Mutual Corruption with Mexico

 Culture, Gangs, Government, Immigration, International Relations
Sep 282010
 

The U.S. & Mexico Trade Jobs & Cash for Drugs & Votes

Drugs for $, $ for Votes

(Illustration courtesy Photobucket.com and Ronbosoldier.blogspot.com)

CORRUPTION FIESTA

It’s really hard to tell whose form of corruption is worse, the United States’ or Mexico’s.  America (del Norte) wants to influence Mexico’s elections (pliancy), use their cheap labor, and farm their migrants for Democratic votes.  Mexico, on the other hand, wants to colonize us, keep expat votes, export violent gangbangers to cities all over America, keep huge remittances flowing, and benefit from our drug dollars.  Together, the two countries have created the rather well-deserved appearance that nothing will be done to stop the flow of  drugs, gangs or aliens – even as we’ve recently reached a critical mass with all three.

Arguably, both countries have (slowly) failing governments, and important elections pending over the next two years.  In the meantime,  both are losing control over sovereign territory, bodies are piling up in Mexico — with some spillover here — and illegal aliens are being touted here as victimized, legal immigrants.  Cartel-related crimes are on the rise in both countries — just ask an Arizonan or Texan — and the response is just expensive, dramatic symbolism.  Logrolling gridlock.

MUTUAL COMPLACENCY

Anything more than casual observation of our “neighbor to the South” must lead to what poet T.S. Elliot referred to in “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock” as “an overwhelming question.”   The elusive part of this is that none of the actors involved, on either side of the border, dare ask it.  To ask, you see, is for this diversity of actors to risk exposing their own inherent interest in having the chaotic status quo continue.  And the question?  Quite simply:  Where does this lead?

With at least 23 of it’s 31 states and the Federal District surrounding Mexico City under siege by DTO’s (Drug Trafficking Organizations — not to be confused with gangs, which are there in abundance and working for the DTO’s) and close to a million of its citizens illegally crossing our border each year, and another half-million or so Mexican gangbangers flooding our cities — why the complacency?  Why the political paralysis – on both sides of the border – over the seven million or so Mexicans who’ve illegally invaded our country?

LA CAUSA — TAKE BACK THE LAND!

A lot of ink has been spilled over speculation that Mexico is becoming a “failed state.”  Others are concerned that too many Mexicans here legally and otherwise have no intention of ever assimilating into our culture, but are content to colonize us until their numbers are sufficient to use the electoral system to reclaim most of the US Southwest as Mexico, restored to its status prior to the Mexican-American war of 1846-48.  In other words, the natives that were once conquered and colonized by Europeans, are colonizing us with a clear plan of re-conquest — The Reconquista.

If this sounds absurd and not a little bit paranoid to you, contact your local lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza, or the National MEChA.  They’ll angrily confirm all of the above, and then demand free tuition, medical care, and amnesty.  Of course, there’s always the indigenous peoples of North and South America who have organized to take both back from the European (ancestry) “illegals” and their “anchor babies.”  That would be the Mexica Movement, a small but determined group that rejects even the names “La Raza” and “Hispanic” due to their European origins.

[These folks aren't concerned about the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American war in 1848.  Nope.  They want things restored to pre-1492.  They are really upset about Christopher Columbus and the smallpox epidemic that killed indigenous people who had no immune defense against the disease -- hence the accusation of European genocide.  As if Columbus invented germ warfare and deliberately killed the people whose labor and cooperation he needed.  Sorry, just an interesting footnote.]

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC MOTIVES FOR STASIS

Harper,Obama,Calderon, Dithering

Our business community is happy to have workers who are used to earning the equivalent of $4.5o/hr in their home country, our unions are eager to have millions of new members (if we taxpayers will foot the bill for the labor contracts that supply fresh jobs), and the Democrats know full well that every naturalized Mexican (and quite a few phony ID’d illegals) will pull the ‘D’ lever at election time.

The Mexican government gets to continue receiving dollar remittances for years to come, while granting dual-citizenship and absentee voting rights to a population of 30 million Mexican-Americans and another seven million or so amnestied and naturalized that won’t have to push up the unemployment stats in Mexico, or angrily lobby for essential Mexican government reforms.

Meanwhile, American consumption of the recreational drugs that Mexico either produces or transports continues unabated, allowing the threats and bribery that go hand-in-hand with prohibition to slowly destroy trust in our institutions and exacerbate racial hostility.  Drug money is now funding hundreds of American police departments through legal (but probably unconstitutional) pre-trial property confiscations, and fighting the possibility of addiction is now a massive employment program at every level of our government.  So it’s small wonder that you don’t see American  politicians voluntarily raising  the possibility of drug legalization.

MIGRATION

Unhappy Invaders

The tsunami of folks (sometimes whole families) who used to be called illegal aliens, then ‘immigrants,’ and now “Displaced Foreign Travellers,” (feel free to laugh)  is wreaking havoc on our border states, and has been occurring for so long that even a large increase in the pace and volume causes no concern among the American population.  Parts of those states have become “no go” zones for American citizens — too dangerous.  Gang shootouts occur in these areas regularly.  Many are in our national parks, where the warning signs were posted by the United States Bureau of Land Management.  Did you know that the counterfeit identification card business is worth in the area of a billion dollars a year?

But maybe our concerns are misplaced.  The 195 U.S. cities currently occupied by Mexican street gangs with no known legal occcupation may turn out to be just be a bunch of misguided kids working their way through a bad situation by selling drugs and killing folks you don’t know.  It may be that the international drug cartels who earn billions supplying these kids with drugs for resale will never become the murderous problem here that they have at home.  After all, we’d hate to have to see our armed forces shooting and arresting our police forces just because the police and the judiciary and the legislators and the bureaucrats couldn’t help but accept the free money offered by the cartels.  You yourself wouldn’t, of course, until the cartel mentioned that if you don’t accept the bribe, they’ll torture and kill your family — then, you.  A really effective sales pitch. One, by the way, which the army isn’t immune to, either.

WAR AT OUR DOORSTEP — BARBARIANS RULE

So the killing in Mexico — which now includes large numbers of random citizens unconnected to the drug trade —  has become pervasive, and anonymous, and without accountability.  Having a problem in Mexico?  Calling the police to complain could be fatal.  Practicing  journalism, likewise. Oh, and you might not want to actually show up for that office you were just elected to.  A lot of deceased Mayors and Governors stumbled on that realization the hard way.  Since law has broken down, the country is no longer a safe place for women…for anyone, really.  So the Mexican armed forces are fighting the cartels, and there is no fallback if that doesn’t work.  Up North, we used to call our harassment of drug users and dealers “the war on drugs; in Mexico it’s actually a war:  They’ve had an official count of over 28,000 killed in less than four years, and fresh killing and discovery of bodies from old killings occurs daily.

Maybe a government that can’t protect its citizens hasn’t really failed. Let’s not be harsh.  President Calderon assures us that the violence will abate after a while, that it is really occcurring because of the success of the military in putting down what our Secretary of State Clinton referred to as a narco-insurgency.  Back in the U.S., we shouldn’t panic that we are in a sort of “drug bubble” in which everyone, ultimately, wants a piece of that free money that you can only get through the sale of illegal drugs.  Can’t happen here, right?  Or is there some kind of tipping point.  A point where all of these diverse agendas come together, separately, with a grotesque unintended consequence that no one knows how to undo. Like, when there’s no one left to trust.  Nah!

OPEN BORDER KUMBAYA

We’re probably thinking about this all wrong.  We need a positive attitude.  Here goes:  Mexicans don’t think we stole a huge part of their country.  The gangs and cartels really just shoot each other (and an occasional innocent bystander).  And Mexicans mostly want to adopt our American culture; read, speak  and vote strictly in english, and avoid living in ethnic ghettoes that mimic their home towns in Mexico.  Our businessmen will be happy to go back to paying much higher wages, our unions will calmly continue their well-deserved shrinkage, and the Democrats will abandon any notion that they have to import voters (and campaign funds) in order to be successful at the ballot box.

Which bring us to a happier place.  The gentle, cooperative merger of the two countries.  Given Mexicans’ historical aversion to “Yanqui imperialism,” we obviously couldn’t annex Mexico.  Whether they like us or not, we’re certainly not going to war with them again (hell, given the  military equipment owned by the cartels, they just might win!)  And I don’t think they would volunteer to become a territory, like Puerto Rico — which didn’t, of course, volunteer.  What to do…what to do?  How about this:  The Emily Litella Strategy.  We just disband our border controls, say “never mind — and bienvenidos.” I think that would be the world peace thing to do, don’t you?

It’ not as if we were proud of our racist, imperialist, exploitational country to begin with, is it?  Nope.  Let’s have someone with ancient roots on this continent step in and try to repair some of the damage we’ve done with our greed and ignorance.  Let’s just hope that, in time, the proper inheritors of this foolish nation will forgive us.  Oops! we’ll be gone; so,  please forgive our despised memory.

A FEW ALTERNATIVES TO MUTUAL COLLAPSE

JUST DO SOMETHING!


But that’ll take a while to effectuate; so, while we’re waiting to be replaced,  I’d like to suggest a few interim measures to alleviate some of the righteous tension that seems to have accrued on both sides of the Southern border.  Let’s join Mexico in legalizing drugs — all of them. Mexico decriminalized personal use amounts of recreational drugs in the summer of ’09.  Small amounts of marijuana, meth, coke and heroin are no longer prosecuted.  This keeps corrupt cops from filling the jails with small drug-busts and shaking down the already-terrified citizens.  But that only helps with that small part of the problem.

Our continuing purchase of their drugs is the unsolved problem.  It’s time to man-up as a nation and admit we are responsible for the slaughter of innocents and worldwide devastation because of our drug prohibition policies. I think we are smart enough to create regulations, just as we do with alcohol, to mitigate addiction.  The free money created with illegality just unleashes a horde of drug salesmen on society, increasing the addiction we had hoped to prevent.  And, because the Black American community stands in the street to sell drugs to the white community, we are exacerbating our race relations as we disproportionately jail the blacks.  Abroad, we arm our enemies, as well as armies of criminals, with our recreational drug spending.  We really can’t afford to have Mexico go down, or to continue the pretense that prohibition is a beneficial policy.  If we don’t change, those currently benefitting from this suicidal policy will act surprised to find themselves living in a world returned to barbarism.

At the border, we need to have a massive, organized, guest worker program, so that most of those people working here — or searching for work, can come in legally, without risking their lives, and being preyed upon by their own people.  Then we can take our time fencing the border, because only Jihadis and other criminal types will still have an incentive to cross illegally.  We will save billions in both drug and border enforcement, and our government, at every level, will earn their share of the billions in tax revenue to be collected through the sale of recreational drugs (I know…the prohibitionists say there will be no net gain in tax revenue from legal drug sales).

It’s not intelligence that prevents these measures from enactment; it’s self-interest, coupled with political cowardice.  The tipping point, though,  should be when your policies are arming your enemies, destroying your friends and menacing the democratic institutions that so many have worked and died for. There are other ways to protect borders; other ways to curb addiction; other ways to be virtuous.

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Redistribution is Nonsense

 Culture, First Principles, Government, Markets, Social Philosophy
Sep 022010
 

Economic Fishing Lessons Beat Dependency.... Everytime

It Works!

If our economic system doesn’t “distribute” wealth, how in the world can it be “redistributed?”  Yet that’s what our happy fisher for tax dollars says he – with the complicity of a ‘Progressive’ Congress – wants to do.   In fact, it’s well under way, with gobs more in the planning.  Was there a “national conversation” about this?
The national conversation about race that Democrats, in particular, seem insistent that we should have…has been incessant for the last thirty years or so.  It seems we never tire of talking about race, and the proliferation of communication technologies has exacerbated the exercise.

But my concern is not about race, right now, but rather the priorities in our national conversation (whatever that is).  We don’t have an honest discussion about the real causes of poverty, or the slow disintegration of our governing institutions.  We have just elected an administration that is intent on the redistribution of wealth, but without a conversation about what that means, and to whom, for how long, and with what general consequence.

The point of the adage about teaching a person to fish, rather than just giving them a fish, is that – once the fish is gone – the recipient of the fish-charity is right back where they started.  The notion of resourcefulness starts with the assumption that you can create or find your own resources, rather than relying on someone else who then has to create resources for both of you.

This is why the welfare system failed so badly.  Public housing meant to house folks who were temporarily in distress became a multi-generational trap for it occupants.  No skills, no incentives, no memory of having to work like their fellow Americans in order to share in the national work ethic; in order to give meaning and dignity to a life enhanced by personal accomplishment.  And, following an insanely belated reform, numerous individuals interviewed by the press were elated that their lives had changed in a positive way.

So how does redistribution differ from the old welfare trap?  Ask any Russian how it feels to be dependent on the government for everything.  Look at the Indian Reservations.  Prior to the casino boondoggle, wall to wall poverty and hopelessness.  After independence, India copied their former colonizers in adopting Socialism as their economic model.  Nearly destroyed India; they finally changed to a free market economy and are swiftly developing, thanks to the education and enterprise of their professional class.  The rest are slowly coming along, but at the mercy of an entrenched government bureaucracy who has to slowly leave their socialist corruption behind in order to properly serve the common man and facilitate free enterprise.

Isn’t it evident that distributing limited resources in a race to the bottom is not a benefit to someone who has to live a long human life-span, often responsible for themselves and other family members?  As a safety net for the temporarily disadvantaged and those unable to fend for themselves, sure, but for an able person who simply lacks skills, nothing could be more cruel.  And the society that adopts such a policy is shortsightedly destructive.  Unfortunately, these societies are often led by trained professionals with good hearts who simply won’t look at where such policies inevitably lead.

So, money and other largesse doesn’t work.  But there is, I think, a form of redistribution that does:  Education.  Education is, in fact, a redistribution of knowledge, of skills.  That’s right:  Teach people to fish.  And how an economy works.  And the history of their civilization.  And how to run a business.  And how to manage money.  And the unique value of their heritage as a country; the genius and sacrifice they are heirs to.

The difference between “earned” and “distributed.”  How to think; not what to think.  Knowing which “national conversations” are important.

Redistribute that.

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Who Will Rule America Next?

 Culture, First Principles, Gangs, Government, International Relations, Rule of Law, Social Philosophy
Jul 272010
 

Collectivists, Gangsters & Jihadis are the Best Candidates

 

 

When this supposedly dysfunctional, imperialist nation founded by profiteering, white male slave-owners is finally – however gradually – converted to a truly ‘just society’ that allows all Americans (if that term is still to be used) to live in dignity and comfort — who will be its masters? Who will rule Post-American America?   Will it be Transnational Collectivists, Muslim Extremists, or Organized Criminals?

Why bother to speculate on something that is unthinkable for a country as strong and resilient as the U.S?  We’ll glance at that later; but first, let’s look at our most likely inheritors.  And no, it is very unlikely that, as in the good old days, a nation-state will try to overtly invade the US; stealth is back in style, and subversion – on a naïve population – works like any good lie in history.

COLLECTIVISTS.

Save the Planet! Destroy Capitalism!

'Revolution' Sponsor George Soros

We’ve all gotten used to the idea that at every international government or corporate meeting of any supposed consequence, there will be staged demonstrations by the world’s Leftist organizations.  Many months of planning will go into the ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations, and pledges of peaceful marching and non-violence will be made to the local government officials.

The police will come out with batons and shields and water guns, tear-gas and rubber bullets.  The ‘peaceful’ demonstrators will smash retailers’ windows, throw molotov cocktails, taunt the police into reacting violently before the cameras in order to prove to the world that the demonstrators are ‘oppressed,’ and, occasionally, someone will die.

They are ‘oppressed’ by Western Civilization, in general, and the United States (Leader of the Free World) in particular.  They think of themselves as ‘revolutionaries’ and think that if they get the ‘change’ they seek, it will look something like the Galactic Republic depicted in Star Wars: planets represented at council, rather than (the archaic, destructive idea of) nations.’

