An Eruditious Antinomy

Though it's certainly cynical to believe that both political parties just take all our taxes, and then some, to pay off their own individual constituencies, it’s worth at least considering that at least when the Republicans are in power and cut taxes for the wealthy and funnel billions to the military that the country at least benefits economically by creating new jobs, higher GDP, more rich people plus arguably slight economic improvements over time for the middle and lower classes. But when the Democrats are in power and raise taxes and funnel billions to their constituency of unions, public employees, the educational system, politically correct scientists and the downtrodden, both real and imagined, the economy stagnates and no one does any better economically except those with a government job or those receiving grants, subsidies or stipends of some nature from Uncle Sam. I think it was H.L. Mencken who touched eruditiously on this antinomy when he said,* ‘Democracy is an exercise in pillage and each election is a referendum on future stolen property.’ The antinomy being that from a flawed system driven by a ostensibly single underlying, corrupting, political process, the greater economic common good is better served by the one party favoring self-interest and the more productive elite minority.

Voting for Democrats is, at least in respect to America’s economy, quite simply throwing out the good in pursuit of the perfect - the practical for the ideal. Americans seem to have a terrible time these days accepting that timeless colloquial maxim, that everything in politics is a choice between the lesser of two evils. Sorry guys, but just because you don’t like either Party very well, you still gotta choose. So you might as well be practical and choose the one that at least has a vague recollection how to balance a checkbook, has the 'immoral' constitution necessary to terminate an underperforming employee and knows how to create something other than a government job.

Politicians who believe they can 'fix everything' historically and inevitably do more damage than good. This widespread belief that America is broken and needs to be overhauled is dangerous. We’d all be a lot better off if our leaders and our citizenry were content with making small improvements over time. I apologize for raining on many of the idealistic Obamanista’s parades out there, but as far as our economy is concerned, trickle down is better than nothing and there is no 'third way'.

*I very well might be the first person in human history to use those two words together in the same sentence.

M.D.T.

Was Santa Clause a Conservative?

Thank you Doug. You and I have concertedly for most of a year now strived our utmost to throw light on the most perplexing issues of our era. I now propose to you and our listeners that we not only have a cultural war on our hands, but worse yet, a ‘Santa Claus Crisis’! It all goes back to that ‘naughty or nice’ thing. Have recent generations really been rewarded differently when they were children dependent upon their individual good or bad behavior? I know I had my doubts early on, since even though I was clearly the more exemplary child in every respect, my two brothers enjoyed consistently equal holiday compensation.

Did Santa Claus ever deny a child a present because they were just plain rotten? Did drugs? Cheated at school? Tortured the family cat?

I’d like to think that at one time, a long time ago, it made a difference to Santa and others how kid’s behaved. But clearly today that would be impossible since it would require making an actual personal judgment about what is good or bad, naughty or nice. Plus we’d have to hold children responsible for their behavior. Just think of the irreparable psychological damage that could be done if we denied one of our children a Christmas present for any reason! It’s bad enough that some children get lavish, expensive gifts while others receive only menial K-Mart trinkets! On the grounds of the need for achieving higher self-esteem for young people everywhere I propose immediate emergency national legislation to equalize the monetary value of Christmas gifts to all children under 18, even those in prison. None should receive a gift worth more than $29.95, the national mean average for a Christmas present! ( Price check by Amazon.com )

Yes, friends and listeners, we have a Santa Clause crisis. Are we a nation where wealth and position are determined by virtuous behavior and individual judgment, or a ‘St. Nickocracy’ where all benefit equally irrespective of their individual hard work, free decisions and self-restraint? Can we ever agree again, as a people, on what behaviors should or should not be rewarded?

Alas, I’m afraid Santa is no longer a conservative. Though at one time I think that he most certainly was. If he hadn't been, he would never have imposed such ridiculous conditions like being “naughty or nice” as a prerequisite for judicious Christmas remuneration in the first place.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FREEDOM FORUM LISTENERS AND THANK YOU FOR TUNING IN TO OUR PROGRAM!

