STRAIGHT FROM LUDWIG VON MISES

FOR A WELL-REASONED and well-written treatise on the virtues of property ownership as the salve for what curses us as a people in constitutional crises, check out this essay...

REMOVING THE FISHWRAP, SMELLING THE STENCH

Thanks to DisEnfranchised Voterfor this entry posted over at the Confluence, a high octane PUMA site whose energetic post-election dialogue nearly matches the buoyancy of those frothy days in early September when I first discovered this most kinetic of political creatures.

I AGREE WITH Joseph Cannon that I expected a few Republicans to sound more “progressive” than Obama. But I also agree with blogger Falstaff that Obama isn’t a conservative in liberal’s clothing. He’s just what many of us predicted him to be: a blank sheet of paper, an empty suit, a person who has no idea who he is or where he stands. He’s only cared about doing whatever he could to get to the top without even thinking about anyone else. It is why he can sound like a conservative because he seriously doesn’t understand the difference. He goes with whatever the status quo is until an adviser tells him differently.

Here is what Falstaff said:

I don’t think this can be understood in conscious terms or in the sphere of political judgment. Contra some PUMAs, I don’t think he’s some kind of clever right-winger in liberal’s clothing. I think we’re seeing someone with a deep need not to be seen—including (indeed, most importantly) by himself. In stark contrast to Hillary, he doesn’t have the first idea who’s actually in there. He’s even hiding in his autobiography, where he becomes more opaque as one reads.

Thing is, this job does not permit invisibility. As I’ve also posted elsewhere, he’s walked out onto the biggest stage of all, and he won’t get off it without us and him knowing who, in fact, he is. That’s the case in palmy times, and it’s certainly the case in a tempest.

Having said all that, my point here was somewhat simpler. It was about preparation. I did credit him with skill at that. He was better prepared for some aspects of the primaries than was Hillary—he had what turned out to be an intelligent game plan. It was all he had, of course—his ability to run plays was really limited, all float-like-a-butterfly, no sting-like-a-bee. But figuring out about the Net, about the generational emotions of Millenials, and about how to game the caucuses was smart tactically. But it turns out that his ability to prepare seems to be limited to campaigning. He and his team don’t seem to have been able to prepare for actual governing.

And the question he faces, and that we all face, is whether he can become a person in real time, in the midst of the tempest. Or, more accurately, what person it’ll turn out is in there, what person he has been so terrified of his entire life and that he’s pervasively and energetically kept in the box. And, then, whether than person is up to the demands of the moment.

It should be obvious by now that our new President is a puppet on a string and we now have a Puppet Government run by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Rahm Emmanuel. And what nonsense is this—rumors that what may be coming down the pike is an election to remove presidential term limits? God forbid. Our State Department just congratulated Venzuela on it's successful election to eliminate term limits—pure unadulterated penis envy!

Totalitarianism all across the chessboard, what a concept! To paraphrase the prophet from Hibbing, oooooh Mama, is this REALLY the end—to be stuck inside Big Government with no liberty to choose again? Should patriotic Americans (and we know what we mean) act as if all this para-democratic nonsense is just for silly kicks or is this just the set-up for the global tribulation next in line to render a few licks across the neck for the menacing tribes of Arab supremacy, and what about China, Russia? Has anybody thick in the business of running this once great nation read to the end of the friggin' manual, yet?

Okay, abort panic mode. Cooler heads must prevail. Steve Lingus of Anderson, SC puts our dilemma into ample clear terms:

The demise of the USA began when we decided to be the guardians of freedom for the peoples of the world and were willing to give our manufacturing to other countries to foster democracy in those lands. Now we pay the price. We are now dependent on foreign labor to make the goods we need. Gone are the slogans that said "Crafted with pride in the USA". Our clothes and shoes come from other lands as does some of our food. Corporate CEOs share this blame as well as to increase the bottom line it was more profitable to make goods overseas where wages were cheaper and there was less regulation. The current economic situation does not help much either as people cut back on all but the necessities which are made in China. The road to recovery will be difficult but as a strong people we will survive that is unless President Obama decides to put us under UN jurisdiction.

