prison”. (Lenin)
The fact is the patriot act could be used against political opponents, or any group that government deemed.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
This began with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The capstone was set in place when the bail out bill was passed, despite the objection of over 80% of American citizens. The United States government by purchasing preferred stock is now an owner of what were once private commercial banks, how many and which ones, well they haven’t shared an abundance of information but we know that 290 billion of the 350 billion dollar allotment has already been spent, and we know Goldman Sachs got 10 billion. http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs95.html
“The surest way to destroy a nation is to debauch its currency” (Lenin)
This began with the Federal Reserve, and the bail out is the finishing touch.
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” (Lenin)
We are selling our national debt to communist countries, such as China.
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” (Lenin)
Fiat money is easy to inflate .Inflation is a hidden tax. Cap and Trade will mean a significant increase in taxes.
“One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers and the disarming of the bourgeois. (Lenin)
Saddling the middle class with the present expense of government, a trillion dollar bail out, and the current deficit of $9,855,940, 486 will certainly lead to the demise of the middle class.
“First ascertain exactly the position of the various capitalists, then control them, influence them by restricting or enlarging, facilitating or hindering their credits, and finally they can entirely determine their fate.” (Lenin)
I think foreign nations owning our government’s debt puts them in an excellent position to do this.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
In the area of communication there is the FCC, along with all their rules and regulations, and let us not forget PBS and NPR; and we need to include the fact the radio and television broadcasting stations must get a license from the government.
Transportation this would fall under the ICC, which leads to the DOT, and FAA. Then we have public transportation systems, such as trains, subways, and busses in various cities across the country, you know the ones that never make any money. Then there are all the licenses for planes, cars, trucks, busses, and planes, and let us be sure to include the one you have to have to drive anywhere. As of yet we are not required to have one to walk or ride a bicycle, but there are places which now require a helmet and pads to ride a bike.
“The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy’s cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this. (Lenin)
The passage of the so called fairness doctrine should eliminate true freedom of the press. Hate crime legislation is also dangerous especially when applied to speech.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
America has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, so many have gone overseas, its cheaper there. The government has now taken part of ownership of GM. It has begun and it will not end here. If the government builds cars as irresponsibly as they manage their budget, we should all be bankrupt in no time keeping them from going bankrupt, and if they are as efficient at is as any other government bureaucracy and agency, well we had all better stay off the roads, they will be a very dangerous place.
For waste land and soil, we have the Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, and the National Park Service and I am sure there is more.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
We have minimum wage laws, and we know how many mothers have been forced into the workplace to help their husbands make ends meet, if they are lucky enough to have one. But it seems to me the only ones obligated to work, are those with a work ethic, everyone else is subsidized by those with the work ethic. So if you don’t work, don’t worry the government takes from someone who does so you don’t have to, this is called security, a safety net. Then if you happen to be an executive or business owner in the class of Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs who makes poor and foolish business decisions that lead to your demise, don’t worry that foolish middle class with the work ethic they will bail you out too! Please understand bail outs are not for small or independent business. You fall in the work ethic category, middle class. Don’t take it too hard, the government wants to take care of you too, they have promised some good free stuff. Although, free means you have to pay for it, just sign over your soul on the dotted line.
I believe the industrial armies are the illegal immigrants government wants to give social security, free health care, and free education too. Yes, since they are giving it to them for free; you the work ethic group, get to pay for these too!
I think the idea is once they have us as low as we can go, they will then eliminate those who don’t work. I know that is how they do it in honest and open communist countries; by that time, we will see this is a relief.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
This goal might explain why there are so few family farms. The United States government hasn’t accomplished this yet. That they haven’t tends to show up in elections as red states and blue states.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
This was instituted in the 1920’s and we have accomplished much, we have continually become less literate, and somehow actually less intelligent, despite more dollars spent consecutively year after year. How one can become more educated, more time per day and year; and less literate and less intelligent makes one wonder if that wasn’t the purpose in the first place? See: http://education-portal.com/articles/Illiteracy:_The_Downfall_of_American_Society.html http://www.heritage.org/Research/Education/WM134.cfm
Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at who it is pointed. (Stalin)
Elimination of child factory labor, we have accomplished that and more. Children today do not even have to do chores, imagine that! To have them do so would be politically incorrect.
Some further quotes by Lenin relevant to this issue.
“A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.” (Lenin)
This can be answered by another quote; “One man with a gun controls one hundred without one.” (Lenin)
Thomas Jefferson’s advice; “For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security” and “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
“While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.” (Lenin)
Albert J. Nock describes this from a different vantage point “It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”
“The goal of socialism is communism.” (Lenin)
Socialism is a soft form of communism; it has all sorts of nice warm fuzzy sounding words; like free health care, free education, free college, and free retirement. Socialism is the stepping stone to communism, it is a time to get you acclimated, and adjusted so you will be quite well adapted to servitude. Think of it like putting a frog in a pan of water on the stove and gradually increasing the heat, he doesn’t even realize and never attempts to escape. Etienne De La Boetie describes it in this way, “The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.” Thomas Jefferson describes how a people enslave themselves as well, “Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” Thomas Jefferson
“We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.” (Lenin)
This is the period where they come drag you out of your bed in the middle of the night and kill you, it serves two purposes, it terrifies everyone so they will behave as they should, and gets rid of anyone who could in any way be a threat. A threat is anyone who is a non conformist! Remember sameness, fixed conformity is the equality of the Marxist philosophy!
“How many Americans will die bringing this to a reality? Hitler 14 Million, Lenin –Stalin 60 Million, Mao 78, 860,000.
“One death is a tragedy a million is a statistic” Joseph Stalin.
At this point, the communists will have achieved utopia, pure communism. Where; “Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stands.” (Marx) Society is the bee hive, and you are simply a bee, your entire being and purpose is to serve the almighty god of state, the Queen. Marx believed in social Darwinism, the evolving of society and man to the perfect state. It is difficult for me to see how man evolves here; I see regression, the return to those systems of government in which the majority of men were always enslaved. It is interesting that Marx in fact places man in his first stage at barbaric communism, he has man end in an enlightened type communism. A full circle, but this is in stark contrast to the Judeo- Christian worldview which is in fact linear. The utopia, of which Marx dreamed, his heaven on earth, will in reality end with utter and total darkness, an abyss and hell on earth, with the decaying rotting flesh of dead men. I for one hold to a worldview in direct opposition to that of Marx, and while I live and I have breath, I will be a light in the darkness; and the salt that preserves and keeps flesh from rot and decay. I will declare that I was created with liberty. I will declare to all who will hear that my God reigns; and he is not a God of Force, that he is in fact the very author of Liberty, that I have been redeemed, and that whoever the Son sets free is free indeed! I will be a peculiar people and I will not conform!