FREEDOM FORUM – 12/18/99


M.D.T.

Done Gone Rogue

You know, sometimes I think it would almost be worth it, to me, to live in a country where everyone was middle class or less just so I wouldn’t ever have to hear again, ‘In such a rich country it’s a shame this… or a disgrace that...’ Now listen up s.f.b.’s ... COUNTRIES WOULDN’T BE RICH IN THE FIRST PLACE IF THEY HAD DIVIDED UP THE WEALTH OF THOSE WHO HAD ATTAINED IT! DEVELOPING COUNTRIES THAT ADOPT THIS LEFTIST, NEO-MARXIST, CLAPTRAP IDEALOGY REMAIN POOR FOREVER! That’s why liberals only exist in rich countries: there’s no ‘somebody else’s money’ to spend more compassionately in the poor ones. Leftists in poor countries are revolutionaries, not liberals. They simply physically expropriate, at the point of a gun, wealth from the few remaining 'haves' to pay for their cigars and the people’s annual medical exams* . Not a bad definition of a liberal enshrouded there; a liberal is someone who wants to force someone else to spend their own money to assuage what they and their ilk perceive to be the world’ s injustices.

Actually heard a caller on Mark Levine state that they didn’t have health insurance but saw no reason why someone else should be taxed at half their income to provide it for them. Are there more than 10% of Americans born after 1960 that would agree with that?

*Ever heard that, ‘In Cuba at least they have health care.' ( Eee Gad )


M.D.T.

Free Will Revisited

The very essence of what it means to be human is predicated upon the existence of free will. It’s impossible to even imagine any story, book or movie where at least part of the drama or interest isn't derived from the observer's identification with a character's moment of decision; that moment when we as observers wonder what he, she or they are going ... to do next. What else are our lives but grand, unique stories that we ourselves assist in writing the pages each and every day? A human life without choice is the very definition of an ‘absurd’ existence. One’s life can never be, in any real sense, ‘absurd’ for those that have the courage, intelligence, imagination and faith to posit their own values to the world at large as 'good'. How can any chosen human action be deemed to be 'for the greater good' or to have any value whatsoever if we share no commonality of what 'the good' actually is? *To believe that all values are individual and equal is not tolerance but nihilism. If irreconcilable value systems are at the root of all war, so be it. Live free or die. Those who swim in the miasma of value relativity cannot but ultimately drown in their own shifting and ephemeral re'solutions de jour. And paradoxically, isn't the position that we should all be nonjudgmental a judgment in itself? Can't one be more intolerant of the intolerants than the intolerants themselves? Perhaps sadly, perhaps divinely, to live is to choose; and for all but the world's would be Raskolnikovs, at some point perhaps the best any of us can do is to relish this one in a gadzillion opportunity to choose our own way, day by day, and pray for guidance.

And just where does our common idea of the good come from? Now that's about the biggest question imaginable! No progress since Plato.

M.D.T.

Icarus's Wings

Leftist leaders and 'visionaries' love to take refuge in a future that’s too far off to accurately predict – slowing climate change and creating a new sustainable green economy conveniently will take decades and massive public investment before we'll even have a hint whether it's working. With the overwhelming majority of their ongoing projects it’s always too soon to tell with any accuracy how things are going plus their progress is always serendipitously too difficult to measure. How do we measure what a child is learning? Has the percentage of Americans living in poverty changed in 40 years? Are there fewer homeless per capita? Just how long will it take to achieve ‘social justice’? To succeed the Democratic agenda axiomatically seems to always require limitless money (aka 'public investment') and unspecified amounts of time. Similarly, there is no definable end nor identifiable line items that can ever be individually budgeted or checked off as ‘done’ within their agendas. Ponder just how absurd it is to ask, ’How long will it take to reduce greenhouse gases 25%, how are we going to do it ,what will it cost and can we afford it?’ Or, 'Just how much would it cost to eliminate povery once and for all and how would we do it?' Any idea how many global summits are required to achieve global nuclear disarmament? Meanwhile, all the prosaic, flat-earth, unintuitive, pragmatic (not infrequently Christian) selfish business people ( aka the mules pulling the cart ) are puting in overtime dealing with such pedestrian matters of the day as providing food to the grocery stores every morning by 6AM and gasoline that's cheaper than bottled water or developing a vaccine for the swine flu. (Though presumedly they could all do it cheaper and better if they had a little competition from the government - l.o.l.)