Your Fellow Americans

They generally refer to themselves as “the movement’ – even though they comprise many distinct movements joined to fight a common foe — Us.   They do not feel obliged to respect the voting ‘masses’ they say they are fighting to liberate, and they only like elections – not, mind you, the idea of elections – that result in an outcome they can rig, both before and after.

Foregoing any candor regarding their goal of achieving power by whatever means necessary, they have cheated and bullied their way into control of large portions of the planet.  And due to Democrats’ embrace of movement principles — and Republicans who believe Global Warming/Climate Change is actually about the climate —  they are winning nearly everywhere.  They have the numbers and the resources; there seems to be no reason why they won’t continue to prevail.

GANGSTERS.

Who's Behind the Curtain?

We’ve also all gotten used to the gangbangers and the drug cartels, and the casual violence that ensues from their various illegal activities.  The notion that free money in the form of drug profits destroys society’s institutions from within, and its citizens from without seems to bore folks who have the luxury of keeping the bribery and executions at a distance, even as they use the ‘recreational drugs’ that are aggressively sold by the perps.

Having gangs larger and better-armed than most police departments, and some armies, is not much different than acknowledging the existence of various sports teams.  The violence occurs elsewhere, while we attend church, smug in our ‘drug-free’ world.  Who could possibly blame us for all the crap that happens to drug dealers and addicts, somewhere else.

And what part of the Western brain lights up when we hear the phrase “Failed State?”  Do we think “Oh my God, the criminals are stronger than those governments, and our drug laws caused it, and it could happen to us if we don’t change our laws?”  Of course not.  That would mean changing our fondest beliefs. It would also damage everyone who is legally profiting from these wickedly destructive laws, whether through employment, or votes gained, or prestige, or personal virtue.  Even the liquor industry, to avoid competing drugs.

Random Citizens are Next

What often happens is that the organized criminals have boodles of cash to spend on government servants, and they are willing to murder said servant and family in the absence of cooperation.  This results in an unannounced partnership.  The public no longer knows who to trust, and taxpayers, like spider’s prey, are kept alive for the next fresh feeding.

Organized crime has been international for a long time, and our government’s cowardice and pandering in not dealing with this has allowed the free drug money to finance expansion into multiple rackets (slavery, extortion, kidnapping, counterfeiting, piracy, and legitimate business fronts) such that it may be too late to turn the situation around through legislation, or law enforcement, or military action.

Offering to kill you or those you care about, or bribe you (an offer you can’t refuse) is an effective strategy that is not going away.  And if your response is “I would just call the police,” you need to know that this brand of corruption will make that a mistake – perhaps your last.

MUSLIM EXTREMISTS. -aka Jihadis


This Freedom Can be Yours

PHOTO NOTE: There is no intention to imply that the ladies pictured above are anything other than normal, devout Muslims – certainly not Jihadis or Muslim Extremists.  I grabbed the photo with the intent of reminding Western ladies that they would lose their accustomed freedoms under Muslim rule.

The third thing we’ve also all gotten used to is the “terrorist threat.”  I call it that because, while my fellow Americans know we are at war in the Mideast, many prefer to think we went into Iraq under false pretenses (they assume it was to get oil),  while  Afghanistan is just a mistake incident to our hunt for (the criminal) Osama bin Laden and his cronies.

The Executive Branch of the United States government will not utter the word “Jihadi.” (The President finally said the phrase “Radical Islam,” presumably to at least acknowledge that some of the people killing American soldiers and civilians are doing so out of religious conviction.) The Leftists we talked about earlier admire the Jihadis as “Freedom Fighters” and are their natural allies because of their mutual antipathy toward the West, with Israel and the U.S. as prime targets.

 

 Palestinians are the poster children for U.S. ‘imperialism.’  Since it  is repulsive to most Americans to consider anyone an enemy because of their religious beliefs, and since we fear a backlash against Muslims in America because of the wars, the Administration has placed many Muslims in prominent positions in our government (Muslim Affirmative Action?).

Those who take the Jihadis’ word that they are, indeed, at war with us, whether we acknowledge it or not, see the Muslim religion as one of conquest and subjugation, whose primary ‘Religion of Peace’ goal is to force the Muslim religion on the entire human population, killing or subjugating all who refuse to cooperate, including other Muslims.  If you listen to the Koranic scholars and understand that there is no possibility of the separation of church and state, or of this religious mission being abandoned, you will conclude that they are the enemy they say they are.  The rest is willful blindness.

In the event, there are over a billion of them, and they have been attacking Western Civilization – the heir to what was once known as “Christendom,” off and on for about 1,200 years.  We forget that; they don’t.  Our society’s dominant philosophy is that we can only have enemies through actions or misunderstandings we ourselves created; diplomacy will work it out.  But diplomacy has no effect when there is nothing the other party wants from you except either your demise, or submission to their rule.  What is the likely outcome in a conflict  between one party who always has an enemy and another who never has an enemy?

SPIRALING DOWN.

But why – you ask – the quasi-paranoid gloom? Well, the non-violent revolutions always take time, and are necessarily cheered-on by a significant portion of the populace; Hugo Chavez’ slow replacement of a free-market democracy plagued by corruption with an explicitly Communist dictatorship is a prime example.

But then, all the Socialists worldwide have caught on to the use of Democratic procedures and gestures to smother dissenting views and interests and gain control over whatever parts of the society are the best leverage for control.  The rest, they’ve learned, can remain untouched, including Capitalist taxpayers and voting citizens.  The Capitalists that matter will either be ‘captives” of the government – earning their profits from the ‘special relationship’ –  or regulated into total cooperation with the government’s aims.

We’ve seen this movie before.  The last time, it was titled Fascism, this time probably some variation of The Green Economy. Tyranny, after all, is such a small price to pay for supposedly ‘saving the planet.’  And no one need be uncomfortable, because the tyrants will look just like the Congress you already have, and (rigged) elections with carefully selected candidates will still be held, and everyone will still have the liberty to attend free universities for indoctrination and training for government-approved businesses.

Every one who belongs to a union will have a job, whether the employer needs that person or not.  Better yet, those most loyal to the beloved government and its ‘Dear Leader” will be rewarded with the homes and accouterments of the former ruling class.  All property will be distributed by degree of cooperation.  Years of the drip, drip, drip of leaking liberty, until the roof finally collapses.  You see, it can happen here.

Noted syndicated columnist and TV Pundit Charles Krauthammer recently opined that the Obama Administration is interested in control of Health Care, Education and Energy.  He thought that the Auto companies and financial industry were just windfalls (I disagree, if he means that they don’t want control of the auto companies in order to preserve union jobs and churn out green cars the government –but not necessarily the people — wants, or that the government doesn’t relish the idea of controlling salary and credit levels through bullying financial regs and administrators.)

Does that necessarily mean that the administration is conducting a slow-motion revolution?  No, but remember that if you’re wrong, it’s the founding vision of this country – and all it’s subsequent success — that you’re betting against.  Regardless, a huge number of citizens are online, expressing their concern, and voicing their outrage over collectivist policies aimed at replacing a free-market constitutional Republic with a “Just Society.”

I think we already have a “Just Society” in the sense that, if you work within the system, it is still possible to address economic and social issues for which there’s a constituency.  It’s admittedly gotten harder as Washington has been gamed by nearly all participants, but that’s a topic for another day.

"You Have a Republic if You Can Keep It"

What I’m concerned about now is, what happens to the United States, it’s founding principles, and its citizens if the eighteenth-century old-white-guy system is dismantled before something coherent is available to replace it? The adage There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip can mean millions of American corpses if society collapses, a la Cambodia – where real people’s lives were made to submit to a radical theory about how a ‘fair’ society should be organized, and the result was millions of dead Cambodians.

Same in Russia.  Same in China.  The National Socialist Party was mimicking the above behavior in Germany before its own “Dear Leader” decided to commit the nation’s resources to conquest and genocide based on old national grudges.  The Italians, who invented Fascism, were much admired for inventing a “Third Way” between Capitalism and Socialism.”  Then they wrecked the country by jumping on the NAZI bandwagon. England, after fighting Socialist governments throughout WWII, turned Socialist after the war.  Beguiled by their intellectuals into an economic death spiral.  We have intellectuals, too.  They’re in charge of indoctrination and propaganda.

Well, even if your worst scenario occurs, Gress, who — of the above candidates — do you think would be our new masters?  And why?

Can’t know, of course, but running a thought experiment for at least one scenario can’t hurt; might jump-start you into trying out your own.  Do that, and you might start looking even harder at what various parts of our government are up to, why, and possible outcomes.  Here goes:

POSSIBLE END GAME FOR THE WEST.

As noted above, the Collectivists of all stripes are on a tear, all over the globe.  Short term, I think they will definitely erode, then ultimately banish Capitalism as we know it, keeping alive the industries that will play ball and support the government tax programs.  Because the Collectivists see Jihadis as US victims, and therefore natural allies, they will initially have many Muslim partners, as both private and National actors.  The Muslims will play along as long as their numbers are small and their resources weak.

Must be Allah's Will

The gangsters will take control over many aspects of (formerly) American life from the ground up — through the control of cities.  The control will not be overt, just as it is not overt in many world cities now.  But the politicians who play ball will prosper, and those that don’t will meet with violent reprisal.  The terrified average citizen will not know who is in charge, and will be too scared to express public concern.  Journalists who report anything that could possibly offend a capo will meet their maker.

The Federal government, meanwhile, will be in a slightly lesser, but nevertheless real partnership with crime elements until the Muslim numbers are large enough to demand whatever they want from the remaining Collectivists.   The Muslims will then kill or enslave the Leftists and go to war with the criminals, a war they will eventually win.  Game, Set, Match for Allah.  (See Jihadi-improved map of Europe, at right.)

CAVEAT:

This scenario is only the battle for Western Civilization. Once won, there will be a standoff between the Muslims and the Chinese.  War will eventuate, and Asians will probably emerge triumphant due to their greater numbers and education levels.  After the fall of the West, India will probably have no choice but to either join, or be conquered by, China.  Russia has the potential for evolving into a nuclear-armed crime syndicate.

CONCLUSION:

Teach your kids Chinese;  leave the Western Hemisphere.  We’ve already blown it (but don’t hurry — this stuff all takes time).

Apotheosis

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Mexican Immigration Muddle

 Culture, Gangs, Government, History, Immigration, Legislation, Police
May 042010
 

Groundhog Day, aka Amnesty

Distribution of 12M Unauthorized 'guests'

Here’s the controversial Arizona law, SB 1070.  The following is just the first paragraph; the actual statute is 17 pages long.  What’s important to note, though, is that in the public conversation about this, THERE IS NO LAW; there is only the perception of a law.  The perception varies widely depending on group identification.  Opponents of immigration laws claim they are inherently racist because, well, their sponsors are racists.  A charge of racial profiling follows, borrowed from the worst experiences of African-Americans, who are not, in fact, illegal immigrants.

The problem is that linking historical racial strife with the word “profiling” delegitimizes the act of profiling, which has been an essential part of legitimate police work forever.  An explanation, here, from author Paul Schlicta, writing for The American Thinker. Since there was widespread public concern that the law permitted some form of racial profiling (by being ambiguous), a second draft allayed those fears.  There will always be lingering doubt, do to the human factor, but the law very closely parallels existing Federal legislation. Here’s an excerpt – regarding the changes to the law – from the PolitiFact blog, in case you wish to read in its entirety:

Critics had said that the original version of the law permitted racial profiling. But the changes signed by Brewer on April 30 were intended to blunt those charges.


The new version of the law says: “A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.”

The prior version had said that an official “may not solely consider race” in such circumstances.

(“Solely,” above, was removed in the final bill.)

S.B. 1070

- 1 -
1 Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:
2 Section 1. Intent
3 The legislature finds that there is a compelling interest in the
4 cooperative enforcement of federal immigration laws throughout all of
5 Arizona. The legislature declares that the intent of this act is to make
6 attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local
7 government agencies in Arizona. The provisions of this act are intended to
8 work together to discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of
9 aliens and economic activity by persons unlawfully present in the United
10 States.
MEXICO’S TREATMENT OF IMMIGRANTS

And here, as described by investigative journalist Michelle Malkin, is how immigrants and visitors can expect to be treated in Mexico.  Note that everyone, native-born or visitor, has to carry ID; it’s jail time for failing to do so. (For obvious reasons, tourists are left alone.)  Political demonstrations are totally forbidden in Mexico.  Read the whole thing for perspective – then skip to the bottom of this post for the skinny on how Mexicans view our national sovereignty.

IMMIGRATION LAWS ARE NECESSARY.


If you want to make sure there are enough jobs for all Americans, you have to carefully control the number of people who come here for jobs.  America has been called a “beacon,” usually meaning for liberty, but certainly for financial opportunity as well.  We have the largest job markets, and we hire on ability.  If you can pool together a little money (family, friends and credit cards are the usual paths for beginners), you can start or buy a very small business and build it through hard work and imagination.  People from all over the world clamor to get from where they are to here, and we have formal national procedures for controlling this demand.

In other words, there is no possible way to not have immigration laws and procedures, as well as quotas and qualifications.  Many are waiting for visas and “green card” work permits, others for their approval for citizenship.  If people find a way to enter the country illegally (many overstay their visas and disappear into the population, for instance), they disadvantage all of those others who use our legal procedures. We are, indeed, a land of immigrants…legal immigrants, most of whom have become citizens and were proud to assimilate into American culture.

They didn’t do this to derogate their former culture which, after all, still remains in the land of their birth, but to celebrate, with us, the idea of  belonging to a nation dedicated to the protection of the individual from the state.  And the idea of free markets, where the individual chooses a  job, a career, a business to start.  Where a single human being’s idea can be owned and developed into a product or service that provides a livelihood for that person, as well as opportunity for anyone hired, and more choices for their customers.   Something that could be grown and shared. Or a job as a career path or stepping stone/learning experience.

They now could belong to a country, and a culture, that extends or withholds permissions to their government, not the other way around; not as in the country they left.  This is why immigrants gain citizenship and assimilate into our culture, and they want others to follow the same rules.  (I’ve heard that the actual bureaucracy that controls this is awful,  and the waiting times and screw-ups are legion, but that’s a subject for another post.)

So… there’s not just some arbitrary rule that say’s “Don’t cross our border without permission,” there’s a principle that precedes and underlies the rule:  ”We need to provide for our own citizen’s safety and opportunities first.  Also, by knowing who has entered our country, and for how long, our police and homeland security agencies have essential investigative information in case of a serious problem.  By knowing how many have entered, we can keep an eye on the job markets, as well as a fair distribution of visas for visitors from anound the globe.

It follows from the above that we simply have to control our 2,000 mile long border, determine our quotas, issue work permits before admitting non-citizens, and supply procedures for obtaining US citizenship.  Would it were so.  The border is porous, quotas and work permits become meaningless among a flood of illegal entries, and people who take the legal route are forced to wait many years to become citizens.  EXCEPT –anchor babies.  A child born in America is an American citizen, regardless of whether the parents arrived legally.  There are legal interpretations of this, but for another discussion.

Like the drug war, something as screwed up and persistent as this can only survive when it has a lot of active beneficiaries.  And that’s not even counting the illegal immigrants.  If you’re reading this for a solution, move on – we are way beyond solutions. (I’ve often been taken by the thought, expressed elsewhere, that it is impossible for most of us to accept that there are some problems for which there is no solution.)  In this case, the can has been kicked down the road so many times – by the governments involved – that to do something timely and effective is no longer possible, a situation that undoubtedly gladdens the heart of those benefiting from the gridlocked status quo.

THE ONGOING DILEMMA


It would be nice to have a complex description of all the sociological factors which contribute to the lack of gainful employment in the Mexican economy, but that’s not what this blog is about.  We’ll have to settle for the explanation that a lot of semi-literate, rural Mexican peasants see no opportunities in their own communities or, indeed, in their own country.  A parallel, more contemporary and probable explanation is that most illegals simply left a low wage Mexican job for a higher wage in the US.  American wages are high enough, apparently, to offset the risks involved in illegal border crossing, as well as the expense of paying a Coyote to facilitate the trip.

