Sylvia Bokor Comments

Taxes & Regulation: The Black Hole of Government Waste and Corruption

2011-09-29T08:49:00.004-06:00

"Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job." So stated an October 2009 report written by Brian M. Riedl, a Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation---http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/50-examples-of-government-waste

Businesses are forced to provide that money. But Obama refuses to cut such spending. He demands more revenue.

Tea Party Republicans argue against raising taxes and for spending cuts. But Warren Buffett wrote that the very rich should be taxed more.

John C. Goodman, president and founder of the National Center for Policy Analysis---a free-market think tank---stated, "Consider that when Warren Buffett is consuming, he's benefiting himself. When he's saving and investing, he's benefiting you and me. Every time Buffett . . . puts his money in the capital market, he's doing an enormous favor for everyone else. A larger capital stock means higher productivity and that means everyone can have more income for the same amount of work."

The following day Jeff Carter, an independent speculator, published "The Buffett Deception." Mr. Carter wrote, "Mr. Buffett has had a great career buying companies and integrating them into his empire. He ought to stick to that. His recent editorial in the New York Times shows the flaws in many arguments that come from the left. . . . Buffett's logic also discounts how many Mom and Pop small businesses pay at the highest marginal rate."

Mr. Goodman and Mr. Carter's articles are premised on free markets economics. Obama and Mr. Buffett's views are premised on the political philosophy of Marx and Engels.

Free market economics is concerned with the production of values. It recognizes that individuals must be free to think in order to build businesses and create values. Businesspeople---employer and employee alike---must be efficient, organized and resourceful. Their efforts swiftly raise the standard of living for everyone when government does not interfere. When government does interfere, businesspeople's efforts are stifled and the standard of living is slowed,then curtailed, and finally reversed.

Leftist's political philosophy is focused on distributing the property of those that have created and/or earned it to those who have not. Such a focus relies on government-enforced distribution, which means government interference in the economy primarily through taxes and regulations.

Taxes and regulations do not increase business. They do not create more enterprises. They do not create values or jobs. They do not raise the standard of living.

But Obama refuses to cut spending. He demands more revenue.

Taxes are spent to finance government officials and their programs. They are spent to pay government salaries, which on average exceed that of most businesspeople. They are spent to maintain the offices of almost a thousand government agencies, each with large staffs. Taxes are spent on duplicate programs, inefficient work and mismanagement. For instance, "Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties." Taxes are wasted through fraud: "The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008."

But Obama refuses to cut spending and instead demands more revenue. When he does talk about cuts in spending he names Social Security, which owes those who were forced to pay into it out of earnings. He does not mention the 70+ programs that could be cut to save over $4.2 trillion without touching Social Security.

Taxes should be spent to pay for the three proper functions of government:
the police, the military and the courts. When tax money does not go to the proper functions of government it goes to improper functions.

Mr. Riedl writes, "A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases ongovernment credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled.
Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, including "over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold." The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece."

In addition, recall the millions of taxpayer money that Obama spent on a 500-man entourage to visit Great Britain.

But Obama refuses to cut spending. He demands more revenue.

Andrew K. Dart writing "The Pork Page," http://www.akdart.com/pork.html, lists a hundred misuses of taxpayer funds. Here are two examples:

"Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) while claiming to be a fiscal conservative, requested 149 projects worth $1.6 billion for authorization and appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010."

In December 2010, a bill "written by . . . members of the Appropriations Committee proposed spending nearly $8.3 billion." The earmarks included $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina; $413,000 for peanut research in Alabama; $235,000 for noxious weed management inNevada; and $300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii.

Onerous taxes and strangling regulations do not create prosperity. They obliterate it. Taxes drain business resources into a black hole of government avarice, corruption and waste. Regulations do not protect the consumer. They strangle the producer.

Taxes and regulations ravage the nation's savings, suffocate ambition, undermine business operations, erase certainty and penalize the successful while rewarding the indigent.

Tea Party Republicans are attacked almost every day on various interview shows and in the news. They are attacked because they refuse to give in to the Left's political philosophy of tax, spend, borrow,tax. Let us make certain to increase the number of Tea Party Republicans come 2012.

Whose American Dream?

2011-08-26T13:44:00.005-06:00

Maybe some of you have read an August 19, 2011 e-mail from Levana Layendecker, Communications Director of Democracy for America, with the subject "Join the movement."

The opening sentence reads: "Democracy for America relies on you and the people-power of more than one million members to fund the grassroots organizing and training that delivers progressive change on the issues that matter."

Five parts of that sentence are immediately curious. You have to wonder what's going on.

For instance, democracy" means mob rule. Is the writer of the e-mail advocating anarchy in America? In a democracy the individual is a cog of no importance residing in a form of government that almost immediately fizzles into oligarchy or dictatorship. There can never be a "democracy" for any appreciable length of time for the simple reason that a mob cannot figure out what to do or come to agreement on anything without one or two individuals moderating and organizing the numerous conflicting ideas and wishes that characterize a mob.

If the DFA really does have one million members and if those one million members really are "grassroots," you might feel some dismay that they achieved such a giant slate without being called "astro turf." However, dismay quickly dissolves when you read the phrase "progressive change." You know much of MSM is peculiarly sweet on Progressive ideas, so they are surely not going to tag Progressive "grassroots" as false and synthetic.

But then you read "issues that matter." You pause. What issues matter to the DFA? They are listed in the ten goals of the "Contract for the American Dream." And here is where we get down to the nitty-gritty of what the "American Dream" means to the progressives.

For most of us, the American Dream is being free to earn your own way, unoppressed by government. That's what most people seek in immigrating to America: freedom of conscience and freedom of action. That's what our Constitutional freedoms are all about. That's what individual rights are all about.

That is not the Progressives' Dream.

For the Progressive, "the American Dream" is getting rid of the principles of American government. What else can it mean when one advocates universal health care? Universal health care has to disregard the moral principle of individual right to life and property. As such it reveals the DFA's desire to force the entire medical profession into virtual slavery under government control.

The same disregard of moral principles is seen in the rest of the DFA's goals. "Invest in America's Infrastructure," "Create 21st Century Energy Jobs", "Invest in Public Education," "Make Work Pay." Does this mean that one million Progressives are going to dig into their own pockets to put up the money to fix bridges and tunnels, create energy jobs, straighten out the horrendous problems of public education?

Don't bet on it. It means passing laws that force taxpayers to pay more into government projects---to the tune of more waste, more corruption and more mismanagement. So the inclusion of "Make Work Pay," "Secure Social Security," "Return to Fairer Taxes" and "Tax Wall Street Speculators" reduces the entire list to one thing: higher taxes and less liquidity in the securities markets---which endangers the portfolios of almost every investor, including retirees, those about to retire and those saving for retirement, the group that consists of those who earn their own way.

Ms. Layendecker asserts that in attaining these goals, "we can stop Republicans from killing the American Dream and build a future based on liberty and justice for all."

They might succeed in killing our American Dream---the actual American Dream---if we do not remain vigilant and ready to assert and defend American ideals and principles, in particular the most basic principle of our Republic government, individual rights. We should recognize that the Progressives' "American Dream" deserves to be killed---and drawn and quartered---without reservation.

There can be no liberty---which is the right to move about freely without coercion---and no justice---which is the virtue of treating men as they deserve---should Progressives attain their fetid collection of goals, which seeks to hog-tie and drain those who earn their own way.

For a lot of information about DFA's specific goals and training programs to gain seats for Progressive Democrats on all levels of government, access http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_for_America

The Achievement of the Tea Party Movement

2011-08-11T12:34:00.003-06:00

It was the first two years of protest. Others had taken the initiative to start a Tea Party. We joined them and supported their efforts with our time, our work, our ideas and dollars. We helped to organize events and rallies, make signs, distribute thousands of flyers, print hundreds of petitions and wove our way through rally crowds to gather signatures.

We visited our Congressmen's offices, wrote our Senators, phoned Legislators, attended City Council meetings and commissioner and district meetings. We joined parades and yelled ourselves hoarse for our chosen candidates. We sweated bullets during summer events and froze our fingers and toes during winter's. We registered voters and became poll challengers and poll workers. Sometimes we worked through the night answering queries and often rose in the morning to start work without taking time to change out of our pajamas. We cheered when others honked in support of our efforts and laughed at our own exhaustion.

Today, seasoned and still dedicated to our principles, we are, each and everyone one of us, the Tea Party Movement.

The Tea Party is a movement of many different kinds of people coming together spontaneously and voluntarily: Capitalists, Objectivists, Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats and Independents. We hold similar ideas and share a common goal of seeking to restore individual rights, Constitutional freedoms, limited government, and to establish free-markets and fiscal responsibility. For these reasons we are united against big government, against the intrusive, regulatory government of the welfare state. We hold a basic point of view: in order to realize the American Dream, each individual must work to earn it, and not look to government to hand them what others have earned.

During the Tea Party's infancy our concerns regarding big government were too obvious to ignore; so, the Leftist media and Leftist politicians tried to ridicule the grassroots by calling the Tea Party Movement "astro-turf."

Since the 2010 elections, the Left no longer uses that slur against us. They got the picture. During the "debt talks" Sour Harry had to scramble about for another slur. He thought he found one.

He bemoaned "Tea Party Republicans" and their refusal to compromise. He flatly stated that Mr. Boehner's proposal was "the worse piece of legislation ever written." How could one know he was speaking the truth? He did not allow the Senate to read it. He instructed them to vote no without seeing it. Like sheep they followed their B.O.-Peep without a baaa. As Reid's statements became shriller against "Tea Party Republicans," so did those of his fellow Leftists.

One Leftist spat out something about a proposal that would have gone through except for "a few right-wing nuts." The New York Leftist Charles Schumer complained that the Tea Party Republicans' refusal to compromise amounted to "It has to be their way or the highway . . . or no way." (He got a little confused in the heat of his moment.)

Tea Party Republicans. It is a tag to be embraced. It is a clear distinction that separates us from politics-as-usual-Republicans and Democrats.

Tea Party Republicans stick to principles. We do not compromise them. We can be accommodating when non-essentials are involved. But principles are basic. They are derived from ethics. We do not give in on them. Because of that, the Tea Party Movement attained something far more important in the long run than an insufficient budget agreement.

Tea Party Republicans understood this. A few others did, too. Last night, August 10, George Wills stated in an hour-long interview, "The Tea Party brought the issue of limited government and free-markets into the arena of public discussion."

A formidable achievement, in view of the welfare state talk that has dominated public policy since 1933.

Confirming Mr. Wills observation, this morning, August 11, GOPUSAMedia sent an e-mail advertisement paid for by Steve King, Iowa Member of Congress, which included the statement, "To preserve America as we know it, we have only one option: to return to the principles of limited government and free market capitalism this nation was founded upon."

Following the conclusion of the debt talks, many Leftist commentators attacked the Tea Party for a variety of things. A number of commentators came to the Tea Party's defense. For instance, Brent Bozell---Founder and President of the Media Research Center, the largest media watchdog organization in America---reported that John Kerry "shamelessly labeled [the S&P's action] a "Tea Party downgrade" . . .although it is known that "while Obama was tripling the deficit with trillions in new spending, Kerry happily endorsed" the spending spree. http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2011/08/10/tea_party_blame_and_fairy_tales

As someone remarked recently, "The Tea Party Movement succeeded because we avoided the danger of becoming centralized, which would have been an invitation to politicians to take us over." We avoided "the divisiveness inevitable from focusing on narrow social values," which would have diluted our dedication, energy and focus.

If we hold firm to our principles Tea Party Republicans will take the White House and the Senate in 2012. We can start to cut spending, downsize government by closing regulatory agencies and terminating at least a third of federal government employees. We have achieved a great deal. We can achieve more.

Cut, Cap & Balance the Budget

2011-07-24T16:18:00.003-06:00

In his July 17 newsletter Steve Pearce, a New Mexico Congressman, mentioned his participation in the Congressional Baseball Game for Charity. He wrote:

"On Thursday, I played in the Congressional Baseball Game for Charity, an annual tradition reaching back to 1909. We raised over $150,000 for local charities. During this difficult economic time, I am happy to spend my time helping charities who are struggling with limited resources. My hit in the 6th inning ended the Democrat teams' no-hitter, and I was named the team's MVP."

That's not the extent of Steve's MVP status. Monty Newman, Chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico, expressed his gratitude to Steve for "supporting the Cut, Cap and Balance legislation that passed the US House this week."

In the House, Pearce voted for Cut, Cap & Balance Act; other New Mexican Congressmen, Ben Ray Lujan and Martin Heinrich, voted against it. In the Senate 46 Republican Senators voted for the Cut, Cap & Balance Act. Fifty-one Democrat Senators voted against it---including Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, both New Mexico Senators.

Bingaman asserted the bill "did not achieve shared sacrifice." Lujan declared that the act "would cut the deficit on the backs of New Mexico's seniors and working families." Heinrich stated something about "breaks for the ultrarich, while making dangerous cuts to Social Security and Medicare."

To be blunt, such remarks are dishonest. The bill, HR 2560, states: Exempt From Direct Spending Limits - Direct spending for the following functions is exempt from the limits specified in subsection (c):`(1) Social Security, function 650.`(2) Medicare, function 570.`(3) Veterans Benefits and Services, function 700.`(4) Net Interest, function 900.`(c) Limits on Other Direct Spending

The entire bill can be read at Politisite.com.

Evidently, Democrats did not read the bill. Harry Reid deemed it "the single worst piece of legislation to hit the Senate floor." http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20110724/OPINION02/107240315 That was good enough for Democrat Senators.

Politisite writes: "They actually didn't even get a chance to vote on the actual bill. Reid used a parliamentary maneuver to force a vote on whether to allow the bill to come to the Senate floor to be debated. That motion to "table" a "motion to proceed" is what passed 51-46. Once again, rather than debate the actual bill, so everyday Americans could "see what's in it," to borrow Nancy Pelosi's famous words, Democrats didn't even want to talk about it." [ibid]

It has been made clear---particularly during last week---that Democrats are not trying to solve the debt problem. Yet they characterize Republican proposals as either (a) ridiculous, á la Obama, or (b) disastrous, á la Harry Reid, or (c) does not achieve "shared sacrifice" á la Bingaman.

An Op-Ed in the July 23 Albuquerque Journal offered an explanation for this curious behavior, although that was not the author's actual theme.
Carl P. Leubsdorf, former Washington Bureau Chief of The Dallas Morning News compared the difference in attitude toward problem solving among politicians of the past and present day.

He wrote that problem-solving on a large, national scale is not the motive of most politicians these days. Instead, their approach to politics is partisan. Today, politicians are wedded to their political party. They seek to maintain party unity rather than solve a given problem besetting the nation.

But partisan politics is neither productive or predictable. Mr. Leubsdorf pointed out that "Barack Obama's disdain for Republicans in 2009, when he told them pointedly he could call the shots because he "won" in 2008, backfired when the GOP won House control in 2010."

Partisan politics boils down to "my gang is bigger than your gang; so, you have to do what I say." This is the hallmark of the gangster, the dictator, the totalitarian---call it what you will. It is an attitude that does not approach problems with a solution but with an edict.

This has been the attitude of Obama and his supporters during the debt talks. They have refused to cut the 70+ programs the Republicans proposed, which would save $2.4 trillion. They chorus one melody: "Tax the rich. Raise the debt ceiling." That's not a solution. It's an extension of the same problem of reckless, wanton spending, without thought, without plan, without concern for tomorrow.

Obama and his supporters continue to claim they need money for "seniors and the poor and the unemployed and the sick and the disabled and the maimed and the blind, for oppressed Haitians and Samolian's, for Afghan and Iraq politicians, for Libyan and Syrian and Egyptian rebels, and for anyone else they can dream up.

But not for the American earners who produce the values that pay for it all. If you're tired of politicians stampeding into your pocketbook with their pretended concern for everyone except the American producer, we need not wait for 2012. We need to start calling and writing the Democrats now and simply say, "No more money. Pass Cut, Cap and Balance the Budget."

And if they should say, as some do, "Leave me alone! You're not my constituent." Simply respond, "Thank goodness for that. I plan to convince those who are, not to return you to office."

Freedom, Profit and Prosperity

2011-07-11T05:11:00.003-06:00

A reader sent me 5 photographs of people in Arizona in front of the capitol building. Many American flags had been placed on the ground. Graffiti of some sort was scribbled on some of the flags. Men, women and children were shown striding across the flags, stomping on them, spitting at on them and burning them.

There are many things one could say about the mind-set of those who desecrate a nation's flag. Intelligence is not one of them.

Desecrating a nation's flag is not argument to persuade others to your point of view. It is not a demonstration to show that your actions have merit. It is not even a show of loyalty to an opposing principle, such as those who might rip apart a Nazi flag to show loathing of fascism.

To try to debase the flag of the United States by throwing it whole upon the ground and stomping on it, is the attempt of the mindless, savages who stick pins in dolls or drink his enemy's blood---as if such actions were power-enabling.

The flag of the United States is unique among nations. And most people know it. It symbolizes freedom. No other flag, save perhaps that of Great Britain, carries so powerful a message. To desecrate the flag of the United States of America means one has no regard for freedom, and more: no regard for the human life freedom protects and advances.

What does freedom mean in action? Freedom is the absence of cocerion; therefore, in action it is the opportunity to live one's life, to achieve happiness. What provides us with material happiness? Prosperity. How is prosperity achieved? Through profit.

When I was a free-lance artist working in Manhattan, in order to live, profit was essential. I had to have money to buy oils, canvas and stretchers, illustration board, brushes, and all the other materials and equipment necessary to running an artist studio. There were also models' fees to pay and my own rent and groceries.

When I was paid for my illustrations and/or paintings, the price I received had to be at least a bit more than my combined expenses. To be paid less than my expenses, or to break even meant I could continue to produce paintings only by going into debt. If such a situation continues for any length of time, the business goes into bankruptcy.

Profit, even a little profit margin, kept me afloat. The same is true of any business whether you are a free-lance businessperson, or own a small company or a middle-size or large one. Profit is not "surplus income." It is not "gravy." It is the muscle and bone, the essential means of doing business. It is the means to keep on going. Without profit, business is impossible. If one takes in a bit more than the cost of one's own expenses, it means the business can stay afloat without undue strain. If it earns a lot more than its expenses, it can expand, offering more values to a larger clientele, creating more jobs improving services and so forth.

Many people, including businesspeople, do not understand the virtue, purpose and need of profit. We have been led to believe profit is somehow "dirty" or "usurious" as if making more than one's expenses was somehow "dishonest."

The truth is, profit is essential to doing business. Profit, since it supports a businessperson's life and that of his employees, is a virtue. By means of efficiently producing values and keeping a business' product desirable, profit says: "You're doing good. You're benefiting life."

The attack on profit is ancient. Today, Leftist habitually attack profit as a sure-fire way to create conflict between those who earn their own way and those who do not. Mr. Obama does the same, feverishly trying to make Americans hate "the rich." Such individuals try to convince us profit is some kind of evil that destroys society. The opposite is true.

Profit is what makes prosperity, improving and increasing the number of values that businesses offer---whether in manufacturing or in service industries. It is profit that raises the standard of living for everyone.

It is the lack of profit that is destructive. A lack of profit destroys a business, a neighborhood and a society. But profit requires individual freedom. One look at the difference between North and South Korea, or again, during the Berlin Wall the difference between East and West Berlin, attests to that. Those cities demonstrate the individual's need of freedom and the prosperity possible when he has it. Profit generates prosperity.

Our flag symbolizes freedom. It is the portable display of what our Statue of Liberty represents. When one sees the stars and stripes, one immediately thinks of freedom, of opportunity, of happiness. People the world over know that. Those who desecrate the flag of the United States of America are making an explicit statement. They are not stomping upon a mere piece of fabric. They are stomping on a symbol of man's need for freedom and the best that he can achieve. What do you call a creature who seeks to destroy the best in man? A criminal? A heinous monster? That which feeds and breeds upon a corpse? Whatever description you choose, he is a killer.

Not even anger is any longer possible toward such creatures. What remains is only a cold contempt re-enforcing a determined resolve to never give in to those who would kill freedom, the profit it can generate and the prosperity that follows.

Politicians Call for Sacrifice to Solve the Mess They Created

2011-07-08T11:13:00.005-06:00

Jeff Bingaman is one of New Mexico's Senators. On July 07, 2011 he sent a newsletter to his constituents. It is a very long newsletter, filled with many questionable statements, premised on the usual Leftists' view of man as a sacrificial goat.

I'm posting here only some of Senator Bingaman's paragraphs and my comments. The Senator's paragraphs I've chosen to post here do not necessarily reflect the Senator's worse demands. They do, however, reveal his worse premises.

Senator Bingaman writes: 1. There has been a lot of discussion in Washington and around the country about how we can sustain and strengthen our country's two federally-funded health insurance programs - Medicaid and Medicare - even while we rein in our budget deficit.

Note Senator Bingaman's characterization of who pays for government health programs. "Federally funded?" Surely, the Senator knows the source of "federal funds." Is it possible he's trying a bit of sleight of hand?

2. Medicare and Medicaid are extremely important to New Mexico. Medicare pays for the bulk of health care provided for Americans age 65 and older as well as people with disabilities; about 300,000 New Mexicans are enrolled in Medicare.

"Medicare pays?" No. Earners pay. Through their taxes. Why does Senator Bingaman ignore the fact that taxpayers pay those costs?

Out of New Mexico's population of 2.1 million, with only about 1/3 the population being producers/earners and about 9% of these out of work, 300,000 enrollees are a mammoth number. The cost to earners who are expected to foot that bill will be onerous.

Senator Bingaman and his colleagues are adroit at making citizens pay for politician-created problems. Notice how they pretend Medicare is absolutely imperative, the totally essential life and death remedy to care for "the children," "the elderly" and "the disabled." Without Medicare, Senator Bingaman seeks to convince us, these helpless and dependent souls would horribly suffer for eons and/or die in a New York minute.

3. As we take the necessary steps to address our budget deficit . . .

The budget deficit is not ours. It is Senator Bingaman's and his colleagues'. They are the ones who voted for the reckless spending, the stimulus packages, the bailouts and buy-outs and forced lending and approval of risky loans and "affordable housing" and implemented Fannie Mae and Freddie Max corruption. They created it. Let them dig into their own pockets and pay for it.

But, of course, for Senator Bingaman and all such politicians, such an idea is not de rigueur.

4. Medicaid primarily provides health care coverage to Americans with low incomes, for example children and the elderly. It will come as a surprise that two-thirds of Medicaid funds go toward care for low-income seniors and the disabled.

Why on earth would anyone be surprised? The entire "affordable" health care law is undisguised robbery of those who earn in order to support those who do not. It's not about the children and seniors and the disabled. It's about politicians' lust to control the entire medical industry, including pharmaceuticals and insurance. It's a wholesale attack on the medical profession and the innumerable charitable foundations and organizations---to which Americans generously give---in order to place those skills and those funds under government control.

5. I believe we must ensure that the burden of sacrifice is shared broadly and not placed largely on the backs of our most vulnerable populations, such as seniors and children.

Seniors and children are our most vulnerable? Not true. With the numerous taxes, regulations, restrictions, guidelines, ruled by thousands of agencies and thousands of bureaucrats, our most vulnerable population is producers/earners. They are the ones who work to create values that we all need and buy. They are the most burdened with government's intrusive laws, which make them virtually helpless, vulnerable to any government official's whim demanding bribes, "kickbacks" and the like. Our businesspeople are the ones who take the risks and sink or swim on their own judgement. Who is it that goes down the drain if they are not protected? The entire nation, including the children and the elderly.

You can bet that politicians who are paid salaries 3 to 4 times more than the average earner most assuredly will not carry on their backs "the children" and "the elderly." Instead, as the Senator amply makes clear, it is earners that must bear the "burden of sacrifice." Why?

The call for producers/earners to "sacrifice" has worn thin. Senator Bingaman and his colleagues, snug in their taxpayer financed retirements, taxpayer financed pensions and self-exempt status, continue to demand that producers/earners "sacrifice"---counting on that word like some holy moral principle that will work its magic by making producers and earners feel guilty if they protest. Politicians such as Senator Bingaman seek to flood taxpayers with guilt should anyone dare say they have not the slightest interest in using their hard-earned money to help strangers when they want instead to help their own higher values, their loved ones.

The demand for sacrifice is long past needing to be expunged as a solution to politically generated problems. In the name of common sense and the well being of those who work and work and work and pay and pay and pay, the demand for sacrifice must be ended. Senator Bingaman and his colleagues created the problems. They should solve them without demanding that taxpayers' "sacrfice."

Congress voted for and created terrible problems as a result of their own negligence and excesses and lack of aforethought. They should cease demanding that earners/producers "sacrifice" to save politician's rear ends.

Determined to make producers/earners pay for politician's errors of judgement, Senator Bingaman of course is not at all in favor of Paul Ryan's proposed budget. He claims Paul Ryan's proposal does "not require a shared burden"---by which he means: not enough sacrifice.

There is more to object to and reject in Senator Bingaman's Newsletter. However, nothing Mr. Bingaman says is new or news or even a letter. It is a prolonged complaint that earners pay for Congress' devastating mistakes and dreadfully bad judgement.

I hope producers/earners say, "No way."