Is the idea of a conservative ‘visionary’ by definition an oxymoron simply due to the conservative’s inherent nature to feel compelled to supply actual constructive, measurable means to achievable ends? Wasn’t it John Kennedy that said some look at the world and say why, but I look and say why not? What if he had said, ‘But I look and say what, when and how much?' Nothing very inspiring about that now, is there! How many visionaries does it take to build a nuclear plant, a Las Vegas Casino or a new version of Windows? About the same amount as angels that can fit on the head of a pin.

Everyday necessity has a stubborn habit of consistently trimming Icarus's wings. It's a good thing too, lest the left's visionaries fly too high with our uninspired pocket books.

M.D.T.

Slip Sliding Away

Nothing terrifies a liberal more than the prospect of having no one to blame and no one to ridicule. That would leave them alone with their own incompetence. If there weren’t greedy rich people to carry the shibboleth of ‘oppressors’ thereby absolving themselves and their purported victims of responsibility, it would be necessary for the left to invent them. At the very foundation of liberalism is a cause and effect world; a godless world where human behavior can be reduced ultimately to a combination of environmental factors; the study of human behavior, personality and outcomes perceived as a science. It’s not Ginger’s fault she’s a drug addict and a prostitute – she came from the slums, had no productive role models, was ignored in our under-funded schools, was molested as a child etc. For them it’s just simple cause and effect; poverty equals human failing. Post hoc ergo proptor hoc. ( A logical fallacy ) The left believes, by in large, there’s no free will in this world; that free will’s a Christian invention, a historical anachronism that doesn’t jibe with their scientific-materialistic world view i.e. a world without spirit. There's nothing divine or radically exceptional about mankind. We're part of the natural order. But there’s a lot more involved within the Darwin vs. Creationism argument than monkeys and men; there’s free will vs. determinism; there’s personal responsibility vs. environmental absolution. Can Man be deemed in any way truly free if he has no soul or if some part of him doesn’t stand somehow outside of nature, beyond cause and effect?

Now, with the specter of G.W. fading in the distance, it’s a virtual certainty that these impostors, these incompetents, aka, the radical elements of the Democratic party now in power, will invent ever new bugaboos at every turn to justify their lack of results and policy failures. Already they posit an institutional racism rooted intransigently within the indigenous American psyche that’s purported to be blocking health care reform. ( It’s not Obama’s fault ) Cries of racism wail siren-like over the media airwaves as the economic downturn and current malaise resists the antiquated fix-its of the old left; those tired and historically discredited fix-its such as leveling the playing field by disincentivising economic outcomes and ‘stimulating’ the economy with massive Keynesian deficit spending supplemented by yet ever greater environmental and financial regulation. When the pillorying of the powerless Republican Party as obstructionist no longer holds water with the American public, then the blame will shift to other countries, the Chinese, Israelis, Indians, Mexicans with their alleged unfair trade practices coupled with illegal immigration. The dark harbinger of protectionism looms. Finally, at last, only the people themselves and democracy itself* are left to blame; those sad, demented souls twisted by over 200 years of capitalist greed and ethnocentric religious dogma – so ethically contorted that they no longer even know what’s good for themselves. Ultimately the more vocal individualistic political opposition is criminalized, barred from the public forum, their opinion banned as ‘hate speech’ and key nonconforming industries are quasi-collectivized to insure their forwarding of ‘the public good’. ( Let’s tax away profitable self-sustaining industries such as coal and oil but subsidize non-competitive ones like solar and wind ).