Be Of good Courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.
Psalms 31: 24
Wildsways
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Economic Freedom IT IS NOT FREE
I wonder how it is that leaders from all around the world can see what is wrong with the U.S. government and the economic policy it is instituting, but our elected officials are running as fast as they can, not looking back, in a race to see how fast they can destroy our free market system, and institute the very policies of our critics.
“Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.
http://www.therightperspective.org/putin-warns-us-about-socialsm/
“China warns over protectionism”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/4375697/WEF-2009-China-warns-over-protectionism.html
“Czech Premier Calls Obama Administration's Economic Policies 'a Road to hell” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/25/AR2009032502074.html
Now; “French President Nicolas Sarkozy says that the economic maelstrom that has captivated the world's attention for the last 17 months is "not a crisis of capitalism" but, in actuality, a breakdown of a system that has "drifted away from capitalism's most fundamental values."
http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk/sarkozy_capitalism/2009/04/02/198925.html
I read somewhere recently about a Cuban man telling two Americans about his plight in Cuba and how he came to the U.S. When one American says to the other; “We are so lucky”. The Cuban replies; “How are you lucky, you have no where to go.
Is it possible that all of these leaders speak from experience? After all they are all socialists/communists. It is frightening to think of a world where there is no individual liberty. You may believe that economic policy has little to do with the liberty of individuals, but I would say that the facts of history prove you wrong.
What our current as well as our past president, his administration and members of congress are promoting and legislating is economic freedom. What exactly is economic freedom? The promise by the majority of politicians to give us economic freedom can be translated accurately as the promise of economic security. Sounds nice either way, doesn’t it? But what does it really mean? How does one guarantee to another economic security? It means they take responsibility for you, it means they make decisions and choices for you. It means that you give them the power of your person, your will, your property, and in return they will make all the difficult decisions for you, so that you don’t have to be responsible, or bear the consequences of your choices, and in return they will guarantee that you are fed and have your basic needs met.
(A serf had economic security in return for 30% of his labor; a slave had economic security in return for 50 % of his labor. What are you currently paying for your economic security, with the federal tax, the state tax, the sales tax, the capital gains tax, and the property tax? http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts264.html )
They proponents of economic security/freedom promise an abundance of free things, from education, to health care, to roads, to job security. The big problem here is that everything they promise has a cost; it has a value (NOT FREE), and will require that in return for these free things that you will work and give all the fruits of your labor over to the authority-which is government. It requires your submission and subjection to their plan, to their purpose, to what in their judgment is not just best for you, but best for the whole, the authority, the state. In reality none of this is without a price, the only thing you will be freed from is making your own decisions and choices in life. Economic freedom is the very opposite of liberty. Economic freedom is freedom from personal responsibility and accountability, and the consequences of actions. It is a denial of our inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Happiness by the way is not an inalienable right, your inalienable right is your right to choose, make decisions, pursue, practice, work at, that which you believe will make you happy. In fact many choices you make in this life may lead you to unhappiness, but it is your right to go after what you believe will make you happy.
The recent behavior of wealthy men and powerful politicians has led to the ruin of our financial system. Rather than be responsible and accountable for their actions, and because they believe in economic freedom for themselves and for you, they are taking the fruits of your labor, the fruits of your children’s labor, and our future posterity’s labor, and are eliminating the consequences for their actions, choices, and decisions. Notice that it is you, your children and the futures children who are funding this. This reveals the truth that economic freedom is a fallacy and a lie! There are consequences for actions, and under a system of economic freedom, unlike the “natural system of Liberty-free market” where an individual is responsible and accountable for his actions where the few corrupt and foolish men bear the consequences of their own actions; we the people, the power that gives government its force will bear the staggering consequences of the actions of a few.
Liberty is not security, it is not safety, and it is never ever free. Liberty is being self controlling, self responsible and self accountable, it means willing to accept the consequences for your own actions.
Rose Wilder Lane wrote in the “Discovery of Freedom”; “Do you assume that this new world can not vanish? This world that your grandfather could not imagine, and that your children now take for granted, do you think that your grandchildren must surely inherit it? Do you imagine that the planes can not be grounded, the factories close, the radio be silent and the telephone dead and the cars rust and the trains stop? Do you suppose that darkness and cold and hunger and disease, that have never before been so defeated and that now are defeated only on this small part of the earth, can never again break in upon all human beings? Do not be so short-sighted. The energies of living individuals must constantly create these defences of human life and these extensions of human powers. Relinquish the free use of individual energies, and these defences must vanish as the Roman galleys vanished. This whole modern world must disappear as completely as the Saracens' swift, clean, healthy and luxurious world disappeared. Every effect ceases when its cause no longer operates.
This whole modern civilization, that is not fifty years old, that is not yet established on any large part of the earth, can cease to exist. It must cease to exist, if individual Americans forget the fact of individual liberty, and abandon the exercise of individual self-control and individual responsibility that creates this civilization.
Young Americans, who have known nothing but this new world, naturally take it for .granted. They see a great deal that is wrong in it; they can very easily imagine a better world. So can any honest person. The eternal hope of humankind is in the eternal human desire to make this world better than it is.
“But when they imagine that a control exists, or can exist, which can be used over individuals, to make a better world according to any plan, they are falling into the ancient delusion that Hitler now has. They are listening to European minded Americans who never have awakened from that delusion”.
http://www.mises.org/books/discovery.pdf
I believe all these leaders of the communist/socialist world see what the U.S. is doing and they like Mrs. Lane know exactly where it will lead not only us but the world. For those of you who doubt Mrs. Lane’s warning, let me share how my son’s wife’s family lives in Siberia- Russia, today. They do not own a car; they do not have indoor plumbing, or running water. They have an outhouse. They eat horse and dog. This is a country still trying to overcome the destruction of a communist system. Chinese people don’t buy Chinese goods Americans do, but they do escape over the border to Russia for just the hope to be free. France practices a soft socialism, but when the beacon of individual liberty is snuffed out, they will move forward to glorious communism. The little Czech Republic likewise trying to establish a system of liberty will once again be trampled under foot. Ordinary Americans will no longer know prosperity, and poor oppressed Americans will no longer be fat, and the homeless will not have cell phones.
“Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.
http://www.therightperspective.org/putin-warns-us-about-socialsm/
“China warns over protectionism”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/4375697/WEF-2009-China-warns-over-protectionism.html
“Czech Premier Calls Obama Administration's Economic Policies 'a Road to hell” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/25/AR2009032502074.html
Now; “French President Nicolas Sarkozy says that the economic maelstrom that has captivated the world's attention for the last 17 months is "not a crisis of capitalism" but, in actuality, a breakdown of a system that has "drifted away from capitalism's most fundamental values."
http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk/sarkozy_capitalism/2009/04/02/198925.html
I read somewhere recently about a Cuban man telling two Americans about his plight in Cuba and how he came to the U.S. When one American says to the other; “We are so lucky”. The Cuban replies; “How are you lucky, you have no where to go.
Is it possible that all of these leaders speak from experience? After all they are all socialists/communists. It is frightening to think of a world where there is no individual liberty. You may believe that economic policy has little to do with the liberty of individuals, but I would say that the facts of history prove you wrong.
What our current as well as our past president, his administration and members of congress are promoting and legislating is economic freedom. What exactly is economic freedom? The promise by the majority of politicians to give us economic freedom can be translated accurately as the promise of economic security. Sounds nice either way, doesn’t it? But what does it really mean? How does one guarantee to another economic security? It means they take responsibility for you, it means they make decisions and choices for you. It means that you give them the power of your person, your will, your property, and in return they will make all the difficult decisions for you, so that you don’t have to be responsible, or bear the consequences of your choices, and in return they will guarantee that you are fed and have your basic needs met.
(A serf had economic security in return for 30% of his labor; a slave had economic security in return for 50 % of his labor. What are you currently paying for your economic security, with the federal tax, the state tax, the sales tax, the capital gains tax, and the property tax? http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts264.html )
They proponents of economic security/freedom promise an abundance of free things, from education, to health care, to roads, to job security. The big problem here is that everything they promise has a cost; it has a value (NOT FREE), and will require that in return for these free things that you will work and give all the fruits of your labor over to the authority-which is government. It requires your submission and subjection to their plan, to their purpose, to what in their judgment is not just best for you, but best for the whole, the authority, the state. In reality none of this is without a price, the only thing you will be freed from is making your own decisions and choices in life. Economic freedom is the very opposite of liberty. Economic freedom is freedom from personal responsibility and accountability, and the consequences of actions. It is a denial of our inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Happiness by the way is not an inalienable right, your inalienable right is your right to choose, make decisions, pursue, practice, work at, that which you believe will make you happy. In fact many choices you make in this life may lead you to unhappiness, but it is your right to go after what you believe will make you happy.
The recent behavior of wealthy men and powerful politicians has led to the ruin of our financial system. Rather than be responsible and accountable for their actions, and because they believe in economic freedom for themselves and for you, they are taking the fruits of your labor, the fruits of your children’s labor, and our future posterity’s labor, and are eliminating the consequences for their actions, choices, and decisions. Notice that it is you, your children and the futures children who are funding this. This reveals the truth that economic freedom is a fallacy and a lie! There are consequences for actions, and under a system of economic freedom, unlike the “natural system of Liberty-free market” where an individual is responsible and accountable for his actions where the few corrupt and foolish men bear the consequences of their own actions; we the people, the power that gives government its force will bear the staggering consequences of the actions of a few.
Liberty is not security, it is not safety, and it is never ever free. Liberty is being self controlling, self responsible and self accountable, it means willing to accept the consequences for your own actions.
Rose Wilder Lane wrote in the “Discovery of Freedom”; “Do you assume that this new world can not vanish? This world that your grandfather could not imagine, and that your children now take for granted, do you think that your grandchildren must surely inherit it? Do you imagine that the planes can not be grounded, the factories close, the radio be silent and the telephone dead and the cars rust and the trains stop? Do you suppose that darkness and cold and hunger and disease, that have never before been so defeated and that now are defeated only on this small part of the earth, can never again break in upon all human beings? Do not be so short-sighted. The energies of living individuals must constantly create these defences of human life and these extensions of human powers. Relinquish the free use of individual energies, and these defences must vanish as the Roman galleys vanished. This whole modern world must disappear as completely as the Saracens' swift, clean, healthy and luxurious world disappeared. Every effect ceases when its cause no longer operates.
This whole modern civilization, that is not fifty years old, that is not yet established on any large part of the earth, can cease to exist. It must cease to exist, if individual Americans forget the fact of individual liberty, and abandon the exercise of individual self-control and individual responsibility that creates this civilization.
Young Americans, who have known nothing but this new world, naturally take it for .granted. They see a great deal that is wrong in it; they can very easily imagine a better world. So can any honest person. The eternal hope of humankind is in the eternal human desire to make this world better than it is.
“But when they imagine that a control exists, or can exist, which can be used over individuals, to make a better world according to any plan, they are falling into the ancient delusion that Hitler now has. They are listening to European minded Americans who never have awakened from that delusion”.
http://www.mises.org/books/discovery.pdf
I believe all these leaders of the communist/socialist world see what the U.S. is doing and they like Mrs. Lane know exactly where it will lead not only us but the world. For those of you who doubt Mrs. Lane’s warning, let me share how my son’s wife’s family lives in Siberia- Russia, today. They do not own a car; they do not have indoor plumbing, or running water. They have an outhouse. They eat horse and dog. This is a country still trying to overcome the destruction of a communist system. Chinese people don’t buy Chinese goods Americans do, but they do escape over the border to Russia for just the hope to be free. France practices a soft socialism, but when the beacon of individual liberty is snuffed out, they will move forward to glorious communism. The little Czech Republic likewise trying to establish a system of liberty will once again be trampled under foot. Ordinary Americans will no longer know prosperity, and poor oppressed Americans will no longer be fat, and the homeless will not have cell phones.
