Essays
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Okay, enough is enough
I took some time off from blogging, primarily because I was getting too angry at what was going on. I would be watching the news and my face would be getting red as I listened to the litany of destruction and devastation being performed in the face of direct and specific feelings being publicly displayed.
In Town Hall Meetings and public gatherings, where they were ignored, insulted, slandered and told “we know what’s best for you so sit down and shut up you moron.”
In public opinion polls, where no matter how it was spun, it required a violation of the principles of statistical mathematics to distort reality enough to display any subset of a subset that was actually in favor of it, margins of error or no…
In Congressional debates where it took out-and-out bribes of one Senator by another, using the taxpayers’ money (nothing more than “business as usual” by politicians) in order to get him to ignore such clear warnings....
Spending bills that were passed under threat of conditions better than we have it now that the bills have been passed. (Remember when they were threatening that we would have 8% unemployment without their massive spending programs, instead of the 10+% “official unemployment rate” we actually have now? Well, neither does the media.) That does NOT include the hundreds of thousands who have simply used up all of their benefits from unemployment insurance and been dropped from their rolls, nor does it count those who have simply quit looking for work. A more honest - and, frankly, more frightening - employment indicator is the total number of employed people in the United States. (Here’s the PDF file, scroll down to Table C.)
Until… Finally. Something happened that was so shocking that it has actually managed to get Barry’s attention. A slap across the chops from the voters of a State so blue that there have been five Presidential Administrations that have come and gone since the last time a Republican held that seat (when he lost to John “Jenjis Khan War Criminal” Kerry).
Scott Brown was elected to be the Republican’s 41st vote. He made that the issue and the voters responded. He promised to stop ObamaCare, and he did. It is now effectively dead in its current incarnations, and even Harry Reid (who is losing to anyone and everyone with an ‘R’ after their name in his bid for re-election this fall) says that he might not have even the 51 votes necessary to try and backdoor it through the highly questionable procedure known as “reconciliation”. The Republicans have responded that they will load up every socially and politically divisive amendment they can squeeze into it, just to force the Democrats to take a stand on some very uncomfortable issues, such as the war in Afghanistan, defunding domestic terrorist trials under civilian criminal statutes, English as an official language, taxpayer funded abortions, the works, during an election cycle where their primary issues have already proven so unpopular.
Serious political punditry have estimated that the DFems may lose 5-7 Senate seats and 20-30 House seats. Not enough to give the Republicans back majority control, but one where serious compromise on every bill would be required before any cloture vote could be attempted in the Senate (while still being able to lose the squishies from Maine and the Maverick from Arizona), and strong support from both sides of the House division before any substantive legislation could be taken up, much less debated and voted upon.
I am in favor of this - the more impediments to legislation, the better.
But much of the next ten months will depend on how Barry chooses to play the game in tonight’s STFU speech. Will he be able to say “You’re right, I was trying to bite off more than I could chew, but I was trying to do the best I could. Now let’s get some real work done.”? (Which is one of the reasons Clinton was re-elected after the avalanche of ‘94.)
Or will he play the angry populist, trying to rewrite history to show that the people voted for Scott Brown not in order to stop ObamaCare, but (as Howard Dean asserted), but because they wanted more from Obama?
He has time to change his mind, right up until the teleprompters get loaded…
Anyhow, I will try to be here more frequently.
Also, if you’ve read this far, I am also announcing a new trivia contest, which will appear in the coming days. Pretty much standard rules, but keep checking back for more details.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
What a crock of shit
I am so fed up with people claiming that this thing or that condition is a “right”, and there are a couple of reasons why.
Cliff Notes version: it isn’t a “right” if it takes the labor of anyone else to make it happen and you can’t have “rights” without “responsibilities”.
There are rights that are part of the human condition, including, but not limited to:
- the right to defend oneself with the means at one’s disposal (you don’t have the “right to bear arms” if all you have is a rock)
- the right to hold an opinion (even if one is not legally permitted to express that opinion)
- the right to pursue happiness (even if you don’t have the actual right to catch any)
- the right to worship a Higher Power (or not, as one’s conscience dictates)
These things cannot be taken away, no matter how abject one’s condition or condition of poverty. They are an indelible part of the human condition, that tyrants cannot remove nor patriots restore.