We can assume that most Mexican villagers by now are aware that you can be killed or seriously injured, and still find it a risk worth taking.  The reward is grinding work and deprivation in the US while sending money back to the family in Mexico. (Remittances are said to be about 2% of Mexican GDP, and the third largest source of foreign exchange, after oil and manufacturing.  The linked web site incorrectly states in its text narrative that remittances are 2nd largest.)

The map above is self-explanatory, with approximately 7 million of the total originating in Mexico.  There are a lot of reasons for the Mexican laborer to come here, including the complicity of his own government in laying off their economic and political problems on the US, and the US government tacitly helping business, as well as eventually broadening their base of voters.  (Both parties vie for the Mexican votes, and each is afraid of offending that community, even when some of the offended are officially criminals!)

But that doesn’t explain why, in a country with a 10% or higher unemployment rate, there are so many jobs available for the illegals to fill.  The Western US agricultural jobs that fostered the creation of the Braceros programs are the oldest and easiest to understand, and are probably the source of the canard that Mexicans fill jobs that Americans won’t take.  Well, if we’re only talking about stoop labor in the fields in a modern economy in which farming is only a tiny, but vital, part – no problem.  But what about all those manufacturing, construction, landscaping and service jobs scattered all over the country?

I can’t answer that here, but we can get some valuable help from the sources I’m excerpting and/or linking below.  We will have to return to this topic, as there are too many salient aspects to be covered in a short post.  I particularly want to explore more of what is happening on the other side of the border to exacerbate and perpetuate this dilemma. Meanwhile, a Cato Institute study shows that immigration has no negative impact on American job markets, and a study at Australia’s Monash University argues that increased legalization of the immigrant work force will benefit American workers higher-up in the job market, and grow the economy.  Here’s the Executive Summary of their report (below).  The entire report can be read on Cato’s site, here, and is 24 pages in length.

Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform

by Peter B. Dixon and Maureen T. Rimmer

Australia's Largest University

Peter Dixon is the Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor and Maureen Rimmer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University in Australia. Their USAGE model of the U.S. economy has been used by the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, and Homeland Security, and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

By the latest estimates, 8.3 million workers in the United States are illegal immigrants. Proposed policy responses range from more restrictive border and workplace enforcement to legalization of workers who are already here and the admission of new workers through a temporary visa program. Policy choices made by Congress and the president could have a major economic impact on the welfare of U.S. households.

This study uses the U.S. Applied General Equilibrium model that has been developed for the U.S. International Trade Commission and other U.S. government agencies to estimate the welfare impact of seven different scenarios, which include increased enforcement at the border and in the workplace, and several different legalization options, including a visa program that allows more low-skilled workers to enter the U.S. workforce legally.

For each scenario, the USAGE model weighs the impact on such factors as public revenues and expenditures, the occupational mix and total employment of U.S. workers, the amount of capital owned by U.S. households, and price levels for imports and exports. This study finds that increased enforcement and reduced low-skilled immigration have a significant negative impact on the income of U.S. households. Modest savings in public expenditures would be more than offset by losses in economic output and job opportunities for more skilled American workers.

A policy that reduces the number of low-skilled immigrant workers by 28.6 percent compared to projected levels would reduce U.S. household welfare by about 0.5 percent, or $80 billion. In contrast, legalization of low-skilled immigrant workers would yield significant income gains for American workers and households. Legalization would eliminate smugglers’ fees and other costs faced by illegal immigrants. It would also allow immigrants to have higher productivity and create more openings for Americans in higherskilled occupations. The positive impact for U.S. households of legalization under an optimal visa tax would be 1.27 percent of GDP or $180 billion.

Ralph Peters of the New York Post has spent a lot of time on these issues.  All of us are aware of the state of siege Mexico seems to be under by the narco-gangs who are killing their own citizens by the thousands and have been emboldened to kill some of ours, lately.  He has a lot to say about that, here, in an article entitled Border Disorder. His piece on the Arizona immigration law dilemma is called Blaming the Citizen, which I’d encourage you to read, here, or stay here for some Ralph Peters advice:

As the left’s blame-the-citizen demands for special privileges for all immigrants only intensify an anti-immigrant backlash, let’s apply some commonsense maxims:

* It is always the responsibility of the immigrant to conform to the laws and social norms of the host society. It is never the responsibility of a society to alter its traditions and values to please immigrants.

* The primary responsibility of government is to protect its citizens and territory. That demands robust border security.

* Illegal immigrants are entitled to basic human rights, but have no civil rights: no right to an attorney, trial or “sanctuary.”

* Washington must remove current incentives to illegal immigration. This means relentlessly pursuing both those who hire illegals and illegals themselves,  doubling sentences for illegal-immigrant offenders, and a constitutional amendment eliminating the automatic citizenship granted to children born on our soil to illegals.

* At the same time, we must reform our legal immigration system to recognize the need for temporary workers, as well as for qualified new citizens.

* Turning 10 million illegals into US voters is not the answer.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/blaming_the_citizen_RXEVoCdMKmfm5mPSxqBWfL#ixzz0myGFYnEn

Here’s a quick summary, and access, to a 26 page immigration proposal put out by the Senate Democrats.  It has a peculiar provision for a permanent immigration commission that bears an eerie similarity, in intent, to the Health Insurance Exchanges.

Democrats Unveil Outline for Amnesty


The proposal, which the Senators dubbed the REPAIR (Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform) plan, did not come in the form of a bill, but a 26-page narrative describing what would be the main components of so-called “comprehensive immigration reform.”

The plan contains many of the provisions that made up the 2007 Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill (S.1639). It contains a mass amnesty program (called a “broad-based registration program”); a guest worker program with a path to citizenship; AgJOBS; the DREAM Act; an employment verification proposal based on a biometric social security card; and massive increases in legal immigration.

Unlike S.1639, the Reid proposal includes a commission on employment-based immigration to recommend policies that promote growth “while minimizing job displacement and wage depression and unauthorized employment”- a description that seems to concede that these are the natural result of our current immigration system.

This commission would be able to declare immigration emergencies, meaning a situation in which our employment-based system “is either substantially failing to admit a sufficient number of workers for the needs of the economy or is substantially admitting too many foreign workers.” After declaring an emergency, the commission would submit recommendations for changes to Congress and Congress would then be required to approve or vote down the recommendations. (See pp. 21-22 of the proposal).

Finally, we’d be remiss in not putting up the proposal by the two Arizona Senators.  Enjoy.

SENATORS McCAIN AND KYL ANNOUNCE BORDER SECURITY PLAN


10-Point Plan To Better Secure The U.S.-Mexico Border In Arizona April 20, 2010 Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) were joined today by Arizona Sheriffs Larry Dever, Cochise County and Paul Babeu, Pinal County in introducing a 10-point comprehensive border security plan to combat illegal immigration, drug and alien smuggling, and violent activity along the southwest border.


Senators McCain and Kyl’s Ten Point Border Security Action Plan:


1) Immediately deploy 3,000 National Guard Troops along the Arizona/Mexico border, along with appropriate surveillance platforms, which shall remain in place until the Governor of Arizona certifies, after consulting with state, local and tribal law enforcement, that the Federal Government has achieved operational control of the border. Permanently add 3,000 Custom and Border Protection Agents to the Arizona/Mexico border by 2015.

2) Fully fund and support Operation Streamline in Arizona’s two Border Patrol Sectors to, at a minimum, ensure that repeat illegal border crossers go to jail for 15 to 60 days. Where Operation Streamline has been implemented, the number of illegal crossings has decreased significantly. Require the Obama Administration to complete a required report detailing the justice and enforcement resources needed to fully fund this program. Fully reimburse localities for any related detention costs.

3) Provide $100M, an increase of $40M, for Operation Stonegarden, a program that provides grants and reimbursement to Arizona’s border law enforcement for additional personnel, overtime, travel and other related costs related to illegal immigration and drug smuggling along the border.

4) Offer Hardship Duty Pay to Border Patrol Agents assigned to rural, high-trafficked areas, such as the CBP Willcox and Douglas Stations in the Tucson Sector.

5) Complete the 700 miles of fencing along the border with Mexico and construct double- and triple- layer fencing at appropriate locations along the Arizona-Mexico border.

6) Substantially increase the 25 mobile surveillance systems and three Predator B Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in place today along the Arizona/Mexico border and ensure the border patrol has the resources necessary to operate the UAVs 24 hours a day seven days a week. Send additional fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to the Arizona-Mexico Border.

7) Increase funding for vital radio communications and interoperability between CBP and state, local, and tribal law enforcement to assist in apprehensions along the border.

8)  Provide funding for additional Border Patrol stations in the Tucson Sector and explore the possibility of an additional Border Patrol sector for Arizona. Create six additional permanent Border Patrol Forward Operating Bases, and provide funding to upgrade the existing bases to include modular buildings, electricity and potable water. Complete construction of the planned permanent checkpoint in Arizona. Deploy additional temporary roving checkpoints and increase horse patrols throughout the Tucson Sector.

9) Require the Federal government to fully reimburse state and local governments for the costs of incarcerating criminal aliens. Start by at least funding the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) at its authorized level of $950 million.

10) Place one full-time Federal Magistrate in Cochise County and provide full funding for and authorization of the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative to reimburse state, county, tribal, and municipal governments for costs associated with the prosecution and pre-trial detention of federally-initiated criminal cases declined by local offices of the United States Attorneys.

#

OH, BY THE WAY… THE MEXICANS WANT ALL THOSE SOUTHWESTERN STATES BACK, AND THEY HAVE A PLAN.  DO YOU?


Shores of Aztlán

As an important footnote, and possibly the subject of future posts, it’s important to note that many Mexicans feel quite strongly that a good portion of the American Southwest (all/pt. of 10 states) was stolen from them by the Gringos.  They don’t feel that our presence in those states is legitimate, or that there should be a border at all.  Their goal is to have many children, flood the area with their own people over time, and reclaim – in deed – what was supposedly taken from them.

The land they are slowly reclaiming is called Aztlán. Legend has it they originally migrated South from there, a spot that has been identified as on the border between Utah and Arizona, near Lake Powell (pictured,left). Their migration stopped near current Mexico city.  They like this story a lot, because it gives them a sense of provenance as an indigenous people that preceded the Europeans that ‘stole’ their land.

They call their plan for re-occupation of the Southwest the “Reconquista,” the re-conquest. I mention this as a clue to the seemingly irrational behavior of people who we have declared illegal.  They regard us as irrelevant; a passing nuisance.  Here’s a map of Aztlán – temporarily occupied by the United States of America.  Note the flag on the lower left designating the map as the “United States of Mexico.”  (This is not some peculiar cult; it’s embedded in Mexican culture!)

Reclaiming their "stolen" land

From the “Gringo” side of this equation – and border – we regard the Southwest territories depicted above as the spoils of war, ceded to us in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo(1848), following Mexico’s loss to American forces (1847) in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848.)  If every nation on the planet gave their country back to the original (conquered) indigenous peoples, a) nation-states would cease to exist, and b) You would spend a lot of time trying to determine the legitimate descendants, if any, of civilizations long gone from the planet.

You can only take the idea of “roots” so far.  It wouldn’t be unfair to compare the above map to the Palestinian map that is notably absent the existence of Israel.  It’s a cultural fantasy that is dangerously shared by the Mexican Mafia (here) and Latin gangbangers everywhere.  In other words, an ignorant, heavily armed and violent force that exists in large numbers in the US.  You can click to read a large database regarding gang activity in the US, including Mexican gangbangers.  This was a 2009 collaborative effort between the National Gang Intelligence Center and the National Drug Intelligence Center.

Here’s a summary of their findings:

National Gang Threat Summary

Gangs pose a serious threat to public safety in many communities throughout the United States. Gang members are increasingly migrating from urban to suburban areas and are responsible for a growing percentage of crime and violence in many communities. Much gang-related criminal activity involves drug trafficking; however, gang members are increasingly engaging in alien and weapons trafficking. Additionally, a rising number of U.S.-based gangs are seemingly intent on developing working relationships with U.S.- and foreign-based drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and other criminal organizations to gain direct access to foreign sources of illicit drugs.

Key Findings

The following key findings were developed by analysis of available federal, state, and local law enforcement information; 2008 National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) National Drug Threat Survey (NDTS) data; and verified open source information:

  • Approximately 1 million gang members belonging to more than 20,000 gangs were criminally active within all 50 states and the District of Columbia as of September 2008.
  • Local street gangs, or neighborhood-based street gangs, remain a significant threat because they continue to account for the largest number of gangs nationwide. Most engage in violence in conjunction with a variety of crimes, including retail-level drug distribution.
  • According to NDTS data, 58 percent of state and local law enforcement agencies reported that criminal gangs were active in their jurisdictions in 2008 compared with 45 percent of state and local agencies in 2004.
  • Gang members are migrating from urban areas to suburban and rural communities, expanding the gangs’ influence in most regions; they are doing so for a variety of reasons, including expanding drug distribution territories, increasing illicit revenue, recruiting new members, hiding from law enforcement, and escaping other gangs. Many suburban and rural communities are experiencing increasing gang-related crime and violence because of expanding gang influence.
  • Criminal gangs commit as much as 80 percent of the crime in many communities, according to law enforcement officials throughout the nation. Typical gang-related crimes include alien smuggling, armed robbery, assault, auto theft, drug trafficking, extortion, fraud, home invasions, identity theft, murder, and weapons trafficking.
  • Gang members are the primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs. They also are increasingly distributing wholesale-level quantities of marijuana and cocaine in most urban and suburban communities.
  • Some gangs traffic illicit drugs at the regional and national levels; several are capable of competing with U.S.-based Mexican DTOs.
  • U.S.-based gang members illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border for the express purpose of smuggling illicit drugs and illegal aliens from Mexico into the United States.
  • Many gangs actively use the Internet to recruit new members and to communicate with members in other areas of the United States and in foreign countries.
  • Street gangs and outlaw motorcycle gangs pose a growing threat to law enforcement along the U.S.-Canada border. They frequently associate with Canada-based gangs and criminal organizations to facilitate various criminal activities, including drug smuggling into the United States.

So, here – for your delectation…is the Treaty that got us the great American Southwest.

Spoils of War

In case you’re disturbed at the thought that you can’t really read this document and, in fact, have no way of knowing what’s behind the elegant red cover, you can see the document itself in the National Archives, here. You can also read the history of the Treaty and the war that preceded it.

Filling the Government Void

Since I’m not yet out of pictures, I’ll close with this one, that probably reflects the frustration of the 70% or so Arizonans who approve of the new immigration bill, and are tired of the really serious problems that come with being a border state and not being able to get the Federal Government to do its (non-exclusive) job of protecting the borders and enforcing immigration law.

Politicians are notorious for their fecklessness and opportunism, but sometimes they go further than citizens are willing to tolerate.  That’ll do ’til next time.

Thanks for reading this far.

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US Citizens Unprepared for Crises

 Culture, Government, History, Military, Police
Apr 242010
 

Real Threats Require Real Preparedness

They At Least Recognized a Threat

This blog post is a cheat!  It’s my intention to do everything possible to avoid scouring the internet for source material and supporting opinions.  My intention, instead, is to get some of my security concerns off my chest, because there seem to be large gaps in both policy and public understanding of our vulnerabilities.
  • CIVIL PREPAREDNESS.

During the Cold War, which – for those of you who were either too young or self-deluded at the time – was a real war, the national leadership thought it prudent to warn everyone to take steps against a nuclear attack.  We had children ducking under desks at school, lectures on blast and radiation, and instructions on how to build a bomb shelter.  If you were unfortunate enough to be away from a bomb shelter during an attack, there were widely-published directions on where your nearest refuge might be.  The entire society, in other words, took the threat of attack and possible annihilation seriously.

