If I May Make So Bold

More Nigel Farage

2011-11-19T12:49:00.000-06:00

European Parliament, Strasbourg, 16 November 2011

The Angela Prayer

2011-11-08T22:46:00.001-06:00

Heil Merkel,
Pander to your base
The Volk is with you
Blessed art thou among Germans
and Blessed is the fruit of thy reign,
Ordnung

That Germany is the responsible adult of the European Union is,apparently, a matter of 'settled science' among commentators on the EU "debt crisis".For well over a year, in every report,in every media,the valiant efforts of the fiscally responsible Bundestag to stave off the impending economic implosion of Europe has been second only to the manifest culpability of whichever nation is most recently being held to have caused the same.
The crisis is, as debt crises always are,the result of spending money that does not,and never did,exist.In this instance,these magical funds were used to purchase votes,by providing a first world,upper class life style,to the residents of a variety of nations with relatively small economies.The governments which benefited from this charade, naturally supported the Union,just as the people of those nations,naturally, supported their respective governments.

The question no one seems to ask - What then does Germany want with the EU ?Why is the Reichskanzler Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel so popular for supporting what seems to be such a very uneven alliance?What is this thing that the German government values more than the stability and security of their own currency?
Is it the opportunity to provide adult supervision to the poor,benighted and,above all,un-organized denizens of the dark and dank of corners of the continent?

The question is a prudent one;As Germany's Federal Chancellor prophesies darkly in parliament that the alternative to urgent efforts in the support of a turbulent Union is war,her renewed fascination with controlling the governments of her neighbours cannot be historically separated from her recent forays into the export both of weapons and revolution.
If the rest of Europe allows Greece to be the first pig sacrificed to the Norse god of sturm and drang on the altar of the Euro,it will not be the last - each of the peoples who have so unwisely been yoked together will be called upon to 'surrender their sovereignty' - their constitutions,their flags,and their souls - one at a time,like a row of dominoes.
The solution to this 'debt crisis' is simple.This time,Poland should strike first.

The Best Possible Alternitive

2011-11-01T18:41:00.002-05:00

Steve Sailer reminds us in the United States of America, that as bad as the behaviour of our government has recently been,it could be worse.
Perhaps,after the good senator has settled into his new medication schedule,he could explain what powers Mr.Putin,as the duly and constitutionally appointed Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation, holds or exercises in Russia which our own Beloved Leader lacks,or fails to exercise, here?

Completely Unforseeable

2011-10-27T22:09:00.001-05:00

Having elected a constitutional law professor to the office of President of the United States,expressly for the purpose of ending a series of foreign wars marred by putatively unconstitutional uses of military force,the proud men and women who inhabit Earth's last remaining super power awaken one mourning to find themselves the proud victors of a brand new conflict,completely lacking any form of congressional approval or oversight.The immediate result of their historic participation in this noble undertaking?
Sharia law:

'The announcement that Islamic sharia law will be the basis of legislation in newly liberated Libya has raised concerns...

Interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Sunday, during his speech to the nation in Benghazi to formally declare the country's liberation from the ousted regime of Moammer Kadhafi, that sharia would be Libya's principal law.

"Any law that violates sharia is null and void legally," he said, citing as an example the law on marriage passed during the slain dictator's 42-year tenure that imposed restrictions on polygamy, which is permitted in Islam.

"The law of divorce and marriage... This law is contrary to sharia and it is stopped," Abdel Jalil said.'

By Simon Martelli | AFP – Mon, Oct 24, 2011(C.F.In Bona Fide)

The warm flush creeping over one's skin,and the attendant loosening of the bowels are merely symptoms of the joy which America and her allies now feel, having brought Democracy to yet another grateful people.

Bandar-log

2011-10-27T00:22:00.000-05:00

    Here we go in a flung festoon,
    Half-way up to the jealous moon!
    Don't you envy our pranceful bands?
    Don't you wish you had extra hands?
    Wouldn't you like if your tails were--so--
    Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow?
        Now you're angry, but--never mind,
        Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!


    Here we sit in a branchy row,
    Thinking of beautiful things we know;
    Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
    All complete, in a minute or two--
    Something noble and wise and good,
    Done by merely wishing we could.
        We've forgotten, but--never mind,
        Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!


    All the talk we ever have heard
    Uttered by bat or beast or bird--
    Hide or fin or scale or feather--
    Jabber it quickly and all together!
    Excellent!  Wonderful!  Once again!


    Now we are talking just like men!
       Let's pretend we are ... never mind,
       Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
       This is the way of the Monkey-kind.


   Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines,
   That rocket by where, light and high, the wild grape swings.
   By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make,
   Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things!

Rudyard Kipling,Road Song of the Bandar-log,1894

(Photographs after jump may be"NSFW")

"They have no law. They are outcasts.