Then there are rights that are guaranteed by the government, including, but not limited to:
- the right to express an opinion, even if it is offensive, without criminal penalties
- the right to use potentially deadly force to defend oneself, one’s family, or even random strangers without criminal penalties (under specific conditions)
- the right to equal treatment under the law, with one set of rules applying to everyone, regardless of personal choice variables that may cause sub-cultures sprouting up within the general culture
- the right to not be forced to incriminate oneself, placing the burden of proof on the government to prove a case before disinterested juries (with the default condition being “freedom” at every stage)
- the right to meet with others for any purpose or no purpose whatsoever
These can be taken away, either by legislative whim, judicial determination or executive decree.
Then there are the so-called “rights” that can never, ever be enforced, except at the point of a gun and at someone else’s cost and labor, yet are being forced upon an increasingly unwilling public to pay those particular bills:
- health care
- food
- housing (as opposed to shelter)
- entertainment
As I said above, if it takes the labor of anyone else - whether it is just the guy who goes and picks the fruit off the tree or a cardio-thoracic surgeon and complete OR team - it is NOT a “right”. You have the right to seek out a tree or cave in which to live. You do NOT have the “right” to have someone build you a house. You have the right to try and cure yourself. (I hear that a tea made of willowfine works just like aspirin.) You do NOT have the “right” to force an expensively-trained specialist to cure you without compensating him at the rates HE chooses. You and your buds can sit around, amusing yourself however you wish, but you do NOT have the right to force someone to come in and amuse you without compensating them at the rates THEY choose.
And second, Rights and Responsibilities are opposite sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other.
Here in the US, we have gained several rights guaranteed by the government, at the cost of assuming certain responsibilities. We have the responsibility to:
- Vote in every election
- serve on juries when it is our turn
- obey the laws of our city, State and nation
- pay the taxes that we owe (financing the “general goods”, such as police and fire, military and the roads, etc.)
And many others. Having a right to something is a form of AUTHORITY. Authority without Responsibility - also known as “the backseat driver syndrome” - is destructive to the morale of any group, whether it is just a family or an entire nation. And Responsibility without Authority is oppression, pure and simple.
This brings us to this piece of crap - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It starts out okay - right to life (which isn’t actually a right), right to an opinion, right to presumption of innocence, etc. - but soon devolves into a progressive litany of things that end up costing others:
- right to work at a “minimum standard of living” (to be supplemented by government as needed) (Article 23)
- right to “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control” (Article 25)
- right to an education, both free and compulsory (Article 26)
Isn’t it nice that employers don’t have the right to not hire people? Or that doctors and farmers and construction workers don’t have the right to work and charge for their labor? (So much for the right to work, eh?) And finally, isn’t it nice that there are so many people willing and capable of teaching critical skills that they can do it for free?
The “right to work” requires an employer to pay wages for that work. The “right to a standard of living” requires that someone pay for that standard of living (in addition to his or her own, let us remember), and the right to an education requires that the teacher spend his or her valuable time (which is the only asset we have that cannot be replaced) to teach those hard-won learning, not to mention any efforts of printing books, manufacturing supplies (such as paper, pencils, etc.), and constructing shelter in which to hold classes.
Those things are NOT “rights”. And how can education be a “right” when it is compulsory? If the right to worship were similarly compulsory, the ACLU would be setting bonfires on every street corner.
We need to have this conversation every day until people quit thinking that they have what they cannot ever own.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Smack Heard ‘Round The World
President O’bam-bam gets the living Shi’ite slapped out of him in a GREAT column over at American Thinker.
Teaser quote:
Viewers were promised in Barack Obama the easy cool of Denzel Washington, the sincerity of Tom Hanks and the heart of Oprah. Instead, they see on their screens Al Bundy with a tan, pecs, and Harvard Law degree, the first jump-the-shark president.
Damn. I felt that one all the way over here.
Friday, August 21, 2009
King Canute would have been proud
Thrill makes a good point in the comments of my previous post, in that we should stop electing lawyers who seem to think that “a law is a law” and, therefore, every law you run into is something that is easily subject to the whims of elected officials. After all, they pump out hundreds of laws every year, and they don’t apply to Congress, anyway.
However, there are laws, and then there are Laws.
A law against speeding doesn’t suddenly stop everyone from going faster than the legislators think they ought to be going, but no amount of legislative expostulation is suddenly going to overcome the Law of Gravity (even if hot air rises). Similarly, they can pass a law that says that everyone must suddenly start sending in their income tax payments in those special yellow envelopes included with their tax forms mailer, yet they will never be able to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, no matter how many clever arguments the lobbyists will be able to make (or how many zeroes they put after those arguments).