And so can go the slow anesthetizing descent of a free society founded upon individual liberty and responsibility into one where ‘the buck never got here’; a society of faith, self-criticism, success and failure morphs into a soft totalitarian regime; a society that cherishes free speech above all else transmogrifies into one that enforces some bizarre, Kafkaesque, shape-shifting, unconstitutional nostrum of political correctness. And so we slip by one single, new, self-ordained societal victim at a time. And so the far left paves the way for a new generation of leaders; leaders cloaked in a lupine mantle of supreme compassion yet strong and ruthless enough to govern a country by imposing fairness and equality; a country that crushes wrong thinking; a country simplified to only the oppressors and the oppressed. And so our national flight away from personal responsibility and the sacrosant ideality of individual free will paves the way for America’s own Juan and Evita Chavez.

M.D.T.

Whoah God only knows, God makes his plan
The information's unavailable to the mortal man
We're workin' our jobs, collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip sliding away

Paul Simon

*I include the following excerpt from a recent, self-absolving The Guardian U.K. editorial.
“But it must be recognised that it's not just Obama's shortcomings that are causing the problem. The very structure of the American political system is at the heart of these failures. For example, thwarting Obama on a regular basis is an unrepresentative senate where "minority rule" prevails and undermines what a majority of the country may want. With two senators elected per state, regardless of population, California with more than 35 million people has the same number of senators as Wyoming with just half a million residents. This constitutional arrangement greatly favours low population states, many of which tend to be conservative, producing what one political analyst has called "a weighted vote for small-town whites in pickup trucks with gun racks."

If It Breaths Tax It

Clearly, it’s understandable that a such a trifling matter as new U.S. protectionist trade legislation against China passing the House couldn’t even make the pages of our major newspapers during a time when celebrity funeral chasing has become the event de jour for our national media. Our ever reliable Wall Street Journal however heretically printed,

China's central government reiterated its opposition to carbon tariff policies and said they could provoke a trade war, ratcheting up the rhetoric as lawmakers in the U.S. consider legislation to reduce greenhouse gases.

But last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that included such tariffs in order to level the playing field between U.S. industry and foreign competitors. China's export-reliant economy is extremely vulnerable to any moves such as a carbon tax that could raise the costs of its exports. WSJ 7/03/09

The specter of exploiting ‘climate change’ to protect domestic industry looms ominously over any world economic recovery. It’s frequently appeared to me that the greatest potential for evil occurs when there’s too much consensus on any given issue. Wherever there's mass consensus, there’s always someone sufficiently keen and malevolent enough lurking to exploit it. Peace is everyone disagreeing. (Can't get enough people moving together in one direction to do any real harm). The next Great Depression might easily be the result of the legislatures in economically stagnant democratic countries agreeing that punitive tariffs on developing countries are necessary to ‘Save the Planet’. Clearly no sacrifice is too great when the future well-being of every cuddly, slimy, scaly, buzzing, photosynthesizing, growling, chirping, fornicating thing on earth is at stake. Make no mistake, a deadly cocktail comprised of record deficits, increased intrusion by government into the private sector and trade protectionism is exactly what triggered the greatest economic collapse of modern times and the consequent world war that followed*. And yes, friends, recyclers, countrymen, it could happen again.

Ronald Reagan famously said, ‘Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.’ He should have added, ‘If it moves or breaths, tax it’, exhalation being a major contributor of CO2.

*One's compelled to ask oneself could they really be this stupid? Well, enlighted people paid thousands for tulip bulbs and bought condominiums with no money down on adjustable rate mortgages that hadn't been built yet with no intention of living in them and some folks walk around naked so they don't have to wash their clothes so often to cut down on the use of chemical cleaners that they use in their washing machines. Wanna really reduce your carbon footprint? Kill yourself. Maybe under national health care we'll finally get our free, organic, prescription, pain-free suicide medication. In Oregon, there's still a co-pay.

M.D.T