It’s been almost nine years since 9/11, yet the notion that citizens should be making any preparations for another attack is conspicuously absent.  Yes, there have been some reported drills by First-Responders, but no “Civil Defense Corps” or other organized attempt to have people know what their options are in case of a calamitous attack.  Where are emergency supplies stored within walking distance of most people?  What, if any, are the communication options?  If land lines and cell phones are inoperable, is there a plan that can be broadcast on radio?  What medical aid can be expected, in order to allow citizens to cope with each type of attack?  Where are the instructions for understanding the nature of the attack that is underway?

What will be done to control panic?  Looting, rape and robbery?  Is drinking-water available?  What about antidotes to biological attack?  Treatment against chemical attack?  Quarantine, if the attack is a deliberate spread of deadly virus.  Weapons training, authorization and supply in case of urban guerrilla warfare that overwhelms the police and National Guard.  (Deputation and a standing, back-up militia may be necessary.)  Training of volunteers in emergency medicine.  How to function effectively, i.e., survive, in the absence of electricity or support services.

  • THREAT AWARENESS.

More Threat Variety Today

According to the government, the US undergoes thousands of attacks, daily, on its government and civilian internet sites.  The commercial loss is staggering, and the extent to which government secrets are lost and vital networks compromised, we may never know.  What would be foolish for us to ignore is the probable disappearance of the internet and cell-phone networks in a real attack. Warfare is such today that we may never know who attacked us.  We have been effectively at war with Iran for years – accurately, them with us –  without a shot being acknowledged on either side.  China is notorious for stealing US industrial and military secrets, both in person and electronically.

Is that a casus belli?  Or do we simply act as if it’s mischievous, while desperately fighting it in the shadows?  Russia seems to be scrambling to reconstitute as much of the USSR as possible, while using Stalinist methods to combat internal dissidents.  I’d have to check, but I seem to recall them being responsible for more journalist assassinations – currently – than anyone else.  (Stalin’s philosophy regarding the murder of dissidents – or even those who might prove inconvenient at a later date – was said to be “No person, no problem.”)

I never forget that I’m living in a country that was thrown into a panic when unable to identify and capture two lone snipers.  There are reports that Mexican and South American drug gangs have now occupied hundreds of medium-sized American cities.  Some are better-armed than the military.  Our own home-grown, multi-generational gangs have slowly evolved into international criminal cartels, originally fueled by illegal drug money, but now by slaves, drugs, prostitution, counterfeiting, money-laundering, kidnapping, extortion and, as the cherry on the banana-split…ownership of legitimate businesses.  We tolerate that threat, because it only means the slow erosion of law and order and our ability to perform the necessary police functions of a civilized society.

But those folks aren’t our declared enemies; just our undeclared parasites.  The declared enemies – those who actively strive to eliminate our presence on this planet, are twofold:  Jihadis and Marxists.  Jihadis get a lot of satisfaction from being martyrs, so there is no real incentive for them not to confront us violently, even if it’s with cowardly attacks with explosives.  Since they have an unlimited supply of martyr volunteers, we can expect cars and individuals to be blowing themselves and us up for the foreseeable future.

Marxists are left over from the Cold War (which occasionally became hot – Korea and Vietnam come to mind) and have learned that violent confrontation is not such a hot idea, so they’ve become state-sponsors of terrorism.  In other words, the Cold War has continued by proxy.  China and Russia know that as long as they have deniability, we can be attacked in numerous ways by their proxies, all over the globe, and we will pretend each attack was the proxy’s idea.  China has spent years modernizing its military, presumably with the aim of being the regional hegemon.  This is not good news for Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, or the remainder of Southeast Asia.  Meanwhile, it’s terribly convenient to have North Korea as their proxy for both local and Middle Eastern capers that wouldn’t be palatable if they had to front them themselves.

  • STEALTH CONQUEST

We're Not Prepared for Either!

A “nuclear umbrella” is mostly a bluff.  We’re not going to start a nuclear exchange with someone unless we are absolutely certain that, otherwise, they will be doing something equally nasty to us.  Our military and its equipment are mostly designed for a large, European land war (remember:  we are the guarantors of their security).  If we’re attacked by a proxy, or in a sufficiently stealth manner by a state, who will we retaliate against, and how?  It looks like the state of technology today is such that a nuclear submarine or a nuke tipped rocket fired from a ship at sea could instantly have us living as we did 200 years ago.  No electric; no modern technology to speak of.  An electro-magnetic pulse weapon ( EMP – a nuke high in the atmosphere) would have that effect. The picture at left depicts a burst caused by solar radiation impacting Earth’s magnetic field – a way for nature to have the same effect as an enemy.  The above link is to an article in “Space Review.”

Or,  a nuclear sub – could,  equipped with modern weapons – effectively incinerate the country.  (I know, all the military buffs will call me out on that, but I think it’s generally true.  If not, the destruction would still be enough to justify our concern.)  If you’d like a novel that features a community trying to survive following an EMP attack, “One Second After” by William R. Forstchen is an interesting scenario that some find improbable, others possible.  I don’t mean to harp on EMP, because it only represents one type of threat – however unlikely – but knowing it exists raises our awareness of the new weapons paradigm we find ourselves in.  A government commission to investigate the threat was appointed in 2001, issued a report in 2004 (which you can click on at the EMP link above, was reconstituted in 2006, and issued its latest report in 2008.

  • CIVIL DEFENSE.

It is possible that we live in a world where, in a very short amount of time, and without warning, we could be effectively destroyed as a society, and not necessarily discover who caused it.  It’s probably not paranoid to recognize that some of the above mentioned states and their proxies could coordinate an effective attack on this county that would leave them blameless and us as history.  Our politicians don’t want to scare us and, God knows, they don’t want to raid their already empty coffers to pay for civil defense, but having all of us grow up a bit and act as if these things are real, would be a step in the right direction.  You actually don’t need to spend a lot of money to recognize a threat and organize a response.  Fatalism is not a traditional American characteristic; we need to recognize we’re in a new environment.

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Anti-Capitalism as Climate Agenda

 Culture, Energy, Environment, Government, History, Legislation, Natural Gas, Oil, Solar, Wind
Apr 232010
 

Tell the Greens We've Had Enough

Al’s Better Environment

THE CLIP BELOW SHOWS our Socialist Climate Czar, appointed by President Obama without Senate confirmation.  Wanting World Government is fine if your job isn’t to advise the chief executive of only one of those governments.  Our government.  Unless, of course, her boss also wants a world government.

JANUARY, 2011 UPDATE:  Socialist Climate Czar Browner finally exits the Obama administration.

Alright!  We’ve now sat out our Earth Hour in the dark, partied our way through Earth Day celebrations (champagne, horns and confetti) and we’re careening our way toward the grand climax of Earth Month.  It just doesn’t get much better.  Meanwhile, out in media-land, drums of ink have been slathered, billions of electrons exhausted and countless events attended, all to congratulate ourselves on our obsession with a wholesome environment.  It’s the 40th year of a movement kicked off by an ambitious Democratic Senator trying to get out in front of the nascent protest movement manned by hippies, Marxist academics and assorted Nativists (see Rousseau, Thoreau, Marx).

Little did Senator Gaylord Nelson realize that the war protesters, collectivists and amateur anthropologists of then would evolve into an environmental movement that has a realistic goal of controlling the earth’s ecology through control of world government.  Like you, I am more than enthusiastic about natural conservation; about clean air and water and preservation of resources.  Where we part company is when these common-sense measures become a matter of personal virtue for some, and a pathway to political power for others.  (The latter, if you haven’t noticed, sets the agenda for the former.)

And having that agenda dictating measures to be taken in their private lives is welcomed by the faithful because it enhances their sense of virtue.  Intellectually lazy and dependent on propaganda from the movement leaders, they and their friends practice Environmentalism as a New Age religion, while the distant theoreticians scarcely feel the need to share where their group allegiance will take all of us.

I feel threatened by the movement because of where its leaders want to go, and why.  They surely know, as we all should by now, that this whole thing is not about our environment, or energy, or species:  it’s about the age old ‘Leftists against Capitalism.‘  Their plan is to replace it with something else, perhaps to be decided later, but initially through world government via the United Nations.  That means that our tired old paradigm born of the American Revolution will have to go – slowly, to be sure, but with finality.  Dustbin of history, and all that.  Since I like the founding principles of the US and don’t feel that we are experiencing a crisis of either Capitalism or the planet, I am totally opposed to going beyond prudent conservation principles and traditional free-market democracy – our Constitutional Republic.

On the lighter side, we have a bit of sardonic humor from George Carlin.  If foul language – which I personally adore – bothers you, skip on – if you wish – to my further fulminations on the environment and Leftist True Believers, following the 8 minute video.  In the interest of brevity, I’m going to be relying more on bullet points and hyperlinks to source material.  Some of this is speculative, and some simply can’t be known for sure at this stage of development, so if you’re looking for proof and certainty, you’re on your on, as am I.  We both have to fight through a haze of imperfect information, plus our own preconceptions and comforting convictions – and simply work hard to find verifiable  answers.

I have a proposition here; one I’ve raised before and will undoubtedly raise again, and that is this: Without Anthropogenic Global Warming caused by industrial nations’ emissions of CO2, we have no planetary emergency.  Without the emergency, or its probability, what we refer to as fossil fuels would not have to be restricted beyond the common-sense need to curb pollution.  Before spending trillions and completely upending our way of life in order to please both the virtuous and well-meaning, as well as the empire-building mal-intended, maybe we ought to tune up our BS detectors and dig a lot deeper into what’s going on here.

This calls for a quick anecdote.  I’m attending a local live theater performance of a play called “The Johnstown Flood” and I’m writhing in mental anguish as the clearly communist-inspired playwright has a young man striding about the stage and shouting for us to all stand up against the injustice of unequal pay.  I looked at my fellow attendees who were all twice the age of the actor – for sure – and probably the playwright as well, and were able to pay $53 a ticket and another $20 for parking only because of the Capitalist system being denounced for their edification.  Theater folks, you see, think that they are supposed to be our conscience.  Since their conscience is, culturally, Socialist, it’s all that’s on hand to deliver for our supposed benefit.

But here’s what I concluded with 20/20 hindsight.  All of us sat and quietly listened to this crap – resenting every minute, with no trace of entertainment benefit or provocative adult insight (something the theater used to do prior to becoming our ‘conscience’ – out of politeness. Out of courtesy, no one would boo or shout out denouncements, let alone throw tomatoes, a tradition long since past.  And I wondered if ourcowardice about this matter didn’t actually extend to the environmentalists and socialists, as well.  How many of us simply won’t tell our friends, or our Congress-Creature, or anyone, really, that Socialism is a murderous disaster.  Americans whine, but are too polite to complain.  We vote for personalities instead of substance.  Now, it’s serious, and unless we grow up, fast, the consequences will be as cruel as any in history.

Back to ‘Earth’:  Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and a man thoroughly despised by the Greens as a traitor, has a short, interesting piece here reminding us of the great strides that have been made with the environment and how stubborn environmental doctrine victimizes those in the developing world who need (fossil fuel) help most.  Take a quick look, right here.

In the same vein, but with more data points is Reason Magazine’s Science Editor, Ronald Bailey, author of “Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution.” He traces the history of Earth Day, its founder and goals.  His conclusion is that those goals have been almost completely realized and it’s time for a new approach.  Enjoy reading it, here.

Since we’re addressing both Climate Change and Global Green Ambitions, there are two more references that are pertinent.  In other words, the science and the politics.  On the political side, we turn to a site called undue influence.com, where they devote a lot of energy to following the politics of the Green Movement.  Since ruling the world is an idea that is considered too crazy or threatening to discuss openly, the proponents of global green dominance have to be listened to pretty closely in order to determine their agenda, and whether it seems possible.  Ron Arnold of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise hit pay-dirt at a conference, and he shares his insights here. Read the whole thing.

Finally, for source material, we direct you to a really interesting paper!  It’s titled “ Oil is NOT a Fossil Fuel and AGW  is Non-Science.”  This is not a title meant for provocation, but a serious introduction to the Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic oil creation, one that has turned them (Russia) into the largest petroleum producing and exporting nation in the world today.  This is a very accessible read, with links to the science reports.  The second part of the article delves into the nonsense of Anthropogenic Global Warming, with references to proofs (supposedly) of its impossibility.  He also references the Petition Project, in which 30,000 scientists avow that the science is not remotely settled.  You can read the whole thing here.

Since that’s quite a bit to digest for one “Earth Blog,’  I think I’ll just limit myself to some provocative assertions, some linked, some not – more a matter of time spent in hyperlinking than the availability of source material.  Most everything in the non-comprehensive list that follows is actually contained in the links I’ve already provided, above.  Enjoy.

There is NO emergency for the planet

Cheap fuel is at the heart of our economy

We ARE self-sufficient in energy

There are NO fossil fuels

If petroleum is non-fossil in origin, is natural gas also?

If abiotic, there is no such thing as “Peak Oil”

Abiotic means geothermal, i.e. sustainable

If oil is unlimited, discontinue unnecessary subsidies of renewables

If renewable subsidies discontinued, possible ‘Green Bubble’ could result

Stop covering our land with windmills and solar panels (they’re ugly, inefficient,expensive and marginal)

Stop putting our corn in gas tanks, raising food prices

Stop the government’s ban on exploration and drilling

Nuclear is safe to dispose and recycle

Nuclear is expensive to build; very cheap to operate

Modern exhaust-gas filters and scrubber, together with carbon sequestration, make coal our cheapest and most plentiful US resource

Yucca mountain is fine:  good for storing current accumulation; not necessary with modern plants

Smaller nuclear plants mean faster build, economical, more numerous

Battery disposal may be ‘Achilles-wheel’ of electric car

Cost to consumer of battery-replacement (shortens car life; raises cost; disposal problem)

There is NO AGW

CO2 is essential to life on earth (we exhale it; trees inhale it – it’s essential plant food)

CO2 is a trace gas

An increase in CO2 doesn’t increase ambient temperature

CO2 is a RESULT of warming; not a CAUSE

Warming is caused by the sun:  Heliocentric Global Warming

Predicted global catastrophe is based on flawed computer modeling

Models have failed to accurately predict short term or recent past

Not possible to predict long term

Scientific community has been bought by grant money

Government and Industry have bought into a “Green Economy”

Scientific method has been abandoned, i.e., consensus is a political word, not science

Many specialists (retired, non-academic, i.e., beyond coercion) say climate science is young and indefinite

Our air and water have already been purified substantially over the last 40 years

It is poverty, not prosperity, that destroys habitat

DDT is safe

GMO food is safe

Climate, energy and food debates are actually about Capitalism vs. Socialism

Premise behind movement is that technical progress and financial complexity are self-destructive; in order to heal humanity, we must return to a more simple, biologically harmonious way of life (see Rousseau; Thoreau; Marx).

Western NGO’s are governments-in-waiting, dedicated to world government on socialist model, w/environmentalism as pathway to power

Marx regarded Capitalism as a necessary step on the path to socialism

Mass transit is impractical and unnecessary (large urban, approx 1.7% of all transport)

The automobile is our liberating reward for study and work and good government.

Transport is technically-evolving with private-sector funds

Governments want to OWN the sources of taxation; eliminate the independent wealth-creator

Urban sprawl is code for affordable growth

Central Planning is inherently authoritarian and regressive

Glaciers are supposed to melt (results in beneficial fresh-water lakes)

Polar Bears are aquatic and increasing in number

Some of our viewers on this site have written requesting more opinion; well, the above should be enough to last you until the next Earth Day!

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Reportaje de una Decada de Hugo Chavez

 Culture, Government, History
Apr 162010
 

Watch Socialismo Destroy a Democracy

For our Spanish speakers, a timely review of the last decade of societal destruction by Hugo Chavez Frias.  It’s a report put together by 21 Latin American Institutions and presented on the blog titled Andes Libres.com. English speakers should feel free to hit the translation button in the right sidebar, or go directly to Andes Libres and use the translation button there.  I’m pulling part of the introduction and the conclusion.  If you wish to dig deeper, by all means take yourself to the blog site of another freedom-loving South American.