No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his virtually unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.—Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers
No amount of legislating is going to suddenly make 150,000 doctors appear out of thin air. (And medicine is a profession that you have to want to get into, rather than something that can be forced on someone, because it is physically difficult, technically demanding, and subject to litigation if anything goes wrong - which it always does. After all, it is possible to do absolutely nothing wrong, and still end up with a bad outcome, just because that is the way the events play themselves out.)
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Socialism - it’s not about the society
It’s about the power. Plain and simple, it is the urge of those who see themselves as somehow “better”, “smarter”, or “wiser” to run society along the ways they think society would be run, if only it weren’t for all those mean people who want to do something different than everyone else. Now, if everyone were marching to the same beat, doing the same things, liking the same foods, enjoying themselves in the same ways as everyone else, then life would be perfect. Societal justice would prevail, and it would be a Utopia, with the basis being “from each, according to his abilities, and to each, according to his needs”. (Yes, I know that is Communism’s mantra. What’s your point?)
Now, if you were to ask a modern liberal what they believe in, they might respond as did Hillary Clinton, when she described herself as a “progressive”. I hear that word, and I want to ask “what is it that you are progressing towards?” The only thing that these so-called “progressives” have in common is their belief that we should scrap everything that made America the only remaining superpower and start over again. Anything that has already happened is “bad” because it failed to bring about this new heaven-on-earth, so it should therefore be done away with, and something new put in.
That isn’t “progression”, that’s “regression”. They are moving away from something, with no new goal in mind. While that may have been called “exploring” in days of yore, there is no new territory to find when it comes to how humans treat their neighbors. It is a spectrum, ranging from Anarchy at one end and Despotism at the other.
Thomas Sowell said it well: “Out of every hundred new ideas, ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.”
Those societies that were better able to adapt to new realities than their neighbors continued to prosper and survive, while lesser-able societies failed and died away. (A microcosm of this phenomenon is the KKK. That’s such a rare breed nowadays that the only place where you can find a member is in the US Senate!) Sometimes this “new reality” involves the brutal exercise of warfare, such as what the Romans did to the Carthaginians. Sometimes it is more subtle, as when the US started shipping blue jeans and rock-and-roll to Russia.
It is to society what Evolution is to the organism.
But to deliberately try to alter the most basic parts of society would be like an individual trying to perform plastic surgery on himself to gain a pair of wings.
However, to increase the power of the government (at various civil levels from neighborhoods to Federal) over ever more intrusive portions of society - over such things as building codes, the education of our children, the interest rates charged by banks, the amount of clothing that must be worn in public or displayed in ads, and a bajillion other ways, both large and small - requires that there be someone who gets to decide what the standards are, as well as the whole army of bureaucracy to make sure that those rules and whims are enforced.
Like I said, Power. The ability to tell your neighbor “no, you getting to do that bothers me, so you are no longer allowed to do that, and you should thank me for protecting you from yourself.”
The moment anyone feels that he has the authority to tel his fellow man what he can and cannot do, without bothering to follow those same restrictions themselves, it is no longer a classless society, and that is a basic ingredient for revolution, just like wheat is a basic ingredient for almost everything we eat. (Another necessary ingredient is knowledge of that non-classlessness. Think about it - if those in the underclass don’t know it, or are being lied to about it, why would they feel the need to change anything?)
Happy, happy, joy, joy.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Capitalism - it’s not about the money
It’s about the Capital.
Money is just the medium of transfer between companies and individuals, and the wide variations of currency and coinage being used among the various countries around the globe - dollar, pound, franc, yen, whatever - shows that they are only worth what people think they are worth.
It’s the capital - the machinery, the natural resources, the hard work and ingenuity of the workers - that makes it possible for value to be added as the raw material is processed into finished goods that people need.
And while value can be created out of nothing at all by skilled craftsmen, capital is necessarily limited, and the monetary and societal system that uses those raw materials most efficiently is the one that will have the highest standard of living.
If Farmer A is more efficient at using his tractors and threshers and all of the other machines - capital assets, each and every one of them - than is Farmer B, then giving scarce capital to Farmer B will result in a lower output for the capital cost incurred, and that will lower the standard of living for everyone, since there will be less grain available, and the costs of everything made from that grain will be driven upwards, and the money spent on those things can not be spent on other things, which reduces the economy in ever widening circles by exactly the amount of the difference between what Farmer B produced and what Farmer A could have produced with the same effort and expenditure.