Giving Up Essential Liberty for an Illusion of Safety
Americans will never forget September 11, 2001. We watched in horror as commercial airliners were flown into the twin towers and the pentagon. The government has used our horror and our fear, and since that day, government has enacted the Patriot Act II http://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Terrorism_militias/patriot-act-II-analysis.php , it has empowered the federal government and the office of president in a way that would make Hitler and Stalin proud, and made the declaration of martial law as easy as the stroke of a pen, HSPD-20, NSPD-51
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/ED5OUPQJ7.DTL
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55825
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Representatives-Were-Threa-by-Patrick-Henningsen-081004-301.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=77860 ; and to top it off concentration camps have been built and prepared to enhance and compliment these laws.
Along with these fascist laws, I have seen pictures on the internet of thousands of plastic coffins http://www.infowars.com/?p=3462 , what exactly is their purpose?
http://www.fdrs.org/global_tyranny.html
http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=Quotes#Hubbard
http://burningbabylon.wordpress.com/category/quotes/
The United States government has since that time invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and just recently the military have entered into both Pakistan and Syria and attacked their people, they have threatened Russia, and are surrounding them with a missile defense system, in nations like Poland and Georgia.
How exactly does one declare war against terrorists? It is not as if they are a country, they are individuals dispersed in different sovereign countries. Yes, they may have groups, be a part of a group, they may even have a common religion. This is all beside the point. Did governments sponsor terrorists? We are told that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein did. I have to ask; who put these in power? Well the United States government did. Now we have gone to war and removed both from power. Is the war on terror over? Not at all, and according to the powers that be it will never be. Realistically, this can never be a real war, and it is a fantasy that all terrorists can be removed from the world. What it does mean is perpetual war and aggression against sovereign nations and innocent civilians, who might happen to have a terrorist within their borders. Now we didn’t like when a small group of terrorists flew planes into our buildings, and killed innocent civilians. Has anyone considered how these nations might feel and react to such violence perpetrated against them? It can only breed more violence, more acts of terrorism.
Now that we have sent drones into two more separate and sovereign countries (Syria and Pakistan), gone in and killed their innocent civilians, along with a possible terrorist, one must ask; how is this different than our own 9-11? I think these countries are justified in being more than a little angry at us. Now, as we are surrounding Russia in a missile shield, I can only wonder how the United States would respond to our coast lines being surrounded by Russian nuclear submarines.
The United States government is running around like a bully on the playground, but this isn’t a game, and we aren’t children, people are dying and people are being denied their rights. Nazi Germany had plenty of excuses for their invasions of sovereign nations as well. What is the US government going to come up with next? The thought police; maybe so, actually there are laws and laws being considered that would do just that. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HR_1955)
I do not recognize this America. What happened to individual rights, liberty? In the name of terrorism they have been trampled under foot.
I remember when I first read Adam Smith; “The Wealth of Nations” I learned much about war, armies, and government. War and standing armies, are costly and are never advantageous, it is always a drain, even victorious they can never benefit or repay the cost. The Iraq war is costing the American people, 341.4 million dollars a day. It is non productive, it is a depletion on capital, and productive labor.
This particular war on terror is more costly than that however, and more costly than any war we have ever fought before, it is in fact costing us our liberty. It is destroying our country, our constitution and the Rule of Law, with every law that is passed that contradicts and violates the constitution which is the rule of law. Unlike a war between sovereign nations it is not defined by borders, it cannot be pinpointed to a specific place. This is a war against individuals and therefore it is a war against you. The laws that are being passed violate the rights of individuals. Don’t tell me “they are keeping us safe”. This is foolishness. Hitler once said something like; “Isn’t it good the masses don’t think.” I would tell you to go read a book, the writing of the founders, history, but that might be too taxing for you. Just click here for a few quotes from the founders on the dangers of government and tyranny.
Wake up! You are marching along like children behind the Pied Piper. Hear me! Unstop your ears! Government is not your friend! Government is a destructive force, it is fire; and it is all consuming. When laws are being passed that violate the rule of law, government has grown too big, too powerful, it is no longer a servant of the people, it has become an enslaver of the people. It has become a tyrant. Think about this; I beg you. Liberty is noble, it is virtuous, it is worthy, why exchange it for the degradation of chains and slavery?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/ED5OUPQJ7.DTL
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55825
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Representatives-Were-Threa-by-Patrick-Henningsen-081004-301.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=77860 ; and to top it off concentration camps have been built and prepared to enhance and compliment these laws.
Along with these fascist laws, I have seen pictures on the internet of thousands of plastic coffins http://www.infowars.com/?p=3462 , what exactly is their purpose?
http://www.fdrs.org/global_tyranny.html
http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=Quotes#Hubbard
http://burningbabylon.wordpress.com/category/quotes/
The United States government has since that time invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and just recently the military have entered into both Pakistan and Syria and attacked their people, they have threatened Russia, and are surrounding them with a missile defense system, in nations like Poland and Georgia.
How exactly does one declare war against terrorists? It is not as if they are a country, they are individuals dispersed in different sovereign countries. Yes, they may have groups, be a part of a group, they may even have a common religion. This is all beside the point. Did governments sponsor terrorists? We are told that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein did. I have to ask; who put these in power? Well the United States government did. Now we have gone to war and removed both from power. Is the war on terror over? Not at all, and according to the powers that be it will never be. Realistically, this can never be a real war, and it is a fantasy that all terrorists can be removed from the world. What it does mean is perpetual war and aggression against sovereign nations and innocent civilians, who might happen to have a terrorist within their borders. Now we didn’t like when a small group of terrorists flew planes into our buildings, and killed innocent civilians. Has anyone considered how these nations might feel and react to such violence perpetrated against them? It can only breed more violence, more acts of terrorism.
Now that we have sent drones into two more separate and sovereign countries (Syria and Pakistan), gone in and killed their innocent civilians, along with a possible terrorist, one must ask; how is this different than our own 9-11? I think these countries are justified in being more than a little angry at us. Now, as we are surrounding Russia in a missile shield, I can only wonder how the United States would respond to our coast lines being surrounded by Russian nuclear submarines.