Barbara Walters & Jane Fonda

2011-06-11T08:31:00.005-06:00

In connection with an honorarium paid to Jane Fonda as one of ABC's "100 Women of the Century," on or around September 14, 2,009, Barbara Walters stated on The View, "I hope that we have all forgiven Jane Fonda for what she did during the Vietnam War and specifically when she visited the Hanoi Hilton."

Regarding this, many readers left comments. I downloaded eleven. Of the eleven, one defended Ms. Fonda because "she was a kid" at the time. Another asked, why was the issue being talked about again now? Nine wrote in the vein that Ms. Fonda committed treason and cannot be forgiven, despite her apology many years after the Vietnam War ended.

I am in agreement in principle with those nine.

We all know what Ms. Fonda did: Her disgraceful words to our soldiers, her shameful conduct toward their captors, her servile allegiance to values and ideals that our Founding Fathers rejected when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Is there any excuse we might consider in Ms. Fonda defense? Can those who take the side of the enemy in time of war be defended or excused?

Given the Leftist influence on our government-run education system, given the Leftist influence in the media, it's certain that Ms. Fonda was as much a victim of collectivism as she was a perpetuator of it. Yet I and countless other Americans, were subjected to the same Leftist influences in government-run public education, and Left-leaning media. We did not accept the view that Communism was superior to individualism. We did not like the idea of our men fighting a war that was not in our interests. We did not like them dying so that politicians could pose as "against communism."

Some point out that Ms. Fonda was "only 18" at the time, too young to know differently. Too young, or too thoughtless? If too young, the fact is that many of us were as young as Ms. Fonda was at that time. But they did not take the side of the enemy. Neither did we burn our flag, although we were opposed to the draft. Nor did we spit at our policeman and call them "pigs." We did not interrupt speakers or yell indecent epithets at them, or refuse to allow them to speak at all. We, too, were not happy that our men were sent to foreign lands to die and/or linger in heinous conditions. But we did not turn on our soldiers, chastising them for fighting a disagreeable war.

Neither education nor age is the deciding factor here. What, then, was the difference between Ms. Fonda and us?

Ideas. The ideas Ms. Fonda acted upon. The ideals, principles and values that Ms. Fonda accepted and which guided her actions.

The consequences of Ms. Fonda's ideas was to denounce American soldiers and POWs, to call them liars because they reported being tortured and beaten, to spitefully chide suffering American POWs with questions such as "are you proud to have killed babies?"

Consider what this nation's ideals are: No man is above the law. Freedom and justice for all under the law. Habeas corpus. Innocent until proven guilty. A jury of one's peers. The sentence of guilt to fit the crime. Debtor's prison outlawed. A division of powers. A limit on presidential terms. The Constitutional freedom of speech, assembly, worship and press.

Consider this nation's basic principles: individual rights, limited government and free markets. Consider this nation's fundamental ruling values: Reason. Purpose. Self-reliance. Self-confidence. Individualism. Lifting oneself up by the bootstraps. The work ethic of "a better mouse trap"---i.e. think of a better way to do something and work like the dickens to achieve it---and putting your "nose to the grindstone."

What are the Communists ideas Ms. Fonda extolled? Man must live for the state. The state knows best. No one may descent from government decree. All rulers are above the law, exempt from the laws all citizens must follow. All citizens are without rights. The government has total control over everyone and everything: how many babies one may have, where one may work, what one may study, where one may live, what meetings one must attend, the able must support the indigent, how many acres of land may be farmed, how many cars may be produced, and so forth. All this Ms. Fonda accepted and fought for against a government that stood for the opposite.

Ms. Fonda acted in exact accordance with the ideas she accepted. She damned those who fought against totalitarianism. She condemned those who did not accept the rule of brute force. She insulted the loyalty and bravery of free men who chose to protect the innocent against the savagery of dictatorship.

We are asked to forgive Jane Fonda. I do not. Moreover, I consider Barbara Walters' "hope" as abysmally lacking in thought as Ms. Fonda's actions during the Vietnam War.

Another joins these two: the individual who left the comment: "Why the heck was this year old post bumped?" This is the same sort of question savages ask about the Holocaust: "Why bring up that old stuff?"

One reason alone: Lest we forget and forgive those who err beyond reason.

Yes, Ms. Walters comment took place about 2 years ago. Yes, Ms. Fonda's actions took place almost 50 years ago. But like the Holocaust, one does not forgive those who acted upon the ideas that made possible such grievous evils.

There is a postscript to this exposition: Why was this two-year old Barbara Walters statement revived? My opinion is that the boiling anger many of us feel against Mr. Obama's actions to change this nation into a collectivist welfare state reminded someone of what such a state means in practice. It means the ideas of Hanoi Jane in charge of us while our best and bravest and most productive are imprisoned, regulated, controlled and ultimately destroyed. We must not allow this to happen.

The Establishment Clause

2011-05-13T11:42:00.008-06:00

In 1802, Thomas Jefferson sent a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in response to a query from that body. In the following Library of Congress transcript, Jefferson's spelling and punctuation have been retained as well as the bracketed material which ultimately he deleted before sending.
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Mr. President
To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

[Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion, practiced indeed by the Executive of another nation as the legal head of its church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.]

Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association assurances of my high respect & esteem.

(signed) Thomas Jefferson
Jan.1.1802.
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An anonymous writer claims that Jefferson's remarks echo those of Roger Williams, the founder of the first Baptist church in America, who wrote in 1644 of the need for "[A] hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world." Whatever the case, Jefferson's expression of "a wall of separation between church and state" led to the shorthand phrase "Separation of church and state."

Although the phrase does not appear in our Constitution, the idea it embodies is a governing principle of our culture. The phrase represents the essentialized meaning of the opening passage of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ." This is known as the Establishment Clause.

From the beginning of our nation, Americans recognized the principle of separation of church and state as a safeguard against religious intolerance and protection of one's right to choose to believe, or not. Our courts followed suit.

In its 1879 Reynolds v. United States decision, the court allowed that Jefferson's comments "may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment."

In the Everson v. Board of Education 330 U.S. 1, 8 decision, Justice Hugo Black wrote, "In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state."

Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote: "When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some."

Another court stated that "A large proportion of the early settlers of this country came here from Europe to escape the bondage of laws, which compelled them to support and attend government-favored churches."

Because of the many different religions and the many different convictions of atheists and agnostics that comprise our American culture, the separation of state and church assures that no one elected to office can lawfully impose his particular views as "the state religion." To further deflect such a danger, Article VI of the Constitution specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Today, however, some commentators question the validity of the separation of church and state, claiming "It's not in the Constitution; so, we can disregard it." But a brief look at man's history underscores the need for such a separation.

The first forms of governments among men---Sumer and Ancient Egypt (c. 5000 BCE)---were both centralized authorities, in which the ruler held both powers of king and priest. The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, for instance, claimed they were the embodiment of "god-kings," or "priest-kings." They held both titles absolutely, sometimes appointing a priest class to perform various tasks, but always retaining the prerogative of supreme authority over men's beliefs and actions.

For millennium nothing changed---except in Ancient Athens. Pericles (c. 495 - 425 BCE), for example, was an elected ruler whose leadership did not usurp that of Athenian priests. But in all other nation-states around the world and throughout time, absolute authority over both secular and religions affairs remained exclusively in the hands of the ruler.

For instance, during the Roman Empire, (c. 31 BCE - c. 284/313 AD) emperors were treated as divinities and some declared themselves gods. During the Medieval period (c. 313 AD to c.1265 AD) the church dominated both secular and religious affairs. Even the great, enlightened Elizabeth I (1533-1603)---alone among monarchs finally to break with the Pope---while granting wider freedom to her subjects nonetheless retained absolute control of her powers which included being the spiritual head of the Church of England.

Cromwell (1599-1658) justified his religious intolerance, the use of force, massacres and cruelty as necessary to hold together the body politic. Louis 14th (1638-1715) the "Sun King," imposed religious uniformity, persecuted the Huguenots and revoked the Edict of Nantes, which led to the exodus of many Protestant merchants and skilled artisans, accelerating economic decline. Napoleon crowned himself at his coronation (1804), thereby declaring that as emperor of France he was to be considered supreme ruler over both secular and religious affairs.

Similarly, the Emperors of Japan and China were considered direct descendents of the Gods, thus empowered as divine ruler on earth, supreme over all men's actions and beliefs. The sheiks, caliphs, and ayatollahs of Arabia, India and Asia were no different.

And so it went. With few exceptions, leaders claimed total authority over both religious and secular affairs---most clearly exemplified by "the divine right of kings" and "the infallibility of the Pope." The result was fines, imprisonment, torture and/or death levied on any that dared oppose the ruler's edicts and beliefs. The Inquisition was only one expression of such crimes against the mind of man. The slaughter and mayhem of the Crusades was another. The arbitrary beheading, dismemberment, disfigurement and proscribed suicides of dissenters or the disrespectful, was characteristic of the rulers of Africa, India and Asia.

Then came the United States of America, an extraordinary achievement that broke with all precedent and stunned the world with its Declaration of Independence and its Constitution, which are the fountainhead of the wealth that cascaded from the minds and efforts of free men.

The Declaration of Independence identified man's individual rights. The Bill of Rights---the first ten Amendments of the Constitution---secured those rights in specific actions. But it was the formulation of the Establishment Clause that addressed the difficult and complex issue of protecting man's convictions and beliefs without intruding upon his right to believe as he chose, or not. The governing principle of "a wall between church and state" was a stroke of genius that protected the American citizen from the deadly juggernaut of combined political and religious power.

The Founding Fathers gave us this nation, a child of the Enlightenment, Ancient Athens surely being our grandparent. As beneficiaries of such a gift, let us not allow our nation to fall to barbarians---either foreign or domestic---by ignoring the lessons of undivided absolute power over our lives and nation.

Districting

2011-03-15T13:05:00.003-06:00

Districting is a Constitutional requirement that must be done every ten years following the census.

The requirement has become a political tool. It is believed that If one can corral many of one's own party into one district, reaching them will be easier. This assumption guides most if not all of the planning of those who refer to themselves as "Politicals."

"Politicals" generally are campaign managers, lobbyists, and candidate promoters. Through a variety of marketing techniques, they promote a given candidate either for pay and/or for conviction. That means they spend money. And that means their central concern is how to get the biggest bang for the buck in order to get their candidate's name recognized and ultimately elected.

For this reason, some statistics are considered important: (1) It is widely accepted that 20% to 25% of the electorate vote the straight ticket;

(2) if many of the same political party are corralled into one district, that district is thought to be assured of 20% - 25% of the vote for the party. The advertising dollar thereby does double duty as it focuses on the other 75%. Districting in one party's favor is thought to make more effective use of campaign money.

Whether districting does or does not help a given political party, ask yourself who does most to get out the vote? Individuals who want their candidate to win and are willing to talk to others to elect him or her.

Who is the electorate today? It is not only Democrats and Republicans. It comprises a significantly large number of Independents or DTS and other parties. And it comprises many that are registered as one of the foregoing but who in fact stand for individual rights, limited government, free-markets and fiscal responsibility. In other words the principles that guide most Tea Party supporters---whether they call themselves Radicals for Laissez faire Capitalism, or Classical Liberals, or Conservative, or Democrats.

Surely, if most of one's party is in the same area, then one can reach them more easily. But reach them how? Ultimately the electorate is reached by the individual precinct captains, individual ward chairmen who organize and motivate the individual neighborhood walkers to go door to door and explain what a given candidate stands for and why voting the straight ticket is detrimental to one's self-interest.

How does one persuade an individual to refrain from voting the straight ticket, and instead to vote for individual candidates? Would you buy a quart of strawberries if you saw that some of them were rotten? It's the same idea with voting the straight ticket. If you vote a straight ticket, the danger is you'll be voting for a number of rotten candidates. Better to vet men individually. The collective approach is never a good idea in anything.

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For those who would like to learn more about districting, I recommend the following web site where you can download a number of documents dealing with aspects of it. http://www.janicearnoldjones.com/Redistricting/tabid/180/Default.aspx

How to Kill a Bill

2011-03-15T12:57:00.002-06:00

The Democrat members of the Voters and Elections Committee had a good time at the RoundHouse today, Thursday, March 10.

Democrat Representative Chairman Mary Helen Garcia did not lead her committee in all the festivities. She kept good order during the first two hearings; so, the deliberations of House Speaker Democrat Representative Ben Lujan, Sr. and fellow Democrat Representatives James Roger Madalena, W. Ken Martinez, Danice R Picraux, Debbie A Rodella and Edward C Sandoval proceeded---at a noticeably snail pace.

But toward the end of the hearings of SJR 11/d things started to get a little out of hand. The relieved atmosphere among the Democrat Representatives became nearly palatable as they unabashedly expressed their delight at the end of the hearings. Laughing and smiling, their chatter becoming a little louder, one almost expected them to burst into song.

They had good reason to celebrate. After all, they are not necessarily engaged in representing the wishes of New Mexicans. Something else evidently moves them.

Take a look at the set up. The Voters & Elections Committee is comprised of seven Democrats and six Republicans. Thus, the Democrats will always dominate if they vote along party lines. The agenda clearly was stacked against hearing a particular bill---HB577 (Voter Photo ID). HB535 was heard first, followed by HJR 12/d, SJR 11/a HB517 and last, HB577. The committee was supposed to start at 8:30 AM. It was called to order a little after 9:00 AM.

Discussion of the first three bills was delayed by long pauses, as Representative W. Ken Martinez meditated upon "unforeseen consequences," and Representative Rodello declared she was confused, and during the hearing of SJR 11/a ("Transfer of State Owned Property") the sponsor, his expert witness and a clerk were actually allowed in situ to engage in editing of text which was repeated three times. Some jolly exchanges regarding abbreviations and commas also took place.

Clearly someone was dragging the lower appendages. But why?

All will soon be clear. The first discussion---of HB535 was serious and polite as Republican Representative Jane Powdrell-Culbert introduced her bill to "Create a Bond Selection Day." Representative Powdrell-Culbert was joined by Secretary of State Dianna Duran and Bobbi, Director of Elelctions. Although it was obvious to observers that the discussion was stuck in low gear, both Secretary Duran and Representative Powdrell-Culbert remained alert, attentive and immediately responsive to the committee's questions. After about 45 minutes of discussion, Chairman Garcia declared that the committee "seemed in favor of HB535," but because four changes were required, the bill would be "rolled over" to March 15 to be discussed again then.

There followed discussions of HJR 12/d ("Recall of Certain Public Officials") and SJR 11/a ("Transfer of State Owned Property"). It was 11:30 AM when Chairman Garcia called for a hearing of HB517 (Financial Disclosures of Legislators). The bill's sponsor, Republican Representative Cathrynn N. Brown, apologized that her expert witness was absent. She therefore requested that HB577 be heard next.

"No, it's late," said Chairmen Garcia, "It would be better to hear it on Tuesday. You'll be first. I promise you." "Could we discuss it on Saturday or Sunday?" asked Representative Brown. "Not possible," quickly said Democrat Representative Ken Martinez "Tuesday is best."

Tuesday is March 15. The end of the 2011 General Session is March 19. If HB 577 wins a Do Pass, it won't get to the House Floor until Thursday March 17. It would then still have to pass the Senate. Postponing of the hearing on HB577 to Tuesday March 15 is a virtual killing of Voter Photo ID, which Republicans have requested perhaps 4 or 5 times in response to 83% of New Mexicans wanting this protection at the polls.

Committee members Republican Representatives Thomas Anderson, Nate Gentry, Conrad James, Bill Rehm, James A Smith and Shirley Tyler said next to nothing during these hearings. It is obvious why. They did not want to contribute to prolonging the hearings. It was clear to most observers that the Democrat majority of the committee had deliberately wasted time in order to avoid a hearing of HB577. As one observer remarked, "They were nit-picking and dic-dic-dic-ing all over the place."

This, in the face of some New Mexicans having traveled over 3 hours to take part in their government. Is it any wonder that many New Mexicans are taking a second look at the veracity and trustworthiness of Democrats? Is it any wonder at the growth of the Independent segment of our voting population?

Trouncing CREDO With Capitalism

2011-02-01T15:06:00.004-07:00

CREDO is the name of a political activist organization that has replaced ACORN.

It has an nice web site---http://www.workingforchange.com/ Using only black and a soft blue-green pastel, it looks fresh and clean and invites easy reading without many distracting colors, boxes and bars. The layout is simple and easily navigated, the content is provided in a good size font easy to read.

On the left side of the site is a list of current events with brief paragraphs stating what CREDO is against or for, and includes admonitions to take various actions. On the right side of the site is a feature entitled "Mobile CREDO."

Here's an overview of some of the "issues" on the site. The lead paragraph links to a blog entitled "Praying for Palin." The blog post is a sanctimoniously cowardly attack blaming Mrs. Palin for the Tucson shooting. The site writer then hops to filibuster reform, then abortion, then declares that "We must put a stop to the escalating hate rhetoric of the right and its very specific calls to armed violent act." Then back to filibuster reform, to the riots in Egypt, to bashing John Boehner and the Tea parties. Next it's the Koch brothers "and their Tea Party funding cabal," then over to "U.S. evangelicals spreading hate in Uganda," and on to the Chamber of Commerce. And so forth and so on.

The funniest statement on this site is the charge that Ayn Rand "secretly applied for Medicare and Social Security." The statement is, of course, merely the writer's public announcement of the absence of gray matter between his own ears.

The Left's "argument" boils down to the claim that those who were forced to pay into a system over which they had no say and no control may not request return of their money in the form of Social Security payments, nor seek redress of funds through Medicare. In other words, the robbed has no right to request a return of his money from the robber.

To the Leftists, to want your money back "contradicts" your view that Social Security and government health care is wrong. That point of view certainly squares with Leftist's philosophy, which is that only those who did not pay into the system should be given government money.

As in almost everything else, Leftists do not have a grasp of principles. Their frantic demand to be taken care of has caused in them a serious break with reality. The extent of that break is evident in CREDO's harangues to run from "crisis" to "crisis." Let them.

Meanwhile, those of us who advocate individual rights, limited government and free-markets will make significant strides. How? By showing people how capitalism works, and that it is for them as individuals---not as a nest of ants.

I started doing that on Twitter some months ago. I was surprised that the number of followers jumped from zero per day to 2 a day. A lot of people are interested in learning how capitalism works and why it's the only moral system devised by man.

Here are some Tweets I posted in the past and will be posting in the future:

Capitalism allows men to rise by choice---not by force--to whatever level they can. The ambitious create large markets.

The welfare state hampers the ambitious through regulation.

In capitalism, small businesses proliferate, supported by large businesses. Support industries surrounding large companies are an example.

The welfare state hinders small business employment by taking money from the able to give to the less able, thus encouraging stagnation.

Capitalism frees men to function to the best of their ability.

The welfare state penalizes the able through regulation and progressive taxes and forces the less able into dependency.

To phase out gov't interference in the economy and to phase in capitalism, the first step is to de-regulate.

---End Tweets-------

FYI: An acquaintance of mine reminded me of the following quote, which identifies a principle that is applicable to many contexts. Because I have touched on differences between capitalism and the welfare state, it is highly appropriate here.

“The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.” --- St. Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274, Italian Scholastic Philosopher and Theologian

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New Mexico Politics: Speaker of the House

2011-01-25T15:00:00.005-07:00

On January 18 the New Mexico State Legislature met for its first session of 2011. At that session an important election took place: the election of the Speaker of the House.

Democrat Ben Lujan was the sitting Speaker. He had been speaker for a number of years. He had become increasingly authoritarian, deferring Legislators' concerns and stating repeatedly that whatever they said "was not germane." He had gone so far as to break and/or to ignore House Rules. Finally, the Legislators en masse threw down on the floor their copies of the Rules in protest.

The November 2 election increased Republican numbers in the House to considerable strength, but not to majority. They wanted Ben Lujan voted out as Speaker but knew they did not have enough votes to nominate a man of their own.

Enter conservative Democrat Joseph Cervantes who wanted the Speaker seat for himself and offered the Republicans a deal.

It is this deal and the New Mexican Tea Parties organizers rejection of it that caused a stir on line and in the media to the extent that the Tea Parties were roundly criticized by pundits and even by their own supporters for not taking the deal and getting rid of Ben Lujan. Even I, who am no longer affiliated with any one particular Tea Party, came under strong attack for taking the Tea Parties' side.

In response to an article in which I suggested that the State Legislature should change their rules, one of my readers asked a good question. The following is in answer to that question and a discussion of why the Tea Party was right to reject the deal.

-------------------------------------------------------

Regarding my suggestion to change Speaker responsibilities so that the leadership of each party appoints his choices to committees, rather than the Speaker having total control of both party appointees: A reader wondered how that could happen.

In New Mexico a House rule is changed by a Legislator introducing a bill on the House floor. The bill is read into the record. The Speaker of the House then assigns the bill to one or two committees---sometimes three committees. The committees review the bill and its action is reported to the floor. At this time, the action of the committees may be questioned. If the committees all state "Do Pass," the bill is placed on the House Calendar in the order it was reported to the floor.

When the bill comes to the floor, House members may accept or reject the actions of the committees by either a majority vote, or 2/3s of the House. (I've not yet found which is required).

So, it is possible that a House rule affecting the duties of the Speaker can be changed. But given the present make-up of the House---Democrats 36, Republicans 33 and 1 Independent---it is probably that Mr. Lujan would exert considerable pressure to assure he does not lose his power as laid out under the present House Rules.

The bill could, for instance, be sent to committees that state "Do Not Pass." Or other tactics would squash chances of the bill being voted on by the House. In other words, the Rule would likely not be changed because

generally Democrats vote in support of Mr. Lujan as a party block.*

This is why many have criticized the Tea Parties for refusing to agree with the Republicans to make a deal regarding the recent election of House Speaker. Critics say that the House Rule will not be changed as long as Mr. Lujan is Speaker, and the only hope of getting the Republican Leadership to appoint their own members to committees would have been a deal with Mr. Cervantes who promised to allow Republicans to appoint their own committee members.

I remain convinced that criticism of the Tea Parties' stand is short-sighted and unjustified. Three essential factors are overlooked in such criticism: (1) the rule would remain in place; (2) the Republicans would be held hostage by means of their supporting Mr. Cervantes---Mr. Cervantes could change his mind at any time; (3) Mr. Lujan could and would overturn any such arrangement simply by annoyance tactics or---more probably---having his party cohorts sandbag Republican efforts inside of committees. Chaos more than usual would result.

But most important was the reason why the Tea Parties refused the deal. Rather than go for the quick fix, they stood united against Mr. Cervantes on principle. That is far healthier and more constructive in the long run for them and for the Republican Party itself, even if many don't seem to understand that.

Arguing from principle can change people's minds. One can show an individual that your principles should be supported. But one cannot change anyone's mind if principles are non-existent and crony-government is the modus operandi. To have accepted the deal would have been, in effect, to have approved crony-government.

There are no favorites in favoritism---save the man holding the leash. And as Ayn Rand wrote, "a leash is merely a piece of rope with a noose on both ends." The Tea Parties were right not to deal.

Besides, there is a fact that many have overlooked. Mr. Lujan's "victory" was a public bashing. A 33-36 win is a margin hardly something to crow about. That Mr. Lujan felt the blow was evident in his frantic rush to strip one man who opposed him of an important committee chair (plus a couple of other committees, I heard) and to empower another with the chair of an committee that can be used to crush New Mexico's extractive industries. It was an obvious way to "punish" the Republicans---who he knows want to be business-friendly---for daring to stand against him.

Mr. Lujan's spiteful and malicious conduct is hardly becoming to his position as Speaker of the House. One must wonder whether those in his own party will soon recognize the need to censure him or at least simply to say "No" to him. Whatever the case, it is certain that those in his own party recognize that he is not a noble figure worth emulation but merely a frightened little old man who knows he's treading on increasingly wobbly terrain. They must surely know that at any time, in any case, he could thrown another fit of ire and turn on them for whatever imagined threat he believes they pose. It would be well if they took steps before that happens.

However the Speaker behaves, it is clear as spring water that it is up to individual Legislators---whatever their party affiliation---to be courageous and resist Mr. Lujan's machinations and/or threats.

That's where we the electorate come in. We must seek out and vote for those who will be courageous and be their own man and refuse to kow-tow to Mr. Lujan. A Legislature should be a deliberative body with each individual thinking on his own to the best of his ability, unencumbered by threats, bribes or cajolery.

Republicans have made some strides. We can make more---but only if we choose to be guided by principles, not short-term deals.

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*FYI: When a political party votes as a block, it is called party politics. Psychologically, it's called tribalism---which identifies a particular kind of mental stagnation wherein instead of thinking for oneself, one "goes with the flow." As a well-known conservative stated: "The only thing that goes with the flow is a dead fish."

Shell Game

2010-12-23T15:47:00.003-07:00

The following is a slightly edited article I posted to my New Mexico Newsletter in response to actions taken by some shadowy background figure who some people describe as a crook, a corrupt political figure who hates the Tea Party Movement and likes to bully people to do what he wants. Once again I was pleasantly surprised by the quick and plentiful support responding to my writing. ========================================

Shell Game

Unless you're completely bored by the posturing of the so-called "influential" you might find it sort of interesting to watch how they squirm in the face of a few facts and of a few people who don't like power plays.