The money that the citizens could have saved on the cheaper bread and cakes could have been further spent on other goods, which would have driven up the demand of those goods, providing additional jobs (and additional taxpayers, which makes the government richer).
Y’see, the most common fallacy in discussing economics is to pay strict attention to the specific group or company being discussed, and ignoring the potential effects on the remainder of the economy.
Nothing, and I emphasize NOTHING acts in a vacuum in an economic sense, because Economics is nothing more than the study of scarce resources which have alternative uses. The instant you posit a potential use for capital goods, you immediately exclude any and all other uses for that resource. Milk that has been used to make butter cannot also be used to make ice cream, for example. Apples that have been baked into pies cannot also be used to make applesauce. Fields that are being used to grow wheat cannot also be used to simultaneously grow rice.
And the people that use their share of capital most efficiently are given lots and lots of those little pieces of paper that everyone seems so obsessed with.
But since value can literally be created out of nothing at all (Pet Rocks, anyone?), we need to keep our eyes on the use of capital, not the aggregation of those little green pieces of paper.
Any questions?
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Whither Freedom?
What does the word “freedom” mean to you?
In this post over at Ace’s Place, he references a quote by G.K. Chesterson.
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
The moment you have your neighbors (either individually, collectively, or through the power of government) saying “You shouldn’t do that” when “that” does no harm to anyone else, you lose freedom. One law, one regulation, just one busybody saying, “I don’t like that” and another slip down the slope. This ranges from an HOA limiting the number of colors that you can paint your home all the way up to a State government banning certain food choices (transfats).
Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws - always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: “Please pass this so that I won’t be able to do something I know I should stop.” Nyet, tovarischee, was always something they hated to see their neighbors doing. Stop them “for their own good” - not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.
So what does freedom mean to you?
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.—Thomas Jefferson
Would you rather have all of your choices dictated to you in a cradle-to-grave Nanny State cocoon, or would you rather have the freedom to fail?
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Who is John Galt?
The (in)famous catchphrase of Ayn Rand’s classic, Atlas Shrugged, has become more than just a catchphrase these days. It has become a call-to-arms (in a metaphysical sense).
Gene Simmons (yes, he of KISS fame) once said, “You may not like rich people, but when was the last time a poor person gave you a job?”
There comes a point when those who are being roundly abused by a given situation decide that they have had enough, thankyouverymuch, and they will pack up and go to more pleasant climes. Abused spouses will file for divorce, guys who beat up their girlfriends will find they no longer have one, kids who rob from their parents may find themselves locked out, and insulted employees will quit.
But what if it is the government that has declared ‘Open Season’ on you? What do we do when the fruits of our hard work are summarily seized - on penalty of imprisonment and forfeiture - and given to those who won’t work as hard or make the “right” choices? When the government’s position about your wealth is that you must have stolen it from those who aren’t as well off?
Bill Whittle wrote about the fallacy of such thinking - of operating from the assumption that wealth creation is a Zero-Sum Game:
If you think about all of the protestors you see on TV, whether they be against US “imperialism,” or globalization, or corporations, or claim to be champions of the Poor, both here at home and for poor nations in the world—all of this anger and seething resentment, all of this bitterness and invective, can be attributed, when all is said and done, to having chosen to believe that there is only so much wealth in the world, and that rich people and rich nations gain and maintain wealth by stealing prosperity from the weak.
This is so idiotic, so demonstrably false, that you really have to wonder why we are having this discussion. All of the money owed to rich nations by the poor—money that was lent to them to lift them from poverty, and then squandered on palaces for dictators and Socialist prestige projects like International Airports in the middle of nowhere—all this money totaled together, is a small percentage of the wealth generated by rich countries in a single year. The idea that the United States can steal 10 trillion dollars a year from dirt-poor nations that don’t produce anything of value is absolutely insane, and yet, and yet, we hear it again and again and again from the professionally outraged who must be obtuse beyond human understanding to keep making such an absurd lie the basis of their entire philosophy.
If we can prove that our core tenet is correct, that wealth is limited only by imagination and the desire to work hard, then not only does the left’s economic theory come crashing down like a Statue of Lenin, but their entire view of US power has to be fatally flawed, as well. Because if we make enough wealth to be able to buy our oil at prices set by the seller—consult reality for confirmation of this annoying fact—then perhaps we are not in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to steal oil from poor Arabs. There must be some other reason for it. Something completely unintelligible and unknowable: national security, perhaps, or simple disgust with torture and repression and terrorism. Things like that.