The United States government is running around like a bully on the playground, but this isn’t a game, and we aren’t children, people are dying and people are being denied their rights. Nazi Germany had plenty of excuses for their invasions of sovereign nations as well. What is the US government going to come up with next? The thought police; maybe so, actually there are laws and laws being considered that would do just that. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HR_1955)
I do not recognize this America. What happened to individual rights, liberty? In the name of terrorism they have been trampled under foot.
I remember when I first read Adam Smith; “The Wealth of Nations” I learned much about war, armies, and government. War and standing armies, are costly and are never advantageous, it is always a drain, even victorious they can never benefit or repay the cost. The Iraq war is costing the American people, 341.4 million dollars a day. It is non productive, it is a depletion on capital, and productive labor.
This particular war on terror is more costly than that however, and more costly than any war we have ever fought before, it is in fact costing us our liberty. It is destroying our country, our constitution and the Rule of Law, with every law that is passed that contradicts and violates the constitution which is the rule of law. Unlike a war between sovereign nations it is not defined by borders, it cannot be pinpointed to a specific place. This is a war against individuals and therefore it is a war against you. The laws that are being passed violate the rights of individuals. Don’t tell me “they are keeping us safe”. This is foolishness. Hitler once said something like; “Isn’t it good the masses don’t think.” I would tell you to go read a book, the writing of the founders, history, but that might be too taxing for you. Just click here for a few quotes from the founders on the dangers of government and tyranny.
Wake up! You are marching along like children behind the Pied Piper. Hear me! Unstop your ears! Government is not your friend! Government is a destructive force, it is fire; and it is all consuming. When laws are being passed that violate the rule of law, government has grown too big, too powerful, it is no longer a servant of the people, it has become an enslaver of the people. It has become a tyrant. Think about this; I beg you. Liberty is noble, it is virtuous, it is worthy, why exchange it for the degradation of chains and slavery?
The Purpose of Bailouts
What is money? If we look to history we will see that a wide variety of things have functioned as money. Shells, salt and a long list of various and differing things have been utilized at different places and different times. Our money today is nothing but paper. It isn’t in reality worth as much as plain paper, because it has already been used, written upon. Yet despite its real non-value, it represents value, or we can think of it as an IOU. This way if I have a cow and you a pair of shoes for sale, I don’t have to give you my whole cow for a pair of shoes that are only worth a few pounds of my cow. Money enables us to exchange and circulate goods.
At one time paper currency was redeemable for gold. Gold because of its scarcity always has value. Although even gold can be less costly when it is more abundant and not in demand. Today gold is in demand, so much so, that you can hardly buy it if you want to, and it is in consequence that it has seen an extraordinary increase in price. This is because of the increased demand for gold, in our current world wide economic crisis. Gold holds it value, when paper money has been made worthless by government! This is because paper money is no longer backed by gold or anything of value. Paper money is merely supposed to represent a value.
It is true that when gold was the currency, government at different times found ways to devalue or debase the currency, but at least there was something real and tangible that currency was based upon. Today if we had a gold standard upon which our currency was based, I imagine that the vault would be empty. This is because adding in the latest bail out, we now owe as a nation over 11 trillion dollars in government debt. This does not include individual and corporate debt of the people who make up our nation. This present crisis was only allowable by having a currency based upon nothing but paper. How much easier to devalue and debase a currency, that is based upon the invisible, and intangible.
Let us just examine a gallon of milk. Milk has doubled in price over the last year. Inflation is usually calculated at 3% per year. Your wages should go up accordingly. The fact is your real wages have gone down, you have less purchasing power. Ron Paul says that your dollar today is worth about 4 cents compared to the dollar of 1913.
The government of this country created the Federal Reserve back around 1914.During the Hoover administration they came up with the foundation of what was to become Fannie Mae. There were also high tariffs, and price controls. Roosevelt built on these and expanded. It was during this period known as the Great Depression that government began to pay farmers to destroy their crops. Of course that didn’t sit to well with the public as many people were very hungry at the time. Roosevelt changed his policy, they wouldn’t pay farmers to destroy their crops; instead they would pay them not to plant or raise livestock on their land. This is an artificial way to keep prices high and food scarce. When anything is scarce it makes it more valuable. We are still paying farmers not to work, to do this day. These are just a few of the many programs, which today we call the “New Deal”. According to unemployment standards at that time unemployment was 14% at the beginning of the Great Depression. Hold on to your pants folks. If we were to use the same high standards and measures today, our current unemployment rate today is not around 7% but is in fact 14%. It is somewhat like education standards. Of course there was no public education as we know it in 1914, but the same way that government has lowered education standards so we don’t feel so stupid, well so have unemployment standards been lowered, so we don’t feel so bad. Do you feel warm and fuzzy inside yet?
Comparing today to the time of the Great Depression, well let me just say that, today we have a trade deficit, then we had a trade surplus. That means that then everyone owed us money, instead of us owing everybody else. The statistics aren’t pretty and don’t bode well for our future. I should mention that it was under Roosevelt, that the government took away the people’s gold. I call this stealing, but I am not sure why we never hear about that. Well, we have already established our government doesn’t have any gold today.
Now we have something new in the mix, our homes, and our property. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have provided 50% of all the mortgages in this country. Banks nationwide were forced (blackmailed might be a better word) because of politically correct policy to give loans to people who would not normally have been able to obtain a mortgage. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being the governments own offspring were able to borrow directly from the U.S. Treasury and were subsidized by our benevolent government. It is because of this special relationship to government that investors believed this was a sound investment. Alas, it was not so! Like governments have devalued and debased gold, and currencies in the past, so the government has now devalued and debased the value of property. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have never been subject to the rules, regulations or accounting practices of private institutions, after all when is government ever accountable to the same standards as private individuals, institutions or industry. How many hundreds of dollars was the military spending on a toilet seat? At any rate when more regulation and oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been proposed and it has; since 1992, at least, it has been known to be a serious problem. Various congressman and even Alan Greenspan have brought the need for more regulation and oversight of the same before congress and it has been rejected time and time again. Why? Because men are corrupt and greedy, they have received monies (bribery), they have received special benefits such as lower than normal interest rates on their personal mortgages (bribery), and of course if they were to actually have responded to the concerns of an impending crisis and done something, well they would no longer be getting the money or benefits they had been. Then of course, too, I am sure that those high paid executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would want to make sure that the congressman who benefitted most from their prestigious positions wouldn’t be taking the fall all by themselves, and would be sure to point the finger at some of our more illustrious congressmen (blackmail). These (not) so honorable congress people simply turned their backs and ignored all the dire warning signs.