They have no speech of their own, but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep, and wait ...

Their way is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs ... but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all is forgotten"


Rudyard Kipling,Kaa's Hunting,1894

"What the Bandar-log think now the jungle will think later"

"But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
-John Maynard Keynes, THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST AND MONEY,1936.

"Communism, fascism, socialism, and any other "ism", purporting to demonstrate that someone else is more entitled to what you have than you are, are all based the idea, or ideal, that people are, generally,better off when people are, generally, not permitted to make themselves better off.Put this way the truth would seem to become painfully obvious.
And, after near a century of genocide, riots, famine and war, the obvious has, indeed, become that painful."

Perspective

2011-10-15T17:13:00.002-05:00

The single most important fact of your life,the one thing,the understanding of which will permanently change your perspective on everything else you know;As a child,you were subjected,by threat of force,to political indoctrination and brain washing.You do not believe that you remember this,or,indeed, that it took place at all.
You do,and it did.
When you begin to understand this,everything else you have ever believed,must,of necessity,be re-examined.

On Denying The Gods Of The State

2011-10-11T14:15:00.000-05:00

Hanno,Pausanias ,Ibn Battuta,Marco Polo,Alexis de Tocqueville,Simon Rierdon.
It is a curious fact,that the only direct evidence as to the seating capacity of the famous Globe Theatre, where many of William Shakespeare's plays were first performed, is contained in a diplomatic dispatch,sent home by the Spanish Ambassador in 1630, to detail anti-Spanish sentiments of the popular entertainments then current in London.If it ever occurred to any of the Englishmen for whom Shakespeare was a contemporary to make note this information, we have no record of it.
This extraordinary oversight is exemplary of a phenomenon well known to students of history - Those facts which are most vital to an outsider's understanding of the way a people lives, are precisely those of which no record will be made by that people,themselves.
Thus,from the most ancient times,accurate information about the societies which have gone before ours has most often been provided by writers who were,themselves, foreign to the culture on which they reported.
Veritas Aculeus has, for some time, made a travelogue of the pseudonymous author's experiences while working in Europe,exhibiting the painful truth of everyday life in way that only the alien can.
Having recently returned,apparently permanently, to the United States, Mr.Rierdon continues to provide the perspective of an outsider,living out his ancient calling;Question Everything.For those who,like him,refuse to take for granted the popular conceptions and pieties of his culture,no further recommendations will be necessary.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

2011-10-07T13:47:00.002-05:00

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

- Rudyard Kipling,1919

Unqualified Requiem

2011-10-06T17:34:00.008-05:00

If the reader has yet to make the acquaintance of Mencius Moldbug, he is most strongly encouraged to do so.An excellent directory of the Mysterious Monarchist's work can be found here.
The reader must be warned of Mr.Moldbug's unfortunate tendency to equate the most liberal sect of the Christian faith in any given generation with the traditions of that faith,itself.The Christian believer will, rather, see that the system of thought which Mencius identifies with Christianity, and which has lately become that which he calls Universalism,is,instead that which the Church names Heresy.Pius the tenth, in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis of 1907 warned of the dangers of this Modernism,"synthesis of all heresies".The century that followed has certainly justified his warnings.
Warnings which Mencius Moldbug echoes and amplifies.He has an Unparalleled talent translating to us our own world with the eyes of our ancestors;That is, showing us the modern world as it actually is.
Today,he mourns the passing of a man,who like himself,was a computer programmer: Steven Paul Jobs,who died at 56 years of age,yesterday on October 5, 2011.

"And yet - there is a God in this world. There is right, at least, and wrong. In everything. In code. In a toy. And this is our special torture: as the planet rots, as fools rule and hyenas feast, as nations lie prostrate, churches decompose, and the Devil with a knife owns London, Paris, New York after dark, fell in our hairy hands the real work of a real King, an Able-man, Ken-ning - who served God, or right at least, and could bend small armies to obey. And make - a toy. So near we are to salvation; so infinitely far away. Rest in peace, Steve."
Indeed.

C+?