Get this through your heads, you socialist ninnies! There is not a big, limited pot of wealth that is filled with the Magic Sweat of Authentic Third World Laborers, that America uses its military to steal from when we run out of wealth here at home.
Here’s something even the dimmest hippy protester / poet should be able to wrap his mind around:
You buy a legal pad: $1.29
You steal a Bic pen from the counter at Kinko’s: free.
You write the script for Weekend at Bernies 3: Bernie’s Revenge!: free.
You hire someone to type it: $30.00
You have Kinko’s print 5 copies: $62.20
You mail the 5 copies: $7.82
5 idiots in Hollywood love the idea: free
They enter a bidding war: free
You get a check for: one… million… dollars!So let’s see… that’s $1,000,000, minus the $101.30 in expenses… uh… that means… You, the village idiot, have just raised the Gross Domestic Product by, uh, one million freaking dollars, and have made a personal profit of $999,898 dollars and 69 cents.
Where did the $999,898.69 come from? It came from thin air! You created it, out of nothing. You added value to the stock of paper and ink you started with. From the monumental talent you possess, the gift of intellect, the pen that made Shakespeare weep with envy, you have created WB3. You’ve given millions of people two hours of side-splitting hilarity, for which they will part with $8.00… and you have created wealth. What’s more, when you go and blow it all on the pointless material crap that makes life so much fun, you’ll be bringing in a little extra for the Sea-Doo distributor, the BMW dealer, the girls at Cheetahs in Las Vegas, and all the others. Not to mention putting—I dunno—maybe half a million freaking dollars into welfare, Social Security, Medicare, the National Endowment for the Arts and the world’s first fusion-powered, laser-armed, flying stealth submarine, the USS George W. Bush.
You did not have to steal $999,898.69 from a farmer in Angola.
And in just the same way as your finished screenplay is worth more than the total cost of the paper and ink you needed to write it, so too is my 2000 Ford Escort ZX2 worth more than the hunk of iron ore, the silica for the glass, the chemicals for the plastic and tires, and the cost of the factory, the electricity to run the factory, and the salary of the people who build the car. That car, like that screenplay, has greater value than the raw materials that comprise it. Through human ingenuity, value is added. Wealth is created from thin air.
Now, as I have said many times before, Government has only a very few ways to discourage certain actions:
- Criminalization
- Taxation
- Propaganda
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
What’s Your Trigger Point?
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Did you ever hear the parable about the Frog and the Pot of Boiling Water? For the purposes of moving our little morality play forward, I will assume you have not and briefly recap it. If you take a frog and drop him into a pot of boiling water, he will instantly jump out of the pot. However, if you place him in a pot of room temperature water, then slowly turn up the heat, the frog will quietly sit there and be boiled alive. (How slowly? I leave that answer as an exercise for the student. Send me your results by e-mail - NOT in person.)
Of course, this presupposes that humans are smarter than frogs when it comes to self-preservation.
But when it comes right down to it, which is worse, losing your life or losing the freedom with which to enjoy that life?
We now have a government that is worlds removed from the intentions planned for this nation by our founders. Instead of the freedom of the press, we have attack-dog media. Instead of freedom of speech, we have crucifixes dipped in feces that is called “Art”, and subsidized (at gunpoint) by the very people it is meant to offend! Instead of the right to keep and bear arms, we have whole cities and States where it is illegal for a citizen, who has been accused of no wrongdoing at any point in his life, to carry a weapon where others might see it. Instead of the right to own property, we have the Supreme Court deciding that it was okay to take property from one citizen and give it to someone else, so long as the new owner agrees to pay more taxes. Instead of the freedom of speech, we have “political correctness” and “sensitivity seminars”. And laws against hate speech, but only against the so-called “victim” classes. (The victim is entitled to be as hateful as he wants.)
And now, instead of the right to offer one’s services freely in a free market, we have governments ordering some businesses to behave in certain self-destructive ways, and deciding what ordinary citizens would earn for their professional services.