Then cometh, the 850 billion dollar bail out. Fannie and Freddie are not being disbanded; the doors are not being shut, even though they have caused a global economic disaster. No, our benevolent government is buying 25% of preferred stock from the most prestigious banks in the country. Now it may seem trivial, but when the bail out failed in the House of Representatives the stock market rose, when the bailout was insisted on and passed the stock market went down and continued to plummet after the bail out. Let me just say, that the successful business and industry owners of Nazi Germany, became mere managers under Hitler. Well, we just got a very similar deal, and I am sure the movers and shakers of finance and investment can’t help but have noticed.
Regardless of the fact that it was government that created this mess, it has refused as usual to admit its error; and is now going to fix this. Heaven, help us!
It seems obvious to me that government through its mortgage arm has created the housing crisis. It created the illusion of a real estate boom-scarcity of real estate-making prices go up to an artificial high, people took out loans and refinanced due to unnaturally low interest rates, and now that the illusion can no longer be sustained, people are upside down in their mortgages, they owe more than their property is worth.
This to me is quite interesting. Who benefits from this? Who becomes the owner of this property, when individuals default? Well, now that government owns 25% of preferred stock in the biggest and best financial institutions, who do you think benefits? Government now will own property that should have belonged to private individuals and enterprises. That is the free market, the capitalist way. This will not ever be the case again, they won’t fail, government didn’t let them and won’t let them.
I believe there is a good reason behind this and it is not to save Main Street, but rather it is to own Main Street!
Private property is a relatively new idea and concept in the history of man and our world. Always until this nation, only the anointed, the Kings, the pharaohs, the Tsars, the emperors had such a right. The land and the people belonged to the ruler. The common man never had such a right or made such a claim.
When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he was putting into words the ideas of John Locke, Adam Smith and others. Men understood that property was essential to the exercise of all his other inalienable rights. Men such as Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler never liked this new thinking, they were caught in the old mode of thought, they simply wanted a new and different royalty, a new and modern type, anointed and exalted in charge and control. Which I might add was for the most part them!
As of this writing, we are seeing our government transform itself into an exact replica of all the earlier and more primitive forms of government that have always been the norm!
When you no longer have a place to stand which is your own, when you are trespassing on land owned by the government what right have you to even exist without permission from the government? You will be in the very position of the serf, the slave. You will have NO RIGHTS-Your government owns you!
For those who believe that things can only get better, that what the government is doing through the bail out and stimulus is good and benevolent. I say, it may give the illusion of better, making you feel safe and secure, but trust me, it will only be long enough to get you trapped safely in their net. Then, my friend, not only will the government own all the property, they will own you!
At one time paper currency was redeemable for gold. Gold because of its scarcity always has value. Although even gold can be less costly when it is more abundant and not in demand. Today gold is in demand, so much so, that you can hardly buy it if you want to, and it is in consequence that it has seen an extraordinary increase in price. This is because of the increased demand for gold, in our current world wide economic crisis. Gold holds it value, when paper money has been made worthless by government! This is because paper money is no longer backed by gold or anything of value. Paper money is merely supposed to represent a value.
It is true that when gold was the currency, government at different times found ways to devalue or debase the currency, but at least there was something real and tangible that currency was based upon. Today if we had a gold standard upon which our currency was based, I imagine that the vault would be empty. This is because adding in the latest bail out, we now owe as a nation over 11 trillion dollars in government debt. This does not include individual and corporate debt of the people who make up our nation. This present crisis was only allowable by having a currency based upon nothing but paper. How much easier to devalue and debase a currency, that is based upon the invisible, and intangible.
Let us just examine a gallon of milk. Milk has doubled in price over the last year. Inflation is usually calculated at 3% per year. Your wages should go up accordingly. The fact is your real wages have gone down, you have less purchasing power. Ron Paul says that your dollar today is worth about 4 cents compared to the dollar of 1913.
The government of this country created the Federal Reserve back around 1914.During the Hoover administration they came up with the foundation of what was to become Fannie Mae. There were also high tariffs, and price controls. Roosevelt built on these and expanded. It was during this period known as the Great Depression that government began to pay farmers to destroy their crops. Of course that didn’t sit to well with the public as many people were very hungry at the time. Roosevelt changed his policy, they wouldn’t pay farmers to destroy their crops; instead they would pay them not to plant or raise livestock on their land. This is an artificial way to keep prices high and food scarce. When anything is scarce it makes it more valuable. We are still paying farmers not to work, to do this day. These are just a few of the many programs, which today we call the “New Deal”. According to unemployment standards at that time unemployment was 14% at the beginning of the Great Depression. Hold on to your pants folks. If we were to use the same high standards and measures today, our current unemployment rate today is not around 7% but is in fact 14%. It is somewhat like education standards. Of course there was no public education as we know it in 1914, but the same way that government has lowered education standards so we don’t feel so stupid, well so have unemployment standards been lowered, so we don’t feel so bad. Do you feel warm and fuzzy inside yet?
Comparing today to the time of the Great Depression, well let me just say that, today we have a trade deficit, then we had a trade surplus. That means that then everyone owed us money, instead of us owing everybody else. The statistics aren’t pretty and don’t bode well for our future. I should mention that it was under Roosevelt, that the government took away the people’s gold. I call this stealing, but I am not sure why we never hear about that. Well, we have already established our government doesn’t have any gold today.
Now we have something new in the mix, our homes, and our property. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have provided 50% of all the mortgages in this country. Banks nationwide were forced (blackmailed might be a better word) because of politically correct policy to give loans to people who would not normally have been able to obtain a mortgage. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being the governments own offspring were able to borrow directly from the U.S. Treasury and were subsidized by our benevolent government. It is because of this special relationship to government that investors believed this was a sound investment. Alas, it was not so! Like governments have devalued and debased gold, and currencies in the past, so the government has now devalued and debased the value of property. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have never been subject to the rules, regulations or accounting practices of private institutions, after all when is government ever accountable to the same standards as private individuals, institutions or industry. How many hundreds of dollars was the military spending on a toilet seat? At any rate when more regulation and oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been proposed and it has; since 1992, at least, it has been known to be a serious problem. Various congressman and even Alan Greenspan have brought the need for more regulation and oversight of the same before congress and it has been rejected time and time again. Why? Because men are corrupt and greedy, they have received monies (bribery), they have received special benefits such as lower than normal interest rates on their personal mortgages (bribery), and of course if they were to actually have responded to the concerns of an impending crisis and done something, well they would no longer be getting the money or benefits they had been. Then of course, too, I am sure that those high paid executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would want to make sure that the congressman who benefitted most from their prestigious positions wouldn’t be taking the fall all by themselves, and would be sure to point the finger at some of our more illustrious congressmen (blackmail). These (not) so honorable congress people simply turned their backs and ignored all the dire warning signs.