2011-10-05T17:01:00.003-05:00

Much has been made of recent experimental evidence that the neutrino particle, under certain circumstances, travels at a rate of speed measurably faster than that of a photon.
While the experimental evidence itself is necessarily slim, being the product of an almost unique facility,which was designed to generate anomalous data,the counter evidence is even weaker - Scholastic Theology:
It is held as certain,that nothing can travel faster than a photon, because a photon has no mass.How are we to be certain that a photon has no mass?Because nothing can travel faster than a photon!
Einstein's equations have been demonstrated over and over again throughout the last century, and any substantial revisions in his understanding of Space,Time,Matter and Energy will require enormous experimental and experiential evidence - but the assumption that light itself travels at the proverbial C is ,exactly, an assumption.That is,while the speed at which photons tend to travel is known,and it is known that relativity's predictions are testable with that value,a different speed for C,higher than that of photons,may also yield predictions consistent with the known results of experiment.If photons have 'negligible' mass,then any particle with less mass would more closely approach the speed C - which,in relativity, is the speed of a truly massless particle.Not 'negligible'.Utterly Massless.
Given that the purpose of the CERN facility is to generate data which the so-called Standard Model of physics can not predict - that is, to perform experiments the outcome of which is not known - it is gratifying to see unexpected information being published.It is disturbing, even horrifying, however, to see so many voices raised, and so quickly,to defend Einstein's Ghost.
IF Einstein's theories, in any particular, turn out to be incorrect, then he and God will have a great deal to talk about.Our job will be to follow the data, wherever it leads, and to never stop looking for more.On this score, our recent performance is,at best, a C.

The Great Awakening

2011-09-06T11:19:00.000-05:00

From before the coming of the Christ, up until our own times, there have always been those who foresaw a cataclysmic danger - not only to human civilization, but the certain destruction of our planet itself.
The solution they proffer never varies: Discontinue all productive work immediately; destroy or discard the accumulated capital that that makes this work possible - the more extreme will further advocate a mass suicide or genocide, and always for the same purpose; To appease or offer sacrifice to forces offended by modernity, and thus restore balance to the cosmos - in the case of those who intend to survive the catastrophe, a new golden age is envisioned where the evils created by the wicked will not intrude on the believer's new Eden.
Or perhaps all will perish in the coming conflagration - never fear; balance will still be restored in the end, the universe will somehow, find equilibrium, with or without the rest of us.
Human beings are, whether by adaptation or design, uniquely suited to live on the Earth;the Earth,in turn, to human habitation.The ecology of this planet has been habitable by man for millennia, despite, if not because of, our long residence here.Whatever changes we may make in the future, for good or for ill, this planet will remain habitable, and we shall continue to inhabit it,together.
Salvation will not come as a result of the deaths of unbelievers, nor will supernatural forces intervene to usher in paradise.
This matter will finally end as every Awakening has always ended.
The believers will destroy all of the means of productivity at their disposal,and, either retire to await their vindication - or turn against those who remain deaf to proselytization, beating their ploughshares into swords in a desperate bid to appease their god by the sacrifice of her doubters....
Regardless of their tactics, or the outcome of their struggle, they are doomed.

The First Rule of Democracy,”The King Does Not Make The Crops Grow.”

2011-08-29T18:31:00.000-05:00

One can tax commerce by taxing money, but one can never tax wealth.This does not mean that one should not- It is simply is that it can not be done.

Just as damning a river deprives those down stream of water, so does a taxation scheme deliberately devised to target accumulations of capital necessarily deprive those who need it of work, while, simultaneously, making the basic goods and services they need to survive become more expensive, that is, require more work...

The kind offer of the damn builders to carry water down, and distribute it by hand to the needy, does little to alleviate their distress.

MACDONOUGH'S SONG

2011-01-31T18:11:00.003-06:00

Whether the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth--
These are matters of high concern
Where the State-kept schoolmen are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
Endeth in Holy War.

Whether the People be led by the Lord,
Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by the vote--
These are things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from the grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.

Whatsoever, for any cause,
Seeketh to take or give
Power above or beyond the Laws,
Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King--
Or Holy People's Will--
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
Order the guns and kill!
Saying--after--me--

Once there was The People--Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once there was The People--it shall never be again!

- Rudyard Kipling in As Easy as A.B.C., 1912

Put Not Your Trust In Princes

2010-11-01T23:57:00.003-05:00

In this day of universal suffrage,it is not that all politicians make promises, and that only some of them keep them - it is that a politician will say or promise anything to be elected.Whether or not these promises can later be be kept is irrelevant to the major goal of the politician - re-election.
All of these promises amount to the same thing - making everyone - or,at least, the speaker's current audience - wealthy, and wealthy without any effort beyond faith.
Merely cast your vote, and all manner of things will be well.
They are lying.They are lying for no other reason than because it is in their nature to lie.The mere fact that a person desires to be elected, proves that that person is lying.
Remember.Remember the sacrifices of your Fathers and Grandfathers.Remember that freedom is not free, and that rights once won at bitter prices, may be lost in a moment - because no one is paying attention.

Electing Santa Clause

Timeless Truths From Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

2010-10-13T14:37:00.005-05:00

"So you think money is the root of all evil?"
"Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor - your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on the moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by mean of nothing but physical motions - and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all goods produced and of all wealth that has ever existed on earth.