I suggest you buy Moriarty's Mountain View Telegraph [a local newspaper on the east side of the mountains from Albuquerque] to follow the shell game surrounding the banning of the East Mountain Tea Party from the Lions Club and Wild Life West. The latest gyrations of this on-going saga is the sort of thing that will surely warm your blood---or give you a laugh---as you wait for that scrumptious ham & turkey Christmas dinner.

As I reported yesterday, the editor of the Mountain View Telegraph contacted me regarding my letter to him and my comments on the sudden banning of the East Mountain Tea Party from the use of a couple of facilities. The editor said he was going to write an article about the situation and present the Lions Club and Wild Life West points of view side by side. He invited me to re-submit my letter in response to his article.

Since I'm a bit snowed under right now, I asked him to go ahead and print my original letter. I said that I was certain that this situation had generated so much interest in my readers that they would reply to his article and thereby answer for me.

Okay.

This morning I heard something that caused me to speculate that the heebie-jeebies may have entered the knees of a certain individual, which would explain why it's likely that this same individual is telling his followers to switch gears. They are now contradicting themselves backwards and forwards in order to cover the backside of their---or his---lower anatomy.

Here's the latest in this sorry show of wobbly principles and authoritarian shenanigans. The Lions Club and Wild Life West told the Moriarty newspaper that the "reason" for their banning the EMTP from their facilities was that renting to the Tea Party violated their 501(c3) status. [FYI: a 501(c3) refers to the tax status of a non-profit organization.] Hmmm. Now, how come these up-standing followers of government orders did not check that sort of thing at the beginning of the year when they rented to the EMTP without a quiver of concern?

I mean it's odd, isn't it? We were originally told the Lions Club and Wild Life West feared what other people would say, that they had been "accused" of being part of the EMTP. Then we were told that donors threatened to withdraw support. Now we're told that their "decision" was motivated by the absolutely incontestable, inarguable concern for abiding by tax regulations.

Uh-huh.

And both said, and I quote: "It's nothing against the Tea Party."

!

Initially, I had given both organizations the benefit of a doubt despite their spinelessness in bowing to what I perceived was clearly the dictates of some behind-the-scenes figure calling the shots. I did so because I hold property rights absolute and I would have defended both the Lions Club and Wild Life West's right to rent to whomever they chose.

But this switching-the-pea-under-the-shell game of "explanations," this yellow-bellied fear of being "accused" of being part of an organization that seeks freedom and fiscal responsibility, this kow-towing to the dictates of others is about as zombie-like and un-American as one can get. This is not the attitude of Americans who responded to the demand for surrender with, "Nuts!" It is not the sense of life of Americans who say, "Don't Tread On Me." And it most certainly is not the sense of pride and firm dedication to the right and the good of Americans who say, "Give me Liberty or give me death."

To such Americans a different chain of actions arises from a different motivation resting quietly within. I speak of those Tea Party workers around the nation who will not rest simply because November 2 was a good step forward. I speak of those Americans who work to place more new leaders on local levels, to develop campaigns to run for school boards and city councils. I speak of patriots who give speeches and write books and articles on the importance of individual rights and the need to de-regulate business, demanding that government cease intruding upon our lives. I speak of patriots---too many to name here---some of whom you will see in Santa Fe on January 18 to celebrate the election of Susana Martinez and Dianna Duran to Governor and Secretary of State, respectively, and to remind our Legislature of some streamlining and de-regulation work to be done.

As one American said, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." I agree. So does the East Mountain Tea Party. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

GOVERNMENT REGULATION IS KILLING BUSINESS

2010-12-03T08:48:00.003-07:00

This morning, I received a letter from a businessman who had been strangled by government regulations. As he puts it, "I lost two companies due to the state's regulators and federal regulators misconduct."

Fed up, he moved his company to Texas where the climate is business-friendly. Many businessmen have done the same. For instance, Marita Noon Executive Director of CARE, fighting tooth and nail for the right of New Mexicans to develop their natural resources, often writes about the disastrous consequences to our state of our business people moving to Texas because of the EIB.

The attacks on our oil men, our miners, our ranchers and farmers, our retailers and wholesalers, our mom and pop stores, our independents and our chains---business people of every kind---add up to thousands. Thousands of regulations and thousands of business people are harassed by government regulations to the point of anger, frustration and emotional drain that cannot be calculated by any measure save stroke or heart attack.

It is not only the new health care law that looms over us like a vulture ready to feast on what's left of us. American businessmen are interfered with by OSHA, by Anti-trust, by the gross receipt tax, by the unemployed labor tax, by the demand for fees, permits, and licenses, and so forth ad infinitum.

The multitudinous practices, guidelines and rules of regulatory agencies are little more than legalized extortion.

Think of the waste of time and money that government demands of those who are providing us with services and products that make our lives comfortable. Think of the emotional and intellectual drain that are forced upon the minds and souls of those who provide us with values. Values such as getting a hair cut or having your teeth cleaned. Values like going to a movie or eating out or having a pet. Values like computers or having our car serviced or buying clothing for our families without having to spend our time doing such things ourselves.

Business people do all that---plus a good deal more. And business people include employers and employees. Remember that. When businesspeople are attached, it means all of us are attacked.

I wish to say it is not right, it is not just that the very men and women who work to make a profit by providing us with so many good things, that raise our standard of living and provide us with jobs are saddled with regulations that demand an unproductive use of their time. They are forced to do paperwork because of regulations. They are forced to wade through reams of pages of bureaucraeze trying to understand those regulations.

Such a waste of time and money decreases profits, which means decreased savings, which means reduced business expansion, which means a decreased number of raises that can be given and the number of jobs that can be created.

I wish to say that we must demand that regulations be repealed, that regulatory agencies be closed, and that those bureaucrats being paid a salary that businesspeople provide, be terminated.

If you want to know what the January 18 rally is all about, this* is what it's all about.

I encourage you to send this e-mail to every individual you know: business associate, customer, stay-at-home parent, senior retiree, student, friend and neighbor. Let us ask every New Mexican in the state to join us. Rent a bus or borrow one, car pool, ask your local community club to pitch in and join you and rent a van. Get to Santa Fe and bring the New Mexican population with you.

Christmas is right around the corner. We are all very busy. We want to be joyous and free. But I say to you that the most joyous thing, the most liberating and freest thing we can work for is to make Christmas 2011 the Christmas we celebrated knowing that 50% of our regulations are repealed, their agencies closed and those working in them let go.

* FYI: A group of New Mexicans are organizing a massive rally for January 18, the first day of the 2011 Legislative Session. We are calling it We The People. It will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM on the Capitol Steps. I am writing a "Decree," modeled on the Declaration of Independence that will call for limited government, fiscal responsibility, de-regulation, free-markets and restoration of individual rights.

But this call for de-regulationn of businessmen need not be confined to New Mexico. I encourage Americans who care about American ideals of individual rights, limited government and free markets to call on both the federal governement and their state government to begin to de-regulate.

Tweets Posted Last Week

2010-11-14T15:45:00.003-07:00

Nov 8, 2010:
Understanding what capitalism is: “Capitalism is a social system in which all property is privately owned.”

At present we have a “mixed-economy,” meaning some freedoms and many regulations.

Capitalism is founded upon the moral principle of individual rights. Regulations violate rights by imposing limitations upon freedoms.

Nov 9, 2010:
Capitalism is a process of voluntary trade. It requires men be free to choose, set goals and decide how they want to achieve those goals.

Capitalism means those with capital are free to voluntarily take risks and make a profit or not.

Capitalism means that investors & businesses are not to be bailed out if they fail. Capitalism requires individual responsibility

Capitalism means those who seek loans take responsibility for re-paying them & that lenders are not forced to make loans they deem risky.

Nov 10, 2010:
Capitalism means that men have the right to save their money & will not be forced to support those they do not choose to support.

Capitalism means that those who choose to help the indigent will not be stopped.

Capitalism means that those who offer a product consumers want won't be penalized as some companies presently are---e.g., Microsoft.

Capitalism means that Americans will not be forced to subsidize a product consumers don't---for example, modern art.

Nov 11, 2010:
Capitalism means that those who want to farm their land are free to do so but may not force others to support them---i.e. gov't subsidies.

Capitalism means those who want a good education are free to seek one but may not force others to pay for it.

Capitalism means that those who want a house are free to build or buy one but may not force others to pay for it.

Capitalism means individualism. Individualism means a military dedicated to freedom---in intellect & physical courage. Thank you, American military.

Nov 12, 2010:
Capitalism means that those who want a job are free to create or apply for one but may not force others to provide one.

Capitalism means that one requests a raise in salary but mat not force an employer to give it, or vote themselves one, e.g. gov't officials.

Capitalism means that those who want to form a union may do so but may not force a company to accept it or an employee to join it.

Nov 13, 2010:
Capitalism means that those who want to build a library for a community are free to do so but may not force others to support it.

Capitalism means that disputes be settled in courts of objective law and that lawmen & judges be held accountable for their actions.

Capitalism means that the initiation of force is prohibited and those who initiate it are punished---including gov't officials.

Raise Money by Cutting Government

2010-11-01T10:34:00.003-06:00

On Sunday night, October 31, CBS 60 minutes reported, "David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director who once preached tax cuts, is now in favor of putting a one-time surtax on the rich."

Mr. Stockman said more. He remarked "both the Democrats and the Republicans were lying to the American people regarding the need to lower taxes."

He said that it would be the worse thing to do at this time because of the trillion+ dollar debt. He listed Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps and other welfare programs that had to be taken care of.

At the same time, on the same program small businessmen in Newton, Iowa were interviewed, their story sympathetically reported. The story reported a truly devastating situation in a town (population 14,000) that had once been a busy and important supplier to other businesses. Now it is being destroyed by Obama's socialist policies.

Clearly Mr. Obama and Mr. Stockman have something in common. They both are in favor of "soaking the rich"---the one sphere where savings and investments could re-establish loans and free-markets. One has to wonder at this alliance. Both Obama and Stockman clearly believe that money can be magically generated in American pockets ad infinitum to pay for risky mortgage loans, irresponsible bailouts, propping up government agencies and failed business, such as AIG, another child of government intervention in the economy.

What neither mentions is that there is a very good way to raise money and not raise taxes. But no government official and/or employee---ex-or otherwise---ever mention the obvious.

Yes, things are in shambles---thanks to government intervention in our economy. But there is nothing realistic about raising taxes on anyone---the rich included.

Consider the following.

1. Literally hundreds of regulatory agencies and commissions employ thousands of workers. American taxpayers pay their salaries. Discontinue their employment and stop a sink-hole of wasteful spending.

2. There are at present over 2 million government workers. American taxpayers pay their salaries. Discontinue their employment. Another dollar drain stopped.

3. Elected officials are given on average $164,000 per year for the highly questionable "work" they do. Multiply that average by 535. American taxpayers pay for that. Cut elected officials pay 75%. Get rid of the jets and the helicopters and the free meals and travel expenses. More money saved.

4. The cost of maintaining government buildings in D.C. alone comes to staggering millions of dollars. American taxpayers pay for that. By shutting down government agencies and discontinuing the employment of federal workers, those buildings can be rented out or sold to private enterprise. This would save more millions of dollars.

5. The government claims that it owns millions of acres of our nation's land. Sell the land to private individuals. Use the money to pay the bills the government has incurred.

Why is it that the American taxpayers are forever forced to pay for government fiascoes? Why is it that government officials never think of cutting their own salaries and expenses but expect American taxpayers to tighten their belts instead?

Time to set out priorities properly. Get rid of big government and save a trillion dollars or so of irresponsible, useless, wasteful and damaging spending.

Ideas Have Consequences

2010-10-31T10:30:00.004-06:00

Ron Radosh wrote in PJM an article entitled "The Disappearance of The Emerging Democratic Majority." For that article, access
http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2010/10/29/the-disappearance-of-the-the-emerging-democratic-majority-the-failure-of-a-thesis/

Having outlined a number of facts that show the falseness of the view that America now constitutes a Democratic majority and that the GOP has been obliterated, Mr. Radosh's concludes his article amusingly.

But his article is worth noting for another, deeper reason. It is typical of many commentators' assessment of today's political situation in that it fails to explain the fundamental ideas that are shifting Americans toward the GOP. Instead it dwells on present economic conditions to explain Americans' disenchantment with the Democrat's socialist policies and programs---best exemplified by the ill-conceived and atrociously unconstitutional new health care law.

While Mr. Radosh refers to things that are prompting Americans to turn toward the GOP, the absence of a discussion of the fundamental ideas behind those things is unfortunate. Those ideas need to be stated because without grasping them explicitly they can become lost in superficialities.

Two such ideas are best summed up in Joe the plumber's slogan: "Distribute my work ethic, not my wealth."

Americans have come to realize that it is wrong---morally wrong---for the government to forcibly take the earnings from those who produce values (products and services) and give that money to those who have produced nothing, or are financially irresponsible.

An example is the destructive consequences of Barney Frank's Affordable Housing. In conjunction with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, it caused our economic slump. It forced banks to provide risky loans to those who could not afford such a loan. The money American producers were forced to hand over caused them to sink into debt, while those who were handed the money are now being excused from their mortgage responsibilities.

That entire fiasco showed that you cannot create a healthy work ethic by forcing men to give handouts. It is wrong to insist man live for the group, the collective, other men---in short, for the state.

Another idea contained in Joe's slogan is the recognition that wealth is created by working and thinking. A work ethic refers to a certain code of values that guide those who choose to work to earn their way.

Understanding this idea is also fueling the shift toward the Republicans. In seeing their jobs disappear, Americans realize that those who are scrambling to start fresh and create a new career are the thinking backbone of our workforce. Not only do they exert the effort to create wealth. They also accept the responsibility of thought, which creates new businesses and new jobs. They recognize, at least implicitly, that thinking is necessary in order to live. They are the self-starters. They are the spiritual brothers of the frontiersmen and 19th century producers who built this country. It was not built by welfare recipients.

Such are the two ideas that Americans have come to recognize:
1. it is wrong to force the earner to give his money to others;
2. a propersous economy depends on free men thinking of new ways to earn money.

Both ideas are essential to a free capitalist society.

We need to make certain the GOP leadership recognizes these ideas---and applies them. We must demand that they repeal the new health care law, lower taxes, begin phasing out the welfare state and begin to de-regulate. These are some of the practical applications of these two ideas. Some of the consequences will be prosperity, more freedom and less government.

Government and Moral Values

2010-10-18T15:13:00.004-06:00

I recommend that one read Selywn Duke's entire article, "Yes, Folks, We All Would Legislate Morality (Psst, Even You Libertarians)" dated October 17, 2010, which can be found at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/yes_folks_we_all_would_legisla.html

My comments run too long to be posted to the site where it appeared. For this reason, I have chosen to comment here on my blogspot.

From that article, I have excerpted the statements that I answer.
-------------------------------------------------------------
To begin with, Mr. Duke's title is ambiguous. Is he claiming that government should impose moral values? Or that government imposes some moral values in the act of passing some laws? If the former, one cannot agree. If the latter, such a statement immediately raises the questions: what moral values are being referred to? Are they in keeping with man's life or opposed to it? Mr. Duke does not say.

He wrote: ". . . for a law to be just, it must have a basis in morality."

COMMENT: The problem here is that Mr. Duke does not clarify what he means by morality or what moral values he is referring to. One assumes that he means the morality of altruism, which is the moral doctrine most in vogue these days, accepted by virtually all religions and other types of groups.

At issue is the kind of values lawmakers accept and hold and which guide their choices in making law.

So, if Mr. Duke is referring to the altruist morality, then most laws are unjust since they ignore the moral principle of individual rights. To make a true statement, therefore, one must say, "For a law to be just, it must have a basis in objective morality."

"[Morality] is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions---the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life." (Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics")

Mr. Duke writes: "... a law states that there is something you must or must not do, ostensibly because the action is a moral imperative, is morally wrong, or is a corollary thereof [emphasis added].

COMMENT: Again, this is ambiguous. Does Mr. Duke mean that it is morally wrong for a law to state you must or must not do something? Or is he saying that a law that commands an action is a moral imperative?

It is true that those who make laws do claim such laws are "right." For instance, the belief that you are your brother's keeper is considered by some to be a moral value. Such a moral value is the basis of all welfare state laws. Such a value made into law claims it is "right" to take from earners and give their earnings to non-earners, and "wrong" not to do so. Not to fulfill your brother's need is therefore considered morally "wrong." All welfare statists base their laws on the claim that it is "right" to take from the producer and give to the non-producer.

Alluding to his statement quoted above, Mr. Duke writes: "If this is not the case, with what credibility do you legislate in the given area? After all, why prohibit something if it doesn't prevent some wrong? Why force citizens to do something if it doesn't effect some good?"

COMMENT: Government officials surely do seek credibility by claiming that government care from diapers to dentures is "good." They did claim that Prohibition would prevent alcohol abuse, drunken violence and family neglect. In fact, it heightened criminality and encouraged gang warfare in daylight, and increased drinking.

The Crusaders deemed it "good" to kill infidels. The Puritans deemed it "good" to burn witches. The Soviets deemed it "good" to impoverish producers. The Taliban deems it "good" to kill Christians. The Palestinians deems it "good" to kill Jews.

The problem is that Mr. Duke does not question whether the legislation government enacts is objectively right---i. e., in keeping with reason, man's means of survival. He simply accepts that when government passes a law, claiming it's "for the common good," it therefore surely will "effect some good."

But that something is held as a moral value by someone, does not make it objectively morally right. In the same way and for the same reason, a reliance on some amorphous "Absolute Truth" does not make something true.

Mr. Duke correctly recognizes that "to prevent some wrong" such legislation based on non-objective values becomes non-objective law and therefore necessitates force. Ayn Rand discusses this in "Faith and Force: the Destroyers of the Modern World," which curiously Mr. Duke does not refer to, although he claims knowledge of Miss Rand's words to the point of "quoting" her sentences I've never heard of or read anywhere else. One must wonder did he make them up?

If one holds the view that man is a volitional being whose rights are natural---i.e., acquired by the fact that he exists as a man, and that his nature as a volitional being requires that he must use his reason in order to survive---then laws based on that view would shun the initiation of force, precluding the welfare state entirely.

Laws would not be passed that forced others to live by legislators' values. Laws would not be passed that morally obligated one to help others against one's own better judgement---a thing altruism demands---which includes bailouts of failed companies and government created institutions such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and rushing to the aid of every disaster around the globe with taxpayer money at the ready, but curiously unable to maintain and repair the infrastructure across our own nation.

Mr. Duke writes: ". . . we couldn't credibly prohibit force, protect property rights, or prevent harm in the first place unless unjustly using the first, violating the second, or causing the third wasn't "wrong." Ergo, morality.

COMMENT: Mr. Duke fails to recognize the context of proper law: to protect the moral principle of individual rights. Law based on a proper moral code prohibits the initiation of force. The use of police force in the protection of property, for instance, is proper because it is retaliatory. Those who initiate force against others violating their rights, forfeit their own rights. Therefore, the use of police retaliatory force against them is morally right.

There should be no objection to the use of police force retaliating against violators of rights. There is mighty objection to the use of government force against non-violators of rights, which altruism in the guise of the welfare state daily initiates.

Mr. Duke writes: "Another argument I heard was that not all law reflects morality; the example given was law mandating that we drive on the right side of the road. Yet this is where the "corollary thereof" part comes in. Without such a law, more people will be harmed in accidents, and we believe it's "wrong" to allow people to get harmed.

COMMENT: Such issues as which side of the road one drives on---including other traffic regulations---are fundamentally procedural issues, not moral issues. While the consequences of not following them can cause harm, the event of harm is not the source of morality. It is questionable journalism to introduce such procedural matters into an article on morality and the law.

Mr. Duke's argument then devolves into the tiresome equivocation of preferences in ice cream to moral values as if this puerile parallel had originated with him and as if it proved Objectivism and its author are "moral relativists." But in a serious discussion of morality and the law, it is important to recognize that individual men hold personal values as well as fundamental moral values and that these are not the same in the face of ultimate alternatives.

Philosophically, "moral relativism" refers to a subjectivist view of morality, which finds its origin epistemologically in holding the primacy of consciousness. To accuse Miss Rand of moral relativism shows a dreadfully vast ignorance of Miss Rand's philosophy.

Mr. Duke writes: ". . . Insofar as our government does legislate . . . it must impose morals, not just "values" (which can be positive or negative).

COMMENT: Another ambiguous statement. Does Mr. Duke means that any legislation by its nature is applied moral values? Or does he mean that the government should make laws that identify, choose, direct, and control moral choices?

A proper government has only three functions. And it does not involve itself in welfare programs. It is concerned only with the function of protecting and defending individual rights. If any legislation violates individual rights---such as a welfare program---then it is an immoral law and should not be imposed upon citizens.

He writes: For it is only when government imposes morals residing within its legitimate domain that laws are just; when it imposes merely values, they may be unjust.

COMMENT: Mr. Duke does not specify what he holds is government's "legitimate domain." So there is no way to know whether such laws he refers to are just.

However, if you know that the only legitimate domain of government is the protection and defense of individual rights, then you know that any law that upholds that moral principle is just. If you know that today's government hardly recognizes the existence of individual rights, you know that today most legislation is unjust.

It is quite true that if the government imposes "merely values" it will be unjust---no maybe about it. There can be no right to violate rights. Forcing men to buy health insurance, for instance, is imposing values. Such a law is unjust.

That said, I am puzzled by Mr. Duke's ignorance of or perhaps contempt for individual rights. It is this that makes his views suspect. His unspecified "laws" and undefined usage regarding the relationship between morality and the law indicates that he believes government should impose moral values. Such a view must lead logically to tyranny, despite his protest that he is "a man who proposed the Defense against Tyranny Amendment."

Government's insertion of moral values---beyond the protection of the moral principle of individual rights---has resulted in the creeping socialism that started at the end of the 19th century when government demanded that earners must financially support those who had not earned their way. It was, it was said, the "right" thing to do. This view took more rabid form in the 1930s when, in addition, government withdrew part of men's paychecks to "secure" their future. It was, it was said, the "right" thing to do. Then government proceeded to loot that alleged security.

From the 1940s to the 1990s, the ballooning welfare state in this country and around the world showed the extent to which government's imposition of moral values perverted education and bankrupted producers. Anti-Trust, it was said, was the "right" thing to do---although it is one of the most unjust of our laws. It strangles businessmen and lowers the standard of living across the board. Affirmative Action, it was said, was the "right" thing to do---although it hindered the group it was suppose to help and lowered the standard of professional and academic excellence. Medicare, it was said, was the "right" thing to do---although it is bankrupting families and all levels of government, and wasting the time of skilled medical personnel forcing them to care for malingerers while true emergency cases wait with little hope.

Today, the new health care law, it is said, is the "right" thing to do. But Americans have awaken to the fact that government imposed morality is the wrong thing to do. When you tell men what they must value, you are telling them how they must live. And that is tyranny. The original Tea Parties patriots knew it. Americans today know it, too.

Mr. Duke wrote: ". . . first and foremost, understanding what morality actually is.

COMMENT: I agree that "first and foremost, [we must understand] what morality actually is." But to understand what morality is, one must understand the standard of value of the good. One must grasp the volitional nature of man and his means of survival. One must understand the role that reason and freedom play in one's life, in production, in capitalism. Not to understand that is to be where we are today.

To demand that people value what government officials declare they should is the harbinger of statism in government and the Middle Ages in culture. During the Middle Ages both state and church oppressed men relegating them to thousand years of poverty, disease and ignorance. Today, the danger is that the state and church will once again struggle for authority resulting in a similar consequence.

If we allow this blending of church and state, together they will bring about another Middle Ages. This will happen, however, only if people accept the notion that morality should be imposed by government. The Inquisition tried it. So did Hitler and Stalin. They all "accomplished" only slaughter. One must conclude that that is the goal of every such advocacy.

Mr. Duke ends his article by stating, "So people who want [Ayn] Rand can have her. I'll side with George, James, and the rest of those Taliban, neocon socialists of dead-white-male fame."

COMMENT: I definitely will take the philosophy of Ayn Rand. As many Americans are discovering, her ideas must be implemented if we are to restore individual rights and prosper.

Mr. Duke has made it clear where he stands.

Tweets on Twitter

2010-10-02T07:36:00.003-06:00

Here are some Tweets I posted this past week:

Posted 9-27-10
To establish capitalism, man's need to be free, & therefore prosperous, must be recognized.

We should demand de-regulation of our economy. We should declare the new health care law unconstitutional.

We should begin to phase out some of the most strangulating regulations, such as the Anti-Trust Laws.

We should begin to dismantle the welfare state. We should restore individual rights, limited government and free markets.

Posted 9-28-10
Gov't does not create values. Only free minds working voluntarily create values---such as food, shelter, clothing, transportation.

Gov't does not create jobs. Offering values, private individuals create jobs, which they offer to other men.

Big gov't stifles innovation, strangles free competition, invites corruption and wastes money.

The present number of gov't employees is about two million individuals. Their salaries range from $50,000 to $150,000 per annum.

2 million times an average of one hundred thousand dollars = $20,000,000,000,000 per annum that taxpayers pay for.

Posted 9-29-10
To restore individual rights and implement capitalism, we should start to de-regulate the economy.

We should de-regulate transportation, returning buses, subways and trains to private enterprise from which they were confiscated.

We should start to de-regulate the banks, savings and retirement accounts. Get the gov't out of our pocketbooks.