Then cometh, the 850 billion dollar bail out. Fannie and Freddie are not being disbanded; the doors are not being shut, even though they have caused a global economic disaster. No, our benevolent government is buying 25% of preferred stock from the most prestigious banks in the country. Now it may seem trivial, but when the bail out failed in the House of Representatives the stock market rose, when the bailout was insisted on and passed the stock market went down and continued to plummet after the bail out. Let me just say, that the successful business and industry owners of Nazi Germany, became mere managers under Hitler. Well, we just got a very similar deal, and I am sure the movers and shakers of finance and investment can’t help but have noticed.
Regardless of the fact that it was government that created this mess, it has refused as usual to admit its error; and is now going to fix this. Heaven, help us!
It seems obvious to me that government through its mortgage arm has created the housing crisis. It created the illusion of a real estate boom-scarcity of real estate-making prices go up to an artificial high, people took out loans and refinanced due to unnaturally low interest rates, and now that the illusion can no longer be sustained, people are upside down in their mortgages, they owe more than their property is worth.
This to me is quite interesting. Who benefits from this? Who becomes the owner of this property, when individuals default? Well, now that government owns 25% of preferred stock in the biggest and best financial institutions, who do you think benefits? Government now will own property that should have belonged to private individuals and enterprises. That is the free market, the capitalist way. This will not ever be the case again, they won’t fail, government didn’t let them and won’t let them.
I believe there is a good reason behind this and it is not to save Main Street, but rather it is to own Main Street!
Private property is a relatively new idea and concept in the history of man and our world. Always until this nation, only the anointed, the Kings, the pharaohs, the Tsars, the emperors had such a right. The land and the people belonged to the ruler. The common man never had such a right or made such a claim.
When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he was putting into words the ideas of John Locke, Adam Smith and others. Men understood that property was essential to the exercise of all his other inalienable rights. Men such as Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler never liked this new thinking, they were caught in the old mode of thought, they simply wanted a new and different royalty, a new and modern type, anointed and exalted in charge and control. Which I might add was for the most part them!
As of this writing, we are seeing our government transform itself into an exact replica of all the earlier and more primitive forms of government that have always been the norm!
When you no longer have a place to stand which is your own, when you are trespassing on land owned by the government what right have you to even exist without permission from the government? You will be in the very position of the serf, the slave. You will have NO RIGHTS-Your government owns you!
For those who believe that things can only get better, that what the government is doing through the bail out and stimulus is good and benevolent. I say, it may give the illusion of better, making you feel safe and secure, but trust me, it will only be long enough to get you trapped safely in their net. Then, my friend, not only will the government own all the property, they will own you!
Monday, May 4, 2009
Commentary on “The 545 People Responsible For All Of U.S. Woes”
Commentary on “The 545 People Responsible For All Of U.S. Woes”By Charley Reese
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18568.htm
It may be true that there are 545 members of Federal Government. Yet, this oversimplifies the problem. Most federal programs which are enacted at a state level are instances where the state has been bribed with federal dollars, to enact and enforce federal programs. This makes elected state officials an extension of the federal system, every branch and arm of government is a further extension, from the FCC, ICC, IRS, FDA, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, and I am only giving a small sample, under each heading there is a sub-list. The list of agencies and departments is many pages long. You can view them here: http://knol.google.com/k/tom-milledge/list-of-united-states-federal-agencies/6mfkn636our/54#
Federal government has grown into a leviathan with an abundance of arms and branches reaching into almost every area of life. Every person who works in or for these agencies is a beneficiary of and dependent on government for their livelihood. They have become an extension of the system. This is just one area, and believe me it is quite an army. Government is parasitical it requires a host, it must be fed, it is the nature of the beast. In order to insure its survival it grows itself, and it grows the number of people dependent upon it, those who work for government and all of its extensions and arms. It has further empowered itself by appealing to the lower classes, in promising to provide for them. Yet, none of these is productive labor, they are all dependent on productive labor, they require it for their support and existence. They make their living on taxing productive labor. All of their wages and benefits are paid by productive labor.
Finally, it grows itself to a level which is no longer sustainable, and it begins to destroy the healthy host-productive labor. It eats away capital, and savings, leaving nothing for the next year. It is like a farmer who uses up all his seeds, and saves nothing for the following year. He does this continually and just a small amount of common sense will lead one to the logical conclusion. Washington said; “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.” At this point government is faced with a dilemma, it must restrict and cut back itself in size and scope, or it must take total control. Taking total control will only prolong the agony, for government is in the business of buying loyalty, and production for use rather than profit. Yes, all production is for use, but profit is evil according to those of a socialist mindset, or it is not put to a proper use, a use the anointed (Those in the ivory towers of government and academia) feels it is better able to decide than the individual, the entrepreneur. The truth is profit is what makes or provides capital; it is what results in savings that are in turn used to create new wealth and profit. Cutting itself back in size and scope requires moral rectitude, it means self sacrifice. That this would be highly unpopular with all the beneficiaries of government is beyond doubt, and this leads them to the conclusion that it would be political suicide. The masses are benefitted by the government’s generosity, the university professor’s benefit from grants and endowments, teachers benefit through job security and wages, parents benefit with free daycare and by transferring the responsibility of their children’s education to the state. Farmers are benefitted by the government’s manipulation of the market, government sets the price of products above what would occur naturally by paying farmers not to farm, not to grow and plant. With every reduction or cut back of government it will affect large groups of people, people who see government as security. That each and almost every program of government could be provided and offered through the free-market is irrelevant to them. The people want security and protection against competition, the politicians want power, and security in their position and they are willing to pay the price for all the excess bureaucracy to have it, despite the fact that this is a waste of scarce resources and a drain on productive society. This is in fact where we are today, it is our present condition. The government prefers the path of total control, which will inevitably lead and has led to the destruction of our economy. Our government is dying; it is in its death throes now. The Federal Reserve and the banks which comprise it, are not suffering from a lack of liquidity, they are bankrupt, insolvent. The money (IOUS) they are printing, and with every turn of the printing press will ultimately lead to hyperinflation; by making the paper abundant and valueless, this is just another way to hide taxation on the productive elements of society. I do not include those who are paid through and by government, who are subsidized, and protected by legislation, etc. for in reality they pay no taxes, all that they receive comes from the productive element. You may say well, “they are working for a living”, this is true. Go try to fire them, after all you pay their wages, but you cannot do so. In a truly free market you could or you could simply buy the services somewhere else. That is what is so marvelous about the free market and liberty.