But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscle. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by a man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made - before it can be looted or mooched - made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgement of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss - the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery - that you must offer them values, not wounds - that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade - with reason, not force, as their final arbiter - it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgement and highest ability - and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. The is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as a driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality - the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brain of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgement, ends up becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth - the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry the money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that is should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you have pronounced upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money - and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know that are able to deserve it.

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another - their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich - will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt - and of his life, as he deserves.

Then you will see the rise of men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - the money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch the money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you seen that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are

You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood: money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edges of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained that same: to seize wealth by force and keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves - slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, of aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers, as industrialists.

To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money - and I have no higher, more revert tribute to pay America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there was no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being - the self-made man - the American industrialist.

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose -because it contains all the others - the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity - to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide - as, I think, he will.

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for you own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become tools of men. Blood, whips and guns - or dollars. Take your choice - there is no other - and your time is running out"
-Ayn Rand via Francisco d'Anconia in Atlas Shrugged, 1957

A Long Train of Abuses and Usurpations

2010-10-06T23:28:00.004-05:00

"In this country of ours, took place the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in the world’s history; the only true revolution. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. But here, for the first time in all the thousands of years of man’s relations to man, a little group of men, the founding fathers, for the first time, established the idea that you and I had within ourselves the God given right and ability to determine our own destiny. This freedom was built into our government with safeguards. ." Ronald Reagan,1961

Whenever a people contract with each other to live together in peace the question must always be asked "When shall we use force against one of our number, and why?".This question arises from the very nature of shared human habitation because human beings are, by nature, free, and entitled to remain free, and to resist constraints on their freedom.Force, or the threat of force, can, and has, been used for millennia, to curtail this natural and inherent condition, and only counter force, or its plausible threat, have ever been used to prevent this.

The purpose of Government, then, is to identify threats to the Life or Liberty of its participants,and to answer these threats with a response adequate to preserve for them the free exercise of the rights granted them by God.Inherent in this belief in the fundamental dignity of the human person, is the absolute necessity of resticting this use of force to its proper and legitimate ends.Recognizing the difference between rights,which are inherent in the human condition, and goods, which are the result of human effort, is,then, the fundamental prerequisite of good government.That is,no human being is ever entitled to anything which requires effort by another human being to make available.Any time the use force is used to mandate behaviour which is not morally incumbent on a human being,the result is to enslave the human being so effected.

Long observation of the history of government, and bitter experience with unaccountable rule, taught the first generation of independent Americans that,however necessary Government may be,as soon as a government has answered all other threats,the accumulation of power which makes governance possible can soon become the greatest threat to the freedom which the government was created to protect.To address this danger, our Republic was designed with a multiplicity of balances and safeguards to curtail the power that any one person, or group of people could ever accumulate.Legitimate activities of government were identified, and the freedom of those in power to exercise force over others citizens of the Republic were specifically and dramatically curtailed.It was desired that the powers of coercion which are vital to preserving our Freedom would never be exercised to curtail that very Freedom.

No person,and no political party,which fails to understand these things, can ever claim to stand in the traditions of the United States of America, and any such person or organization must always be recognized by the rest of us as what they are - People who would attempt to replace the American Revolution with a new revolution of their own, a revolution designed not secure rights granted by a Creator, but to control goods, made by human hands.

Such people will advance dozens or hundreds of reasons why the collective force of government should be turned away from the defence of the governed, and towards some other end,but the end of their proposals is always the same: to reduce the population, or some portion of it, to state of slavery, wherein the labour they perform, and the knowledge which they accumulate to perform that labour,become the property of some one else. Such people have sought continuously for decades to gain the control they desire over lives, by claiming to advocate for the needs of the elderly,the homeless,the poor,or some other such group,whose members are perceived to be in such dire need of charity from the rest of us, that the use of government - that is, force - is needed to meet their most basic necessities.

Far from decrying the hypocrisy of other partisans, one is forced to admire the rigour and consistency of modern efforts to socialize the administration of medicine, a task undertaken by not one, but two consecutive Presidents from the political party whose adherents call themselves democrats.

It is now, and with perfect philosophical consistency, proposed that that the infirm are somehow being maintained in their infirmity precisely by the selfishness of the healthy, who stubbornly refuse to insure themselves against catastrophe at the same cost as those who have demonstrated familiarity with the same.

They are not.Regardless of the choices or misfortunes which have consigned the infirm to their condition, it is the liberty of a free people which has created their only hope escaping it - the most effective system of Medicine in the history of the world.As the freedom which permitted this system to exist is taken from us, the genius which created it will likewise be extinguished, until where once,there was a free people, enjoying the legitimate fruits of their freedom, all that will remain is a nation of slaves,labouring under a condition of absolute despotism.