Perdiendo Democracia

Here are the creators of the report:

Venezuela: Una década de Revolución Chavista

Firmantes:

Álvaro Vargas Llosa, Independent Institute, Estados Unidos
Carlos Alberto Montaner, Internacional Liberal, Cuba
Carlos Ball AIPE, Venezuela
Rocio Guijarro, CEDICE Libertad, Venezuela
Cristián Larroulet, Libertad y Desarrollo, Chile
Martín Krause, ESEADE Argentina
Gerardo Bongiovanni, Fundación Libertad Argentina
Oscar Ortiz, Fundación Nueva Democracia, Bolivia
María Luisa Brahm, Instituto Libertad, Chile
Miguel Flores, Fundación Jaime Guzmán, Chile
Marcela Prieto, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Colombia
Margaret Tse, Instituto Libertade, Brasil
Dora Ampuero, Instituto Ecuatoriano de Economía Política, Ecuador
Carlos Sabino, Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala
Guillermo Peña, Instituto Veritas, Honduras
Rolando Espinosa, Centro de Estudios en Educación y Economía, A.C.
Academia de Investigación Humanística A.C, México
Edwar Enrique Escalante, Andes Libres, Perú
Enrique Ghersi, CITEL, Perú
Ian Vásquez, CATO Estados Unidos
Julian Morris, International Policy Network, Gran Bretaña
Otto Guevara, Movimiento Libertario, Costa Rica

Introduccion

La causa esencial de la Revolución Bolivariana es buscar más y mejor nivel de vida para todos, en la lucha por instalar en Venezuela un nuevo sistema social, económico, político: el socialismo criollo, a lo venezolano.
— Hugo Chávez Frías

Al asumir  Hugo Chávez  la presidencia de Venezuela, hace ya más de una década, se comprometió con la puesta en marcha de un proyecto nacional, regional e internacional de izquierda radical, bajo la consigna de conformar una gran nación latinoamericana, “como lo soñara Simón Bolívar”.

En ese entonces, Chávez se presentó como un antisistema   y  prometió terminar con los vicios de la política tradicional venezolana, pero tras diez años no ha hecho nada para resolver los problemas del viejo régimen, en tanto que la crisis general institucional no sólo continúa, sino que ha empeorado. Su concepto de Estado asistencial se ha visto afectado por la baja en el precio del petróleo y el cambio constitucional -realizado en 1999- no ha sido garantía de mejoras sociales que tengan sustento en el largo plazo.

Con el  fin de alcanzar sus objetivos, ha utilizado todos los recursos a su alcance -algunos abiertamente ilegales o rayando en la legalidad- para presionar y coartar el accionar de todos aquellos que no coinciden con él, incluyendo el pasar por encima del  estado de derecho, de las libertades individuales, la libertad de expresión y la justicia.

Desde que Chávez llegó al poder, Venezue¬la se vio  inmersa en una serie de consultas electorales que comenzaron con el llamado a una Asamblea Constituyente, la que no estaba prevista en la Constitución vigente, y culminaron con su reelección presidencial el 3 de diciembre del 2006, prolongando su mandato hasta diciembre de 2012, pudiendo reelegirse indefinidamente gracias a la enmienda aprobada en enero de este año. A través de esas consultas, y mediante una evidente manipulación de la opinión pública y las instituciones, el Presidente fue tomando control absoluto del país.

El resultado de lo anterior, ha sido que Venezuela  a partir del año 2003 perdió su calificación de país Libre, especialmente por las transgresiones a las libertades civiles, como lo evidencia el Índice de Democracia de Freedom House y por consiguiente el fracaso en el fortalecimiento de una verdadera democracia más estable y segura.

El presente documento  centrado en los cambios efectuados durante la “revolución chavista”, en el panorama institucional, político y económico de Venezuela, tiene como objetivo  demostrar que tras una turbulenta década, el país ha desaprovechado su ventaja -por el alto precio del petróleo- de convertirse en un ejemplo de crecimiento económico y desarrollo democrático.

Conclusión

El resultado tras diez años de administración chavista acentúa una dependencia casi total del ingreso petrolero, la que ha sido instrumentalizada, para concentrar el poder político y económico. El gobierno ha inducido un patrón de inestabilidad económica que repercute en la producción, el consumo, la inversión y el empleo productivo, y de allí que ha comprometido las posibilidades de desarrollo integral que se esperaban con el alto precio del petróleo.

A ello se agrega el avance del proceso de deterioro institucional, y pérdida del capital humano, pues los poderes públicos son cada vez más parciales y dependientes del Ejecutivo. La ausencia de un instrumento importante de control del actuar público, que se suma a la desaparición de los frenos y contrapesos del poder, tienen como resultado inevitable la erosión del sistema democrático, que debe estar fundado en el pluralismo.

Chávez defiende la legitimidad de su gobierno invocando sus orígenes democráticos, pero ha convertido a su país en un Estado que vive una democracia plebiscitaria, pero no como ampliación de la democracia republicana, sino como algo que se le opone. La democracia no se agota en su origen, sino que requiere del ejercicio democrático, que supone respeto a las minorías y un Estado de Derecho efectivo, componentes que no existen actualmente en Venezuela.

En estos diez años, su gobierno ha dejado de cumplir varias de sus promesas, no ha sido capaz de encarar los problemas como la delincuencia, la violencia y la corrupción que han aumentado significativamente y pueden generar inestabilidad social. De hecho, se ha ido generando mayor movilización social en el último tiempo, encabezada por los estudiantes.

Las acciones de Chávez nos muestran como cada día Venezuela atenta contra la Democracia, transformándose en un Gobierno ilegítimo. Además, el nivel de vida de los venezolanos ha caído a niveles alarmantes debido al gasto ineficiente de los ingresos petroleros. Junto con ello, con el ALBA se ha impedido la integración de la región, dificultando la unión de las naciones Latinoamericanas.

Si continúa acentuándose el deterioro económico, social e institucional, como consecuencia directa de las políticas empleadas por el gobierno chavista y si la tendencia a la autocracia prevalece, el futuro de este país se perfila cada vez más incierto.

In case you missed it above, you can read the whole report by clicking here.

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Tea Party Nation

 Culture, Government, History, Taxation
Apr 162010
 

It's Our 'Movement' versus Their 'Movement'

Tea Party Are Us

A FEW WORDS ABOUT TEA PARTIES:

  • It’s not about race.
  • It’s not about political party.
  • It’s not transitory.

We could add that they’re also not about ideology, but that would be a lie.  The ideology is Americanism:  an abiding belief in the founding principles and that the current ‘regime’ has violated them.  Many pundits have already pointed out the disgrace of our government denouncing its dissenting citizens as “racists, homophobes and morons.”  With the cooperation of the usual suspects in the media, they’ve desperately tried to paint us (yes, I have attended) as violence-prone crazies, not unlike the fringe-ier militias.  More recently, as similar to the bombers of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma in ’95, or the guy who recently attacked an IRS office building with his private plane.

This is an old Saul Alinsky tactic, based on an old Marxist tactic:  tell a lie often enough and it becomes recognized as the truth.  Well, not only is the public catching on to this nonsense faster than these (unimaginative morons) would like, but their ‘movement,’ the one we foolishly elected, is now looking at our ‘movement.’ Ours started in 1776; theirs in 1917.  They want to use their revolution to defeat ours;  they are counter-revolutionaries.   They have history on their side when they assume that we can be dismissed; that we’ll get tired or distracted and go away.  Wrong.  Not this time.  The election of their movement and its attempt to collectivize our society in contravention of our society’s basis in the protection of the individual has gotten our attention.  We are focused and angry.

And how could our focus on Washington not reveal the open fester that is the bazaar our precious system has gradually become?  How could we not notice when our more candid elected officials tell us that it is no longer possible for them to change this disaster from within.  The very ‘Cui Bono’ politicians who are most profiting from the status quo are the one’s asked to change it.  And who can blame them.  They’ve each overcome great difficulties to learn and take advantage of a corrupt system; to be its beneficiaries.  Is it reasonable to ask them to give it up – to abandon their just reward?

And we’ve come to recognize it’s not just money.  Greed comes in many forms, and many of those who rail against our capitalist system for being greedy would do most anything to preserve their incumbency and the privileges it bestows.  The most effective one’s are happy to be passing laws that either directly benefit their campaign contributors or harass others into sending lobbyists to plead for relief (which ultimately produces more campaign contributors).  And shame on us for allowing these same incumbents to sit down in private sessions and draw lines on the map around those most likely to vote for them.  We used to pick our representatives; now they pick us (and our pockets).  Now that’s greed!

But there’s another kind of government greed, and that’s a total disregard for the cost to the taxpayer, or to the society as a whole, or to the individuals and institutions caught in a tax system perverted to maximize collections and social control from Washington.  When did we acquiesce to the notion that our tax system should be used to determine our social behavior?  When did we accept the notion that half of society, or more – there is no official limit – will have no responsibility for financing our many government programs?  Or the idea – by voters obsessed with the idea of ‘fairness’ – that an income tax (bad idea in itself) that goes up in rate at the same time as in volume is somehow ‘fair.’  (If you’re on the receiving end, it looks fair enough.)

We need a safety net for our most vulnerable citizens.  But Democrats are proudly declaring that 99% of Americans got tax refunds this year!  As in President Obama’s campaign, few wanted to point out that most of those tax ‘refunds’ were to people who were never required to pay income tax to begin with.  IOW, they got a check from the government, what the economists call a transfer payment.  I don’t recall voting on that, following the non-debate in Congress – do you?

So, the tea party will go on as long as we can maintain the Republic we have so carelessly allowed to fall into disrepair.  There’s a lot of work to do, and we may not prevail.  Our fabulous success as a free-market Republic dedicated to protecting the individual from government may disappear in a collectivist cloud – to be erased from memory in subsequent generations because our replacements could never afford to tell the truth about the magnificent thing we once were.

And, if you happen to still have a little more ‘Tea Party’ energy, here’s a fine article on the topic, less rant (me) and more fact and acute observation (her) from the fabulous Michelle Malkin, writing an Op-ed for Investor’s Business Daily, here.

[You can purchase the above-pictured, magnificent Patriotic Celebration Puzzle by artist Royce McClure at the Patriot Post Store, patriotshop.us, here.]

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Irresistible Social Decay

 Culture, Government, History
Apr 062010
 

Free-Market Feminist

It’s fine to be railing against the threat of socialism, fascism, statism, progressivism, or whatever collectivist, authoritarian description fits your temperament and sophistication.  The problem is that the train has pretty much left the station.  We have gotten so used to treating our political system frivolously, and churlishly adapting ourselves to the lousy consequences – repeatedly- that when the time finally came to deal with something too serious to finesse, we just stuck to our bad habits.

Habits, incidentally, that power-hungry, authoritarian statists have been all too happy to encourage.  As a result, we have half the American population feverishly focusing on the significance of having – in the last two national elections – installed officials who are dedicated to overturning the American Revolution:  for the common good, of course.  We elected a movement, and we’re fast in its (lying) grip.

Americans of all backgrounds, it seems, would much rather deal with clashes of personalities and group conflict than tutor themselves on social movements, or take seriously the historical effects of those movements on other societies.  It’s appalling to me that the lesson we seemed to take away from our war with a Germany run by the National Socialist Party is that appeasement is bad and people should be careful not to elect populist demagogues.  Well, they’re right on both counts, but seem to totally ignore the many years of debilitating dependency on central leadership that preceded it.

Many leaders of this country actively admired Adolph Hitler and his regime.  FDR’S cabinet was in awe of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who had convinced everyone that his formula for government-directed( but not controlled) industry was the “third way” between Communism and Capitalism.  Both Hitler and Mussolini started their careers in the communist labor movements of the time, in societies that were already socialistic.  They broke off with the Communists and used them as foils in building their own power structures.  But all three were authoritarian collectivists.  The Russians planned their economy; the Germans and Italians planned the planners.  The workers triumphed…if they cooperated.  And sometimes, they were disposed of regardless.

By pretending Hitler and Mussolini  belonged to a completely different ideology, Stalin found he could unify his people in the struggle against the Nazis and the Fascists, while they were each doing the same against him.  In the end it was all about control over the society, and the ability to pursue whatever petty, murderous agenda occurred to its new masters.  All of them were master propagandists, controlling the media in order to unify the society.

Hitler and Mussolini were masters of the grand public display, the massive gathering, the seemingly endless sea of consenting faces shouting the state’s slogans.  But the most lethal and long lasting was Stalin, who controlled vast networks of “agents of influence” in Europe and the United States.   Oh, there were spys and double-agents, of course; some of whom lived with spouses who had been assigned to them as handlers. ( Some even knew this was the case.)

Most effective, though, were the cultural agents who controlled the magazines and newspapers of the time, uniting the Western Democracies in the fight against Nazism, even as Stalin and Hitler plotted to use one another as an excuse to purge their own ranks of supporters now deemed superfluous.  The purges occurred and everyone accepted that the Nazis and Reds were enemies right up until the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939.  Stalin subverted, to one extent or another, France, England, the US and Spain, deliberately encouraging, then betraying, his supporters in Spain -resulting in the victory of the (Spanish) Republicans, and the conservative Franco dictatorship.  The rest continued to look kindly on the murderous Communist Revolution, as intended.

That, I have to admit, is a pretty course summary of what occurred during those years.  My complaint, however, doesn’t rely on the accuracy of every jot and tittle of recent history, or in drilling down into the details.  The recitation is just to remind you that matters consequential to our present lives happened then.  And the future of our Republic, and of Western Civilization in general, depends on our acceptance – or at least some acknowledgement – of their significance.

My complaint is simple:  We didn’t learn the right lessons, so, as the adage goes, we are doomed to repeat them.  The lessons aren’t about stopping aggression and avoiding dictators.  They aren’t about perseverance and sacrifice.  They aren’t even about bravery in combat and having fine generals, intelligence agencies and natural resources.  They’re about how the individual citizen views their own personal liberty vis-a-vis the state. They’re about societal planning and central control run amok.

They’re about governments buying the support of the people by creating common enemies, rewarding allies and grooming ruling elites.  Governments that are so popular they are allowed to indoctrinate your children into a loyalty – not to the family – to the state.  For everyone’s benefit, of course – with big, splashy public displays of popularity and massive welfare programs to encourage state dependency.  We’re talking way beyond “safety net.”

The reason conservatives and libertarians talk about the works of Austrian Economist Friedrich Hayek is not for the greatness of his economic theories or his passion for liberty (both:  excellent), but for his bravery in explaining to an unreceptive English population in the 1940′s what he had been through under European Socialism (in his native Austria, and later as a Professor in Berlin) and how it could be similarly destructive to the English social system if pursued.  He labored to explain to the British socialists that centrally planned economies and the uniformity that must occur for such planning to be successful is inherently authoritarian, and that it is a process.  Slow, incremental, destroying individual initiative and empowering the state.

He was scorned by the intellectuals and ignored by the rest.  England continued down a path of slow economic ruin that wasn’t arrested until the advent of Margaret Thatcher.  After she helped patch things up, they went back to the Labor Party and resumed the slow destruction of their economy and freedoms.  They’re on the verge of an election today, and both topics are high on the agenda.

And, (via commenter Black Saint, responding to a Bill Frezza piece on Socialism in Real Clear Markets) – at about the same time (1944), in the United States, six-time Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas,  said this in a speech:

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” He went on to say, “I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform.”

I should probably add that, based on my own experience, there are a great many people (voters) in this country, who think of themselves as liberals and never seem to have noticed that the Democrat party was long ago taken over by socialists and progressives.  What these two groups have in common is a hatred of capitalism and a belief that the founding principles embedded in the US Constitution are relics that impede implementation of policies that will, if adopted, result in a “Just Society.”