Therefore for those of us, who believe in freedom; that hold liberty as dear, we are likewise faced with a choice. Are we willing to reject the leviathan, if we work for government are we willing to know longer serve and find a job in the private sector. Are we willing to reject welfare, Medicaid, social security, and opt to be self responsible? I know you paid for it, but the system is broke, there is no money, just an IOU! You have been robbed. Are we willing not just to increase your exemptions on your withholding tax, but to refuse to pay government any tax at all when it comes due? Are we willing to recognize that education is not a right, that economic security is not a right, and to reject these foolish notions? Are we willing to sacrifice our lives, our fortunes, our properties for Liberty? Our founding fathers were and they did!
Albert J. Nock stated the following “It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”
Reading “In the Politics of Obedience” Part 1, by Etienne De La Boetie it is described it this way. “The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support”.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18568.htm
It may be true that there are 545 members of Federal Government. Yet, this oversimplifies the problem. Most federal programs which are enacted at a state level are instances where the state has been bribed with federal dollars, to enact and enforce federal programs. This makes elected state officials an extension of the federal system, every branch and arm of government is a further extension, from the FCC, ICC, IRS, FDA, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, and I am only giving a small sample, under each heading there is a sub-list. The list of agencies and departments is many pages long. You can view them here: http://knol.google.com/k/tom-milledge/list-of-united-states-federal-agencies/6mfkn636our/54#
Federal government has grown into a leviathan with an abundance of arms and branches reaching into almost every area of life. Every person who works in or for these agencies is a beneficiary of and dependent on government for their livelihood. They have become an extension of the system. This is just one area, and believe me it is quite an army. Government is parasitical it requires a host, it must be fed, it is the nature of the beast. In order to insure its survival it grows itself, and it grows the number of people dependent upon it, those who work for government and all of its extensions and arms. It has further empowered itself by appealing to the lower classes, in promising to provide for them. Yet, none of these is productive labor, they are all dependent on productive labor, they require it for their support and existence. They make their living on taxing productive labor. All of their wages and benefits are paid by productive labor.
Finally, it grows itself to a level which is no longer sustainable, and it begins to destroy the healthy host-productive labor. It eats away capital, and savings, leaving nothing for the next year. It is like a farmer who uses up all his seeds, and saves nothing for the following year. He does this continually and just a small amount of common sense will lead one to the logical conclusion. Washington said; “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.” At this point government is faced with a dilemma, it must restrict and cut back itself in size and scope, or it must take total control. Taking total control will only prolong the agony, for government is in the business of buying loyalty, and production for use rather than profit. Yes, all production is for use, but profit is evil according to those of a socialist mindset, or it is not put to a proper use, a use the anointed (Those in the ivory towers of government and academia) feels it is better able to decide than the individual, the entrepreneur. The truth is profit is what makes or provides capital; it is what results in savings that are in turn used to create new wealth and profit. Cutting itself back in size and scope requires moral rectitude, it means self sacrifice. That this would be highly unpopular with all the beneficiaries of government is beyond doubt, and this leads them to the conclusion that it would be political suicide. The masses are benefitted by the government’s generosity, the university professor’s benefit from grants and endowments, teachers benefit through job security and wages, parents benefit with free daycare and by transferring the responsibility of their children’s education to the state. Farmers are benefitted by the government’s manipulation of the market, government sets the price of products above what would occur naturally by paying farmers not to farm, not to grow and plant. With every reduction or cut back of government it will affect large groups of people, people who see government as security. That each and almost every program of government could be provided and offered through the free-market is irrelevant to them. The people want security and protection against competition, the politicians want power, and security in their position and they are willing to pay the price for all the excess bureaucracy to have it, despite the fact that this is a waste of scarce resources and a drain on productive society. This is in fact where we are today, it is our present condition. The government prefers the path of total control, which will inevitably lead and has led to the destruction of our economy. Our government is dying; it is in its death throes now. The Federal Reserve and the banks which comprise it, are not suffering from a lack of liquidity, they are bankrupt, insolvent. The money (IOUS) they are printing, and with every turn of the printing press will ultimately lead to hyperinflation; by making the paper abundant and valueless, this is just another way to hide taxation on the productive elements of society. I do not include those who are paid through and by government, who are subsidized, and protected by legislation, etc. for in reality they pay no taxes, all that they receive comes from the productive element. You may say well, “they are working for a living”, this is true. Go try to fire them, after all you pay their wages, but you cannot do so. In a truly free market you could or you could simply buy the services somewhere else. That is what is so marvelous about the free market and liberty.
Therefore for those of us, who believe in freedom; that hold liberty as dear, we are likewise faced with a choice. Are we willing to reject the leviathan, if we work for government are we willing to know longer serve and find a job in the private sector. Are we willing to reject welfare, Medicaid, social security, and opt to be self responsible? I know you paid for it, but the system is broke, there is no money, just an IOU! You have been robbed. Are we willing not just to increase your exemptions on your withholding tax, but to refuse to pay government any tax at all when it comes due? Are we willing to recognize that education is not a right, that economic security is not a right, and to reject these foolish notions? Are we willing to sacrifice our lives, our fortunes, our properties for Liberty? Our founding fathers were and they did!
Albert J. Nock stated the following “It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”
Reading “In the Politics of Obedience” Part 1, by Etienne De La Boetie it is described it this way. “The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support”.
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