Let me add these finishing touches to the discussion. First, you cannot have "free trade" with non-capitalist market sectors. A free market system cannot compete fairly with slave/prison/child labor. Second, China refuses to float its currency on the world market, but instead props up its currency by fixing it to an unreasonable sub-value. This protection in turn guarantees its exports low prices in relation to other countries, and is just another way to dump products in other markets at below cost. The US must set trade policy to reflect reasonable currency values and impose tariffs that reflect those imposed on our products by the trading partner. If Chinese products were valued at their true cost, they would be priced competitively with goods made in the US and other "free" economies.

CRASHING THE UTOPIAN BUS

SCRAPING THE BARREL and putting in buckshot, hey, get your hands off my scripture, and help me out from under this utopian bus, please. No, I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I did find this tasty bit of humor at the clutch hitting Confluence site. Man, will I be glad when this election is over, EVEN if it means that REAL HOPE becomes as rare as the great spotted owl, also. The suspense is killing me! Anyhoover, read on...

Came into work today and saw this notice in the employee lounge:

Notice to All Employees

As of November 5, 2008, when President Obama is officially elected into office, our company will install a few new policies which are in keeping with his new, inspiring issues of change and fairness:

1. All salespeople will be pooling their sales and bonuses into a common pool that will be divided equally between all of you. This will serve to give those of you who are underachieving a “fair shake.”
2. All low level workers will be pooling their wages, including overtime, into a common pool, dividing it equally amongst yourselves. This will help those who are “too busy for overtime” to reap the rewards from those who have more spare time and can work extra hours.
3. All top management will now be referred to as “the government.” We will not participate in this “pooling” experience because the law doesn’t apply to us.
4. The “government” will give eloquent speeches to all employees every week, encouraging it’s workers to continue to work hard “for the good of all.”
5. The employees will be thrilled with these new policies because it’s “good to spread the wealth.” Those of you who have underachieved will finally get an opportunity; those of you who have worked hard and had success will feel more “patriotic.”
6. The last few people who were hired should clean out their desks. Don’t feel bad, though, because President Obama will give you free healthcare, free handouts, free oil for heating your home, free food stamps, and he’ll let you stay in your home for as long as you want even if you can’t pay your mortgage. If you appeal directly to our Democratic Congress, you might even get a free flat screen TV and a coupon for free haircuts (shouldn’t all Americans be entitled to nice looking hair?)!

If for any reason you are not happy with the new policies, you may want to rethink your vote on November 4th.

Okay, that was a wonderful parody of the Obama Doctrine, but did you ever wonder where all this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed utopianism of the Uber Left got started? Here is a scholarly look at this utopianism and its more recent by-product that is currently sweeping the globe, and why incidentally, Barack Obama seems to feel that he is not necessarily America's first Black President, but he expects to be hailed as the first Black Global President by general acclamation, titular head of the United Nations, one presumes.

Don't you just LOVE the truth! Here is a short excerpt from the Lee Harris lengthy essay—The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing (The Utopian Leanings of Latter-day Radicalism).

America-bashing has sadly come to be “the opium of the intellectual,” to use the phrase Raymond Aron borrowed from Karl Marx in order to characterize those who followed the latter into the twentieth century. And like opium it produces vivid and fantastic dreams.

This is an intellectual tragedy. The Marxist left, whatever else one might say about it, has traditionally offered a valuable perspective from which even the greatest conservative thinkers have learned—including Schumpeter and Thomas Sowell. But if it cannot rid itself of its current penchant for fantasy ideology of the worst type, not only will it be incapable of serving this purpose; it will become worse than useless. It will become a justification for a return to that state of barbarism mankind has spent millennia struggling to transcend—a struggle that no one felt more keenly than Marx himself.

For the essence of utopianism, according to Marx, is the refusal to acknowledge just how much suffering and pain every upward step of man’s ascent inflicts upon those who are taking it, and instead to dream that there are easier ways of getting there. There are not, and it is helpful to no party to pretend that there are. To argue that the great inequalities of wealth now existing between the advanced capitalist countries and the Third World can be cured by outbreaks of frenzied and irrational America-bashing is not only utopian; it is immoral.