They seem oblivious to the fact that they live in the most “Just Society” ever to have been devised; a society that has brought more opportunity – from the ground up – and personal liberty to more people than any in history.  It is the reason immigrants flock here from all over the world.  Of course, if we surrender the principles of the American Revolution to modern counter-revolutionaries, there won’t really be any reason for folks from oppressive or failed societies to seek opportunity here.  We can use Venezuela (liberty) or Argentina(economy) as our role models.  Maybe even rapprochement with our old enemyFidel.  The benefits are endless.

But… back to the Brits and Von Hayek.  The shocker here  is that England had just come within a hair of losing their sovereignty to the Third Reich, and yet – narrowly victorious – they shrugged off the German social experience that led up to the war, and just “moved forward” as if there was no relationship whatever between their own governance style and that of those who had tried to annihilate them.

German Socialism is said to have been originated by Otto Von Bismarck, a strict militarist.  The Weimar Republic was unable to resist the well-organized movement of the National Socialists led by Hitler, and stood by as he leveraged his election into a dictatorship.  Mussolini was a rabble-rousing Professor who had spent years working on his theory of the perfect society.  Stalin was an extremely clever thug who, like Che Guevara, started out as a hit man, but – unlike Che – simply took power from the (ruthless) intellectuals who were implementing “Scientific Socialism” on the Marxist model.  (Castro was smart enough to get rid of Che before he could become a problem.)

So, with apologies for the slightly unfocused ramble, I just want to say that it’s all been tried before, in many ways, and always with bad results.  Our Leftists, domestic and international, young and old, always try to weigh us down with guilt from a past that has seen us overcome our social problems faster and more effectively than any (large) society in history.  They would have us become so despondent that any change would seem preferable to what we have now.

Don’t listen!  These people don’t want the American Revolution, and they certainly don’t want you to notice that we have the tools within our Republic to address any problem that arises.  They don’t want the national unity and social harmony that would have us talking about political renewal – about fixing some of the many problems that have arisen in the conduct of affairs in Washington and many state governments.  They want you to desire replacement.  Change.  But the change they’re talking about is a an abandonment of the American experiment in favor of a collectivist utopia that has never been and will never be.  No matter.  It’s the dream that counts.  It’s the personal virtue that accrues to the person who cleaves to the dream.  And there is no end to the sacrifice on the part of others; to the pain to be endured by their fellow citizens, that they are willing to endure in the pursuit of “Social Justice.”

Next time you find yourself engaged with one of these benighted individuals, ask them if we don’t already have a fine system of “Social Justice.”  And why they think we can’t work within that system to fix any problems we have, provided we have enough citizens who care.  And why they would want a replacement system that has caused death and financial ruin all over the globe in the name of “Social Justice.”

Once you get past the tribal level, in size, there is nothing workable about collectivism in any of its forms.  It’s a dangerous con; feeding on those who would prefer to “surround themselves with comforting convictions” (Bertrand Russell).  It’s not cute.  It’s not benign.  It’s a social toxin.

Beyond the Safety Net required of any civilized nation, we have to guard against the slow introduction of this menace.  And if it’s already among us, it must be rooted out, denounced for what it is, and banished forever from the presence of free human beings.

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‘Earth Hour’ Hatred of Civilization

 Culture, Environment, Government
Mar 282010
 

Eco Death-Cult Groks PRK

My plundering of global blogposts continues.  Below, from the Land of Oz,via PA Pundit, is a fairly self-explanatory disgust-fest over our Eco-Morons’ worship of pre-civilization conditions for the entire planet.  They seem to actually be holding North Korea up as a model of eco-propriety, ignoring that it is a dictatorship that has impoverished its people to the point of cannibalism as an alternative to starvation.  (Funerals are no longer held during the day, so they can prevent the freshly-deceased from being dug up and consumed by their starving neighbors.)  But Socialism is otherwise OK because, you see, it treats everyone the same.

By Andrew Bolt

TonyfromOz prefaces ….. That yearly farce, Earth Hour is this Saturday Night.

Korea Lights

Terry McCrann on the farce of Saturday’s turn-off-the-lights Earth Hour:

Earth Hour is the rest of the planet paying homage to North Korea, endorsing its state of grace with Gaia.

The land where the lights are permanently out, as the famous satellite photograph shows of the stunning difference between the northern and southern ends of the Korean peninsula….

Nothing better captures the utter inanity of the cult of global warming and its characterisation of carbon dioxide as an even greater Satan than George W. Bush’s America than Earth Hour. Insufferably smarmy, quite pointless, contradictory, utterly inchoate.

Although I have to concede a certain bizarre honesty in the way the concept projects – a tacit admission that the anti-CO2 crusade actually does seek to literally turn off the lights…. Earth Hour seems to project that looking – literally – like North Korea is not only a good thing but where the aggressive campaign against CO2 will end up.

No, no, no, comes back the response. In the post-carbon future, alternative energy will provide all the light we want.

So if we can, if we supposedly will, look like today’s South Korea in that glorious future, why not celebrate turning on the lights?

Yet when a Liberal Senator’s site suggests just that, see The Age gasp in horror. (TonyfromOz adds ….. Where this says Liberal Senator, be aware that in Australia, ther Liberal Party is the name of the Conservative Party, and they have the same outlook and policies as the Republican Party in the U.S.)

Economist Professor Ross McKitrick, one of the “hockeystick” debunkers:

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it is nothing more than an hour devoted to anti-humanism.

There’s no link to his piece, so, with his permission, here it is:

I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity. Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading. Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water.

Most of the world’s poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases. Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. That’s how we developed.

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it is nothing more than an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It invites people to become sanctimonious do-gooders by turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in service of some ill-understood abstraction called “The Earth”, all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of electricity. People who want to do without electricity to prove their symbolic solidarity with nature should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

I don’t want to go back to nature. Haiti just went back to nature. For humans, living in “Nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work to end poverty and disease are struggling against nature. I hope they believe in their own cause enough to leave their lights on…

If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and therefore we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something very bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations. No thanks. I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization is something to be ashamed of.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog

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Prohibition Stupid & Immoral

 Culture, Gangs, Government, Health Care, Legislation, Markets, Rule of Law
Mar 172010
 

Funding Enemies; Subverting Civilization; Incentivizing Crime

We Just Never Learn

An Investor’s Business Daily editorial on Monday, March 15th regarding the previous Saturday’s massacre of American citizens in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas:

President Obama expressed outrage Sunday over the broad-daylight massacre in Juarez of a pregnant American U.S. consular employee and her husband, which left their 1-year-old baby wailing in the back of their car. Within 10 minutes, a second attack by machine-gun-toting thugs killed the husband of another U.S. consular employee and injured his two children, ages 4 and 7, traveling in a separate car. All were returning from the same child’s birthday party.

Killings like this in the border city near El Paso are so numerous the State Department cautions against assuming it was a targeted hit — “although we are not discounting anything,” said spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet.

The death toll in the Mexican drug war has hit 19,000 now, with Juarez the worst-hit. Over the weekend, 50 people were killed elsewhere in Mexico.

The editorial goes on to rail against the violence directed at Americans, and calls for a tougher approach, on both sides of the border, to back up our inadequate $1.6 billion in equipment and training funds to fight the cartels.

While I am normally in agreement with the IBD editorial board, on this issue we part company.  It is outrageous, immoral and delusional that, given the obvious carnage caused by prohibition – American prohibition – anyone can write with sincerity that the solution to the problem is stronger prohibition.  It doesn’t work.  It hasn’t worked.  It will never work.  Passing laws against human nature in order to enforce a social preference couched as a moral crusade against addiction is – in light of the observable global consequences – immoral.  We have the addiction anyway, because the prospect of illicit earnings propagates armies of drug salesmen looking to create new addicts.  That’s the incentive system and unintended consequence of law that we knew was bad when we were forced to repeal the 18th amendment to the Constitution.

Further consequences, without even trying to be comprehensive, are:  1)  Funding our enemies in the War on Terror, 2)  Exacerbating a sense of racial isolation among American minorities, esp. Blacks and Latinos, by stuffing our prisons with drug offenders, 3)  Propagating criminal cartels and gangs all over the world, many of which are better armed than the police or army – and have no regard for the lives of other citizens, 4)  Undermines the rule of law and the viability of our institutions by the use of bribery and intimidation – as well as huge shadow-economy profits that distort the economic life and incentives in any communities affected.

There comes a point in any large system where – regardless of its desirability or outcomes – so many people have a stake in its maintenance that it cannot be voluntarily changed.  At that point, only catastrophic collapse is possible.  We’re getting close to that conclusion, but I would like for our editorial writers to at least acknowledge that – so that we at least have the possibility of saving ourselves from this monstrosity in some more rational way.

Even just since the Nixon years, when the latest chapter of this ongoing debacle was written, shelves of largely ignored books have been printed, warning of the wrongheadedness of the scheme and its horrible consequences to individuals and whole societies.  The bad consequences of addiction under legalization and regulation don’t even come close.  And I assume that the journalist who wrote the article sincerely believes that the effort formerly called “the drug war” is correct policy, probably because, as William Bennett – one of our former Drug Czars believed – we simply cannot have a society that tolerates widespread drug use.  Moral decay followed by chaos and economic collapse.  And, of course, there’s really no such thing as ‘recreational drugs.’  Really?

That would be a fitting end to this rant, were it not for your all-time favorite feature:

FREQUENTLY UNASKED QUESTIONS

  • As drug cartels become more common – in your community and mine, with violent intimidation and bribery the norm (plata o plomo) – who will you be able to trust?
  • Do we tolerate the midnight raids on the wrong addresses and the resultant harassment – and occasional deaths – of our fellow citizens because it’s always happening to someone else; maybe someone you would never personally be associated with?
  • If millions of people routinely used marijuana in the 70′s and are currently productive members of society, how is it a “Gateway Drug?”
  • Did you know that most of our burglaries are caused by junkies trying to get money to support their habit, and that England briefly had a successful program that allowed heroin addicts to get their drug by prescription – not to get high, but to maintain themselves in order to function in normal jobs (a program, I hear, that was stopped by pressure from the US government)?
  • How are our unemployment statistics skewed by the existence of such a massive Black Market?
  • How profoundly does this affect the family and societal dynamics within Black and Latino communities?
  • Other than the cartels and minor drug pushers, who is profiting from the status quo, and why should we tolerate it?
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Pelosi Tea Party Propaganda

 Culture, Government, Health Care, Legislation
Mar 162010
 

Nancy

This via Steve Stevlic of Tea Party Patriots Chicago and Rich Johns of Chicago Townhall Meetup.  Hope they don’t mind my pilfering, but it is clearly a good FYI for everyone who understands the essentiality of the Tea Party Movement and the consequent need to combat the lies used to thwart the will of the people.

It looks like Pelosi has had to rethink her original position of characterizing patriots as a bunch of kooks; probably a reflexive reaction based on her notion that the only people who legitimately conduct public demonstrations are Leftists, or those organized, bussed, duped by them.  The list of supposed health care myths and recommended responses to them deserves a good Fisking, but this has already been done repeatedly on the floors of Congress.
Suffice it to say that her staff appears to be either too lazy or too intellectually bankrupt to come up with better lies than those that follow on this list.  Might be interesting to note, though – since she’s still bothered by the idea of Death Panels – that it is not the explicit language of any bill that results in that conclusion, but the totality of the organization that makes it inevitable (not to mention the experience of the other countries currently practicing universal health care).  Enjoy.
By Steve Stevlic, on Mar 15, 2010

Tuesday, March 16 will be a day of action both in Washington DC and here in the Chicago area.

Nancy Pelosi is resigned to the fact that on Tuesday DC will be overrun by people who actually want Congressmen to read the bill before they vote on it,want to know how healthcare will be paid for and want to know where in the constitution does the government have the power to control the healthcare industry and mandate American citizens to purchase health insurance.Pelosi and Reid

Here is the memo her staff sent to their members on how to deal with Tea Partiers:

FROM SPEAKER PELOSI:

From: Thornell, Doug [mailto:Doug.Thornell@mail.house.gov]
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 5:25 PM
To: Thornell, Doug
Subject: Tea Party Etiquette

TO: Freshman and Sophomore House Democrats

FROM: Office of the Assistant to the Speaker

DATE: March 15, 2010

RE: Tea Party Etiquette

As many of you have read, tomorrow, Tuesday, March 16, 2010, tens of thousands of conservative and Tea Party activists will be on the Hill as part of what they are dubbing a “Surge Against Obamacare.” Rick Scott, a multimillionaire investor and former hospital executive, is helping to lead the grassroots effort along with a number of other groups on the right like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. While many of you have met with outspoken activists in your districts in the past, we wanted to remind you of some of the best practices to review with your DC staff:

1. Be prepared. Activists are expected to begin arriving around 9am and they have been given instructions to wait in your office until they can have a meeting. Please have an orderly process and enough staff and interns to welcome what could be a very large number of visitors throughout the day:

· Have staff and/or Member time set-aside to visit with attendees in small groups;

· Ask for extra chairs or seating to be brought to your office or the hall in case there are seniors or disabled visitors that need to be accommodated;

· Consider having some light snacks, H2O, and coffee available;

· Ask visitors to leave all signs and banners outside the office.

2. Prioritize listening to your constituents:

· Have multiple guest books/comment sheets available for all visitors to sign-in and leave comments – we recommend you have one for residents of your district, one for residents of your state (but not your district), and one for out-of-state visitors. Have a Capitol Directory and map available to direct visitors to their Member of Congress and written instructions on how to get over to the Senate side of the Hill.

· There is limited rationale for your Member to meet with out-of-district constituents, especially if you already had other business or meetings previously scheduled with constituents who had planned to visit with you tomorrow on other topics. It is up to individual offices to decide if staff would like to take these meetings.

3. Listen and communicate in small groups:

· As we learned in August, small groups are typically the best venue for exchanges on this complicated topic.

· Many of the conservative activists are not opposing the actual provisions in the bill, but are instead reacting to a caricature of the reform bill presented by right-wing media outlets. In fact, many conservative and GOP ideas and concerns are addressed in the legislation:

  • Reduces the deficit;
  • Cracks down on Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse;
  • Provides historic tax credit for small businesses and individuals to purchase health insurance;
  • Allows consumers to shop for health insurance across state lines via multi-state compacts;
  • Inaugurates medical malpractice reforms, (an area where the GOP failed to take any action when in charge of Congress for 12 years).
  • Also, don’t assume common myths about this bill have been debunked. Be prepared to explain that there are no death panels, that Medicare is in fact strengthened, and that reform is not a government take-over, but it is an attempt to crack down on the abusive practices of health insurance companies by providing oversight and increasing competition.
  • Finally, work to establish common-ground with visitors by ensuring they are aware and supportive of the important changes that will take place immediately:
  • Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
  • Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
  • Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;
  • Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;
  • Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;
  • Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs;
  • Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
  • Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;
  • Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
  • Relief on the Donut Hole.
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Sour Oscar Notes

 Culture, Military
Mar 072010
 

“Avatar” and “Hurt Locker” are troubling films, for similar reasons.  So…forgive me for being the turd in the Oscar punchbowl, but I couldn’t let the occasion go by without reminding my readers that Hollywood is a Leftist cultural propaganda machine -and proud of it.  They are passionate about stopping wars, destroying capitalism, exposing the selfish and uncaring, ending social injustice and establishing global human rights.  We could quibble about the details, but, as a general statement, not many hollywood industry people would disagree.

This blog was started long after those interested in seeing “Avatar” had already done so, and before most of us have had  a chance to see “Hurt Locker.”  Of the 10 films nominated, I’ve seen only four, which probably puts me on a par with most citizens.  Nor is it my intention to do movie reviews as a blog feature; nevertheless, Avatar really pissed me off.  It was one of the most beautiful and meticulously directed and photograped films I’ve ever seen.  Truly a work of art, and nothing to be taken from Director James Cameron on that score.

Where we part company is on his view of corporations and the military.  He seems to despise both, and whatever culture encourages their existence.  I’ve heard he’s a Canadian – which explains some of that  - and he seems to be publicly declaring his embrace of those views.  In that regard, I have to say that “Avatar” is one of the most hateful dramas, filmed or live, I’ve ever witnessed.  I suppose he thinks he’s doing his bit to further the evolution of civic virtue by painting both the business people and soldiers as ruthless, unprincipled murderers.