A Capitalist Country?

2010-09-25T21:38:00.006-05:00

There is no small confusion, today, between the concept of a 'Free Market' and that of 'Capitalism'.

The two concepts are not the same.Our Free Market is free, only because we are free. It is impossible to ‘control’ or “plan’ or even ‘regulate’ the Market, without controlling real, live human being first. Goods and services are moved from one pair of hands to another, by people. If no one wants something, it does not move. If every one wants something, it moves very, very fast, and if one wishes to change this paradigm, one will have to begin by getting control of one more of those pairs of hands. Many would have us believe that because they or their predecessors have succeeded in deriving a profit from some activity or asset - some Capitol - in the past they should continue to do, indefinitely. This is regarded, somehow, as a ‘protection of property rights’, and laws must, therefore, be ‘updated’ in order to insure the continued success of business models which are unable to succeed on their own. Does any thinking person believe this? What precisely, should the method be, and, the amount allocated to revive America’s failing horse drawn carriage industry? Government backed loans? Guaranteed prices? Perhaps a quota on the auto-mobiles that may be sold, or an outright ban.-after all, auto-mobiles are more dangerous than carriages, do more damage to a nation’s infrastructure, and have destroyed our domestic carriage production…

Every industry and art currently practised, all of them, without exception, may someday be obsolete. While in some cases, we may not be able to anticipate what will replace them, this does not make them ‘essential’ or ‘irreplaceable’, any more than whale oil represented an ‘irreplaceable’ technology two hundred years ago Any given industry, art, or trade-including all the forms of agriculture-remains valuable only so long as people are willing to pay for them. ’Protecting’ these industries while favoured by people within them, has never been in the best interest of an entire people. When it is done, it is done at the behest of those groups who stand the most to gain, and only justified to the remainder of the population afterwards. This is not freedom, and has nothing to do the free market, and every thing to do with bribery.

Any time a special protection is put in place - or a special regulation - that does not exist for the purpose of protecting Americans from fraud or deception, but rather, to force us to spend our money - that is the fruits of our labour - in way that we would not, otherwise, the Free Market becomes a little less free.As do we.

Proverbs

2009-06-19T12:48:00.000-05:00

We ask the young to fight and die on our behalf,because we know that they will.If we had to depend on the old men and women who declare wars, to fight them as well,we would all be dead long ago.

Republicans and Democrats are not very different from each other-both are beholden to to various special interest before their own constituencies.Just because a person belongs to the same political party as John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan does not make that person a worthy successor to their office,or entitle him to your support.

In a democratic republic,people who call themselves democrats and republicans,each excluding themselves from the other's camp,and denying each other entry to their own,may rightly be regarded with suspicion by the people whom they claim to represent.

Equal access means the same access that every one else receives.It does not mean that you shall cut into the front of the line-only that no one will cut in front of you.

Equal opportunity guarantees you the right to compete.It does not mean you will win.

To pretend to represent a policy as protecting the poor from the rich is facetious.Any procedure which grants a privilege to one member of society by denying it to another is always wrong,and always benefits those best able to pay for lawyers-and politicians.

Political personalities often claim that they will 'fight for your rights',but they never do.

If you want to find a group of people who are willing to fight for your rights,visit the local chapter of the VFW.

Proverbs

2009-05-15T14:28:00.000-05:00

If you do not know whose fault it is,it is probably yours.

Salesmen are trying to sell you something.

If a candidate for public office has to buy your vote,he does not deserve it.

Your fair share,isn't.

Lawyers who have never practised law are the worst possible candidates for public office.

Followed closely by by businessmen who have neither turned a profit,nor lost their own money.

People who do not pay taxes are,fundamentally, unqualified to set and collect them.

A person who has done nothing to persuade his countrymen not to jump off a cliff has no call for complaint when they carry him over.

Our greatest freedom,our most inalienable right-the right to leave.A person who has done every thing in his power to persuade his countrymen not to jump off a cliff,is under no obligation to join them because they in the majority.
If you are not proud of your country,leave.But go somewhere you can be proud of-they may ask you to fight for them,they will certainly want you to pay to taxes,and they might not even let you vote.

When, and Why?