That is on top of the overwhelming tax burden about to be imposed on anyone who actually manages to still be a productive member of society. You see, when you just dump a shitload of currency into the market without actually putting in something for those dollars to buy, then the total value of the dollar will decrease in direct proportion to the amount you just expanded the supply. (If there are 100 $1 bills in circulation and 100 potatoes available to buy, then the price of each potato would be $1. If you add another 100 $1 bills without adding something for it to be used on, then you have 200 $1 bills chasing the 100 potatoes, making each potato cost $2 - a 100% increase. That doesn’t mean the potato is suddenly twice as large, but that the dollar is only half as big.)
What happens when we dump most of a trillion dollars into a market that is only about 12 trillion dollars for the entire continent? That means everything will suddenly jump to be 8% more expensive. Across the board. And that is just the average. That kind of a jump will cause some people to stop buying certain luxury items, which will wipe out their markets, laying off more workers, and a vicious cycle starts. The last time we had this happen, unemployment was in the double digits for YEARS. Banks have to recoup their loans, too, so the Interest Rate will start climbing as banks start trying to tighten the money supply, too, following the lead of the Federal Reserve.
It’s ultimately fatal to an economy. See Zimbabwe and their recent currency revaluation, where $1,000,000,000,000 (yes, that is one TRILLION) of the old Zimbabwe dollars is equal to one of the new dollars.
And what is the ONLY method of removing all that money from circulation? Taxation or outright seizure by the only power to legally utilize force to take something from its owners.
At what point do we jump? When does “preserve, protect and defend” kick in?
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
A parting thought from Charles Beard: “You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our Founding Fathers used in the struggle for Independence.”
UPDATE: Great Minds Think Alike. (h/t Ragin’ Dave)
That any Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of America or Judicial Order by the Judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several States or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States of America by the government of the United States of America.
I think they have a good idea. Pass it on to your respective State Legislators.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Not Just A Man, But A Gentleman
I applaud Helo’s efforts at preventing the pussification and emasculation of the American male, and wish to contribute bits of knowledge from my own experience.
I went to three different schools during my four “high school years” (Freshman thru Senior), and the one I was at the longest actually had a course for the guys titled, “Being A Gentleman”. It was about the day-to-day gestures that involved public behavior (such as “precede a lady down stairs, but follow her up them, in case she stumbles"), but it was also about some important lessons involving honor and honesty.
I think the honor and honesty parts are more important.
But let’s start with some of the simple stuff, shall we?
- Be polite - when dealing with others, no matter what their social status, always act as though they are your equal. Call it noblesse oblige if you must, but speak in a calm and civil tone to everyone. You will not be remembered by how you treat your superiors, but by how you treat your juniors. Be especially polite to those older than you.
- Never curse in public - this does not mean you don’t get to express anger, just that you should never use vulgarity to do so. There are many more impressive insults that can be used in any given situation than those based solely on Carlin’s Seven Words.
- Speak calmly and quietly - a famous actor once said “important people speak slowly and less important speak quickly, because they are afraid that no one will listen”. Speak as though your ideas are worth waiting for, and people will treat them that way, too.
- Don’t lose your temper - this is nothing but a show of weakness to those around you, implying that you cannot control your emotions. And if you can’t control your own emotions (which are entirely a product of the processes inside your own head), what else are you losing control of?
- Don’t interrupt - it is rude and says to the person speaking that you have no regard for what they are saying, because what you have to say is more important. (This is a pet peeve of mine, and why I love writing like this so much more than carrying on a tete a tete conversation. I have the opportunity to not only finish, but polish, a sentence until it says what I want before it gets published. I also do well when teaching a medium-to-large group, but that is another issue.)
- Remember the Golden Rule - Treat others just as well as you would expect to be treated.
If you can think of any others, I invite you to tell us.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
I Wanna Talk About…
Socialism. I wish to try and explain what socialism is, and where it comes from. No, not the history of it, but the inherent human urge to install socialist authorities into government.
And why this is a bad thing.
Socialism has been defined as:
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.
The main problem with trying to implement such a system is long since proven - people are different, with different skills and abilities and talents and wants and needs and desires.
Oh, not what you were thinking? Then follow me down the rabbit hole, and see where that fact leads us…
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Higher prices are actually good for the economy
Higher prices happen because of one of two things have happened:
- a large-scale calamity has occurred, making the item being sought harder to get (such as after a natural disaster)
- some event has made the item being sought seem more intrinsically valuable, even though the total access and supply has not changed (such as the price of gold going up, even though there has been no sudden loss of supply)
This is a Patriot’s Journey post. Others participating this year are: The Bastidge, the wonderful people at The Line Is Here, Doug at Inessential Musings and Shortbus from The Edge of Reason
Some examples might make this easier to understand.