The objects of their bloodlust-in-pursuit-of-profit isn’t limited to the spiritually evolved naturists of Pandora – oh, no – we’re talking entire planets here.  Our virtuous protagonist is heard to say at one point that – to paraphrase – “They destroyed their own planet (earth) and now they want to destroy ours.”  This Cameron is a very bitter man.  Too bad he doesn’t recognize the enormous strides made by the U.S. in particular, and the West in general – over the last forty years –  in improving the environment at every level.  And since he thinks the military causes war the way guns cause violence, it would be a bit much to expect him to appreciate the emergence of the most careful, ethical military in human history.

His ex-wife (no, I’m not going to “Palin” her and her family) and current pal, Kathryn Bigelow, has also made a brilliant, meticulous film involving the military, and they’re going head-to-head for the Best Picture Oscar.  I don’ t like writers who comment on films they haven’t seen or books they haven’t read, anymore than you do (we’ll let slide where they haven’t lived enough or thought enough to usefully comment on anything more than their own families and pets).  What gets me is there was a quote up on television the other day that supposedly appears in the film, “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” (emphasis mine.)

And that,  if true ,  leads me to believe that – as with her husband, and beyond the excellent art  - there is an agenda here, and that is to pick a military anomaly and preserve it for posterity as a generally true statement about the motivation of our military, and therefore, the parts of our culture that support the military.  She probably has the perfectly laudable aim of persuading the public that wars are caused by addictions to violence, by both individuals and governments.  And, even though there are plentiful examples throughout history of each, her notion that our own military and (Republican) governments are motivated by the same principles, is badly misplaced.

In other words, war is not a drug; adrenaline is a drug, and there are some adrenaline junkies in the military, just as there are in the civilian population.  Picking out an example to dramatize is a slur on our troops and our society.

The entire Trans-nationalist, global Leftist movement seems, in fact to be transfixed on social, war and labor issues that were au courant in the early twentieth century.  Many of the institutions they strive to either keep alive or restore are artifacts of that era; yet, oddly, they see themselves as forward-looking, advanced thinkers who are positioned to lead us all into a better future.

And one way they hope to do that is by making movies that are historical rewrites and subtle reminders of how bad we supposedly are as a culture.  Ready for a little ‘hope ‘n change?’

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Justicia y Equidad

 Culture, Government
Mar 062010
 
If you have trouble with the google translator in the right sidebar, please let me know.  I came across this piece on social justice and equality on the excellent HACER website (hacer.org).  I went directly to the source in Paraguay, the Foundation for Liberty.  I thought some of you might be interested in hearing the point of view of someone who has decided to fight the years-long wave of socialist transformation that has been sweeping South America.

La retorica interesada, hace que se tenga que explicar lo sencillo.
Adam Smith

JUSTICIA Y EQUIDAD SOCIAL

Pareciera que hasta estoy viendo los corazoncitos que titilan sobre la cabeza de los  “idealistas”  al mencionar estas nefastas palabras, que solo el intento de ponerlas en práctica, significaron la muerte de millones de personas en campos de concentraciones y lo que es peor, el concepto ha sobrevivido como sinónimo de “algo bueno.”

Sin embargo, palabras como inequidad social o desigualdad social, son tenidos como palabras más que malditas, hasta entre los más connotados economistas. Y esto, aun cuando no necesariamente sean indicadores de pobreza ni miseria. Pocos realmente se detienen a pensar en la gran desigualdad económica que existen en los países tremendamente ricos, en donde la miseria es, en el peor de los casos, un problema menor.

El motivo fundamental de la desnaturalización de los conceptos, es el constante bombardeo propagandístico de la intelectualidad ideologizada, que ha pervertido hábilmente estos términos y que han copado todos los espacios con preocupante sagacidad. Tanto que a muchos les daría una especie de shock, saber realmente a que hacen referencia los que eternamente pregonaron la centralización de la economía, aun con la prueba de los catastróficos resultados, sin ninguna excepción en ningún solo lugar en donde se lo haya practicado.

El marketing es la técnica de embellecer un producto, sin que necesariamente se esté diciendo la verdad sobre él. Los comunistas siempre pregonaron el igualitarismo socioeconómico. Es decir, todos los miembros de una sociedad deben tener el mismo nivel económico, de modo a que no existan las clases sociales. Esta idea aunque parezca muy inocente y hasta bello en lo conceptual, ha sido estudiada durante miles de años, teniendo su momento crucial para ponerlos en práctica desde 1917 a 1991 en la Rusia soviética y sus satélites.

Para poder igualar a la gente en un solo rango social, necesariamente se debía usar la fuerza, tratando de eliminar a los que poseían más, quitándoles toda su propiedad. La muerte y desolación que conocería la URSS, no tiene precedentes históricos y constituyó el mayor experimento de la humanidad, que buscaba la erradicación de las diferencias sociales y económicas.

El impacto de la catástrofe fue muy duro y aunque no hubo arrepentimiento o reconocimiento de la gigantesca falla, los seguidores siguieron insistiendo con más ímpetu en sus creencias, solo que ya no contaban con los recursos, pues habían consumido todo lo existente, como un cáncer que hizo metástasis. Pero con el problema en frente, tuvieron que mitigar algunos conceptos que en lo esencial no cambio para nada.

Si bien, la palabra comunismo a muchos le resulta chocante, al menos si es lo meridianamente instruido, antes de su puesta en vigencia, era una palabra muy bonita, muy idealista, sonaba muy bien al igual que hoy suenan las palabras equidad y justicia social. Pero cuando se supo de las consecuencias que acarreó el comunismo, tuvo una connotación negativa y fue allí donde los defensores del sistema, por lo general geniales intelectuales, recurrieron al marketing para disfrazar este concepto y dar así nacimiento a nuevos términos, pero con el mismo significado y ante las narices de todo el mundo.

La palabra equidad y justicia social, son términos muy en boga gracias a la audacia de los propagandistas del comunismo.  Ambos se usan en el mismo sentido, aunque la palabra equidad tiene un significado muy distinto al de la justicia. La equidad significa dividir un todo en igualdad de proporciones, sin reparar en el motivo, mientras que la justicia, significa dar a cada quien lo que le corresponde por algún motivo. En la antigüedad, la equidad y la justicia estaban representadas por una diosa con una espada y una balanza, solo que la equidad no tenía ninguna venda para poder partir en partes iguales un todo.

La justicia por tanto, era representada con los ojos vendados, pues tenía que dar a cada uno lo que le correspondía, sin reparar en las proporciones, sino en las razones. No era necesario mirar, sino evaluar. Es decir, a la justicia solo le interesaban los meritos, para poder dar a cada uno lo suyo y no necesitaba medir nada material como la equidad.

En términos económicos, la equidad significa exactamente lo que significó el comunismo soviético. Un Ente, que era el politburó, quitaba todo los  bienes de su gente y luego repartía a todos supuestamente con equidad o partes iguales, sin necesidad que haya meritos para ello. La premisa era darle a cada uno según su necesidad y no por su capacidad. Sin embargo, las desigualdades económicas, que tanto condenan, es algo muy natural, pues nadie puede tener el mismo patrimonio que otro, aun cuando exista alguien que trate de ejecutar la equidad, pues son millones de individuos que componen una sociedad.

El parámetro para estos, no es que no deban existir pobres en una sociedad. Es más, la pobreza es mil veces preferida antes que existan unos cuantos ricos, aun cuando estos tengan miles de empresas  que dan sustento a los que trabajan en ellas y tengan la oportunidad, de que alguna vez y mediante esfuerzo personal, puedan también ser ricos. Son millones los casos en que gente muy pobre llegaron a ser muy ricos dentro de este sistema.

Para los que defienden la equidad, es mejor que estas personas pierdan esos puestos, con tal de que los ricos pierdan sus patrimonios. Es decir, su objetivo no es combatir la pobreza, sino empobrecer a los que tienen mucho dinero, sin más argumentos que la equidad social. Este es el principal fundamento de cosas tan descabelladas como el impuesto a la renta personal que penaliza el exito, cuanto mas ingresos existan, mas impuestos se debe pagar.

Pero aun hay más, si esto es muy lógico a simple vista, la audacia de los amantes de la miseria motivados por la envidia, no tiene fronteras. Han logrado posicionar una herramienta llamada dialéctica, que palabras mas y palabras menos, estos hechos tan lógicos en realidad deben interpretarse dentro de un contexto general y no particular y existen  intelectuales que son los únicos que los pueden interpretar y hacernos el favor de guiarnos a nosotros, que somos la masa estúpida o sin sustancia.

Aunque, viendo como tienen éxito en su brutal posicionamiento, capaz que en la última parte de esto, esté de acuerdo con ellos, pues cada vez mas, logran posicionar cada estupides solo con la fuerza de la repeticion. Ojala despertemos de una buena vez y dejemos de ser de lo que nos tratan.

Hugo Vera Ojeda

Director de la Fundación Libertad


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Attitudes: Impatient Social Egalitarian

 Culture
Mar 052010
 

Action fantasy movie from Universal Pictures' The Incredible Hulk.

We all wonder, from time to time, “just what is it that’s going on in that person’s head?” We’ll probably never know for sure, of course, but our native sense of empathy is supposed to help us get a clue.  Some folks are so low in self-awareness and so mentally undisciplined that they’d be just as curious as us to find out.

Occasionally, in order to explain some social attitude to myself, I run a silent narrative in my head from the other person’s imagined point of view.  Some attitudes are fairly pervasive and so, have strong social consequences:  not intrinsically good or bad – just significant.

Here’s one I jotted down recently.  Sound about right?  Tell me what you think.

We are tired of waiting.  As minorities, the poor, the marginalized, we’ve given capitalism and constitutional democracy plenty of time to show they can be successful for us.  But it never changes. Discrimination persists, the rich exploit our cheap labor and our only lever of power is outside the system, in the streets.

We want our lives fixed now, and we will join with whoever proposes methods that will make it happen.  If the rich and their institutions go down on the way, so be it. Meanwhile, many of the ‘haves’ will have to move over so that we ‘have-nots’ can have our turn. We need a society that works for us, too.

We hate you.

A little harsh, to be sure, and certainly not comprehensive, but it allows us to immediately segue into what is presumably your favorite feature:

FREQUENTLY UNASKED QUESTIONS

  • We seem to have developed a number of self-segregating sub-cultures in the U.S.  Is their alienation from mainstream society sustainable?
  • Is social cohesion “cultural imperialism?”
  • If society has millions of high-school drop-outs who lack the skills to successfully function in a country that sees poor immigrants succeed regularly, what opportunities can society offer that will bridge the gap?
  • Do our political leaders and intellectuals respond to this attitude with aspirational guidance, or do they justify this person’s hatred and class envy with claims of victimization?
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Attitudes: Young, Counter-Culture

 Culture
Feb 282010
 

We all wonder, from time to time, “just what is it that’s going on in that person’s head?”  We’ll probably never know for sure, of course, but our native sense of empathy is supposed to help us get a clue.  Some folks are so low in self-awareness and so mentally undisciplined that they’d be just as curious as us to find out.

From time to time, in order to explain some social attitude to myself, I run a silent narrative in my head from the other person’s imagined point of view.  Some attitudes are fairly pervasive and so, have strong social consequences:  not intrinsically good or bad – just significant.

Here’s one I jotted down recently.  Tell me what you think:

“I am young, cultured, refined and sensitive.  I don’t admire competition or people who engage in business.  The military, to me, are mercenary killers used by evil profiteers to make war on dark-skinned people with peculiar languages and cultures.  I see poverty as the result of a predatory, selfish business culture.

As a result, the lower half of American society remains a victim of historical injustice and will have to be maintained by our government.  For this to happen, the rich perpetrators of social injustice will have to endure high taxation and societal scorn.  Since the most visibly prosperous are white American males, their activities must be curbed by any means possible.

Prosperity means victimization.  LIberty is only for those rich enough to enjoy it.  It’s a power concept used to trick the poor and middle class into hoping for a better life that cannot be honestly attained.  Lenin said “Freedom is want.”  I agree.

You people make me sick.”

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No Peace/No Justice?

 Culture
Feb 242010
 

No Sense

O.K., Puzzle me this:  Are those who seek Social Justice socialites?  Oh, wait…that ID has already been claimed by the people who cause social injustice. Just wondering because I’ve been seeing these “No Peace, No Justice” bumper stickers for years and, each time, I marvel at the exquisite ambiguity of those words (and the thinking of the mopes who  adopt it as a slogan).  I mean – the smug sanctimony coupled with the veiled threat, and couched in infinitely variable language is probably as compact a summation of the angry, pointless crusade as anything out there.

Peace, to be fair, is not nearly as endlessly interpretable as justice.  Still, it’s impressive enough.  There’s the famous Pax Romana, recently in history transmogrified by anti-war protesters into the even jazzier Pax Americana. Same bloody connotation for each, only – with the latter – it’s Americans calling fellow Americans murderers.  Just a little nuance.  And there’s World Peace, an abiding goal of all of us, but something Lefties seem to feel is achievable in our lifetime and, therefore, should be reflected in national policy.

There’s peace in the sense of the lull between wars; and there’s the peace you experience within yourself in the absence of strife.  There’s peace as an armistice between combatants, and there’s eternal peace that believers in the afterlife achieve, er…after.  Let’s not forget “Peace in the Valley.”  Elvis liked that one a lot.  And of course, if you threaten to make my life miserable – however you can manage – then that’s extortion, whose absence is peace.  All I have to do to get the peace is give you whatever it is you think you deserve.  Good deal.  Works against individuals, businesses and governments, to name a few.

But what if, instead of money or privilege, you want something a little harder to define; something, in fact defined by you alone.  What if the shakedown is justice?  Well, that’ll bake your noodle.  It immediately occurs to you, the victim of the extortion, that this justice thing can be reinterpreted anyway the demander likes, and as often and varied as possible.  Maybe you should call a Justice of the Peace.  (Do the bumper-sticker bozos have a Justice of the War?)  The war against peace and for justice, of course.

Seriously, look at the panoply of justice beliefs around the world.  Some folks think it’s perfectly just to bury a rape victim – after all, she brought shame on the group by being raped – up to her neck and then stone her to death.  Maybe someone should disturb their peace.  I’ll skip the beheaders and hand loppers; already a tired meme.

Mao thought justice would be served by periodically turning his people against one another in order to brutalize those who were slipping a bit in their belief in his earthly paradise.  That’s a little Social Justice for you.  Maybe he thought of it as ‘socialization.’  After studying carefully in France for a while, Pol Pot returned to his home country of Cambodia with an army of teenagers armed with AK47′s to exact a little justice on his middle-class countrymen who weren’t, in his view, leading a good, revolutionary life.  So he marched them all out of the cities and worked them to death, for their own good.  Justice served.  Millions dead.

Sorry, getting a little maudlin; you get the idea, though.  Sarajevo, Rwanda, North Korea, Cuba – social justice seems to require a lot of human sacrifice.  I didn’t bother to mention the USSR because everyone knows that an otherwise perfectly fine revolution was screwed up by Stalin; no reflection on Communism – force for good in the world as illustrated by a few of our previous examples.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we Americans seem to think it serves justice to subject our kids to political indoctrination and segregation from mainstream society.  They grow up with heads full of useless crap and an inability to function in society.  There is hopefully a special room in hell for those who place their own careers (and ideologies) ahead of these kids’ future.  Social Justice.  We all know this goes on, and we feel helpless to do anything about it.

So, maybe the next time we spot one of those “No justice, no peace” bumper stickers, we can reflect on whether it’s better to side with the symbolists and nihilistic fist shakers, or, in the name of social justice, work to have an educated, responsible society that knows it’s lame to want the government to be your mama.