2009-04-04T19:43:00.005-05:00

It is quite certain, that before any human being specialized in administering justice, there was already a shared view of what justice was.Before there was government there was law.
However counter-intuitive this concept may seem to any one who has never lived without a government,it is inherit in both in our understanding of law, and, in the United States of America, in our understanding of government.
The statement might seem less unusual if phrased differently:
"Before there was government, there was right and wrong."
The book of Genesis tells us that after the Flood, God gave us a law.Among the commandments found in Genesis 9:1-7 , one is distinguished from the others by being given to men to enforce on other men.
"He who sheds man's blood,by man shall his blood be shed."
As there is not, for instance, a similar injunction to men to enforce the commandment to be fruitful and multiply,this may be reasonably reckoned the first law.
More secular explanations exist for the origin of this first principle of cooperative living.
"It was realized centuries ago that it is impossible for a man to protect himself against murder, because it's extremely easy to kill a man, so it was agreed that men should protect each other."
-Rex Stout, via the incomparable Nero Wolfe, TOO MANY COOKS, 1938
People agreed- if one does this, that must be done to him.When ever human beings decide to live in proximity to one another, we must always find a way to answer the question, ''How ought we to order our lives together?'', or, put differently,"When shall we use force against one of our number, and why?" This is the whole, and the only, question of law.

What Is Good For The Country?

2009-03-29T20:58:00.005-05:00

"...for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country."-Charles E. Wilson('Engine Charlie'),15 January,1953.

Reuters reported today that George Richard Wagoner,jr.,president and chief executive officer of General Motors Corporation,resigned "under pressure from the Obama administration".
The continuing government intervention in private American businesses grows invasive, as the current President of the United States, a constitutional law professor, discovers that his office now has the power to appoint,and secure the resignation of, the executives of said businesses, in exchange for loans made from the Treasury.
The ultimate end of this policy is to place these failing businesses under the firm control of organs of the American government.This, in turn, is justified by the position that the relevant companies are failing because of the incompetence of their most senior management,who,consequently, should be punished for their failures,by being denied continued leadership. The veracity of the belief that popularly elected government officials will prove better qualified in this role has not been critically examined and is not immediately apparent to this author.

"But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
-John Maynard Keynes, THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST AND MONEY,1936.

Two Things In Life

2009-03-09T22:58:00.004-05:00

" Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

While the constitution expressly assigns the protections and rights of citizens to those born within our boarders, it is silent on the rights of the unborn, and within this ambiguity, debate has proceeded without interruption for decades.
Recently, two issues have entered our public debate that, on critical examination, reveal themselves to be of a different nature than that which their proponents assign them.
Firstly, we read that our chief executive has reversed previous rules regarding the use of government funds for research involving genetically human test subjects.While the moral questions involved in the artificial creation of a lifeform of human heritage that is not human under the law have yet to be resolved within that law, the issue of government funding for this controversial research should be much simpler.
Properly phrased the question is not," Shall we permit these experiments to take place?"
No law banning these experiments was under discussion.Forgoing congressional input, in the same fashion as his predecessor, the President undertook to answer a very different question :
" Shall we in power today force those of our countrymen who disagree with us to participate in funding this research?"
His answer was yes.
We also find that the administration is "inviting" public comment on another question of policy involving an opinion about the nature of human life. At issue is whether medical professionals are permitted to disagree with the President about the morality of performing abortions.As above, no one is questioning whether or not a woman may choose to have an abortion performed. Instead, we are being asked if someone else should be punished for refusing to help her.
At issue in both of these cases is the moral use of government resources.To answer such a question we need only remind ourselves where those resources come from.
They come from us.Every time we, as a people, choose to spend public money, we are choosing to coerce the cooperation of the tax paying public.
The present author is hardly the first to point out that the use of government power is nothing more or less than the use of force. It is point that he might perhaps be justly accused of stressing at some length.If it is certain that we must have a government, and that it must levy taxes, then we must undertake to see that those taxes, once collected, are used in a manner that their collection, by force of arms,justifies.As another author has written,"If you don't pay your taxes...you'll be jailed.If you try escape from jail, you'll be shot."
Without any input from Congress, the President of United States has declared two important issues,involving the consciences of millions of Americans, settled.
The reader is invited to review the previous entry, on the subject of Tyranny.

Our Lives Together

2009-02-15T11:27:00.006-06:00

In any contentious debate, it is always worth the time to review the principles which underlay the contested subject matter.This is particularly true when the stakes are raised beyond mere academic pride, as is the case when decisions are to made based on the conclusions of the debate. Clarity of thought and speech becomes especially vital when the goals of debaters do not require agreement or consensus, but rather, a majority of the parties involved will be able to enforce cooperation on those descenting.
These conditions describe every debate, of every parliamentary body in the world.For this reason,wherever majority rules, debate ought be clear,concise, and thorough.
It is in this light that we ought judge the bills currently being debated in our own Congress, and those likely to be introduced in the future by individuals currently wielding great influence in that body.
Our own first principles,then:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Tyranny is intrinsically evil.Taking what does belong to you is inherently wrong.Interfering with the free exercise of another's conscience, for reasons other than the preservation of Life, or Liberty, is Tyranny.
These principles were cited as sufficient reason for the formation of our nation as a sovereign state, separate from Great Britain,and it is these most basic of agreed upon principles which are central to The United States of America's answer to Aristotle's famous political question: "How ought we to order our lives together?"It is in the light of these Great Truths, which all of us hold in common,that current and proposed legislative priorities should be judged.
It is,in fact,an inherent affront,both to our nation's founders, and to our current population,when our legislators choose to pursue their policies without first examining the worth of such in this sacred light of history.A free people may rightly regard those who desire to force quick, and possibly irrevocable decisions, and to support these decisions with the collective might of that people's democratic government, as dangerous and unstable personalities who ought not be charged with public service.It is a lesson that those personalities now in power should learn from the election of November last, when that judgement was entered against their predecessors.