Posted 9-30-10
To restore individual rights and implement capitalism, we should get gov't out of education and gov't control of textbooks.

We should start to phase out gov't regulation of agriculture, trucking, shipping, the importing and exporting of goods.

We should start to de-regulate real estate, mortgages, land, business and residential development. Close Fannie and Freddie Mae.

De-regulate communications including radio, TV, telephone and telegraph.

Posted 10-1-10
Gov't employees number about 2 million. Average salary is $75,000 per year, which sums to $150,000,000,000, which taxpayers pay.

Terminate all the jobs held by those individuals presently in the agenices that regulate the economy.

Sell or rent to private enterprises the buildings that presently house the regulatory agencies.

The money saved and the revenue gained should be used to off-set and lower income taxes on all Americans.

Posted 10-2-10
Spending earnings increases trade; saving earnings expands production. Both actions raise the standard of living.

Gov't salaries don't raise living standards. Elected officials salaries exceed taxpayers', whose taxes pay gov't salaries.

Reps and Senators number 535. Salaries range from $160K to $237K. Average is $198,500 times 535 = $106,197,500 per annum taxpayers pay.

The Enormous Cost of Big Government

2010-09-28T11:24:00.002-06:00

We have some 2 million plus government employees at present. They are only the tip of the statist flames consuming our republic. I plan to post more information on the salaries and size of scores of regulatory agencies, department heads, elected officials and appointees and the extraordinary expensiveness of maintaining the White House, its building, grounds and kitchen staff.

Those figures will NOT include millions spent on Ms. Pelosi's personal jet and its fuel, nor the countless perks she deems herself "entitled" to. Nor will it include mention of the TWENTY attendants that make up part of Mrs. Obama's personal entrourage and costs the taxpayers in the neighborhood of $2 million.

All that feeding at the taxpayer's expense, while the government wants to increase taxes on our businesses, small and large, introduce a "transaction tax" on all bank dealings, loot our retirement funds and force us to buy things we do not want.

However, I've not written that report yet because I've been a bit busy with political activism; so, I print below an e-mail I received this morning, Tuesday, September 28, 2010.

FYI: I have already voted for cutting spending by acessing http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/

If any of you also are interested in voting I would appreciate your comments here or on Facebook to let me know what you think. Thanks. Here's the e-mail from YouCut.

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The policies put forward by President Obama and Speaker Pelosi over the last 20 months have caused the size and reach of the government to grow exponentially.

Since President Obama took office, the Federal civilian workforce has grown by approximately 188,000 new employees (this number even excludes temporary census workers) or about 15 percent. Meanwhile, the private sector has lost millions of jobs and the unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent.

This week's winning YouCut item, supported by Rep. Lummis of Wyoming, would save the taxpayers $35 billion over the next ten years by reining in the growth of the federal workforce.

We need to cut spending immediately and we need to end the uncertainty that has paralyzed our nation's economy. Click [ http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/ ] to vote on the next five YouCut projects and we will bring the winning item to the floor for a vote.

Regards,
Eric Cantor
House Republican Whip

A Tale of Two Parties

2010-08-25T11:56:00.007-06:00

Following is an Op-Ed I submitted to The Albuquerque Journal. It was rejected; so, I posted it to an on-line discussion group and to an activist group. I now post it here for the same reason that it was worth writing: it is a story that illustrates a particular modus operandi that is becoming characteristic of a group of individuals for which such a characteristic should be anathema.

When you encounter in your friends an indifference to your personal values, you can be sure such individuals are not your friends. When you perceive that the values your firiends claimed they shared with you are merely mouthings, you can be sure you are better off without them. Such dissembling will in time devolve into a serious threat to your well-being. It is better you call their bluff and go your separate ways.

What happened during a particular "Meet the Candidates Forum" in New Mexico revealed an instance of a smilar kind.

My Op-ed is meant to call a bluff.

====================================

A Tale of Two Parties

On August 15 the East Mountain Tea Party held a "Meet the State Candidates" Forum at the Moriarty (New Mexico) Lion's Club. Democrats and Republicans alike were invited.

Democrat Invitees: For Governor (Denish) and Lt. Governor (Colón) candidates, the Colón office responded that someone from Colón's office would represent both candidates. Secretary of State Mary Herrera early in August confirmed she would come. State Auditor Hector Balderas said he would get back to the EMTP, and yet subsequently did not respond to several emails and phone calls. State Treasurer James B. Lewis said he would try to come personally, if not, would send a representative. Attorney General Gary King called said he definitely would have someone from his office at the event. State Commissioner of Public Lands Ray Powell said he was unable to attend.

Republicans Invitees: For Governor (Martinez) and Lt. Governor (Sanchez) respectively, Mr. Sanchez confirmed he would come and would represent both candidates. For Secretary of State Dianna Duran confirmed to come. For State Auditor Errol Chavez confirmed to come. For State Treasurer Jim Schoonover confirmed to send someone from his office. For Attorney General Matt Chandler said he would send someone from his office. For State Commissioner of Public Lands Matt Rush confirmed to come.

Therese Cooper, co-founder of the East Mountain Tea Party (with Char Tierney) was to act as a moderator to introduce the candidates. Dr. Rick Morlen, President of the Board of the Albuquerque Tea Party, agreed to moderate the question and answer session.

Everything seemed A-Okay. Everyone was excited. The unusual forum featuring both Republicans and Democrats promised to be an interesting and orderly exchange of views. The prospect electrified voters.

But something happened, the cause of which can only be guessed at.

Two days before the event Mary Herrera's office called to say she could not come and that they would get back to the EMTP. A similar call regarding Denish and Colón came from the Colón campaign---again, two days before the event. Neither office contacted the EMTP again.

When the time for the Forum arrived, not a single Democrat candidate nor his representative appeared. All Republicans, except two, came as promised. Matt Chandler's representative e-mailed the EMTP to explain his failure to appear. The next day he telephoned, apologizing further. Errol Chavez sent word that his doctor recommended he rest and that he would not be able to attend.

But from the Democrats, candidates and representatives alike: silence.

Nonetheless, the forum went forward on schedule. Three questions were asked of every candidate. Each was given five minutes to answer. At the end of the round, the audience was given opportunity to ask questions. Each candidate was given two minutes to answer.

One hundred and seventeen New Mexicans filled the room, eager to discover what each candidate had to say for himself. They heard what the Republicans had to say. But what happened to the Democrats? Why did all they all bow out?

Did the Democrat Party leadership tell Democrats not to appear? Was there an agreement among the Democrat candidates to sandbag the Tea Party forum? Was it the hubris of the incumbent dismissing his challenger? Or was there a deliberate effort to side step what they feared might be questions that put them on the spot?

Yet each question would have been asked of both party candidates. That was the purpose of the forum: to compare answers to questions, such as: "Corruption has become widespread on both federal and state level. Tell us your plans to put an end to this national and state scandal and to protect the citizens of NM from further corruption."

The inarguable fact is that the Democrats left the public in the dark about their motives for quitting the forum---and about their views. Does this indicate that Democrats generally cannot be trusted to keep their word? Does it suggest that Democrats do not like being pinned down to what they really think? Is it possible that the Democrats were frightened of their Republican opponents as has been widely discussed?

Whatever the case, at the most charitable it was discourteous behavior. The Democrat invitees showed poor judgement in accepting the invitation and/or promising representatives in their stead, then all---politician and representative alike---failing to appear without a word to the East Mountain Tea Party organizers, their Republican colleagues, or the electorate.

Someone remarked, "It is hard to vote for someone when they don't show up to their job interview." One might consider such things when deciding whom to vote for come November.

(FYI: A list of the questions asked the candidates can be read at www.eastmtteaparty.com)

Prohibition Revisited

2010-07-28T11:39:00.004-06:00

Survivalists, or "Preppers" as they sometimes call themselves, see a bleak future. They could be right…or not. It depends on which road we take: acquiescence or resistance.

Prohibition made it illegal for Americans to buy alcohol. It did not stop them from drinking. It increased it. Going to a speakeasy was groovy, as collegians -- even high school students -- sought new adventures. Others started to drink in sheer defiance of the heavy handedness of the federal enforcement of the 18th Amendment.

Prohibition interfered with individuals' choices. So does the healthcare law. ObamaCare interferes with the relationship between doctor and patient. The new law will not stop suffering. It will increase it. The Affordable Health Care Act (Public Law No. 111-148) forces doctors to give free examinations and preventive treatment. In some cities, doctors are currently paid as little as $8.00 a visit. That fee can be expected to decline further under the new law. The number of doctors taking Medicare/Medicaid patients has dropped from over 70% to approximately 50% in 2009.

This percentage is expected to continue to sink farther, as doctors withdraw or refuse to take part. One hopes so. They have formed a Tea Party and are advocating the repeal of the healthcare law. Most doctors know that capitalism would fairly reward the highly skilled. Welfare states on the premise that the able are obligated to care for the malingerer, do not.

Prohibition increased criminal activity. So will the healthcare law. As the number of doctors decline and the safety of medical practices is sabotaged by corruption and fraud, criminal activity in black markets will erupt. The unscrupulous will offer shoddy, possibly even deadly medications, preying upon those tired of waiting in long lines.

Those denied access to medical care will surely face extortionists. Donald Berwick, arch-socialist, has been nominated to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He admires Great Britain's health care system. He supports massive government rationing. Those who accede to politician/bureaucrats' demands will get treatment. Those who don't, won't.

Mr. Berwick also supports a massive health care bureaucracy to redistribute the wealth. The wealth he will loot will pass into non-productive hands and unprofitable schemes, disappearing down black holes of spending instead of investment. Mr. Berwick's nullification of individuals' choices guarantees that the productive will vanish.

The healthcare law also usurps State sovereignty. It has been widely reported that 21 states have filed lawsuits on the grounds of the unconstitutionality of the healthcare law, that 10 more are planning to, and that 41 states are banning key aspects of it. The infringement on state sovereignty as much as the unaffordable cost prompted Florida, for instance, to act. The Complaint, filed in the US District Court Northern District of Florida, shows that the law will add another 1 million enrollees to Florida's already bloated 2.7 million Medicare/Medicaid recipients. The healthcare cost for Florida will be around $6,700 per person. New Mexico will have to shoulder an estimated 91,000 new enrollees at $7,074 per person.

Nationally, the new health care law will add $562 billion to the deficit over the next ten years. Since the costs of implementing and creating state bureaucracies to run the healthcare program are not included in healthcare estimates, the actual deficit is expected to be close to $1 trillion. Former New Mexico Congresswoman Heather Wilson rhetorically asked in an e-mail to several acquaintances, including this author, "Where is that money coming from?"

Productive citizens in the private sector are the government's only source of real revenue. To illustrate one way of squeezing that source, a business associate related the following: "A friend was medi-vac'd from St. Vincent's to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Her bill there was $106,000. The hospital accepted the Medicare reimbursement as payment in full. That reimbursement was $5,000. The $101,000 then [went] to G & A as overhead to be passed on to other patients with health insurance, [who] will pay higher rates for service."

The new healthcare law mandates even lower hospital reimbursements.

Prohibition sought to force individuals not to buy a product an individual wanted. The healthcare law seeks to force individuals to buy a product an individual may not want. Both laws violate the individual rights to life and property. Advertisers entreat you to buy a product, or shun a competitor's, but they cannot force you to do so. A government can. It points a gun---i.e. prison and/or a fine if you do not obey---at your head to force you to take actions you do not choose. Since life is a process of making choices and taking actions to sustain your life, such laws violate your right to life by placing politicians' values between your choices and your actions. In the same way, they violate your right to property by forcing you to spend your money (your property) as they dictate.

The violation of individual rights is not only a violation of one's political freedom. It is more fundamentally a violation of one's moral values. The violation of one's right to life, for instance, is the attempt to cancel one's reason. Since every man must think in order to live, thinking is a matter of sustaining one's life, and thus it is right to use one's own mind to do one's job and earn one's way. Hence, reason is a moral value. When, however, the government violates your right to life, it violates the function of that moral value. It says, in effect, the government will tell you what to do, you must forgo following your own thinking and choice.

The violation of individual rights also violates one's moral virtues. It is no secret that after more than a generation of the welfare state, those bought up in it have a moocher mentality and a malingerer's approach to self-supporting work. Such attitudes show that the virtue of productivity has been destroyed and that the virtue of pride and the virtue of independence
---the choice to think for oneself---have been obliterated. The individual who held a sign in Arizona protesting that state's immigration law is an example of what violating moral virtues lead to. Her sign read: "We want free food; free housing. You owe us, America."

"They can put me in jail and fine me. I will not comply with that law," Dr. Andrew Bernstein, author of Capitalism Unbound, stated on his Facebook wall. Others have come to the same conclusion. What will happen when a large number of otherwise law-abiding, hard working, tax-paying Americans elect to go to jail rather than comply? Who---or what---is the government going to loot next? Bank and retirement accounts. It has already begun. A proposal is being readied to take over retirement accounts. The productive are the competent. Without the competent to maintain them, electrical grids will break down. Illumination, cooking, heating, cooling, security systems, stock trading, banking, computers controlling myriad operations of all forms of communications, transportation, water supply and fuel pumps, will not function. Food supplies will also be affected.

Harvested food will rot in trucks stopped on the roadside for lack of fuel, and in stores for lack of refrigeration. People desperate for food will tear through crops. Whatever foodstuffs remain in the fields will spoil without a means to harvest and transport it.

As the supply of goods dwindles, the number of sick will balloon. Different forms of medical help will be offered. The government's extortion racket will surely invite "underground" practices. Like the speakeasies of the Prohibition era, you will have to know someone to gain admission into a trustworthy underground medical facility. Thugs will run another type of facility, offering bogus remedies and butcher-knife "operations." Many people will die unnecessarily. And not on clean sheets.

We should be prepared, but our goal should be to retrieve our country. Preppers seek to move to self-sufficient rural areas, isolating themselves as much as possible from what they believe is to come. Let us stay and fight. Let us dedicate ourselves to Patrick Henry's view.

We need not accept so dark a future. We need not acquiesce to the meaning and intent of this law---which comes close to near-total control of individual lives. Consider who fashioned this law: Corrupt, grasping, dishonest politicians who have caused crises after crises---such as Barney Frank's "Affordable Housing" which is acknowledged to have been the underlying cause of the economic meltdown. Such men and women have presumed to write a law violating our rights and telling us we must obey it. Are you willing to be ruled by such creatures?

Let us repeal the healthcare law. Let us vote out those corrupt politicians. Let us recognize the importance of free-market medicine and individual rights, and that we cannot have one without the other and be healthy and safe.

To Those Who've Commented

2010-07-04T15:01:00.006-06:00

I owe an apology to those who took time to comment on my posts in a civilized manner and to those who requested contact information and to those whose idea of commentary is a stream of censored material.

To the first two, I truly am sorry. I've been a bit busy with one thing an another and did not get around to reading all your nice, supportive thoughts. Thank you very much for all your comments and very interesting insights and evaluations. I much appreciate your feedback.

To those who asked to use my material on their site, please do link up.

To those who want to contact me personally, your best bet is to "friend me" on Facebook. Then we can chat privately without a problem and I can give you my e-mail address if you need it for some special purpose.

To all of the above, I wish you a most happy July Fourth.

To those who've left censored material on my blog spot, I have to laugh at how self-defeating you are. Does it not occur to you that if your material is so foul and coarse that you are totally censored, I cannot read whatever you want to state? I'm delighted to know I am a burr under your saddle.

Political Agnosticism

2010-06-27T12:52:00.004-06:00

Several months ago, I paused to admire a lovely neighborhood. A man and his wife approached and asked if I was putting up flyers on the wall. "No," I replied.

"How about this one," the man asked pointing at the shreds of a yellow flyer on a utility box.

Perhaps he asked the question because I was standing near that utility box? I explained that it was thought members of Organizing for America had done that and that Tea Party supporters had removed it.

The man asked, "Are you one of them?"

"Of whom? The Tea Party? Yes, I am. But I am an Objectivist, not a Conservative. No one in the Tea Party is OFA."

He said, "You're merely the other extreme. You're all the same."

I was taken aback. In today's clear-cut struggle between individual rights on the one hand and statism on the other, I had never met anyone who considered both as anathema. If he were a centrist, he would advocate features of both sides. But he had not. He considered both sides "extreme" and "the same."

Did he genuinely believe that both the advocacy of individual rights and government's violation of them were equally reprehensible? What sort of government was he for?

I did not discover the answer to my question until a couple of days ago.

I had a telephone conversation with a woman who is an officer of an organization allegedly devoted to advancing Albuquerque businesses. I thought an interview with her might be interesting for a radio show I'm helping to produce for the Patriot Activist Network.

After explaining why I had called, she asked, "What is your agenda?"

Thinking that she meant what was my political perspective, I answered, "I don't like what's happening to my country. I want to help businessmen understand that government should be limited, and that markets should be free."

"Are you connected with the Tea Party?"

"Yes. PAN is a branch of the Albuquerque Tea Party," I said."

"I am tired of anti-everything," she said, implying that Tea Parties are anti-everything. "I do not denigrate the President. I am not anti-anything." She continued in this vein for quite a while. Eventually, she began to tell me about what she undoubtedly considered her accomplishments.

She had been interviewed on an Albuquerque public television program, she said. Also the United Nations had hired her to go to China to teach technology. She had worked in Russia, too, doing the same thing. She wanted to be for things, she said, repeating again that she was not anti anything. She ended by declaring that she was for populism and worked "to develop and promote populism as the basis of a safe and strong society."

Now, populism is the doctrine that arose in 1891-1904 as a political party advocating among other things, public ownership of utilities, an income tax and government support of unions and agriculture. It is a variant of statism. Her claim that she was not anti anything means she is not anti our government's infringement of individual rights, not anti Russia's slaughter of millions of peasants, not anti China's ruthless suppression of student protests and Tibetan priests, not anti the removal of the clitoris of Islamic women, not anti the Taliban's bombing of the World Trade Center, and so forth.

Like the man I had previously met, she was a political agnostic. Not being against anything means not taking sides. What is it about taking sides that the political agnostic abhors?

Many people avoid passing negative judgments openly. In personal relationships they might be "sweet" to one's face but scathingly critical behind one's back. In political matters, however, the same people can take a specific stand and loudly protest in defense of it.

The political agnostic takes the opposite tact. He will tell you to your face face that you are wrong, but he is loath to criticize the government. Both the man and the woman referred to above told me, respectively explicitly and implicitly, that I was wrong to be involved with the Tea Party, wrong to criticize the government or denigrate the president. They claimed that they were not anti anything but in fact they were anti taking sides against the government.

The political agnostic is an authoritarian. He is comfortable taking orders. But only from authority figures. He feels safe to be told what to do. He resents those who question authority. He feels such questioning is a slur on his own self-image of a "good person cooperating with those who know best."

Safety to the political agnostic means the absence of public dissent. He does not say, "a plague on both your houses." He says, "Let there be only one house, the central government that tells everyone what to do." The political agnostic does not say, "I don't want to be bothered with politics." He says, "Let a leader decide, which we will all obey."

By advocating a central government he feels secure from that constantly moving ocean of different types of individuals, different premises, different tastes, likes, dislikes, opinions, desires, goals, and choices. In that continually teeming roar of ebb and flow, of striving toward different goals that is society, he believes that only a centralized authority will guarantee him "safety"---the "safety" of the straight-jacket---and a "strong" society---the strength of a prison's iron bars.

He evades recognizing that men of wisdom, integrity and benevolence are not interested in controlling others and consequently are not attracted to offices of omnipotent government. But vicious, fear-infested, manipulative and shrewdly malevolent men are. As has been seen countless times in an abundance of ghastly acts---the Nazis, the Communists, the Taliban, the Khmer Rouge---the bloodlust of totalitarianism does not stop with the abuse of men, women, children and animals but goes on to erupt in torturing, dismembering, starving and slaughtering all that lives.

The political agnostic's role in this mayhem is seen in those who stood by and did not protest the rise of Adolph Hitler and his "Final Solution." It was revealed during the 1920s and for decades following, by those who celebrated the "noble experiment" of Soviet Communism in which countless millions were slaughtered outright or were driven to despair, mental paralysis and starvation by government policies. It is expressed in the intellectual distortions of those who deal commercially with Communist China providing them with western technology, know-how and world wide instant communication. It is seen in the empty-headed shortsightedness of those who declare, "I'll take anyone's money: I'm a businessman."

By refusing to take sides, the political agnostic shuns the virtue of justice and damns the good.

No one can justly stand on the sidelines and refuse to take sides at any time. Today, no one who makes the effort to arrive at an objective evaluation of the Obama Administration and Congress can justly conclude that Americans are not being railroaded into socialism against our will. And no one can rationally come to the decision that in such circumstances, one should do nothing.

The lives and thought of John Locke and the Founding Fathers resulted in the creation of the United States, the freest nation on earth and in history. For a while.

To regain the republic they created, one must take sides. Nothing short of that will regain our freedoms and restore our individual rights. And it will not end in November. That is only the beginning.

Terror-Fried

2010-06-06T11:56:00.003-06:00

Here are two comments made on my blog site responding to my May 27, 2010 post.

May 27, 2010 10:39 PM
???? said... ????,?????;????,??????..................................................

May 31, 2010 7:18 AM
???? said... ????????,?????? ..................................................

No doubt the web master censored them because they contain foul language.

Given my innocuous post, it's easy to identity what prompted these writers to make such coarse and probably illiterate remarks. They are terrified that their days of freeloading would be over should food-stamps and other so-called "entitlement" programs be ended. They are also terrified that should regulations be repealed they'll no longer be able to scream violation of this or that regulation---ignoring the employer and employee rights violated by the regulation.

Americans' universally-recognized-and-sometimes-sneered-at-generosity is a matter of choice. That choice can be withheld. The malingerer knows it. He also knows that after decades of screaming that the productive owe him for being needy, the productive are beginning to realize they owe him nothing---especially because he's needy.

Now that would indeed be very terrifying to know, if one has the soul of a malingerer, or a killer. One would surely start using a half dozen four-letter words in place of tears and sores. That's what "entitlements" have always boiled down to: when whining doesn't work, use insults and get the government to force productive workers to provide for malingerers.

It would be even more terrifying to know that no matter how loudly the grasping and the envious cry, their pleas might one day bounce off of indifferent ears. Surely indifference would be warranted---especially after a century of hearing the virtues of productivity and profit attacked as greedy blood sucking.

But more deeply, those two who posted foul-language comments on my blog site are terrified that the days of self-sacrifice as a moral good are coming to an end. Slowly Americans are beginning to recognize that government has no right to loot Paul to give to Peter, and that to do so is a vice, not a virtue.

Remarks on Restructuring Government

2010-05-27T12:23:00.003-06:00

Following are the remarks I made in Santa Fe on May 25, 2010, in the Capitol building before the New Mexico Task Force on Restructuring Government:

I represent no organization here today. I speak only for myself, an American concerned about the present state of government.

I do not seek to be harsh and/or disrespectful. But I need to say acouple of things and I will be blunt.

I know that government on all levels is bloated beyond its proper functions. Yesterday, I sat appalled at what I heard said here. It's not merely the extent to which most of you intrude upon individual rights in so many ways. But also that most of you seem oblivious to that intrusion.

I recognize that the problems you are struggling with are difficult and complex. As Representative (name omitted) said today, "Restructuring means to throw everything out and start fresh with a blank canvas."

I agree with that analogy. I urge you to do this. Let's have a sleek and streamlined government. The one principle to guide you is this: the only proper function of government is the police to protect individual rights domestically and the courts to defend individual rights by settling disputes. That is all.

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Nota Bena: I could tell that the Senators, the Representatives, the advisors and the members of that Task Force had no idea what I was talking about. I looked into their faces and saw silence. I don't know if any single one of the people in that room actually heard what I said.

It's okay. It's a start. The words have to get out there. Eventually, enough of us telling the government what the proper function of government is, some of it will might soak in---especially to men such as the Representative who recognize what re-structuring means.

Ideas and the Coming Election

2010-05-03T05:48:00.004-06:00

Polls measuring the political concerns of grassroots Americans consistently show that a majority is "extremely angry about government intrusion into personal lives." Despite that finding, a parochial, anti-conceptual view of politics predominates among political party officials, politicians and candidates.

For instance, as the Tea Party movement was born in March 2009 discussion groups proliferated around the nation. Grassroots Democrats, Republicans and Independents, candidates for political office, ranking political party officers attended the meetings. So did many activists, bloggers and Tea Party supporters. The discussions tended to revolve around political corruption, excessive spending, budget deficits, the bailouts, government take-overs, and so forth. Grassroots attendees seemed to be looking for something that would tie together all of their concerns.

But when one stated that the growing intrusion into American lives shows that "we must demand a restoration of individual rights," political party officials and political candidates declared that "Voters are turned off by that philosophical stuff." One candidate said, "The only way you can get elected is to talk about fiscal accountability and transparency. Talking about ideas is a waste of time. Philosophical ideas are too abstract. People don't understand them. What they understand is their pocketbook."

Such fatuous remarks reveal the magnitude of the speaker's ignorance. Bookstores are doing a booming business selling books that deal with ideas. For example, "Total sales of Ayn Rand's novels reached 1.1 million in 2009.
. . . Nearly half of those total sales were Atlas Shrugged," a novel that deals with philosophical ideas. During the first quarter of 2010, sales had not slowed. Her non-fiction work, such as the Virtue of Selfishness, is also reaching new highs in sales. Libraries have long wait lists for books that deal with ideas. Bloggers dealing with ideas have good-size followings. Articles posted on the net by columnists who deal with ideas generate hundreds of comments. Talk radio has grown large, with steady audiences. The questions phoned in are predominately thoughtful.