Which once again brings us to our delightful feature:

FREQUENTLY UNASKED QUESTIONS


  • Is it peace to preach national disunity and shame over your nation’s past?
  • Is it peace to selfishly legislate your neighbors’ freedoms away in order to satisfy your quest for civic virtue, or to eliminate behavior that annoys you?
  • Does social justice mean fairness and equality, or freedom and opportunity?
  • Isn’t “No justice, No peace” a guarantee of permanent conflict?
  • Who benefits from permanent conflict, freedom lovers or tyrants?
  • Is it likely that the American founders already invented a socially just system, but one that needs more maintenance than it’s been given?
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Delusion Caused the Collapse

 Culture, Government, Markets
Feb 232010
 

The Only Escape from this Trap is Failure

Market Delusions

It’s alright to stay: I’m not going to stir the ashes of the financial collapse.  I have bigger fish to fry, so I’ll just do a quick resume of the situation from my viewpoint, then get to what’s on my mind; namely, what sort of trap did we all fall into in order to create such a calamity?  More importantly, was the collapse actually a typical intractable situation that slowly becomes a crisis?

OK, the government did it.  There, I’ve said it, so you don’t have to get feverish trying to anticipate who I’m going to blame.  Just my opinion.  I’m a simple man who likes to think of causation occuring in some sort of sequence.  Cause and effect; one foot in front of the other.  So I can’t blame organizational size, or derivatives, CDO’S, CDS’s, short sales, speculators, greedy bankers, cowboy traders, quants, or anything else appurtenant to the financial industry.  The industry is as we found it in late 2007 – gigantic, dynamic, prosperous; powering a worldwide market with trillions of transactions each business day.

But a massive worldwide distribution system is only as good as what it distributes.  Until the crisis, it was good credit paper that fueled millions of jobs, protected nest eggs, liquified businesses large and small.  Feed garbage into this behemoth and that’s what you distribute.  Republican and Democratic governments had a hand in pressuring banks and incentivizing mortgage brokers to drop prudent underwriting standards; both were allowed to bundle the mortgages and ship them off to the behemoth.  They made lots of money, the government got money and votes, and the behemoth had a feeding frenzy at a time when it was important to have a product to sell to world investors hungry for a return.

The rest is a history that will be interpreted in many ways – already has – and we all agree we had a close call.  So here’s what’s bothering me:  How is it that virtually every cadre of our professional world failed to stop this before it went off the rails?  It’s not that we didn’t have regulators; the various congressional committees are trying to eliminate the stovepiping of responsibility, the venue-shopping by financiers, and the many authority overlaps among agencies.

The rating agencies were there, churning out ratings at an accelerated pace, assuring investors they were buying good paper (it’s interesting to note that the subprime loans were rated AAA because that was the best rating for that type of loan. It wasn’t until 2008 that the agencies woke up and realized this sent entirely the wrong message to the markets, and they proceeded to change the ratings on all future mortgages).  The banks, large and small, had regulators sitting next to them at work.  The stockbrokers and bond traders and insurance investors were all tightly regulated as a prerequisite to being in those businesses.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the massive guarantors of these packaged mortgages, answering both to the executive branch of the government and their public shareholders.  The mortgage brokers were the least regulated, but dependent for their business on the good will of their communities and those who purchased their mortgages.

So, back to the top:  What really caused all of these actors to avoid acting to save their own system?  It looks like some kind of delusion trap wherein the momentum to profit caused a loss of restraint and reached a tipping point where no one within the system would have been powerful enough to stand up and say “stop” without being disregarded, disgraced or dismissed.  Self-interest, at every level, in a consensus environment, forces everyone to keep the game going until it collapses of its own internal contradictions.

If that’s so – and I’m only speculating – what other delusion traps do we know about where all the actors are trapped in a paradigm that will eventually fail, but not before causing a lot of external damage?  I nominate prohibition, campaign finance and the federal income tax.  The immigration mess is a poster child for what happens when you refuse to deal with a daunting, controversial problem involving a lot of self-interested constituencies, here and abroad.  I’m sure you can think of a lot on your own, so feel free to pile on with your suggestions.  This is important, because it happens these are intractable problems with global significance.

There are now too many constituencies benefiting from the drug war to allow anyone, for any reason, to change it.  No one thinks the income tax is anything but a disaster, and there are many good alternatives, but we are paralyzed into riding the current system right over a cliff.  Congress is trapped into spending a significant part of their lives fund raising, rather than governing – a widely known fact – and they desperately need tax money to fund programs to curry favor with voters.  This produces a lot of bad outcomes, but no one who can change it will, because the status quo is what they mastered in order to get their jobs.  Do we need the entire government to fail before anything gets fixed?  Is it necessary to just scrap our constitution and start over?  I’m afraid we’re going to find out.

Which brings us to:

FREQUENTLY UNASKED QUESTIONS

  • Re Fannie, et al:  How healthy is it to have a government entity with private shareholders who can lobby Congress and make campaign contributions?
  • What will prevent future regulatory defeasance if the regulators aren’t sure their decisions will be supported and insisted upon by their elected leaders?
  • How is it possible for voters to rescue officials from their own delusion trap if the trap makes the rescue impossible?
  • Is there a level of buy-in to certain human activities that only a calamitous collapse can resolve?
  • Why do we keep electing officials who wilfully profit off the delusions of others?
  • After all the hearings, will Fannie and Freddie get ‘fixed’ ?
  • Will mortgage-loan underwriting standards get restored?
  • Which regulators allowed those standards to be removed?
  • Which legislators approved of the regulators defeasance?
  • Is Wall Street ‘greed’ the same as, or worse than, politician’s ‘greed?’
  • How can we defend against recurrences if we allow blame/causation to be deliberately misdirected?
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Are Car Owners a Pack…or a Herd???

 Culture, Government, Transportation
Feb 202010
 

Magnets in Roadbeds; Not Rails in Roadbeds

Car Owners Aren't Sheep

Pretty cool panel discussion held by Cato and taped by C-span today.  Nice diversity of views over a book by Randal O’Toole called “Gridlock.” Haven’t read it yet, but looking forward to it, because it’s an important topic easily overlooked.  We’re basically talking about the freedom to choose where you live and whether to drive vs. an urban-planning scheme wherein you are clustered together in high-density areas and forced to either walk, cycle or take public transport.  Your choice, for now.

Americans in an assertive mood say “We’re a pack, not a herd.”  A little crude, maybe, but it expresses the legitimate emotion that we are an independent people not given to being pushed around.  Why then do lefties always seem to treat others as a herd (“masses” and “proles”).  Though often talking human dignity and a deep concern for the disappearance of “community” (sound familiar?), they utterly disregard the innate dignity of personal choice in all of their social-engineering schemes.

They say people need what they vaguely term “livability,” with an emphasis on small living space (no land), walking and biking, and big “howdy’s!” to your passing neighbors from your cozy high-rise front porch (I know – they get their nineteenth century nostalgia a little confused with modern urban living conditions).  All of this for your own good, of course.

Sounds like reasonable concerns…that most folks would reject anyway – simply because the car gives them choice and flexibility (freedom/liberty), and living away from the city gives them more land and a larger house for the money.  How bad is that?  Plenty, according to our would-be herders.

So, Comrade, if you can’t convince these people to give up their perfectly rational choices, maybe – just maybe – you can persuade the media and some legislators.  That won’t work too well either (they own houses and cars, too), this attack on their fellow citizens’ ability to choose how to live, so some reason for urgency – some call to a higher good – needs to be created.  What to do?

Sometimes, even the most devoted busybody nannystater has to stretch to come up with a plausible cover for an idealistic but unpalatable agenda.  IOW, what can we tell the rubes?  Oh…wait!  How about scarcity. Yeah, that’s the ticket.  If, let’s say, land is ‘scarce’ (we’ll call it “urban sprawl”) and its use causes pollution and alienation, don’t these people need saving?

We probably wouldn’t  need this grand leftist rescue mission to save us from ourselves were it not for the doughy, conformist, middle-class burghers’ need for cars.  Cars that are a nightmare on so many levels it should be no problem convincing the well-intended that there is a reasonable solution. Gather everyone in high-density communities where they can walk or bike-ride, interact in a personal way, and take public transport or car-sharing to anyplace outside the community.  Buses, trains…even bullet trains!  Problem solved.  Who could resist?

Lefties of various stripes have had this dream for decades, but ‘progress’ has been slow, funding scarce, and resistance high.  Now with the advent of the complete Democrat control of the U.S. government and – let’s not forget, leftist control of the party -it’s looking more possible to realize the dream.  For everyone’s good.  Of course.

O’Toole, God bless ‘em, disagrees.  Our interstate (1956) highway system, whether intended or not, has superceded the passenger train system. Now, because technology has moved on, he says it is only a matter of political will to establish a 21st century transport system, instead of trying to perfect one invented in the 19th.  He’s consulted with Detroit engineers and is convinced that strategic placement of magnets in the roadbeds will allow our already computerized cars to operate at 60mph without drivers.

The idea is to group cars closer together and increase road capacity 4x its present level. Using “Adaptive Cruise Control” (sees front and rear) and “Lane-Keep Assist,”(automates steering) cars could travel much closer together without additional risk.  Both VW and GM think this is do-able and recent live (DARPA) tests with a limited number of cars have been successful.  O’Toole also asserts that the congestion relief obtainable from this system would lower green-house gases by 30%.

First up at bat to respond on the Cato Institute panel was Michael Replogle of the Institute for Transport and Development Policy.  His remarks reflected the leftist points mentioned above and a desire to defeat the “car and oil-dominated corporate agenda.” (WTF??)  He wants the U.S. to emulate Singapore, Malaysia and (presumably) London, who each have mileage-based user and congestion charges to limit traffic, especially in the city centers.

Next up on the panel was Anthony Downes of the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank. He mostly agreed with O’Toole, but said he would use his limited time to share his views on points of disagreement with both men.

His problem was the practicability of actually executing such a massive program, and the potential road hazards of driverless cars at high speed. He noted we had a total of 242 million cars on America’s roads in 2006, with an average fleet turnover of 18 years.  How, he asked, do you make such a drastic change to that number of cars?  Further, at the 2000 Census, only 4% of Americans used public transit, while 92% have access to an auto.

He seemed to think that congestion was off-point for the other panelists.  He explained that congestion is a sign of success for the economy, a symptom of prosperity, and a legitimate trade-off. (It mostly results from everyone needing to be at work at about the same time.)  He noted that in bad times congestion decreases on its own. (Do progressives wish to encourage bad times in order to realize their dream of car-less collective clusters? Do you remember back when they decried “little houses, all made of ticky-tacky?” It seems that now that’s the goal.)

Q& A produced a little clarification.  A system requiring total reliance on car computers could work.  The problem of accidents and of dangerous merges could be worked out.  A blend of computer and driver might also work, but the most important obstacle to success, according to O’Toole – who had the last word – was government cooperation.  He felt they had no inherent stake in change.

Which brings us to:

FREQUENTLY UNASKED QUESTIONS


  • Is Urban Planning, as Friedrich Hayek contended, a Socialist enterprise?
  • How dangerous to the Republic are small groups with focused agendas who use the democratic ballot to achieve their ends?
  • How scarce is land for development in the United States?
  • If the cost of public transport is 3x that of private, as the author contends, what remains of our motive for change?
  • Why can’t people – as the late, great Jimmy Durante asked – leave other people the hell alone?
  • If it can be proven that the U.S. can be energy-independent without a ‘green revolution,’ would we do it?
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Socialists of the World – Disperse!

 Culture, Government, Social Philosophy
Feb 172010
 

Capitalism Improves on Socialism; Not the Reverse

The Socialists are Coming!!

Honestly, folks – this is just a really huge misunderstanding.  I’ve known it for years, but so long as you all were just a nattering fringe, why say anything?  But now – OMG, it’s like “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”  Every time I turn around, another perfectly sane-looking fellow American is reciting socialist dogma to me.

I know…I know.  What’s the problem?  Live and let live; just a different point of view, right?  Well, no.  It was the most toxic idea in the 20th century, impoverishing whole nations at its mildest and stacking up millions of corpses at its most virulent.  Look, I’m an old white guy (the scourge of the earth), so a pretty good chunk of my life was lived in the ‘Cold War,’ while hot wars – almost all caused by some form of socialism – broke out all around me.

So now, thanks to a socialist infestation of our educational system – together with a stupefying drop-out rate – the actual malignant history of this thing goes untaught.  Worse, the crucial lessons of our own national founding are ignored in favor of scab-ripping the old wounds of slavery, labor strife and gender discrimination – no progress, no change.  nothing left to be proud of.  Just us arrogant, selfish American imperialists running amuck in a bewildered world with only an apologetic Obama to rescue what’s left of our national honor.

Fine.  We are now a shame-based, guilt-laden tribal society begging forgiveness for practicing free enterprise and rescuing other nations from their own oppressive governments.  Sorry.  Looks like pretty fertile ground for a new, better social philosophy (like, maybe Progressivism).  Or European-style Socialism. Or, Marxism without Stalin; maybe Maoism without you-know-who.  Hell, we can’t even observe the destruction of the Cuban people without blaming ourselves.  Time for some serious deprogramming.

To that end, why don’t we start and take a hard look at the notion that we are a materialistic, selfish, bigoted society driven by greed and lack of care for those less fortunate.  Whole bookshelves are devoted to this, so – this being a blog and all – let’s do the short, incomplete version.

If the founders, for instance, could have started this country and abolished slavery at the same time, many historians feel they would have.  George Washington – a slaveholder – wanted that, but knew it couldn’t be done and still hold together the union.  He and the others kicked the can down the road for Abraham Lincoln to deal with a little later on.

Capitalism is exploitative, materialistic and selfish (read Milton Friedman).  It is chaotic because it’s not directed by anyone but the individual, or groups of individuals cooperating in a competitive marketplace.  The exploitation is mutual and dynamic – something it appears Marx didn’t wish to recognize.  (Hard to see in his day, in any event.)

The individual who works for wages or salary is seeking security from the risk-taker who employs him.  The wage-earner can perpetuate this paradigm, acquiring new skill and experience for modest pay increases – indefinitely, as long as the business survives – or save his money and decide to be a risk taker himself, ‘exploiting’ others who will then emulate his former choices.  Very few people who wish to progress stay in the same situation indefinitely.  The risk-taker, if successful, may become gradually wealthy, but may then have a change in the market occur that he can’t deal with, causing him to fall down the income ladder (it happens a lot).

The system is driven by individual choice – that’s the selfish part.  The much-derided ‘individualism.’  And the scorned ‘ambition’ (that pays the family bills).  But what about these other ‘-isms?’ You know – material and consumer.  These, my friend, produce jobs and the risk opportunities for your fellow citizens (opportunities, opportunities, opportunities).  Prosperity is a celebration of our liberty to do these things.  To make our own decisions and strive to succeed.  It’ the American Idea, unique in the world, and the basis for our Republic.

Oh, wait!  What about caring for “the general welfare” more than for yourself – as Socialism promises.  A moral, decent society that cares.  Look around you.  Selfish, ambitious, money-hungry, materialistic Americans form more cooperative organizations than any collectivist could ever dream of.  Free association, with multiple overlaps.  We give more to charity and are more religious than any other large, industrialized society.  Our fight against poverty is inseparable from capitalism and democracy and has raised millions of people from poverty all over the world (yes, Virginia – globalization!).

Do you really want to throw all that away so that the government can guide you to “Social Justice?”  IMHO, we have the best system of social justice ever devised; we just need the utopian socialists and their dupes to get on board (or find a more worthy cause).

Which brings us to:

FREQUENTLY UNASKED QUESTIONS

  1. Is poverty mankind’s historical and geographical default condition – or is it caused by greedy capitalists?
  2. Is it better to have a government that you allow (ours); or one that allows you?
  3. Would the world be a better place without the “selfish ambition” of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs?
  4. Is the automobile a polluting disaster, or is it a celebration of American freedom and success?
  5. Do you know a Socialist who is proud of capitalism and our constitutional republic?
  6. Is Socialism too focused on the past; especially the ’30′s?
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