Mine

2008-11-22T12:45:00.011-06:00

For many years now, The United States of America,and much of the world, has enjoyed a "boom market" in our economy.This market has been characterized by unexplained and unexamined increases in the prices of almost every conceivable investment , from real estate to stock.
Recently, we have been reminded that " boom market" was originally a term used in conjunction with "bust".As in "Boom and Bust". What is happening?
The current apparent shortage of liquidity has nothing to do with the actual work in, or the value of items on, the market.Rather, it is a shortage of the credit on which this market has come to rely.
Credit occurs, as everyone knows, when someone who has capital ( money), loans it to someone else for a period of time, expecting to receive it back again, with compensation for its use.A good loan,then, is is a loan that is likely to be paid back in a reasonable period of time with sufficient interest to compensate the lender for the use of his money during the interim.Such loans are typically of a type that can be called "productive", that is , the person borrowing the money uses it to finance a business, and the loan is repaid out of the profit.Other kinds of loans- to buy something which the borrower can not afford- and which are not productive,are comparatively riskier, and less likely to be paid back.Indeed, the interest on such loans is called usury,and its collection forbidden, by many religious faiths.

"For even as a man going into a far country called his servants and delivered to him his goods;
And to one he gave five talents, and to other two, and to another one, to every one according to his proper ability: and immediately he took his journey.
And he that had received the five talents went his way and traded with the same and gained other five.
And in like manner he that had received the two gained other two.
But he that had received the one, going his way, digged into the earth and hid his lord's money.
But after a long time the lord of those servants came and reckoned with them.
And he that had received the five talents coming brought other five talents, saying: Lord, thou didst deliver to me five talents. Behold I have gained other five over and above.
His lord said to him : Well done, good and faithful servant, because hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things.Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
And he also that had received the two talents came and said : Lord, thou deliveredst two talents to me. Behold I have gained other two.
His lord said to him : Well done thou good and faithful servant :because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
But he that had received the one talent came and said : Lord, I know that thou art a hard man ; thou reapest where thou hast not sown and gatherest where thou hast not strewed.
And being afraid, I went and hid thy talent in the earth.Behold here thou hast that which is thine.
And his lord answering, said to him : Wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sow not and gather where I have not strewed.
Thou oughtest therefor to have committed my money to the bankers : and at my coming I should have received my own with usury.
Take ye away therefor the talent from him and give it him that hath ten talents.

'Due diligence' is the term applied, under the law, to the responsibility that a person, who is lending someone else's money, has to ensure that the loan will be paid back.In days gone by, this involved inspecting the assets and business plans of borrowers.During our recent "boom" , however, it has become common to loan money to people who had no obvious plan to multiply these investments prior to repaying them.Worse, these loans were derived from so-called "financial institutions" , who were loaning out money which belonged to people whom the institutions, in turn, had promised high interest rates while pledging not to risk this money in speculative ventures.Of course, any interest rate significantly above the rate of inflation can only be achieved by speculation which necessarily involves risk.To believe differently is delusional-It is unreasonable to expect that one will be able to grow one's wealth without risking it in a productive business.This fantasy is as alien to the dignity and sensibilities of a free people as the previously discussed desire to receive one's essentials from a benevolent monarchy.

What is happening then, is not a failure of our free market economy, but a collapse of the credit market, two very different things.This, in turn, is the natural, and inevitable, consequence of the unethical, predatory and amoral business practices of our much beloved "boom market".
Those businesses which are founded on selling their wares to customers who can not afford them will fail.Similarly,those that rely on revolving credit- credit which is never actually paid back- for their basic operations, will also be forced to close. This is thought remarkable,only because it has been so long in coming. Now that the day of reckoning is at hand, the chaff will be separated from the wheat, and no power on earth can long prevent it.Nor should any try.

Electing Santa Clause

2008-11-10T00:57:00.007-06:00

It is no mistake that our elections in the United States come in the fall.Once upon a time this was the harvest season, the time to pack all of one's accumulated wealth indoors before the big,bad Winter set in.