Posit a hurricane (say, Katrina or Andrew) hitting the coastline of a heavily populated urban area. Homes are destroyed by the hundred-fold (not to mention loss of power and other utilities), making many people homeless and in need of immediate shelter from the elements. That means that many people would start looking for a hotel room.
Let’s follow our hypothetical family of four - Mom, Dad, Cindy-Lou and little Knothead - as they attempt to find necessary items and a hotel room.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
The Broken Window fallacy
I was just watching Neil Cavuto (well, listening, since I was facing the other way), and heard some moron advocate the economic fallacy that “creative destruction is good for the economy”.
The idea is an odd one, and easily disproven, even though it is a popular fallacy.
The scenario is this: a shop keeper is open for business when some young ruffian comes along and tosses a brick through the front window of his shop, shattering it. People come along to see the damage and start contemplating that the broken window is actually a good thing, because the shopkeeper will now have to hire a glazier to replace the window, and the glazier therefore gets business he might not have otherwise gotten. The glazier will then be able to spend that additional income on things he needs, causing additional ripples throughout the economic cycle, and that must therefore be a good thing for the economy as a whole.
Therefore, destruction is a good thing for the economy.
One problem.
The shopkeeper, who had been slowly accumulating a small sum of money he had wanted to spend on (say) a new suit, must now perforce spend those accumulated funds on a new window instead of the new suit he had wanted. So instead of having a window and a new suit, he is forced to be happy with just having the window. And while his money would go to the glazier, causing that ripple, it is now not going to go to the tailor, who would have made the new suit, and then spent that income in those expanding ripples, exactly as the glazier did.
But now the economy is missing a new suit, and is just that much poorer, since the wealth that would have created it now must be used to repair the damage. But because this new suit is never seen (since it was never made), the missing suit escapes the notice of the public, and the only one who knows about it is the shopkeeper. This is because Need is not the same as Demand. The shopkeeper didn’t need a new window, because he already had a window, and the savings would have been used for a different demand.
If you ever hear anyone arguing that natural disasters are good for the economy, feel free to laugh at them, and invite them to stand behind what they believe by destroying their belongings.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Wow. Just… wow
I found this clip over at Ace’s HQ, and it is possibly the most incisive dissection of the Liberal mindset I have ever seen.
Watch it. Save it. Learn it.
“Anything other than indiscriminiteness is the evil of having discriminated.”
Evan Sayet is a conservative writer and producer, and clearly someone who has given this a great deal of careful thought. It’s kinda long (about 50 mins), but take the time to watch the whole thing. You’ll thank me later.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
A little out of date
I have been turned onto this site recently by two different people, one in a blog entry, the other in an e-mail (and the two are almost certainly unrelated, AFAIK), and I recognized the name, since I have been an avid reader of Sci-Fi for a long time, but have never really gotten into his books.
The name of this author is Orson Scott Card, and he also writes a weekly column, which has now been bookmarked as a weekly read.
But I ran across this incredible essay that sums up what I mean about a VERY divisive issue quite well.
That issue has much to do with several other of my personal pet peeves - judicial activism rather than vox populi, Professional Victimhood, others trying to enforce a specific morality by using government force, and proponents insulting any who oppose as a “hater” or accuse them of acting out of fear.
Care to guess? I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with “Romosexual Carriage”.
A little dialogue from Lewis Carroll:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
The Massachusetts Supreme Court has not yet declared that “day” shall now be construed to include that which was formerly known as “night,” but it might as well.
By declaring that homosexual couples are denied their constitutional rights by being forbidden to “marry,” it is treading on the same ground.
Do you want to know whose constitutional rights are being violated? Everybody’s. Because no constitution in the United States has ever granted the courts the right to make vast, sweeping changes in the law to reform society.
I have made many of the same points in opposition to the current attempts - that homosexuals are not forbidden to marry (just that the State won’t recognize it), that they are permitted to marry a person of the opposite gender (and OSC points out that this has been occurring all through history, with both male and female homosexuals getting married and having children), and male-female marriage is the force behind the development of civilization.
But Mr. Card has those “Hedley LaMarr” fingers ("purtier than a twenny-doller whore") and I can only urge you to Read The Whole Thing. I will certainly be catching up on his other published works as soon as I can.
I will be happy to debate any of the points he raises. But leave the insults at home.