The Left, if it is not to condemn itself to become a fantasy ideology, must reconcile itself not only with the reality of America, but with its dialectical necessity—America is the sine qua non of any future progress that mankind can make, no matter what direction that progress may take.

The belief that mankind’s progress, by any conceivable standard of measurement recognized by Karl Marx, could be achieved through the destruction or even decline of American power is a dangerous delusion. Respect for the deep structural laws that govern the historical process—whatever these laws may be—must dictate a proportionate respect for any social order that has achieved the degree of stability and prosperity the United States has achieved and has been signally decisive in permitting other nations around the world to achieve as well. To ignore these facts in favor of surreal ideals and utterly utopian fantasies is a sign not merely of intellectual bankruptcy, but of a disturbing moral immaturity. For nothing indicates a failure to understand the nature of a moral principle better than to believe that it is capable of enforcing itself.

It is not. It requires an entire social order to shelter and protect it. And if it cannot find these, it will perish.

Read it all.

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND

IT SEEMS TO BE OKAY for certain corrupt individuals to violently overthrow the government of the United States whom they declare as racist oppressors, but the same crowd, including Barack Obama and the roll call of Democrats now in power have little empathy at all for the victims of truly oppressive governments who rape, torture, and murder its own citizens. Iraqi Kurds come to mind (and yes, we too, were against the invasion). But frankly, we are merely standing at the near edge of the killing fields to come...

We have been aware of this Obama-Ayers connection for well over a year. Glad somebody is finally grabbing onto the flames and riding the fury that is sure to follow. That somebody has a name, And her name is Sarah Palin. Now perhaps, more genuinely good folks will come to understand where Barack has been spending some of those "missing years" in his official biography.

But time moves along. Creep sets in. So where did the radical left take refuge? In the media and in academia, personifying the long march through the institutions. Students now leave the “education” houses more indoctrinated than educated, more susceptible to influence. And who is the corporate, elitist peddler of this influence? In short—the corporate media.

They couldn’t care less about their responsibilities to the American people, because the American people need fixing. They need to be saved from themselves. Such is the leftist worldview.

Imagine if we discovered that John McCain had launched his career from the Unabomber’s front porch. Do you think he would still be a reasonable presidential candidate? Oh course, some hide and seekers might, probably those same hide and seekers who think an Obama candidacy is a viable option for sane and dare I say it—patriotic—Americans.

One question remains. How can candidate Obama be the most liberal US Senator as well as this year's designated corporate shill for the banking interests who control the media, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and most of the other institutions that matter in the financial life of this nation and Western capitalism at large?

Perhaps this is our answer. Malleability and "transitional fall guy" are key concepts here that may encourage thought. The puppetmasters know no shame, and everybody wants to be a star. A loathsome result, this dichotomy often returns.

Meanwhile, there is this story that the McCain campaign will surely exploit in the coming days:

It seems that Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies (which was nothing more than a boot camp for radicalizing America's youth) in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993. Obama plans to use this nonprofit group, which he features on his campaign Web site, as the model for a national service corps. He calls his Orwellian program, "Universal Voluntary Public Service."

Read it all.

INSPIRING A RESPONSIBLE CREED

1. Freedom of religion

What we must defend:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." — First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

What we must defend it against:

"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." — CAIR co-founder and longtime Board Chairman Omar Ahmad (he denies saying it, but the original reporter stands by her story)

"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future." — CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper

The Muslim Brotherhood “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” — Mohamed Akram, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” May 22, 1991

2. Freedom of speech

What we must defend:

"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." — First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

What we must defend it against:

"In confronting the Danish cartoons and the Dutch film 'Fitna', we sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed. As we speak, the official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues. They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked." — Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference

"Pakistan will ask the European Union countries to amend laws regarding freedom of expression in order to prevent offensive incidents such as the printing of blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the production of an anti-Islam film by a Dutch legislator..." — Daily Times, June 8, 2008

3. Equality of rights before the law

What we must defend:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." — Declaration of Independence

What we must defend it against:

"The indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man. The indemnity paid for a Jew or Christian is one-third the indemnity paid for a Muslim. The indemnity paid for a Zoroastrian is one-fifteenth that of a Muslim." — 'Umdat al-Salik, o4.9

"Thus if [a] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. But if the man is not a Muslim and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution...Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash....Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim…then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain...Again, the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed....Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them." — Sultanhussein Tabandeh, A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

4. Governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

What we must defend:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." — Declaration of Independence

What we must defend it against:

Non-Muslims have "absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines." If they do, "the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life." — Syed Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Pakistani political party Jamaat-e-Islami

Never surrender. Never submit. Never be silenced. Freedom and independence forever.