Then, some time between St.Nicholas Day on Dec.6th, and Three King's Day, or Epiphany, on the 6th of January,( with The Feast of The Nativity on the first day of Christmas, December 25th, being the date the majority of us have experience with) everyone could get together for a celebratory, gift giving occasion.Winter was a time for social gatherings, a time when not much work could be accomplished, and travel was relatively hard.

Gifts were exchanged freely and, often, the wealthier members of a community could use this custom to supply the needs of those less fortunate than themselves, without subjecting the recipients of such gifts to the opprobrium of receiving charity. The middle of winter was excellent time for such neighbourliness.
This excellent custom, very suitable for a free people, seems to have degenerated somewhat in modern times.
Now, when we Americans find that we lack some basic good, we vote it to ourselves. All throughout the recent campaign, while Republicans and Democrats argued with one another as to whom could be the most generous with other people's money, who could give the most benefits, and health care, and "stimulus" away, if only they were elected to high office, I kept waiting for someone to point it out, but no one did:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
When we, as free citizens, in a free,democratic republic, exercise our right to vote, we are practising the use of force, as every participant, in every human government through out history, has done. The singular advantage of representational democracy, over any other system, is that our leaders can not become tyrants- when the yoke of any leader becomes too great, we replace him.Our system of government was designed, expressly, to prevent the accumulation of power in one person's hands, no matter how benevolent or capable.
This is important to remember.We do not trust our leaders, nor is it appropriate for them to ask for our faith.We expect that the mortals we elect will be accountable to us for their use of our collective power.
It appears that many of the people who vote today believe they select a deity, who will honour their devotion by showering blessings down upon them.Perhaps this godly figure will expand the economy, or give you your own doctor, to wait on you at your leisure, with never a thought for payment for his own professional services.Perhaps this saintly benefactor will make your boss like you, and cause the place where you work to stay open forever, whether or not it ever makes any money for it's owners.
Maybe he will simply give you money.He could use his miraculous powers to make all manor of good things for everyone, then, magically empowered by your votes, he could travel through out the land , leaving them in your homes for all of you to find in the morning.
Tuesday is Armistice Day,the anniversary of the end of World War I.Celebrated as Veteran's Day here in the United State it is a day to remember that all good things,even freedom and democracy, come at a price.
Voting is a sacred trust- not because it grants godlike power, but because it does not.When next we go to the polls,we would all do well to remember, that we go to limit the power of our government, so as to protect the freedoms that others have bought for us.For when our government has the power to give us the things we want, it then also has the power to take them away.This is a power that we in America do not grant to our leaders, whether they hail from Chicago, or from Flagstaff, or even the North Pole.

Where Do They All Come From?

2008-11-06T14:47:00.023-06:00

In the United States of America,we live,and work, in a free market economy.

This "capitalism" means simply, and only, that each of us is free to labour where and when we like, and dispose of the fruits of that labour in what ever way we see fit.
Although this is the obvious natural condition of man, it is a way of life that many of our ancestors would not have recognized.
Throughout much of the world, and a great deal of human history, many educated and powerful people have been enarmoured of fantastic nonsense, "theories about the economy", which they purport to use to show that everyone can become "equal", if only everyone will allow the theorists to be more equal than the rest.From Plato's Republic to the communists parties of twentieth century dictatorships,and into modern times, these Utopians have asked us to believe that that there was something fundamental wrong with human society, that they, alone, knew how to fix.
This is not the case.
We have, each of us, that which we have made ourselves, or that which others have given us. Born into this world naked, and doomed to return to the earth the same way,when faced with a desire for something which someone else has, you are possessed of only three avenues to obtain it for yourself:
You may take it from it's owner against his will,offer him something which he values more in exchange, or persuade him to give it to you has a gift. It is important, at least to one the parties in this transaction, that the first of these approaches is never confused with the last.

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house:thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's."

It is common today, and quite fashionable, to describe the desire to improve one's lot in life by honourable and honest means- the "profit motive"- as greed.Yet when this author sees all of the divers plans and theories in the world that call,against all logic, for the confiscation and redistribution of the chattels and wealth of the most fortunate and successful among us, he must ask- where do all of these ideas, these theories, come from? ; and, in answer, he sees an ugly thing to which this pejorative appellation, "greed", is much more aptly applied.
Communism, fascism, socialism, and any other "ism", purporting to demonstrate that someone else is more entitled to what you have than you are, are all based the idea, or ideal, that people are, generally,better off when people are, generally, not permitted to make themselves better off.Put this way the truth would seem to become painfully obvious.

And, after near a century of genocide, riots, famine and war, the obvious has, indeed, become that painful.