The majority of American voters characteristically have worked hard all their lives to improve themselves financially and intellectually. One does not improve oneself financially and intellectually by reading exclusively the comics, the society page or the tabloids. Americans are looking for ideas.

They know it is not right for government to confiscate their money and give it to those who have not earned it. What idea makes them know that such action is robbery? The right to property. They know that it is not right for government to set salaries. What idea gives substance to that knowledge? The right to life. They know it is not right for government to demand homeowners have a license to sell their home. What idea is behind that? The right to property and liberty.

Rights are the foundation of our Republic and of men's well being. Only the restoration of our rights can stop the descent into collectivism---and it does not matter if you call it socialism, progressivism, fascism or communism, all are expressions of collectivism, the fundamental political principle guiding the Obama government.

The opposite of collectivism is individualism. Morally, individualism is the doctrine that says man has the right to live for his own sake. Politically, it espouses the individual's right to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Economically, it results in the free-market. Under individualism, men are free to pursue the shape and meaning of their own happiness as long as they do not violate another's rights. Under individualism, men are free to choose the work that interests them, earning their own way, minding their own business, helping those they wish to help. These are some of the aspects of individual rights that need to be discussed, advocated and made the center of a political platform.

The political party that does, will be the winning party in 2010 and in 2012 will sweep the collectivists out of office. The candidates who do, will be statesmen returning this country to the land of freedom it once stood for.

Government Plans to Loot Your Retirement Account

2010-03-09T14:11:00.005-07:00

In a proposal entitled EBSA Proposed Rules, the Labor and Treasury departments are requesting information from employers, employees, financial institutions and others regarding Retirement Accounts. They "are asking for public input about the use of annuities in defined-contribution plans, such as 401(k)s. . . . including the advantages and disadvantages of distributing benefits as a lifetime stream of income . . ."

The 401(k) plan was created and is regulated by the government. It consists of two types of plans: the Defined Benefit and the Defined Contribution. In a Defined Contribution plan you can contribute whatever you want as long as you do not exceed your salary. Opting to take a lump sum upon retirement assures that you will at least get most of your retirement money out from under government control and will be able to invest it outside of government retirement plans. If, however, you opt for the Defined Benefit plan you might become understandably concerned that your retirement funds might not be steady, or that you might not be paid at all---given the huge debt the government has incurred and the state of various government programs. Consequently, retiring individuals increasingly choose to receive a lump sum upon retirement rather than "a lifetime stream of income."

Department of Labor data shows that the "number of active participants in Defined Benefit plans fell from about 27 million in 1975 to approximately 20 million in 2006, whereas the number of active participants in Defined Contribution (Page 5254) plans increased from about 11 million in 1975 to 66 million in 2006."

One of the requirements of the plan mandates that employers think for their employees. At present, employers are required to help employees choose payout options that suit their individual circumstances, while assuring adequate levels of such income to the extent possible." This, the Proposal deems "insufficient;" so, it demands that employers also provide the retiring worker with "several types of information, such as on risks that could affect retirement income security, could help retiring participants make more informed decisions regarding how they balance income and expenditures during retirement."

Further, the employer is required "to provide participants with a notice on risks that individuals face in managing their income and expenditures at and during retirement." And more: Employers "are responsible for making contributions that are sufficient for funding the promised benefit, investing and managing plan assets (as fiduciaries), and bearing investment risks because the employer, as plan sponsor, is required to make enough contributions to the plan to fund benefit payments during retirement."

On several levels this is one of the most sweeping violations of individual rights. It is an open assault on Americans' life and income. It is not enough that employers are forced to pay into their employees' retirement accounts. Now every job creator, every employer large and small will be forced to spend hours and mental effort in unpaid service advising his employees how to use retirement funds.

From the perspective of the employee, the EBSA Proposal is equally unjust, violating their rights as well. It wants to force Defined Contribution employees to use "a lifetime stream of income"---i.e., government issued annuities---thereby forbidding lump sum payouts. In other words, the employee's money will no longer be his to use as and when he wants it. Government officials will decide when employees can have the money they've earned and how they can receive it. When government takes over retirement accounts, the money will not be invested in reputable securities earning a return and watched over by expert investment analysts. The money will be siphoned off for other schemes, as is the money one pays into Social Security and Medicare. Employees' savings will be wiped out.

The Proposal is undisguised looting of employer and employee alike.

The Proposal is not only immoral, it is also, as all immoral acts, wildly impractical. The EBSA Proposal is based on the assumption that savings are static and can be withdrawn from its function with impunity. But when withdrawn, savings become merely a sum that can be exchanged for something else. They are no longer savings.

A nation's savings are the fundamental means of fueling a growing economy as well as cushioning unexpected setbacks, such as natural disasters. In a mixed economy such as ours---i.e., some freedom and many regulations---the continual setbacks ignited by government interference cause a declining standard of living. Savings, therefore, become even more acutely important---especially to youngsters starting out, bright with ambition and teeming with ideas. When savings dry up, so does economic growth.

Savings are savings because the wealth it comprises is viable. Were it not for savings, financial institutions would not have a reservoir of money that could be used profitably to finance new ventures, make loans and extend credit to trustworthy, hard-working clients. The profit from such contractual agreements benefits the institution as well as its savers, i.e., its account holders, shareholders and investors, thereby increasing the wealth of all.

Were it not for savings, the simplest everyday purchase could not be made. That ready cash in your pocket? It is there because someone somewhere has savings. The employer who paid you your salary had to have savings on which to draw. The grocer has goods to offer you because someone somewhere has savings and extended him credit. The auto shop that maintains your vehicle relies on someone's savings to ensure its payroll, support its inventory, accept your credit card and anticipate slow business days. And so forth.

In an industrial nation, men cannot successfully live hand-to-mouth, as once they did, and as the oppressed peoples in under-developed countries are forced to exist today.

Savings are not currency stuck in a can and buried in the ground. Savings today are in pension and retirement funds, almost all of which are in securities of one form or another. Most of those funds are in 401(k)s. Many of those funds were hard hit in the disaster following the government "affordable housing" fiasco. Many accounts suffered losses of 50% or 75% of their value. Some lost all their value.

Accounts that did not suffer such drastic losses were held by the most financially responsible institutions and individuals. They are in effect now the only ones providing savings until others get back on their feet. The Treasury wants that money. Consider what that means.

Retirement accounts are the nest eggs of those who have worked to provide for their old age. They are the nest eggs of those living on fixed incomes---the retired---of those about-to-retire and of the young. The sum total of American retirement accounts is in the trillions. Should this proposal be made "law," it is obvious where that money will go. The government has incurred gargantuan debt. Turning Americans' retirement accounts over to government control is not merely economic insanity. It is economic suicide.
There is no justification for destroying those who have saved. To destroy them on the pretense that such destruction "helps" those who have not saved is based on the same premise that sticking a finger in a dike's hole will prevent the dam from bursting. It is unrealistic, wishful thinking.

Those who have taken responsibility for their retirement cannot help those who have not. The irresponsible will be as irresponsible with what he's given as he was previously. Forcing the responsible to give to the irresponsible merely drains both pockets.

Savers have built retirement funds over years of work, their effort making innumerable goods and services, creating a prosperous, viable economy. Once the savers are destroyed, so will be all those who depend on them---including "low-wage employees," about whom government officials claim to be concerned. Is that what government officials want?

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Readers are invited to leave a comment regarding the EBSA proposal on the web site: The Treasury has asked for comments regarding its idea to take over retirement accounts.
http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100302/REG/100229880/-1/INRegulatoryAlert03

Alinsky & Obama

2010-03-08T15:35:00.004-07:00

Recently I finished reading Rules for Revolution, by David Horowitz.* There, Mr. Horowitz discusses to some extent Saul Alinksy's influence on Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton. But his main thesis is identifying some aspects of Alinsky's goal to destroy the United States---as discussed in Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.

Alinsky is not a philosopher. He is a political activist who holds the same premises of every collectivist. He believes that the individual and his work belong to the group. He goes farther. He seeks to destroy everything in the name of establishing heaven on earth. In other words, Alinsky is a nihilist.

Ayn Rand identified Herbert Marcuse as the philosopher behind the 1960 uprisings. But unknown to most, including the media, Alinsky was training those who were at the forefront of police-baiting, street riots, campus destructiveness and howling down university speakers. All the while, he successfully stayed in the background during the 1960 upheavals.

Mr. Horowitz reports that Alinsky was the friend and student of the notorious gangster Frank Netti, Al Capone's first lieutenant. Putting to use what he learned from Netti, Alinsky began to organize and train community leaders in Chicago, himself participating in that city's political corruption. Years later, he trained Barack Obama, said to have been his star pupil.

As President, Obama has placed Alinsky followers in key positions, some as "czars," un-elected, un-appointed---and therefore unquestioned through congressional hearings---accountable to no one.

Mr. Obama has flawlessly absorbed Alinsly's teachings, one of which is the technique to never say what you mean, always evade the entire context, never identify your actual goals. As an Alinsky student, for instance, if you bow to a foreign ruler, you know your motive is to belittle the country you represent. But you do not admit that. If you apologize for your country's alleged wrongs, you must ignore the wrongs done to your country. But never admit this. If you criticize a loyal ally, you must never admit you do so to destroy that alliance. Your wife can help out. For instance, if she calls Americans "mean-spirited," she must evade knowledge of their unmatched generosity. If she is proud of your country only because Americans elected Alinsky's student, she must never admit that that is what is meant.

The truth does not matter. Facts do not matter. The only thing that matters is how much you can get away with. You can spend $7,000 "out of your own pocket"---a pocket filled by taxpayers---to buy your children a swing set but express indignation that some executives are paid bonuses for work performed.

You can let your wife and children use Air Force One---a jet owned by the American public---to shop in Paris and go to lunch in London but chastise distinguished American executives for flying in their private jets to a Washington D.C. meeting.

You can encourage hatred of the rich while confiscating middle class wealth. You can agitate distrust between unions and management. You can take over banks and large companies in the name of the employed, while "saving" financial institutions by inflating the currency.

The goal is to destroy trust, to undermine cooperation, to confuse those who like you and to obliterate those who do not. As Alinsky taught: "The issue is not the issue. The issue is the revolution." And the revolution is to polarize Americans, wreck the American economy, reduce the United States to poverty by destroying the rich and giving political power to the "Have Nots." The technique is not original to Alinsky, or Obama.

Consider the murderous havoc of the French Terror, for instance. Or recall the slaughter of millions and the suffering of the Russian people under the Soviet Communists. Remember the Nazi Holocaust. That is what happens when the desire for prosperity is called "greed" and a man's refusal to earn his own way is said to "entitle " him to the worker's paycheck.

Although neither Alinsky nor his student Obama would ever admit it, the refusal to earn your own way is the mark of the "Have Nots;" earning your own way is the mark of the Haves.

What is it the "Haves" have? Money. Property. Where does money and property come from? From economic power. From the power of thought, of ideas, of putting ideas to work, of creating jobs and making money and earning a living.

What is it that the "Have Nots" have not? Political power. What is political power? It is not influence. It is not wealth or others' approval or admiration or a large following ready and willing to do your bidding. The essence of political power is the gun. It is the gun that the "Have Nots" will be given. The power of the gun will physically coerce the "Haves" to obey the "Have Nots" and the "Have Nots" will be ruled by irrationality. The result is heaven on earth.

The destruction of a civilization is not the nuking of many cities. It is a gun in the hands of the thoughtless, which make laws and enforces them.

Whatever happens on November 2, 2010 will indicate whether we have time to re-vitalize the principles and the ideals of our Founding Fathers---or not.

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*David Horowitz will be the speaker at an Albuquerque Tea Party event in May 2010. For details access www.abqteaparty.com

The Goal of Government Health Care

2009-11-29T13:04:00.002-07:00

Here are the first two paragraphs of New Mexico Senator Tom Udall's response to an e-mail urging him to vote "No" on the health care bill presently before the Senate:

"This past weekend, the Senate took an important step toward providing quality, affordable health coverage for all Americans by voting to begin debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This bill is a solid foundation for debate and I'm confident that it will save lives, save jobs, save money and save Medicare.

"This reform will provide the help that the one in four New Mexicans without health insurance so greatly need. And not only is it fully paid for, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of this bill shows it will actually reduce the federal deficit by about $130 billion over the first ten years."

This is a typical instance of how politicians respond to constituent's communications---and what they reveal about their own goals.

The Senate did indeed take "an important step." What is the goal of that step?

Senator Udall claims that government health care provides "quality, affordable health coverage." But it has been well documented that under government health care, medical quality declines and research stagnates. Medical professionals become over-loaded with work. They are crushed with fatigue and mind-stultifying paper work. Performance suffers. Improvements in techniques, procedures and medicines slow, eventually to cease. Similarly, the long lines, the postponed treatment, the uncertainty of being able to obtain proper treatment, the anxiety attendant upon being forced to trust those one has not chosen, affects patients deleteriously. The "quality" of government health care will be poor.

Is poor health care the goal of the Senate's "important step?" Most people in poor health do not have much physical or mental stamina. It is difficult to focus one's mind on one's work and plans---let alone cultural problems---even when one has a bad cold. That difficulty increases drastically when one is in seriously poor health. But surely politicians do not really want to impose poor health upon Americans. Do they?

Let's see. The government produces nothing. It earns no money. Its notion of "affordable health coverage" means stealing from those who have earned their money and giving it to those who have not. But those stolen dollars do not go to the medical professional. It goes to bureaucrats and politicians who dole out medical services by pull and favor. Meanwhile, medical professionals will be forced to work for less than their skills deserve. Mr. Obama has said, he will decide what doctors are paid.

What does this do to a mind that must focus on complex procedures, weigh scores of variables, examine dozens of possible avenues to solve a medical problem? How long can a mind accept such injustice? Will it be rendered malleable under such duress? Does over-work kill one's capacity to protest such an invasion of one's life and work? Is this the goal of politicians' "important step?"

Udall claims that government health care "will save lives, save jobs, save money and save Medicare." How does one save Medicare by cutting it drastically and adding 30 million more patients to its rolls? Certainly, government health care will save politicians' lives since they will be exempt from it. It will save politicians' jobs, too, since Americans will be legally prohibited from refusing government health care. We can't hold them responsible if we break the law. The jobs of politicians will not be threatened. Ours will.

Government health care will surely result in more money for politicians. The more bills passed, the more politicians will rake in money from bribes, deals, extorted sums and lucrative favors. This could be construed as "saving" their money. Is that the goal? To control our pocketbooks?

Think again. The working of your mind is the motor that earns your income. Your income pays for your food; so, any regulation on what you earn is in effect a regulation on your mind. Regulations on your health choices and preferences are of the same kind. That is the goal toward which politician's "important steps" are taken. And that is what government health care is all about. It is about control of you and your choices, i.e. your mind.

Mind control? No. What is happening today is not a matter of some injection that overrides your mental functions. It is an attempt to control your actions, which are the result of your thinking---or lack of it---by making you think that government health care is "helping others." Senator Udall states that government health care will "help . . . one in four New Mexicans without health insurance [they] so greatly need."

You've been taught ad nauseum that helping others is vastly important; so, you might forget that Americans are the most generous people on earth. They have the most charities, philanthropic organizations, foundations and free clinics. You might also forget to ask about the other three New Mexicans who will be forced to pay for that one. Why must others fork over their paycheck to provide him with coverage he either doesn't want or need?

Senator Udall claims government health care "will actually reduce the federal deficit by about $130 billion over the first ten years." This is a lie. The present Medicare program shows that government health care increases costs and spending. A $898 billion health care plan cannot reduce a deficit. One cannot reduce one's debt by increasing one's spending.

Come 2010, such politicians as Udall on every level must be swept out of office.

A Comment on Rational Egoism

2009-11-25T06:58:00.002-07:00

Rational egoism refers to an entire ethical system originated by Ayn Rand. The system rests on the recognition that man's means of survival is his mind. It identifies the ruling values a man should hold and the virtues his life requires.

In essence, rational egoism recognizes that in order to support his life, man must think. He must figure out what he needs (his values) in order to live, and how to gain them (his virtues). The rational egoist is the individual who recognizes that he must exert intellectual and physical effort in order to survive and that it is good and right for him to keep and dispose of the result of his efforts as he chooses.

An essential aspect of Ayn Rand's ethics is the nature and meaning of the self. Miss Rand's view of the self is revolutionary. For millennium all religions and all ethical systems, have viewed the self as born sinful, evil by nature and pre-determined. The self, it was asserted, must be whipped and controlled by the state or religious authorities in order to curb, if not crush, vicious thoughts and demonic actions. Such a view of the self is in essence the Nietzschean brute, the only difference being that Nietzsche said such a creature is good, while other ethical systems said such a creature is bad. In all cases, the self was commanded to live for others in order to be moral. And if one did not choose to live for others, the state and/or the church saw to it that one was forced to do so. The initiation of force, inherent in any advocacy that man must live for others, was thus made into a moral good.

Miss Rand, in contrast, showed that the self is that aspect of the individual that thinks and judges and chooses and acts, and that the self is formed by one's own choices and actions. One's choices and actions reflect the thinking one has done, or has not.

Concern with one's choices and actions is concern with one's own interests, which means one cares about one's life and its quality. To be concerned with one's own interest on a fundamental level is to be concerned with one's own estimate of the moral stature of one's self, which is egoism. To evade such concern is to be guided by other's say-so, which is anti-egoism, or as Miss Rand's coined description: the second hander.

A fascinating dramatization of the essential qualities of the rational self is Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. The abstract meaning of the self is neatly summed by Gayle Wynand, in the same novel, during the battle over Cortland Homes.

"A republic if you can keep it."

2009-11-18T10:00:00.005-07:00

At a recent activist training session an 18-year old said, "I'm here because I want to do something about the antipathy among my own age group."

A work-at-home mom said, "Forty-five times I've written to my Congressman asking questions. He will not answer."

To a Tea Party worker, the manager of a car dealership said, "Congress is out of control. We have to stop them."

Volunteering to help raise money for protest rallies, an insurance office worker said, "I've never demonstrated before against my government. But now I must."

A preacher said, "Today I received the thirty-seventh form letter from my Representative."

Most congressional members continue to ignore their constituents. Although Americans have loudly and persistently registered their opposition to health care, the latest Pelosi/Obama 1,990 page monstrosity is now in the Senate under consideration as if Americans' opposition to it is irrelevant.

Congress evidently believes we have no say in the matter. We have sent them letters, e-mails, faxes and telephones messages. They turn off their phones, shred the incoming faxes and emails and ignore our letters. On their web sites, their idea of responding to our opposition to government health care is to send long, boring canned letters that have nothing to do with anything except their own plans.

They do not answer our queries. They do not answer our complaints. They do not address our concerns. They do not vote the way we want them to vote on the dozens of bills they write aimed at taxing us more and listening to us less. They do not admit that they are violating our rights, that their countless regulations are onerous, the taxes they impose burdensome, their corruption outrageous. They evade the fact that we pay their salaries in return for which they do little more than posture.

Much of that posturing revolves around repeated announcements that they create jobs. They do not. Businesses create jobs. Businesspeople have an idea, figure out a way to make and sell it, hire others to help them. That is job creation. It increases employment and general productivity. Job creation necessarily leads to product improvement---one cannot remain static in any business. Product improvement leads to improved sales, which expands business, which raises salaries and results ultimately in raising the standard of living.

Every businessperson is aware of the process---from small to large businesses, from the manufacture of common nails to complex computers, from the making of cheese to the design of satellite sensors. We know who creates jobs. It ain't the government.

One does not create jobs by taking money from one person and giving it to another. One does not create jobs by commanding company bids for infrastructure work, ordering that helicopters be built for politicians, or agreeing to pay $200 for a toilet seat. One does not create jobs by regulating established enterprises, taking them over, making deals with unions, or ordering banks to lower their mortgage and credit card rates.

Such actions depend on the goods being there in the first place, and are violations of individual rights. But individual rights are the foundation of our culture and the basic meaning of a republic. Congressmen who ignore their constituents do not sustain a republic. They reveal a preference for a different type of government organization: statism, which is collectivism, which means ultimately totalitarianism.

What's to be done to stop Congress' stampede toward statism? What's to be done to counter this massive infringement of our individual rights? What's to be done to end this flagrant invasion of our lives and property? How can we terminate congressional dismissal of our opposition to government health care, to energy controls that guarantee shrinkage of agriculture, mining and fossil fuel production, to business and professional regulations that are suffocating our economy, to strangling taxes?

Must we move to Washington, stand on the Capitol steps and grab each Congressman by the arms and shake them to register our disagreement with what they're doing? Would that help?

What can one person do? You can organize. You can vote.

The Tea Party is one type of organization that has brought together hundreds of thousands of grassroots Americans. Many such organizations have been formed across the nation. Most of them have a plan. And most of the plans are identical: vote out of office every single representative coming up for re-election in 2010.

The plan is already in operation. The mayoral and a city councilman race in Albuquerque, New Mexico started the drive. Virginia and New Jersey followed suit. New York gave it a shot. More races are taking place in 2010.

But there is more to the plan than voting out of office every current incumbent that has ignored our choices. The grassroots is no longer sitting on the couch and cursing. They've jumped to their feet and are taking part in politics. They are finding ways to enter primaries. How great a part they are taking is being revealed as more Americans realize that Ben Franklin was right.

If we want a Republic, we have to work to keep it. Now, more than ever, more Americans realize the truth of this and are taking action. We will succeed. As one Albuquerque Tea Party member recently said, "I will never give up. Never. We will take back our country." Yes, we will. It's up to us to restore and keep our republic.

Ideas and Politics

2009-10-26T13:54:00.006-06:00

It is not unusual to hear politicians express contempt for philosophical ideas while simultaneously claiming they are Progressives and Pragmatist---as if those words did not give title to volumes of philosophical ideas---each resting upon the most lethal premise in man’s history.

While many Republicans---conservative and liberal alike---steep themselves in social issues of highly charged emotionality, such as abortion, they evade or ignore fundamental ideas. Some fail to distinguish between concretes and fundamentals completely, thus disarming themselves for a battle that requires intellectual clarity and moral certitude.

Fundamental ideas give rise to, make possible and color every concrete with which an individual deals. To evade or ignore them is to invite disaster. That’s what has happened to the Republican Party. They have for too long mouthed the same Democrat pap that we’ve heard scores of times. If the Democrats, for instance, say they want to provide universal health care, the Republicans do not denounce such a flagrant attack on individual rights. Instead they say, “Yes, we do too, but not your way.” On this issue as on every other, the Republicans are on the same page with the Democrats, singing the same tune, using the same chords, merely in a different key.

Some politicians claim that voters are not interested in ideas. This is patently false. The grassroots assuredly are interested in ideas, as witness the avalanche of interest in Ayn Rand’s books---which deal exclusively with the dramatization of ideas. American voters are not indifferent to ideas as the lines at libraries, the sales in bookstores and the explosion of blogs attests. At present they are looking for ideas more eagerly than ever before.

The Republican Party has said that it wants to figure out how to re-invigorate the GOP. They can do it if they throw out collectivist ideas. This will disassociate the party from past mistakes. In lieu of discarded collectivism, the GOP should rally Americans to the restoration of individual rights, the only effective way to counteract the Obama government's collectivist assault on the American people. The restoration of our individual rights protects our freedoms, makes possible limited government, and leads to capitalism.

The grassroots recognizes the validity and importance of the right to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They understand the connection between their individual rights and their choice of work, keeping what they earn, disposing of their income as they see fit, choosing their own doctor and paying their own way. They are fully aware that when one takes from the producer/earner to give to the non-earner, one is depleting savings. They know that reducing savings reduces investment in productive enterprises, which chokes growth, which reduces the standard of living.

Collectivism holds that the individual exists for the state. For decades Democrats have advocated taking from the earner and giving to the non-earner. They have advocated enforced unionization, enforced medical care, enforced social security, enforced public education, enforced business regulation. Obama’s Administration has crystallized this practice.

The grassroots has been clearly shown the irresponsible spending that blasts through the stratosphere, the disastrous regulations and take-overs of companies, the harassment and intimidation of businessmen, the support of corrupt union leaders against the membership, the appeasement of our enemies and the snubbing of our allies, the attempts at “fishy” censorship, and now, recently, the attempt to shut down free expression on the net. They have been told the topsy-turvy collectivist line that a rich nation is a bad nation, that producers/earners are demonical threats to society, that those who create jobs are exploitative, that dissent is unpatriotic (now, but wasn't during the 1960s), that supporting countries that deserve it is intolerant but kissing thugs and bowing to savage rulers is sensitive diplomacy.

The preceding are all concrete expressions of a fundamental idea: statism. Statism is the culmination of collectivism, the rule of brute force, in which the state is supreme, the individual subservient to the ruler in all respects and instances. Statism is the complete destruction of the individual and his rights.

To stop the Obama Administration’s giddy plunge toward statism, the Republican Party would be foolish---and self-destructive---not to join the grassroots and commit itself to the restoration of individual rights. The GOP could seek no greater re-generation than to re-establish the abstract ideas this country was founded on: individual rights, limited government and capitalism, and their concrete social expression, our constitutional freedoms: freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, of worship, and to keep and bear arms.