Republished from yesterday's Jiihad Watch.

PROJECTING THE FINAL BLOW TO LIBERTY

AS WE PONDER the two rather "spotty" major candidates gearing down for the final leg in the 2008 race for the US presidency, let's reflect upon a few choice words written about the same time our own original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787.

No stranger to serious ideas, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship [rarely benign]. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.

"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance ;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage."

In other news, somewhat more to the point of this blog, given the pathetic and worrisome the lack of persuasive skills in navigating this country back to solid land exhibited by these two candidates, let's isolate the idea behind God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 by David Levering Lewis. This book, and similar books seems to suggest that we are quite unfortunate to be saddled with a "Eurocentric" culture and how severely "Islamic civilization" is being treated, unfairly and without just cause.

There are endless numbers of books detailing the dark side of European colonialism, some of them no doubt justified, yet comparatively few good books have been published on the victims of 1400 years of Islamic Jihad on several continents. The problem is that Islam gets too little criticism, not too much.

In contrast, we actually believe European culture is being slighted today. We now face a situation where the United Nations increasingly wants to ban "Islamophobia" across the world as hate speech, while books saying that Western civilization should have been wiped out are praised. Which civilization is actually being demonized here?

For much of its history, Europe has undeniably been a rather violent place, though this is not unique to Europe. We must question, however, whether Europeans are particularly "ethnocentric." After having spent a lot of time reading history from several continents, visiting other countries and talking to people from different cultures, the impression is that Europeans have, by and large, been less ethnocentric and a lot more willing to give credit to other cultures than is common elsewhere.

Frankly put, Western nations are being destabilized as a direct result of mass immigration from more truly oppressive countries scattered across the entire world, including, and especially Muslim ones. Our current problem is that we are too open-minded and naive, not that we are "too racist."

This is still a flaw in the empire suffering from the latest wrinkle of noblesse oblige, but precisely the opposite of the spirit we are constantly being accused of having.

BLEEDING HEARTS LIBERALS WITH TIGHT FISTS

The following article is from the desk of conservative columnist George F. Will, who takes a swipe at the liberal constituencies in our midst. Before we stoop to fiscal stereotyping, a quick glance at the money-raising abilities of his year's presidential hopefuls show another non-intuitive trend as both of the current Democratic candidates continue to out-trawl Republican candidate John McCain. Now read about liberal charity:

Residents of Austin, home of Texas's government and flagship university, have very refined social consciences, if they do say so themselves, and they do say so, speaking via bumper stickers. Don R. Willett, a justice of the state Supreme Court, has commuted behind bumpers proclaiming "Better a Bleeding Heart Than None at All," "Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty," "The Moral High Ground Is Built on Compassion," "Arms Are For Hugging," "Will Work (When the Jobs Come Back From India)," "Jesus Is a Liberal," "God Wants Spiritual Fruits, Not Religious Nuts," "The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans," "Republicans Are People Too -- Mean, Selfish, Greedy People" and so on. But Willett thinks Austin subverts a stereotype: "The belief that liberals care more about the poor may scratch a partisan or ideological itch, but the facts are hostile witnesses."

Sixteen months ago, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, published "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism." The surprise is that liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives.

If many conservatives are liberals who have been mugged by reality, Brooks, a registered independent, is, as a reviewer of his book said, a social scientist who has been mugged by data. They include these findings:

Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.

Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.

Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.

In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.

People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

Brooks demonstrates a correlation between charitable behavior and "the values that lie beneath" liberal and conservative labels. Two influences on charitable behavior are religion and attitudes about the proper role of government.

Read it all.