Collectivists say might makes right. But it does not. Rights make right. If the Republican Party wants to be a viable political party, they must self-righteously proclaim the practical virtue of individual rights, a moral principle that assures peace and prosperity. Nothing more than this is needed. Nothing short of this will win.

The Nobel Peace Prize & Mr. Obama's Intentions

2009-10-11T06:13:00.013-06:00

Americans are well aware that these are troubling times. Things have been turned upside down. We are told that obeying government edicts constitutes "freedom." We are told that government health and insurance plans are "competition." We are offered movies dramatizing the view that a free-market economy---which made this country the richest nation in the world---is barbaric and exploitative.

One sometimes feels that the entire world has gone insane. A case in point is awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Mr. Obama for his intentions.

Certainly, Mr. Obama has shown us his intentions.
1. He intends to force every American into government health care and insurance plans whether they want it or not, and to force us to pay a penalty if we refuse.
2. He intends to enact censorship. His "fishy" expedition was merely a trial balloon. He has now gone a step farther. He wants the FBI to monitor the net and fine and/or jail those who dare to dissent from his views.
3. He intends to disarm every American, thereby violating our right to keep and bear arms.
4. He intends to violate our right to peaceably assemble. Police are instructed to arrest those who form a group of more than ten. Others are arrested without cause.

These are only some of Mr. Obama's intentions. Are any of them good? Do they take cognizance of our freedoms stated in the Constitution? Do they acknowledge our individual rights to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? They do not. Every one of Mr. Obma's intentions promises to generate hostility, anger and violence, if not outright rebellion. Should such intentions be awarded a peace prize? They should not.

It is not surprising that Norwegian officials would consider Mr. Obama's intention to crush Americans' individual rights as meriting an award. Like most European countries, individuals there regard themselves as subjects---not citizens---and have no idea what a right is. The Nobel Committee would be composed of such individuals. They would be pre-disposed to award the intention to destroy the characteristic unique to Americans, i.e., the recognition that each individual is a sovereign and autonomous intellect. That is the essential meaning of individualism. It is what Mr. Obama intends to destroy. From his actions, there is no other conclusion to reach.

The result of Mr. Obama's acts and intentions is that he and his administration have driven an angry and bitter wedge between Americans and their government. Franklin D. Roosevelt was widely disliked and referred to disdainfully as "that man in the White House." But Americans--- thanks to enterprising businessmen---got on with their lives, found jobs, moved to less-congested areas and discovered ways to pick up the pieces left by government interference in the economy. McCarthy and Nixon were tarred and feathered by the media, but generally Americans were split on their assessment of both men's effectiveness. Johnson was distrusted for his back-room politicking, but Americans were more concerned about Civil Rights. Government shortcomings did not create a hostile gulf between our representatives and us.

Mr. Obama has changed things. As promised. Never has there been such deep alienation between Americans and government officials as presently exists in this country. As his acts took form and his intentions unfolded, many Americans for the first time in their lives began to fear the government. Then, as violations of our rights followed more such violations, fear turned into outrage and Americans started to fight back. Their fight is paying off. Those in government are now starting to fear Americans.

That's understandable. Most government officials are no longer Americans. As a nationality, Americans are identified around the world and in their own minds as champions of individual rights, limited government and free markets. But the majority of government personnel---elected, appointed and hired---no longer hold such values. They retain the nationality but that is all. They have betrayed their loyalty to fundamental American values for "pull," for private jets and fine houses, for special medical and insurance plans and salaries that exceed most middle class incomes, all of which the American producer/earner pays for.

The decline of our representative republic toward statism has been gradual and is at present incomplete. Mr. Obama is seeking to complete it. Most government officials and their supporters are rushing to help him.

His Organizing for America, for instance, brazenly performed a skit in which collectivism destroyed individualism. OFA members laughed raucously and loudly applauded. Knowing full well that decades of Soviet collectivism murdered millions on farms and in cities, in frozen Siberian gulags, in the dungeons of the Soviet "police," in countless, unrecorded suicides, Mr. Obama's OFA cheers for collectivism. Knowing full well the terror and agony in which people existed under communism, and refusing to consider the strangled ambitions, the corruption and repeated "Five Year Plans" promising utopia in the future but requiring that wheat be imported from the USA, Mr. Obama's OFA members chanted "Go Communism!"

No matter whether one calls their efforts progressivism, socialism, communism or fascism, it is all the same and it's all collectivism. And collectivism is what Mr. Obama intends for the United States of America.

I hope Americans will embrace their values and not let go of them. I hope they will vote into public office those who will advocate the restoration of our individual rights. We must not allow Mr. Obama to get away with his intentions. 2010 is not that far away. It is time to start working to replace all those who support Mr. Obama and his intentions.

Water and Health Care: A Parallel

2009-09-20T09:33:00.003-06:00

From the time I arrived on Albuquerque, New Mexico's West Side some 14 years ago, I was impressed with New Mexico Utilities, the private enterprise that supplied our water. They did a superior job of keeping our water clean, fresh tasting and odor-free. They sent out periodic questionnaires to discover our concerns and/or grievances. One of their employees went from house to house to check on customer satisfaction. Their personnel were courteous and helpful. Because of my water-conserving methods, my bill was lowered.

About a year ago, the Albuquerque Water Authority unilaterally decided to take over New Mexico Utilities. Westsiders were dismayed. We had not been consulted. The West Side Coalition held a town hall in order to find out what we thought. Both New Mexico Utilities and the city were invited to present its case. The meeting hall was quite full. At least 200 residents attended. We listened to arguments and looked at charts and graphs for about 2 hours.

Afterwards a vote was taken whether to keep New Mexico Utilities or to switch to government management of water. Ninety-eight percent of the citizens expressed their satisfaction with New Mexico Utilities and voted to keep them.

The Water Authority ignored us. They forced New Mexico Utilities out of business. The result was a lowering in the quality of our water and a raising of rates that increased every month. Now and then the water has an unpleasant odor. It's expected to get worse.

Although I had not changed the amount of water I used and continued to use the same water-conserving methods, the Water Authority increased my bill by $8. I called the Water Authority to ask why. They claimed I was using more water. They were not helpful. They were rude and snippy.

There is nothing I can do. They are in complete control of our water. They are a monopoly. They are competing with no one for customer satisfaction.

There’s a parallel here that most readers will grasp. When government forces out private enterprise, the quality of product and/or service goes down, the price goes up. You can bet that the same thing will happen should we allow government to take over the health care industry.

The Undisclosed Danger of Government Health Care

2009-08-27T07:35:00.004-06:00

Government health care is not concerned with patients. Politicians' interest is primarily focused on the productive---in the U.S., about one-third the population. Government has no income other than what it confiscates from the productive. So, promises of "affordable health care" depend on the able while devouring life from them. In other words, parasitism.

Some people seem oblivious to this. A man wrote on Twitter, "I'm a socialist and proud of it." Whatever he may feel about being a socialist, pride is not a virtue possible to a looter and a parasite. Blood lust is.

State planning demands obedience. For example, Organizing for America held a meeting in Belen, New Mexico on government health care. OFA would not allow any expression of opposition. They told dissenters to "Sit down!"-meaning: "and shut up!" They became angry when questioned. They spoke to one of the dissenters using coarse language. They put obscene notes in other dissenters' vehicles and ignored those who complained about such conduct.

Such creatures abound in government health care. It is common knowledge, for instance, that those in state-run sanitariums, asylums, and senior care centers are sickeningly abused. Little is done about it. The government is in charge.

Interfering with impunity in other people's lives and property is characteristic of those who advocate government health care. Some time ago, Wal-Mart announced its support of socialized medicine. It wrote, "[T]he best way to lower costs is by managing the supply chain [meaning the medical professions] and encouraging efficiencies of scale [meaning medical rationing]."

"Managing" those who aren't employed by you is a euphemism for violating others' individual rights. Those who took over Sam Walton's extraordinary achievement are helping to destroy what made it possible. They are evading the importance of individual rights, which protects private property and promotes innovative thinking.

They're not the only ones evading facts. The AARP declares "need is a right," while seeking to deny rights to those they plan to force to fill those needs. But need is not a right. No one has a right to other peoples' work and effort wrested from them by force-legalized or not. Yet the AARP says force is a proper means of dealing with individuals. They say might makes right.

So does Mr. Obama. He declared that he will set doctors' fees based not on how many patients the doctor treats, not on his specialty, not on how many hours he works, but on the patient's improvement. Mr. Obama evidently does not grasp that medical problems characteristically are replete with numerous variables and that results of medical treatment are not as predictable as sunrises. Should we trust such stupefying ignorance?

Mr. Obama has no understanding of the free market. In a free-market, the patient judges a doctor's performance, not a politician. If the patient is dissatisfied with the doctor's performance, he can sue for malpractice. He can seek out another doctor. He can persuade others to boycott the doctor and drive him out of business. He can write to newspapers describing the doctor's performance. He can complain to whatever associations the doctor is a member of.

Government health care offers no alternatives. The state dictates. The doctor must obey. And so must the patient. Like the doctor, the patient under government health care is frozen into a system that is riddled with irrational requirements dreamed up by politicians and their lackeys. The dream revolves around control of the able.

Whether doctor, businessman, blue or white-collar worker, it is the able that make life worth living. It is the able that stand with the facts of reality against fallacies and falsehoods. It is the able that earn the money that pay politicians salaries. It is the able that politicians seek to control.

Government officials seek to force their edicts between doctor and patient, declaring that their force is superior to your choice. They seek to insert ignorance and suspicion between knowledge and trust, declaring that their say-so is superior to a physician's knowledge and judgment honed by medical experience, and to a patient's evaluation and decision.

But the mind cannot be ruled by force. Those that can, are incapable of creating anything. They can only destroy. Such minds are those of thugs and goons, the lowest ranks of society.

Thought does not function efficaciously under threats. Minds that are able, shut down under force or the threat of force. In medicine, force discourages interest in a medical career. The number of doctors declines; the quality of medicine follows suit. Research and development becomes sluggish, eventually ceasing altogether. This is the undisclosed danger of government health care.

Destroying another's rights does not guarantee health care. A right yoked to a bureaucrat's whim is not a right. "A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." (Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights.") To destroy one man's rights is to destroy all men's rights. To destroy the rights of doctors and patients is to turn a nation into warring camps and those needing medical attention into numbers on a waiting list.

Either doctors are free to work unfettered by government edict or they are not. Either we are free to choose our doctor or we are not. Either each of us is free to earn our own way, keep what we earn and decide how to dispose of it, or we relinquish that freedom to government officials---which means, we relinquish our individual rights of life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Capitalism vs the Welfare State: The Next Vote

2009-08-05T16:13:00.008-06:00

Let's sort out some things.

As a political and economic system, socialism is government ownership and management of the means of production and distribution of goods, the control of money, and the abolition of profit and private property. These ideas also describe communism and progressivism.

Socialism originated at the end of the 18th century in several "social studies." The studies evaded the Enlightenment's giant strides in providing jobs and raising the standard of living of hundreds of thousands who had been far worse off before the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

In the 1840s, the term communism was coined to describe a militant form of socialism. Marx and Engels used the word in the title of their work, The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. Later both Marx and Engels referred to themselves as socialists, and Marx's work remains the basis of socialist thought.

In 1878, a schism split communists from socialists. The socialists advocated "gradualism," the idea that capitalist society could be changed by reform from within. The communists advocated the violent overthrow of government. It was only a matter of methodology. They remained glued together by their fundamental ideas.

Progressivism started sometime after the Civil War as an attempt to help poor people through self-help programs operated by private charities. Progressives usurped the effort. They, too, evaded the advances achieved by the Industrial Revolution.

As early as the 1890s, progressives elected politicians who promised to take over utilities, improve city services and tenement housing codes. Other states joined in. By 1903 a wide range of progressive political and economic ideas were adopted to regulate railroads and utilities. They pressured government to raise corporate taxes. They advocated workmen's compensation---paid for by businesses---and child labor laws, which denied income to the very poor.

In 1906 progressives passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1913 progressives established the Federal Reserve. In 1914, they established the Federal Trade Commission and the Anti-Trust Act, extending government regulation of business. In 1916, they again raised corporate taxes, organized a railroad commission to set rates and established a conservation commission.

World War I interrupted the progressive's juggernaut lumbering toward total government control of the economy. However, it was resumed with the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, although now referred to as the welfare state. Another name, the same ideas.

The sameness of these doctrines, which many people believe represent different points of view, arises from a single source.

There are only two ways to regard man's relationship to society: either he has the right to live for his own sake, or he must live for others. Whichever principle you espouse places you in one or the other of opposing camps.

If you accept the principle that man has the right to live for his own sake, you are an individualist. If you believe that man must live for others, you are a collectivist.

If man has the right to live for his own sake, then that right must be protected and so, the initiation of physical force must be outlawed. In such a society no one's rights may be violated with impunity; so, government has only one job: to protect individual rights domestically by means of the courts and the police, and by means of the military in matters of foreign aggression. Individualism limits government.

In a society in which rights are protected and from which the initiation of physical force is banned, men are free to trade value for value as they choose, working at what they choose, disposing of their earnings and property as they see fit, enjoying their life as they like. This is capitalism, the economic system in which all property is privately owned.

Our constitution explicitly states the individual's right to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Enumerated, too, are freedoms that follow from individual rights---such as, for example, the freedom to peaceably assemble, the freedom to petition the government to redress wrongs, the freedom to keep and bear arms, and so forth.

If you believe that man must live for others, government becomes your ruler. There is no alternative. A large group seeking to plan and execute some plan requires by its nature a leader, or leadership. In a nation of people who believe man should live for others, the government becomes that leader simply by claiming that it represents everyone in the group.

But the government is a group of men. If you believe you must live for others, it is that group of men that will tell you what to do, how to do it and when to do it. It is that group of men that will regulate and control every aspect of your life, from hopscotch to hospital.

Progressivism, socialism, communism are all expressions of collectivism. But collectivism as repeatedly shown in countless examples throughout history cannot work. So, necessarily, the collectivist seeks an accommodation. He is willing to allow vestiges of capitalism, not too much but enough to keep the leaders in shoes and jets to fly to their vacation spots. All else is controlled and regulated by government, which is what we have today: A "mixed economy."

No matter how you describe him politically, Mr. Obama is a collectivist. It doesn't matter whether you say he's a socialist, a progressive or a communist. It all adds up to collectivism. It all adds up to---like it or not, accept it or not---everyone being forced to live for others.

The question is: why should men live for others when they can better live their own life? They "should," according to collectivists, because it gives collectivists power over men's actions, which is what all forms of collectivism are about.

So, if you wonder about those who seek power over other men, it's instructive to recognize that all collectivist doctrines depend on the values that the able create.

Consider, for instance, the slogans of both socialism and communism. Socialists declare, "From each according to his ability; to each according to work performed." Communists declare, "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

Notice "from each." Who are they? They are the men of ability. If you're one, you might want to think about whether you want to be an individualist or a collectivist when you cast your next vote.

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Suggested Reading:
Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels

The Pelosi Terror: Guillotine The Rich

2009-07-21T15:56:00.003-06:00

Nancy Pelosi wants government to take over health care. But there's a snag. At present the yearly income level at which Americans will be slapped with an onerous tax increase, is set at $250,000.

Pelosi's own salary is presently $223,500 per annum, which does not include perks such as free travel and postage and so forth. With a yearly cost of living increase of 2.5%, she will soon reach the $250,000 category. So, she's seeking to raise the income level to $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for families.

In a recent interview pleasantly discussing her desire to slaughter the very rich, Pelosi remarked that if individuals hear that those making one-half million or more will be heavily taxed to pay for the government's health care program, they will be relieved, exclaiming, "My God, that's not me."

Consider the import of such a statement. Pelosi knows that high taxation is destructive. She also knows that high taxes have an adverse affect on the desire to earn more. She knows that those who are below the kill-line will not be motivated to penetrate it.

A yearly salary of $223,500 is a lot of money. Who pays Ms. Pelosi's salary? You do. The taxpayer. Is your employee listening to you? She is not. After the rich have been guillotined to support socialized medicine for a year or two, your taxes will be raised to continue the government charade. Is she working in your interest? She is not. A rich American means more savings, more investments in new business, more jobs, a higher standard of living nationally. Sending them to the guillotine means sending you.

During the interview, Pelosi claimed, "Americans want government health care." Is she telling the truth?

A Gallup poll showed that in interviews with 3,026 adults, 18 years of age and older, conducted in 2009, from July 10 to July12, 56% favored and 33% opposed Congress' passing major healthcare reform legislation this year. Gallup stated that most of the questions were asked of only 1,518 individual adults, with a sampling error of plus/minus 3 %. That means about 850 Americans favor and 501 Americans oppose health care reform. Out of a population of almost three hundred million, no matter whether using 1,518 or 3,026, the number does not constitute "all" Americans.

But wait. Suppose one looks at what these Americans favor or oppose. Saying that one favors government health care reform does not mean favoring government health care. With all the corruption and high prices government has caused, reform understandably would be on one's mind these days. So, it's no surprise that the same poll found that 52% to 42% of the 1,518 polled---that is, approximately 789---said that controlling costs is more crucial than expanding coverage. Does that mean that all of those 789 are enamored with government health care? It does not. It simply means they are concerned with costs. One cannot conclude from this that "all" Americans want government health care. What they want is less expensive care. Who does not?

But will government health care give it to them? Today, under partial control of government medicine, fraud amounts to $68 billion a year. Fraud drives up costs. With a government monopoly of health care, fraud will be considerably worse. The cost of health care under government will skyrocket. Establishing free-market medicine will bring costs down.

During the interview, Pelosi stated, "Every single person in America is an expert on his or her health care."

This is true, so why does she claim the government knows best how to take care of their medical problems? Such a question was not raised. Instead Pelosi referred to regional, generation, and ethnic differences, then stated that she and her cohorts want the government health care plan to work for the entire country, ending with the remark: "So, we have to listen to everybody," she said.

Such a statement would be laughable were it not so flagrantly dishonest. Pelosi like so many of her colleagues does not listen to her constituents. She is not listening to any American who opposes her and flatly refuses to recognize the existence of dissenting points of view. She is determined to have her way no matter how many Americans are rendered destitute, no matter how greatly the economy suffers, no matter how many jobs are lost through the impoverishment of the producers/earners.

"Death to Aristos!" shouted the sans-culottes during the French Terror. Pelosi is fully sympathetic to that point of view.

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Suggested Reading:
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson

A Letter to Lee Scott, CEO Wal-Mart's

2009-07-14T18:55:00.003-06:00

Dear Mr. Scott,

I was shocked to read that Wal-Mart's supports socialized medicine. Having asked for a donation to our Tea Party Association here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was told that Wal-Mart's policy is not to involve itself in political movements. So, upon hearing of your support for socialized medicine I thought that maybe the government had threatened you. Since the Obama Administration forced the CEO of GM to resign and then turned around and treated Bank of America's CEO so shamefully---going so far as to threaten him to withhold vital information from shareholders---the thought that you had also been threatened was not so exaggerated a supposition.

I don't know whether they did threaten you or not. But I do know that you are helping to destroy the moral meaning of Mr. Walton's achievement by supporting the government's health care plan. You are supporting statism, which has always sought to destroy the free market, while looting the profits of men like Sam Walton.

Don't you recognize that by supporting government take over of the medical profession, you are supporting government take over of every other business, too?

Medicare in this country does not need to be reformed. It needs to be repealed entirely, totally demolished. At present, fraud under only partial government control amounts to $68 billion per year. What do you think is going to happen when government has a monopoly on medicine? Does it not occur to you that the Postal Service is a good example of what happens when government monopolizes an industry? Quality goes down, prices go up. And those with the brains and the dedication and love of medicine are not going to enter into a profession run by bureaucrats.

Of all America's businesses, Wal-Mart's is in a prime position to resist the government, to act as a spearhead and rally doctors and the grass roots who oppose socialize medicine to your side and defeat the government's plans and turn the tide away from the shameful path the government is forcing upon us.

Do not betray Sam Walton. Do not betray the American people. Do not betray your own individual rights and freedom by supporting so venal a program as socialized medicine. Do not dishonor the name of Wal-Mart by supporting a health care bill that no one has read but is being pushed through Congress with maniacal speed. If the bill passes it will be the death of the free market in medicine and ultimately the death of the free-market in many other businesses, too. Don't help the government do this. Rescind your support of it.

Sincerely,
Sylvia Bokor
cc: 1,769 individual American citizens

Addenda: This a.m.---July 15---I send a FedEx letter to Mike Duke the CEO and President of the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart. It was essentially the same as the above. I also submitted a Letter to the Editor of the Albuquerque Journal. I consider this issue very important and encourage those interested in a free market in medicine to also write letters protesting Wal-Mart's support of socialized medicine.

Quo Vadis, America?

2009-07-05T08:06:00.002-06:00

The Latin title of Henryk Sienkiewicz's famous novel means, "Whither goest thou?" On this July 4th it's a question we should be seriously asking ourselves.

At any time, for any peoples, there's only one of two ways to regard the individual in relation to society: either as an autonomous and sovereign intellect recognized as the primary unit of action, or as an undifferentiated glob within a group.

For millennium men lived as members of a group or a class---in clans, tribes, dynasties, city states, military oligarchies, dictatorships, theocracies and every other form of communal society in which the concept "individual" was---at that time--- undiscovered.

Then appeared our Founding Fathers who saw a new direction and formualated a startling new idea. They saw the importance of one man, one mind, one passion---the individual, the fountainhead of all that civilization knows and enjoys. They created a government based on the moral principle of man's right to live for his own sake. They shaped the world's first representative republic, a government to guard our freedom, making us the freest nation on earth. They gave us the Bill of Rights---the first explicit statement in history that named the individual's freedoms and his rights to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. At last, men were free to earn a living as they chose, dispose of their property as they saw fit and live free of government coercion.

Since then, every July 4 we celebrated our freedom and our gratitude to those who left us so precious a legacy. We celebrated our independence from a burdensome government. Today a burdensome government threatens us again, and our legacy is in jeopardy. We hear demands that doctors be enslaved and teachers be shackled in the name of "the common good." We are told that everyone should be subjected to mandatory "volunteerism" to serve the community. We see businessmen who have created the richest nation on earth being persecuted and ordered around by politicians and their appointees in the name of "the public interest," while government cronies declare that the media should shun dissent with government policies.

Whither goest thou, America?

This July 4, the Albuquerque Tea Party celebrated "the Spirit of '76"---a spirit that calls for "more freedom and less government." Focused on the fundamental principles of individual rights, limited government and capitalism, the Albuquerque Tea Party argues against government's encroachment into our lives and objects to government takeover of the economy. They are providing the opportunity to voice our concern about government actions.

However, some people resent the choices engendered by freedom. They want to hide the individual in one big group and forbid individual choices. They advocate the ancient practices of communal living, known as collectivism. Today, it's called socialism.

Socialism is the doctrine that believes society is superior to the individual and that society "as a whole" should be our primary concern. But there is no way to treat society "as a whole." Society is composed of individuals with individual needs and desires and abilities, with individual dreams and goals and ambitions. The concept "society" is an abstraction describing a group of people. That abstraction does not exist as a concrete entity.

Only the individual exists. When individuals come together to cooperate in some venture, they remain individuals. They do not dissolve into unidentifiable globs. The notion that society, or the group, is somehow more important than the individual is putting the cart before the horse.

The Albuquerque Tea Party seeks to put things in proper order. On July 4, they honored our Founding Fathers in the "Spirit of '76." And the grass roots turned out to cheer them on. They recognize that by restoring individual rights we will limit government and that a limited government will make possible genuine capitalism, which benefits us all.

Whither goest thou, America? Do we want freedom or fear? Do we want to be a nation of free individuals who think for themselves and earn their own way, or a straight-jacketed "society" marching goose-step to government edicts?

The answer is up to each of us. And each of us can give our answer loudly and clearly by supporting and advancing the Tea Party in his city.

Special Fourth of July Notice:

2009-06-30T04:36:00.000-06:00

From the Albuquerque Tea Party of New Mexico

We have all watched in awe as Iranians took to the streets of their nation to protest a corrupt and abusive government. Do we have the courage to stand up to our government and tell them we won't take it anymore?

"The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. — Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom." It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event."

--Essay by Samuel Adams, written under the pseudonym "Candidus," in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771)

Government Health Care is Hazardous to Your Health

2009-06-27T11:15:00.002-06:00

On June 25 a town hall meeting was held in Rio Rancho, New Mexico to discuss Obama's health care plan. The meeting opened with a televised study of the Canadian and UK's health care plans. Afterwards, a factual report of the Obama plan was presented. Listening to it, I felt like I was in 1938 Germany listening to someone explaining Nazi proposals to crush everyone under an iron boot.

The Obama plan is a full-scale collectivization of America, of our lives and of our relationship with our government. It is the undiluted destruction of our individual right to life and property, a denial of the right to choose what to buy, from whom to buy it, how much we choose to pay and at what time we choose to pay it.

It proposes to tell doctors and others working in the medical industry what to do, and what to charge, what treatments to offer, and what prescriptions are permitted. It proposes to tell patients who they may have access to, what treatments they may have, how long they must wait for treatment and whether---as in the case of those over 70 years of age---they will be treated at all. On top of all that, it forces earners/producers to pay for what they do not want.

It spreads its fetid breath over every aspect of health care. The result is total control of every citizen's well being and ultimately of every citizen's life. It is not a health care plan. It is the destruction of individual rights and the transformation of our nation into a socialist state. This is the "change" Obama promised. He meant it then. He means it now.

Obama's universal health care plan proposes to force American earners/producers to pay the medical bills for every United States resident, whether a citizen or not. The same idea in principle was tried in New York City many years ago with welfare checks. Every moocher, looter, free-loader, malingerer and other form of parasite dwelling elsewhere, moved to NYC to take the checks that New Yorkers were forced to pay. Within John V. Lindsey's first term, the city was swamped with "migrants" who lived on welfare, cluttering the city's streets, esplanades and parks. With Obama's "medical care for every resident," the result will be the same and very likely considerably worse.

Additionally, the plan requires by law that everyone have health insurance whether they want it or not, making the government the single, sole payer. The single payer concept means there is no alternative the citizen may choose from, there's no way to redress a wrong. There's no way to seek a different opinion, there's no way to select a doctor you feel more comfortable with or a treatment you prefer. Doctors and patients alike will be under the command of government bureaucrats.

Most important the single payer concept effectively eradicates competition and makes health care into a monopoly. In private enterprise, monopoly doesn't exist for very long because competition eventually finds a way to get a foot into the market---by lowering prices, improving products, offering different products. But a government monopoly is enforced by the gun. A government monopoly guarantees ruinous practices, lower quality goods, decreasing competence and efficacy, higher prices and, therefore, higher taxes. The best example of this is the U. S. Postal System.

The self-employed doctor will be effectively eliminated. Those working at health care facilities, clinics, hospitals and other voluntary associations will be government employees. Without any competition to make money in medicine, loaded down with government paperwork and bureaucratic "watch dogs," doctors will not be able to see as many patients as they might like. They will not be able to improve their skills and discover new treatments or develop better, more effective skills. Without competition to make good money, interest in the field will decline and the quality of care will deteriorate while political pull-peddlers will replace skilled medical personnel.

Do not make the mistake of attributing to this health care plan and its sponsors the currently fashionable bromide of "good intentions with unforeseen consequences." There are no good intentions in this bill. The government knows exactly what it's doing. Here's one telling piece of evidence: All members of Congress and all of their staff will be exempt from the plan.

Like the stimulus bill, Congressional representatives have not read the health care bill. They will vote on it without knowing what they are voting on. And like the stimulus package, it is expected to pass. In 2 weeks.

Please call your representatives in Congress and insist they vote against all the government health care plans pending.

ABC Network Corporation & Town Hall Meeting

2009-06-18T05:00:00.004-06:00

Following is a communication received this a.m. from the Co-ordinator of the Albuquerque Tea Party.

"ABC is going to the White House on the 24th of June to hold a townhall on health care and has specifically refused any participation by someone with a different point of view (response to Republican National Committee was flat, "Not going to invite anyone to Republican alternative.") To protest the health care reform and that kind of blatant media bias, tell people to show up with a sign at the corner of Carlisle and Comanche in front of KOAT, our local ABC affiliate, at 6 PM on June 24. But tell people to remember that it is ABC Corporate that made this decision, not KOAT, so be respectful and polite and just ask them to "pass it on to Corporate." These "mini-rallies" will be taking place all over the nation.

Pass the word and post where you can. This is NOT an ATP sponsored event as there are many groups working together."

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Sylvia Bokor Comments:
It should not be necessary to point out that a town hall is specifically understood to mean "open to the public to express one's point of view." Of course, as a business enterprise, ABC Network Corporation has a right to invite whom they want. But it's noteworthy that the ABC Corporation refuses participation of those with a different viewpoint:

First, it contradicts the principle of free speech---which one might hope the media would be willing to defend. Evidently not.

Second, it underscores something I'm running into as I help the Albuquerque, NM Tea Party distribute flyers: some businesses are scared of government retaliation to take a position that is contrary to the Administration's socialist polices and programs. Thankfully, however, most small and middle size businesses are showing courage to speak up for their individual rights.

Third, it shows an exceedingly dangerous trend as government becomes more involved in control of communications, nationalizes businesses, tells corporate CEO's what to do, and continues to increase the enormous power of the Treasury---all of which is done without much objection.

Censorship is THE most deadly threat to our freedom. With many in the media presently writing outright lies about the Tea Parties, this latest attack on dissenting viewpoints should galvanize us all to a concerted and renewed effort to peititon the government to limit itself to its proper and only job: the protection of individual rights.

Report on the Albuquerque, NM Tea Party

2009-06-12T15:47:00.005-06:00

Last night the Albuquerque Tea Party Organization met in preparation for the July 4th rally. About 60 New Mexican volunteers were present.

The Albuquerque Tea Party leadership is impressive. The men and women are personable and easy to work with. They are affable, dedicated and hard working individuals, objective thinkers who understand the importance of principles and of working toward fundamentals without being way-laid by narrower concerns that often bog down start-up organizations.

The evidence of the ABQ Tea Party leadership's objective thinking is shown by their position paper. For instance,

Mission Statement:
"To preserve the Constitutional Rights of the citizens of the U.S.A., by limiting government; constraining government spending and taxation; and advancing a free market economy."

Core Issues: "
Excessive government spending, taxation, intervention;
Individual's Constitutional Rights;
Free market Economy (Capitalism).

Those interested in the development of tea parties may already know that a vast network of organizations has been and is presently escalating across the nation. The Tea Party Patriots at present seem to dominate most of these and are coordinating a national effort. To this end, most of the Tea Party organizations in cities throughout the nation are now affiliated with the TPP. Some of these affiliates have undertaken various and different kinds of goals. For instance, some of them advocate anti-abortion positions and religious concerns.

The ABQ Tea Party is affiliated with TPP but is more philosophically oriented. This is certainly the better route to take. The way to overturn government excesses is to pound home on the fundamentals of limited government, capitalism and individual rights. Get these; the rest takes care of itself.

The Albuquerque group has a clearly thought out foundation. They are in it for the long haul with their focus presently out to 2012. Primaries are being looked at during "lulls" between Tea Parties to consider candidates best to support and "throw out the bums" as one man said.

A town hall meeting is planned for June 25 to argue against universal health care.

Way to go New Mexico!

Socialism In Action

2009-06-04T06:54:00.003-06:00

In the Boston Globe on June 3, 2009, appeared an article by Jeff Jacoby entitled "China's 'socialist road' to misery." It is a harrowing report of the Chinese government's atrocities against her citizens--in particular the hideous persecution of Falun Gong. How can anyone commit such horrors on another human being?

One must remember that the perpetrators of such foul evilness are actions committed not by human beings but by the irrational, the mindless, the sub-human to whom obedience is the only criteria, the only value and the only goal of "the socialist road with Chinese characteristics."

Let us be warned that the United States is not immune from such horrors now that we have allowed socialism to take over this nation. It CAN happen here. But we can change it. We can stop socialism dead in its tracks by voting out of office all those who support to any degree such a vicious doctrine as socialism.

For those interested, the article may be accessed at
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_ opinion/oped/articles/2009/06/03/chinas_socialist_ road_to_misery/

America At A Crossroads

2009-06-01T09:00:00.004-06:00

Today's political mix includes liberal and conservative Republicans, and liberal and conservative Democrats. The Republican and Democrat tags no longer accurately identify political doctrine. The designations liberal and conservative have also changed from their original meaning.

Today's liberalism is a perversion of Classical Liberalism, which stressed the essential goodness and rationality of man and his ability to recognize and solve problems, all of which led to systematic improvement in man's life, exemplified by the Enlightenment.

The corruption began in 1848. Karl Marx and Friedich Engels, ignoring the vast improvements the Enlightenment made possible, argued that the state should advance the welfare of individuals. Since the state has no income except by taxing those who produce, those who produce were sentenced to provide for those who did not, violating the rights of producers.

The corruption spread in the 1930s when Roosevelt signed into law the minimum wage, progressive taxation, Social Security and established Fannie Mae to provide low-interest mortgages. Classical Liberalism was dead. Liberalism and the welfare state became one: socialism.

Conservatism originally supported limited government and free enterprise. But it also held that political, social and religious institutions represented ageless wisdom and that the source of individual rights were "gifts from God," not man's nature. Rights, therefore, were considered privileges meted out in obedience to God.

The communist victory in Russia disarmed conservatives. They recognized that their own views did not contradict communism. Politically "You are your brother's keeper" was collectivism. Seeking to disassociate themselves from communism, conservative patriotism devolved into "my country right or wrong." By 2008, John McCain solidified this view explicitly with the campaign slogan "Country First," stressing duty and placing the group above the individual: nationalism.

In the decades following World War II, liberal and conservative doctrine continued to draw closer. Both attempted to defend the nation against communism using questionable methods. During the 1950s, conservatives used abrasive, sometimes intrusive investigative methods. In the 1960s liberals attempted to assassinate a communist head of state.

During his inauguration speech John F. Kennedy, sounded the conservatives nationalist theme scolding Americans to "Ask what you can do for your country," then in his liberal role doubled the number of government regulatory agencies. Two decades later, conservative Ronald Reagan continued Kennedy's big government policies and signed Affirmative Action into law, violating the rights of businessmen by telling them whom to hire.

In 1965, liberal Lyndon Johnson established Medicare and Medicaid, violating the rights of doctors, the medical profession and those requiring its services. In 2003 conservative George W. Bush violated another large segment of the medical profession with the Prescription Drug Act.

By such actions as these and many, many more, conservatism and liberalism merged to become nationalist-socialism, hardly distinguishable from each other in their violations of individual rights.

Nationalist-socialism is fascism, a form of collectivism that shuns individual rights and the division of political power, leading to dictatorship. Fascism is government ownership of the means of production, with private enterprise ordered to do the work and take responsibility for it.

In 1970, Lyndon Johnson re-structured Fannie Mae, then added Freddie Mac, exempting both from taxation and oversight. Currently, Freddie and Fannie Mae---i.e. the government---control 90 percent of the nation's secondary mortgage market. Today, a government-created financial crisis is blamed on "greedy" businessmen and "capitalism," while the government orders CEOs to resign and to conceal vital information from shareholders.

Liberals claim they are not socialist. They merely want to force rich people to feed poor people. But individual rights determined by other people's wishes are not rights.

Conservatives claim they are not theocratic nationalists. They merely want to force people to do their duty to church and state. But rights dictated according to a group's desires are not rights.

Liberals claim they do not seek to violate individual rights---except when the violation is for a cause they deem "good," such as forcing men to practice socialized medicine. But rights restricted by some people's needs are not rights.

Conservatives claim they do not seek to violate individual rights---except when the violation is for a cause they consider morally sound, such as forcing women to have children they do not want. But rights predicated on the assumption of women's inferior status to force them into unchosen actions are not rights.

"A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." [Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights"] To claim that a moral principle is at the mercy of another's wish is blasphemous. Rights do not include the "right" to violate another's rights---no matter what the need, wish, demand, or assumption.

America has been pushed toward a cross roads where she must choose between force and freedom, between government edict and individual rights. If we choose freedom and rights then we must dismantle the welfare state and abjure fascism. In place of the welfare state we must establish genuine free enterprise for once---Laissez-faire capitalism---which means protection of individual rights and limited government. Nothing short of this will free us. Nothing more than this is worth fighting for.
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Suggested Reading:
Ayn Rand, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal
Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

The Fairness Doctrine

2009-05-03T08:51:00.009-06:00

Indiana Representative Mike Pence introduced a bill "to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from re-promulgating the Fairness Doctrine." In support of Mr. Pence's bill I encourage a YES vote to prevent re-instatement of the Fairness Doctrine. Access H.R. 226 at http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h226/show

The government uses the word "fairness" to mean "equal"---as in "equal treatment." However, since the Fairness Doctrine commands who shall have access to a station owner's property it violates the station owner's property rights. In forcing the owner to broadcast a view with which he disagrees it nullifies the station owner's views, violating his freedom of speech.

That's not equal treatment.

The Fairness Doctrine rests on two basic premises. The first premise is that the government owns the airwaves. But property is the result of effort exerted by an individual to discover, use and maintain a particular thing. John Locke showed the validity of this argument in Two Treatises on Government when he identified how property comes to be property.

The government did not discover the airwaves nor how to use them. It did not invent or build the equipment necessary to use them. It does not spend thought, time and money hiring the personnel and maintaining the equipment necessary to broadcast. It has merely arbitrarily asserted it owns the airwaves.

The second premise is that you must sacrifice your interests to those of others. Why? Because "you are your brothers keeper"---the "you" being anyone who produces. And the more you produce, the more you "owe" to society. This is "giving back," the neo-collectivist slogan for "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

No one can be expected to live his life for someone else. It's immoral to ask it. It's impossible to practice. You cannot digest another's food. You cannot take on another's disease. You cannot think another's thoughts. And why should you try? There's no virtue in it. And certainly no profit.

The Fairness Doctrine is a government edict that violates individual rights by forcing a man to provide venues through which others may express their opinions. Why? Those who don't share the station owner's views have the right to turn off his broadcast, or build their own station, or express their views in a different forum by writing letters or making speeches, etc. But for government to force a man betray his views for the sake of another's is tantamount to thought control.

If a station owner broadcasts messages that support Candidate X, it is not just that he be forced to support Candidate Y. If Candidate Y contracts with the station owner to run an ad, that's between them. But for the government to force the station owner to support a candidate he does not support---well, what would you call it? A form of censorship?

If a station owner broadcasts messages that support The Fairness Doctrine, would the government insist that the owner also air messages against The Fairness Doctrine? You can bet it would not, which indicates the root of what the Fairness Doctrine is all about: a device to push programs that the government favors.

The Fairness Doctrine places government dictates above station owners' rights, above your rights, and the rights of all American citizens---whether you own a radio and/or TV station or not---because it makes government the "ruler" not the servant of the people, which reverses the central intent of our Constitution. The government has no "duty" to force any views on anyone. It has only one job: to protect individual rights.

Those who argue that the Fairness Doctrine is in "the public interest" embrace two mistaken assumptions. The first assumption is that there's such a thing as "the public interest," as if 300 million Americans shared one point of view and one action alone would benefit everyone. The destructive consequences of Prohibition was one of the most graphically destructive examples of how false that notion is. The Hays Office was another.

The second assumption is that the government unerringly knows what is the public's best interest. But only the individual can judge his own best interest. Government bureaucrats can only say what they're interested in.

The Fairness Doctrine is not a doctrine that supports freedom or individual rights or free enterprise. The only way to deal fairly with it is to prevent its re-instatement, and to repeal it entirely.
---------------------------------------------------
Nota Bene: The above article was originally posted May 2, 2009. I revised it last week and re-posted it June 1, 2009.

Tea Parties - America's New Direction?

2009-05-02T05:10:00.000-06:00

On April 15, 2009 Tea Parties protesting the government's fiscal irresponsibility took place throughout the nation. A second Tea Party is being planned for July 4.

Rejecting socialism, Tea Party participants are acting fundamentally on the principle of individual rights. It is right to earn a living. It is wrong to give our earnings to those who don’t. It is right to benefit from one’s own efforts and actions. It is wrong to "bail out" companies which the government caused to fail in the first place, then make us pay for the government's mistakes.

Government-created Fannie and Freddie Mae unleashed Barney Frank's "Affordable Housing" program and pressured banks and insurance companies to give loans and coverage to those who could not afford it. Yet the government claims that capitalism has failed and more government intervention is required. But the present economic system is not capitalism and it is not free.

We live in a "mixed economy"---one with some freedom and many controls. We are still free to start a business, but not free to run it the way we see fit. Government regulations presently control every size business on every level---federal, state and city. We are still free to own some property and visit stores of our choice, but the government controls and regulates virtually every product and service we buy, including entertainment, energy, land, fuel and the air waves.

We have been misinformed about the nature of an economic system that is founded on the individual's right to his own life, to benefit from his own effort, to dispose of what he earns as he chooses. We have been misled about an economic system that despite continuous government interference has resulted in the creation of the richest nation on earth, filled with the most generous individuals on earth. It is an economic system that has been vilified, maligned, distorted and made the scapegoat of every government failure and disaster caused by government regulation since the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. That system is capitalism.

"Capitalism," novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand wrote, "is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned."

In a completely free society, the government's role is solely to protect individual rights. It leaves men free to produce or not as they choose, to work to the best of their ability or not as they choose, to trade with others, to benefit from their own effort, to save and invest and support charities as they choose.

But over many decades government has increasingly violated our rights and eroded our freedom. Today we are seeing the culmination of that erosion in an open assault on individual freedom. Kennedy's bill, for instance, to make "volunteerism" mandatory for all Americans, from children to seniors, is as flagrant a contradiction in terms as it is a blatant attack on individual rights of life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

To safeguard the individual and thereby the nation, men must be left free to think and act and work without government controls and regulations. Tea Parties may be the catalyst that will help to shift our country toward a genuinely free and morally sound direction. They may be the beginning of a grass roots movement to tell government to leave us alone. Get out of our lives. Limit government. Protect individual rights. Let us implement a truly free enterprise system of economics. Let us for once practice genuine laissez-faire capitalism.

Suggested Reading:
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal
Ayn Rand, Philosophy Who Needs It

The Bumpy Road to Individualism - Conclusion

2009-04-20T15:56:00.000-06:00

By the end of the Italian Renaissance the battle remained horrifically one-sided. Collectivism is the political expression of altruism, i.e., that each man should live for others. Altruism is a known and widely accepted moral code. It has been the foundation of the world's religions for over two thousand years.

Individualism had no explicit moral base. Those who attempted to ground it in the self, or the ego, corrupted the meaning of the self, the ego and individualism. Nietzsche's view, for instance, of the egoist as a destructive brute determined to achieve his own ends without regard for means and indifferent to human misery is the widely accepted view of selfishness, of egoism and of individualism. To change that view, certain crucial questions had to be raised and answered to establish the factual base of the science of ethics, which would give substance to egoism and to individualism. But for over 400 years no one knew the right questions to ask. Meanwhile the battle between implicit individualism and collectivist raged.

In art history, the baroque period (1550 to 1750) follows the Italian Renaissance. In many ways baroque art reflects the same conflicts that troubled the Renaissance. In the visual arts---the swirling drapery and disturbed poses in sculpture, the sometimes overly ornate curving forms in architecture, the clash between so-called "Romanticism" and Classicism in painting---indicated the fermenting undercurrents, which continued to swell without resolution. The same powerful stirrings were also taking place in music and literature.

Given the two hundred years attributed to the baroque, its expression in Italian art was understandably much different from its expression in, say, the art of England or Holland at a later date. Yet a common thread linked them. The philosophical underpinning of the times was in flux and men's actions showed it. It's not surprising, therefore, that the characteristic that defines the essential meaning of the period was agitation---agitation in thought, agitation in action, agitation in values and goals.

Agitation was evident in the long-brewing controversies preceding the Protestant Reformation. But it had nothing to do with individual men's personal relation to their religion. Rather, it was like a family squabble over methodology, a conflict among mystic tribalists who shared the same basic view of man. The individual continued to be viewed as merely an undifferentiated part of a group. Agitation preceded the reign of Elizabeth I (1533-1603) much of which she inherited and resolved to the benefit and glory of England. Nonetheless, the essence of the individual's relationship to the state did not change. He remained a subject, servant to the state.

Agitation colored the exploration and settlement of the New World. Thousands of men were leaving the Old World to make a new life on an uncharted continent. While Church and state forced collectivism upon the New World, agitation continued between the individual and the group in the Old as Dutch financial establishments worked to seed numerous business enterprises struggling to disentangle themselves from the guild system.

Amidst this turmoil John Locke (1632-1704) completed his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It was published in 1690. In the same year his Two Treatises on Civil Government was also published. This, Locke's political philosophy, is among the most crucial works in man's history. Locke argued that all men were equal before the law, that each man had inalienable rights of life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that possession of these rights obligated a man to not violate the rights of others. His work heralded in the Enlightenment in England, which then spread to the continent and across the Atlantic to the New World. There, Locke's ideas were the rock upon which the United States was born. His views comprised the first explicit identification of individual rights. And it turned the collective view of man on its ear.

Politically, the concept of individualism is the doctrine that government exists for the individual and that government's only role is to protect individual rights. Economically, individualism is expressed by laissez-faire capitalism, which entails limited government. Socially, individualism is the recognition that the individual is the primary unit of action. He may choose to cooperate with others, but it is understood that no man can think for another as no man can digest another's food. A man may persuade other men to work for him, to help him realize an idea. But in all cases, each man is an autonomous, sovereign unit of thought and action. Therefore, a particular form of government is required to protect and defend individual rights.

Locke's brilliant achievement and America's Founding Fathers' valiant implementation of his ideas combined to form a government for the people and by the people: a government to serve the individual, to insure individual freedom by protecting individual rights. For the first time in history---for a dazzling but all too brief period---the individual was recognized as the proper center of government. The see-saw between individualism and collectivism began a shaky back and forth teeter with individualism on a slow upswing although still badly weighted by mistaken perceptions.

The upswing was the torrent of productive energy that Locke's ideas unleashed. The United States entered into one of the most extraordinary periods in man's history. For about one hundred years individual rights were protected with little government interference. The result was increasing productivity and prosperity as Americans created the richest nation in history and the most generous people on earth. The benevolence that is the result of freedom achieved through the protection of individual rights vindicated Locke's deep conviction that man by nature was good.

But the Constitution included some grave errors. The errors led to a steady erosion of individual rights. Through those errors individualism was in continual jeopardy.

Although the preamble to the Constitution has no political power, two phrases in it allowed collectivists to gain unjustified power over American citizens. Those two phrases are "We the people" and "promote the general welfare." The first has been interpreted to augment Federal government power, draining state power. The second has been interpreted to justify welfare programs and the Federal government's authority over same.

Both interpretations commit the fallacy of dropping the context of man's rights. If one holds individual rights sovereign "We the people" simply refers to the voluntary agreement of individuals to cooperate for a specific purpose. It is merely a re-statement of the fact that "the people" is composed of individuals. It is not a license to subordinate the individual to the collective.

In a similar way, only by dropping the context can the phrase "promote the general welfare" be used to justify destruction of individual rights. It is precisely the protection of individual rights that promotes the general welfare. "Promoting the general welfare" is merely a re-stating that the government's job is to protect individual rights, not usurp them.

The third error is the so-called commerce clause, Article 1, Section 8, in particular point 3: "The Congress shall have the power . . . to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes . . ." Although many other points in Section 8 permit government intervention in the economy, it was point 3 that allowed collectivists to legislate laws that hamper free enterprise and expand Federal power. Article 1, Section 8 became the battleground for and against increased regulation of business.

Aided by the errors in the U.S. Constitution, European rulers also inspired collectivists' goals. Between 1883 and 1887 Bismark inaugurated the welfare state as a weapon against his enemies. Less than thirty years later, the Federal Reserve in the United States (1913) was established. It was a powerful blow against the rights of bankers and all who dealt with bankers, which meant of course every individual who had an account with a bank, invested in stock or dealt with those who did. Legislating how banks should operate was the collectivists means of controlling the life-blood of the nation.

By 1917 collectivists took over the government of Russia. Over two million peasants were slaughtered to force agrarian collectives. In the cities, the life's work of countless individuals was taken over in the name of the re-distribution of wealth. As Russians were herded together to march in celebration of collectivism's triumph, they were starving---like hundreds of thousands more throughout the Soviet Union.

The collectivist tsunami swept across the European continent. Money was printed by the truckload to fund welfare programs. By 1923 a widespread, exceptionally severe inflationary depression crushed the German people, setting the stage for the rise of German fascism.

In 1929, the United States entered what has become known as the Great Depression, an economic disaster caused by the Federal Reserve's "easy money policies." The manipulation of the money supply without goods and/or services to back the printed dollars resulted in expansion of credit without any backing, installment buying without any concern for repayment and wild speculation in the stock market. Nothing could contain the empty dollars. And nothing did. The economy collapsed.

During the 1930s the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt sunk America deeper into the welfare state. The government interfered more often and more deeply in more businesses and more markets. Collectivism was on a binge, flying high, its praises sung almost everywhere while people suffered and prosperity declined. Nothing seemed able to stop it.

One individual alone rose to challenge collectivism. One individual alone saw the fundamental cause for the continual victories of collectivism and of the inability of individualism to combat it. One individual without allies, without great wealth, without social or political connections saw the missing ingredient that individualism desperately needed to sustain itself and forge a proper foundation for a free society.

In 1934, a book entitled We the Living was published for the first time. It was the work of a young woman who had emigrated from the Soviet Union to become an American citizen. It was published in Italian and Mussolini thought it was an attack on his enemies; so, he permitted its circulation. When someone in his gang observed that the novel was stirring individuals against his regime, he ordered it taken out of circulation. We the Living is a novel showing the destructiveness of all forms of totalitarianism.

In 1943, in the midst of the Second World War, Ayn Rand, the author of We the Living, finally found a publisher for her second novel The Fountainhead. The beginning of a significant turnaround toward individualism was launched. It was a slow beginning. Advertising for The Fountainhead was modest and restrained. Only one critic saw its monumental importance. The novel, dramatizing the value of individualism and the source of creative thought, was made into a movie. It was not highly promoted. Nonetheless, sales of the novel continued and remained steady. In 1958, Miss Rand's masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, was published. Left and right, liberals and conservatives alike, all attacked the book. Altruists/collectivists at root, they saw the threat of Atlas Shrugged.

Nonetheless, the novel found a receptive audience. The audience was comprised largely of those who were NOT politicians, media, or college professors. Interest in Miss Rand's work grew yearly. Today Atlas Shrugged is at the top of the literary marketplace.

Ayn Rand raised and answered basic questions regarding man's moral code. She identified the proper standard of the good and identified the moral code at the base of individualism. It is the ethics of rational self-interest---also known as rational egoism---or as she titled one of her non-fiction works, The Virtue of Selfishness. Miss Rand demonstrated that selfishness is concern with one's own interests, that according to man's nature as a rational, volitional being his interests are shaped by the fundamental values of reason, purpose and self-esteem and that his actions are guided by virtues in keeping with those fundamental values. Rational selfishness is the necessary and essential foundation of capitalism. Laissez-faire capitalism requires the free exercise of one's rights, which is individualism.

Individualism has been given a mighty leg up.

Yet the struggle continues. On the one hand, big government corruption and fiscal irresponsibility are causing many Americans to recognize that collectivism is an effort to enslave them. On the other hand, collectivists are exploiting Americans' present fears and anger by blaming individual businessmen for government's faults and calling for wider government powers.

Beneath this surface, a fundamental, long-range change is taking place. It is real. It is happening. It is seen in several clues. For instance, collectivists' ridicule and insult has replaced substantive argument, showing that their arguments have grown from thin to empty. The eminent collapse of Newsweek, a self-proclaimed socialist magazine, is another clue that collectivism is all but dead. What sustains it is only the moral code of altruism.

The best way to show the manipulative destructiveness of altruism is to advocate the positive benefits and importance of individual rights. The Ayn Rand Institute and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights are engaged in this education process. http://www.aynrand.com/ In addition, a number of informed activists are working in areas of their own interest to counter government's increasing disregard of individual rights.

It's likely that years from now when individualism is taken for granted many will wonder what was all the fuss about. "Of course," they will say in the future, "individualism is the only doctrine proper to man. It could not be otherwise." And they will be right.

Ayn Rand and the Financial Crisis

2009-03-11T10:12:00.000-06:00

In this time of financial crisis and the Democrats' irrational response to it, Americans are showing a growing interest in Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Increasing sales of her masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, have been reported around the United States. Reports in The Economist indicate the same is happening in Great Britain.

People are looking for better answers than the Democrats' frenzied bacchanal of print and spend. Surely appointing tax evaders to cabinet posts have raised many a temper. Even Democrats at the important grass roots level are disenchanted by the proposal to raise taxes on those making $250,000 or more per annum. Such a proposal affects every small businessperson in the country, and many of the self-employed. In protest, one such small businessperson coined the phrase "Going Galt," which has gained considerable publicity.

Raising dividend and capital gains taxes will increase the penalty on those who've worked and struggled a lifetime to save for their retirement. The shamefully dictatorial mindlessness of universal health care will break the back of doctors, the medical profession as a whole, their patients and every hard-working American and their children who will be forced to pay for it. The unbridled insolence of the current administration proposal to "cut back" on doctor's "pay" reminds one of Caligula's mental state.

The only people who will benefit from this orgy of print, spend and dictate will be the corrupt.

This is not what most Americans want. And so we are looking for answers. Answers are available. They lay in our moral base.

The morality, or ethics, one accepts gives rise to the politics one accepts. This is true of every individual whether he is aware of it or not. Since a nation is composed of many individuals, their combined choices will sum to a majority accepting a given ethical system. In this way, the predominating choices shape the nations' politics---its practices if not its principles.

One of the leading questions of ethics is: who should be the beneficiary of a man's actions? Should a man live for himself, or should he live for others?

If he lives for himself he keeps the result of his efforts and uses his property for his own purposes. Our own past history shows that the greater the freedom to live for one's own benefit, the more will men prosper, and so will the nation. Objectivism holds that this is moral. It is called rational selfishness. Individualism, free-enterprise and limited government are its political expressions.

If a man lives for others, then whatever he earns must be given to someone else---inevitably to those who earn less than he does. In this way, as the Soviet Union demonstrated, the standard of living declines radically and the nation as a whole spirals down into poverty and destruction. Objectivism holds that this is immoral. It is called altruism. Collectivism is its political expression. Socialism is an instance of collectivism.

We presently have a "mixed economy," with some freedom and many controls, regulations, restrictions and intrusions into our economic activity and private lives. This has led to many socialistic practices, and if Obama and Pelosi have their way, socialism will surely engulf this nation ever more extensively.

The first step out of this government-created financial mess is to CUT taxes. We are taxed at every level of government. Taxes should be CUT across the board---federal, state and city---and of every kind including property and sales taxes. Leave more money in the hands of those who've earned it. Whatever one may think about the current government's policies, most Americans agree that taxes are too high and too many and they are becoming increasingly onerous.

The first step toward recapturing the original meaning of our nation---a nation of free men---is to recognize the inviolate right of the individual to his life and property, which is based on the ethical system of a man's right to live for himself---i.e., rational selfishness. Once this point of view is adopted, we shall begin to experience a far better future.

Ayn Rand's ethical system rests upon reason and individual rights. To discover the true meaning of capitalism, to establish genuine free-enterprise and authentic limited government, it is her ethical system the United States should adopt.

To learn more, you might care to visit The Ayn Rand Institute web site: http://www.aynrand.org/

At web site of The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights are some interesting articles on the financial crisis: http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_financial_crisis

Suggested Reading:
Atlas Shrugged
The Virtue of Selfishness
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Philosophy Who Needs It

Part III: The Bumpy Road toward Individualism

2008-12-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

Individualism began as a doctrine implicit in the Ancient Greek view of man, best captured in their art and in Aristotelian philosophy. That view consisted essentially of reality being knowable and the base of all knowledge, and of man as a heroic being. Such a view reflected an individual's pride in his own capabilities, his self-reliance, and acceptance of responsibility for his own life and soul, i.e., his consciousness.

However, a doctrine left implicit is on wobbly footing. Consequently, when in 313 the Byzantine Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan making Christianity the official state religion, the implicit idea of individualism was buried under reams of Christian dogma.

Central to Christianity is the notion of altruism, meaning: self-sacrifice. Altruism is explicitly anti the self. Although why others' selves are to be held superior to one's own, was never made clear, altruism was widely accepted through the assiduous efforts of a number of Christian fanatics, principally Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430).

The wide acceptance of Christianity---forced upon men by the state's power of the gun---led to the Medieval Ages. And for a thousand years altruism, and its political expression collectivism, kept the population burdened with illiteracy and consequent disease and poverty. Church and state both admonished the individual to live for the group, to sacrifice himself to others. With altruism calling the moral shots, collectivism kept individualism tethered to oblivion.

The word 'group' refers to a number of individual things----either human or not. For example: a group of candy bars, or a group of trees. A group does not exist as a concrete object. It is an abstraction, a shorthand way of referring to a number of things together. It does not and cannot exist apart from the objects comprising it.

Only individual objects exist, including human beings. Why Christianity considered the group somehow superior to the individuals comprising it was not questioned. Why an individual should sacrifice himself to a group of other individuals, with each individual commanded to sacrifice himself to the other, and so forth around in a vicious circle, was never answered.

In such a quagmire, men had little chance to raise themselves out of a morality that claimed they should suffer and die for others and a society that said they should work for others. Individualism was nowhere in practice. Collectivism and its moral base, altruism, dominated men's lives.

Slowly over the centuries a little of Aristotle's thought seeped into Western Europe. Peter Abelard (1079-1142) taught some of his ideas at the University of Paris. Then between 1267 and 1273 the publication of Thomas Aquinas' more important works, raised a tiny node of implicit individualism. Aquinas argued that the domain of faith was separate from the domain of reason. This was an implicit indication that the individual counted for something.

Although it was not nearly enough to teach men the importance of individualism, it opened a door to it: the recognition that a certain kind of methodology is essential to man's successful life on earth---the methodology of thought, of reason, of conviction. Through that door, a number of artists and writers in their work implied the importance of the individual.

For instance, Dante's (1265-1321) Divine Comedy while a paean to Christian values, was focused on the travels of an individual man and his love for an individual woman. Dante's splendid oath of dedication to the highest best is usually regarded as his devotion to God. But one can legitimately understand his words, "for thee and nothing else I care," as a solemn commitment to one's own highest best. One can only speculate to what extent such a commitment entered men's minds as they read Dante.

In any case, the separation of the realm of reason from that of faith was an important beginning. Although that beginning was an inexact and incomplete view of the individual self, it led out of the Medieval Ages into a period of comparative euphoria, the Italian Renaissance.

Influenced by Aristotle, Aquinas' work made possible the Italian Renaissance by way of shaping in part men's understanding of their means of gaining knowledge. That understanding necessarily rides alongside of how men regard reality and their own nature.

If, for example, a person learns that he gains knowledge by looking out at reality and using his mind to identify what he sees, he will also form simultaneously the view that reality is knowable. And he'll feel pretty good about his own abilities to know and learn things.

On the other hand, if he believes that he must look to some higher authority to be told what's in a non-existent dimension, which he cannot of course see or know, he will form simultaneously the view that reality is unknowable and/or unimportant and that others know best. And he'll not feel very self-confident about his own abilities to know anything.

Morally, Renaissance man was still mired in medieval Christianity with its pernicious affect on the human spirit. The Christian view that the good was to sacrifice one's life to others, that the self was loathsome, that one's own individual life had no value and must be subordinated to others, that obedience to authority was one's duty---all this was oppressive. It made men sad.

Existentially, on the level of practical pursuits, the recognition of the value of reason had a mighty liberating affect. To some extent men came to understand that since only the individual has the capacity of reason, their own individual life was a value. The Aristotelian view that man was basically good and benevolent, that nature was open to his efforts, that friendship and love and justice among men were worth striving for is a view that encompasses values that can only be attributable to an individual, not to a group. These ideas made men happy.

As might be expected, and can easily be seen in its art, the Italian Renaissance was characterized by men's longing for the heroic grandeur that was Greece on the one hand, and on the other by men's befuddled entrapment in Christian values.

The tug-of-war between man's right to live for himself, and the state and church's dictates that he live for others began in earnest. The battle between incomplete individualism and collectivism as a moral ideal was mounted.

----------------- To Be Continued --------------------

LEST WE RETURN: The Rulers--Part I and II.

2008-10-30T07:02:00.000-06:00

With the rise of the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt (between c. 5000 and 4000 BCE), men’s social groupings expanded.

Previously, the social groupings of prehistoric man had slowly developed from family to clan to tribe. The advent of the Neolithic Revolution---the invention of farming and animal husbandry---saw a different kind of grouping and a different kind of living arrangement. The building of the first city (Jericho c. 8000 BCE) indicates that the new way of producing and keeping food required closer proximity of men to their farms and animals. Tribes may have started to live together side by side.

In any case, by the time King Menes united the tribes of Egypt (around 3200 BCE) individuals in both Egypt and Mesopotamia were regarded as members of one of two classes: the rulers and the ruled.

Among rulers arose two distinct types that often vied for predominance: those who sought dominion over men’s physical being, the kings, and those who sought dominion over men’s spiritual being, the priests. (The concept "spiritual" is here used throughout as synonymous with "consciousness" unless otherwise noted.)

The kings were those who ruled by might. They were the men of muscle, the men who made others do their biding through cunning and brute physical strength, aided by men of like kind who were promised riches in exchange for their allegiance to the head muscle-man.

The priests, like priests today, were those who ruled through fear and ignorance of nature. They were the equivalent of what other tribal societies came to call witch doctor. But instead of involving themselves with attempting to heal the wounded, they devised cosmologies---myths and fantasies---purporting to explain various natural phenomena.

Among the ruled were all those who produced material goods. These were the thinkers , the producers: the farmers, weavers and builders, including the artist/artisan/craftsman. It was these who kept the rulers alive. They did not know it. They did not know the importance of their work---or its moral meaning .

Part II.

Rulers did not accumulate riches through trade, invention and improvements. They accumulated riches through plunder, annexation and war. Whereupon the ruler declared that he owned all the land under his purview, that his power was absolute, that it was divinely ordained and that therefore he was above the law (This is the source of the notion of today's "eminent domain"). He pronounced himself the final and unquestionable authority on all matters. In effect, he held the power of life and death over every individual within his reach.

Rulers of both church and state dressed in the finest of fabrics---woven and sewn by weavers and seamtresses, i.e. the producers. Their skin was rosy and glowing from much good food---raised and harvested by the producedrs, farmers and livestock folk. They drank from cups in-laid with precious metals and stones, fashioned by skilled artisans, the producers. They commanded and the producers built magnificent tombs, pyramids, ships, chariots, palaces, grand cathedrals and country retreats with artfully landscaped gardens and fountains. Their domiciles were furnished with the finest furniture, decorated with rich tapestries crafted by artisans, the producers. Paintings of exquisite beauty adorned ceilings and walls. Sculptures graced walkways and lined the edges of scented pools of pristine water.

Both kinds of rulers postured before the populace, powerful only by dint of his willingness to destroy and his entourage to obey his commands. He gripped tight a mass of workers who had no idea of individual rights or property, their ignorance held in stasis by means of force.

The money to pay for the materials and to keep the craftsmen/artists alive long enough to do the work is said to have come from the munificence of the princes of church and state. Did it?

In the tribal states of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia everything that was, belonged to the ruler---no matter where it was made, who made it or what effort it cost the maker.

This remained the practice up to around 500 BCE when during the Ancient Greece period an implicit understanding of individualism began to develop, which held sway through much of the rule of Ancient Rome's Republic. During the Medieval Ages, however, the idea of individualism was lost and ownership of everything reverted back once again to the ruler, with the church muscling in for a share of the loot.

In the feudal culture that dominated Europe from the ninth century AD to the middle of the seventeenth century, the king confiscated around thirty-eight percent of every peasant's crop and of every subject's product. On top of that, the church took one-tenth of every individual's annual income.

Centuries later it could be stated with certainty that the rulers needed the art and the craftsmanship---and the nature of that "need" was not simply material comfort. They needed it "to impress themselves and foreigners alike with illusions of power which had little basis in reality."1 Rulers were not merely keen to have fine architecture, paintings and sculpture. They were obsessed with having it. No matter what it cost the peasants they ruled.

"Is there not the story of how Nicomedes, King of Lycia, yearned for a statue of Praxiteles, and exhausted almost all the resources of his people in acquiring it? And did not Attalus believe in the same way being prepared to spend over six thousand sesterces for a painting of Bacchus by Aristides?"2

". . . I must also add that some time later in the year 1060 the circular church of San Giovanni was built on the very same square, opposite the cathedral. It is an amazing thing, and almost unbelievable, that it took two weeks and no more to erect and complete the columns, pilasters, and vaulting of this church, as is recorded in an ancient document in the cathedral's office of works. In the same record, which anyone may consult, it is written that a tax of a penny on every hearth was imposed to raise funds for building the church, although it does not say whether this means a gold or copper coin. And at that time, the record also tells us, there were thirty-four thousand hearths in Pisa."3

############ ############# ############

The people who actually build a civilization yet accept the unquestioned authority of state and of church, find themselves the fodder of both. Previous to the Enlightenment, with one exception---that of Ancient Greece---the ruling idea that guided men's actions was the notion that the collective was superior to and more important than the individuals who comprised it. This idea was then and is now dependent upon faith and force.

Civilizations advance by discovering the importance of the individual and by implementing objective law to protect him and his property. Those that never discover the importance of the individual remain ruled by force---such as most of the nations of Africa and Asia. Those that knew it but lose it, revert to savagery---such as those western nations who are every day more tightly embracing collectivism/socialism, including the United States of America.
©2008-2009 Sylvia Bokor. All Rights Reserved.
----------------To be continued
__________________________________________
1. Haskell, Francis, Patrons and Painters, Yale University Press, New Haven/London:1980, p 384. (NB: Haskell refers specifically to the rulers of Baroque Italy but his words are applicable to rulers everywhere.
2. Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Artists, Vol. I, Tr: George Bull, Penquin Classics, England: 1965, p 29.
3. Ibid, Vasari, p 43.

End Part I and II
===============================================

LITERATURE: Ayn Rand and John Dunning

2008-10-22T07:46:00.000-06:00

This is the first of comments that I will make from time to time on art. It deals with an example of current fiction that is slightly different from the usual naturalism with which we are today inundated.

The following is a quote from John Dunning's The Bookman's Wake (p.421-422). The speakers are the hero, Cliff Janeway, and Eleanor, a bookscout, he is helping. (A bookscout is one who searches for certain kinds of books.)

-------------BEGIN QUOTE--------------
I had worked my way around the edge of the front room and had reached the door to the back when I heard Eleanor say, "Good grief, look at this." She had dropped to her hands and knees, out of sight from where I stood. I asked what she had and she said, "You'll have to come look, you'll never believe it."

I found her near the door, holding a near-perfect copy of The Fountainhead.

"It's a whole bag of stuff," she said. "All Ayn Rand, all in this condition."

There were two Fountainhead firsts, both binding states, red and green, in these lovely crisp red jackets. There was an Atlas Shrugged, signed Ayn in old ink and inscribed with endearment as if to an old friend. Finally there was the freshest copy of We the Living that I ever hoped to see in this lifetime. A Rand specialist had once told me that there were probably only a few hundred jacketed copies of We the Living in existence.

Six, seven grand retail, I thought. Sitting by the door in an open bag, in an unattended store.

"It doesn't make much sense does it?" Eleanor said.

I shook my head.

"If the door blew open, they'd get screwed by the rain in a minute," she said. "Jesus, Otto must've really lost it."

"Look, you know this guy---do you think he's so far gone that he wouldn't know what he could get for these?"

"I doubt that. Otto might not know about the new guys---the Graftons, Paretskys, Burkes---but he'd sure as hell know about Ayn Rand."

We stood there for a minute and touched them.

--------------END QUOTE-------------

Sylvia Bokor Comments:
FYI on Mr. Dunning's hero, Cliff Janeway: He is an ex-cop turned book dealer, specializing in rare and scarce books, with particular emphases on items interesting to collectors. He is involved with bookscouts, with other book dealers and with good and bad guys of many types.

John Dunning tells an interesting story---primarily if not exclusively through creating interesting characters. In regard to the two novels named above, the stories themselves are not unusual, although the style is arresting. It grips the reader. The stories deal basically with good v. evil. There is little to no moral ambivalence, and the moral premises indicated are not offensively (or consciously) altruist/collectivist.

Upon reading his first novel, it seemed clear that Mr. Dunning, like virtually all fiction writers today, was a naturalist. The most overt evidence of this being name-dropping of those actually living or having lived.

In Mr. Dunning's case, I was initially disappointed to discover that this practice was used to near-suffocation. Every writer that most avid readers had read or heard of was mentioned---except the romantics. However, given his hero's profession I accepted this as part of the hero's interests.

Nonetheless, I was curious whether Mr. Dunning's work contained evidence of the usual relation between the naturalist and the political liberal, which is usually in the same relationship as Siamese twins. I was therefore surprised when I came to the above quoted reference to Miss Rand's works in his second novel.

The surprise evaporated when it occurred to me that Mr. Dunning in the guise of Janeway may not be interested in content at all, or in book design, book publishing or even book manufacturing. The center of his interest apparently seems to be merely the current condition of a book that some people are interested in collecting.

I say 'apparently' because it may be that a publicized center is a diversion to conceal an actual center---as in many individuals unwilling (or presently unable) to disclose their true self. In any case, it's necessary to read all of an author's works in order to make determinations of this kind. And I haven't yet.

So, in the meantime, I will give Mr. Dunning much credit for telling an interesting story. It's hard to do and he does it nicely. Unfortunately, like all naturalists, Mr. Dunning does not dramatize ideas---save those implicit in his style, story line and characterizations.

Dramatizing an idea is extremely difficult. To do it at all is praiseworthy. To do it well deserves high marks. To do it with the panache and revolutionary literary techniques of an Ayn Rand is an achievement of the first magnitude, beyond comparison.

While I would recommend Mr. Dunning's first two novels to those who love books, I must do so with the warning that he is not a romantic in the usual sense. He appears to be a "closet romantic" who, at present, is concealing himself with a number of the techniques of the current day naturalist. Too bad. Maybe his later work is different. I don't know yet. I shall check it out soon.

Letter to Editor, Boston Globe: Published

2008-09-28T12:55:00.000-06:00

Re a writer's query to Ayn Rand fans: There's no need to apologize for free-markets. But because of considerable mis-education, there is a need to explain them. The use of the terms "execrable" and "distribution of wealth" indicates the mistaken Marxist-Keynesian views of the questioner. Properly, wealth is not be "distributed." It is earned. CEOs do that. They earn a lot of money because they have a great deal more responsibility than other employees do. Most importantly, they create jobs, expand production and thereby raise the standing of living. Politicians' promises "to create jobs" is self-aggrandizement. Politicians don't create jobs. CEOs do. That's why they're highly paid.

©2008. Sylvia Bokor. All Rights Reserved.
---------------------------------------------------------
Suggested Reading:
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal

Separating State and Church

2008-09-28T11:52:00.000-06:00

Every human being needs a moral code in order to live. There is no choice about that. Morality is a requirement of man’s life. There is a choice of which moral code you accept. You might accept the moral code identified by a philosopher. Or you might accept the moral code of theologians. You might figure out a moral code of your own. But whatever the case, a moral code is essential to your life. And your actions will be guided by it whether you’re aware of it or not.

A moral code is more important to human beings than food and drink. Because depending on which moral code an individual chooses, it is his moral code that shapes his decision to earn food and drink, or to sacrifice for it, or to kill for it. On some level, to some extent, most Americans understand this.

But some do not. They believe that by blurring together church and state a happier and more loving culture will result, providing them with the subsistence they need. A brief glance at history proves this false.
In every culture on earth there have always been men who wanted only to produce the materials they needed in order to live, and to live peaceably in trade with their fellow men, free of coercion.

And there have always been men who wanted to rule those producers. Such men declared themselves rulers. Some sought to rule men’s actions. Eventually, these became known as the state. Some sought to rule men’s moral conscientiousness. These became known as the church.
Millenniums passed. Despite the presence of such rulers, before monotheism the vast majority of men enjoyed religious freedom. Some cultures were freer than others. People worshipped or not, as they chose.

Then in 313 AD the Emperor of Byzantine issued the Edict of Milan, making Christianity the state religion. It was a period when church and state were indistinguishable from one another. Yet, the ruler of the church squabbled with the ruler of the state. Who was more powerful? Who controlled what? Whose say-so was most important? The church wanted state power. The state wanted church power. Discord arose. Strife grew. Prosperity declined. Men began to fear for their lives.

Always mutually suspicious of one another, state and church sought ways to expand their powers. The most obvious way was to form an alliance with one another. The soldiers ordered into service by the state were commanded to kill with the religious fervor of the church. The Crusades was one result---orgies of murder, rape and mayhem that soaked the earth with human blood.

For one thousand years state and church formed and discarded alliances. Alliances to seize land or goods, to stamp out perceived threats, to slaughter heretics and infidels. They formed alliances to "rid society of witches, warlocks and gypsies," to crush the non-believer, the errant-believer and the other-believer. The Inquisition is an example. It arrested innocent individuals, interrogated and tortured them, tore them apart on the rack, imprisoned, starved and burned them at the stake.

This period is known as the Medieval Ages. It was a time of unimaginable suffering: poverty, disease, slaughter, pillage and hatred. Individual moral conscientiousness was forbidden. Men were told what they must believe. They were terrified, their spirits crushed by lurid tales of damnation if they did not believe. A rage of malice and viciousness swept men’s minds and actions. Violence grew daily among individuals and groups, seemingly without end.

Between 1267-73, the theologian Thomas Aquinas argued for a different approach. He tried to clarify the realms of faith and the realms of reason. Some seventy-five years following the completion of his masterwork, the Italian Renaissance was born. Much of the misery of the Medieval Ages was wiped away.

During the Italian Renaissance, men had a better grasp of how things could be understood and great strides were made. But they were still not free to worship as they chose. The individual continued to suffer restrictions on his own moral conscientiousness. He was crushed between his longing to know greatness on earth and his confusion over church dictates. He remained the helpless victim of church and state.

This state of affairs continued until 1690 when John Locke published his famous Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatise on Government. These works indicated a solution to the dominance of church and state over men. The British Enlightenment spilled into the New World. About a century later came the explicit statement in the U.S. Constitution. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ."

This statement legally separated the powers of church and state. Congress was not the church. The church was not Congress. Signed in September 1787 and ratified in June 1788, men were freed at last from the specter of state and church allied against them. They were freed from demands to believe as the church dictated. They were free to worship as they chose, or not.

This highly truncated glance back in time shows why it is essential to keep church and state separate. It demonstrates why without the separation of church and state we are all in peril, no matter what our belief or absence of same. It shows why the separation of church and state is vitally important to us all. Unless we want to return to Medieval times, we must uphold the freedom of everyone to worship as they choose, or not. Which means we must keep separate church and state.

©2008. Sylvia Bokor. All Rights Reserved.
--------------------------------------------------
Suggested reading:
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand, Philosophy Who Needs It