Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Making our society safe... How it used to be done

Newtown, Connecticut is on my mind. What a horror. What evil. The political among us have already seized upon the event to call for disarming all of those who didn't do it. Or, quoting Glen Reynolds in USA Today quoting Williams Burroughs:

"After a shooting spree," author William Burroughs once said, "they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it." Burroughs continued: "I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military."

Don't forget organized crime and other bad guys like the drug cartels in Northern Mexico who basically do not give a s**t about what is illegal or not.  They will also have guns, but you will not.
Originally Mexico had a clause in its Constitution, very similar to the Second Amendment, which guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms. Over the years, through incremental regulation, it has reached the point where only a few have such a right. They are the notoriously corrupt police, the army, the navy, the wealthy, the politicians and the criminals. Citizens are disarmed.

Long ago when I was young and traveling in Mexico, I used to worry about being shot by the only bullet in Tamaulipas, usually I fantasized that I would be shot by a Federale whom I had failed to bribe properly.  The constant was that I would simply become desaparecido... disappeared.  Gone, because the Citizens are powerless.

Have any of you read the stories as I have, about the small towns on the Mexican side of the border that wake up with hang tags on their doors, as if Fedex or UPS tried to deliver a package, but the tags inform them that they must vacate their town, abandon their homes within 24 hours, or they will be murdered along with their wives and children? These stories call to mind the plots to American movies about the frontier, about American folk heroes of the West. 

Mitt Romney's relatives in Mexico are part of a small community who have chosen to arm themselves, in violation of the law, to defend their town against attacks by the drug cartels.

Consider, if you will the cultural heritage reflected in the plots of our most cherished movies and literature even today. Ask "What is the natural order?". In movies consider, "The Magnificent Seven", "Open Range", "Shane", "Outlaw Josey Wales", "True Grit", "3:10 to Yuma" (1957 and 2007), "Pale Rider", "Torino". All of these plots revolve around a defenseless, either disarmed or ineffectual victim or victims, lacking skills in self defense, who depend on the law and good will to protect them, and are hopelessly vulnerable to the evil villain, until the hero arrives.

The hero is classically American. Usually hesitant to take up the murderous skill with which he has been gifted through hard experience, but ultimately willing to do so in the face of the uncontested murderous evil embodied by the villains in the story, the hero, not without knowledge of his own mortality,energized by outrage at the intimidation and bullying of the villain, knowledge of his own skill, and a desire to protect the innocent, takes up arms to protect them and himself even at the cost of his own life.

This willingness to fight for one's own life and that of one's compatriots against other men of evil intent is what is admirable in humans and is, in America, part of our folklore. Americans who populated the frontier were far from laws and institutional protections. They ultimately were responsible for their own safety, they could either step up, defend themselves, or die. The world may have changed somewhat, iphones, interconnectivity and so on, but Man has not changed. Man is a predator, voluntarily tamed by civilization, or not. Civilization is won and held amongst men only by armed conflict.

At a school, the police will, in the end, only arrive to assist with the dead. Any effective defense must come from within.  Jews who remember the absence of resistance to the Nazis espouse "never again" as a guiding principle.  They know the origins and growth of evil are dependent upon passivity in the face of evil.

Why then, the ongoing desire by the Left to disarm those that are law abiding and would possibly step up to defend the defenseless? In any one of these culturally iconic films, did the people in the small Kansas town, plagued by attacks from the outside, disarm themselves and allow the criminals to keep their arms? No. They stood their ground, for better or for worse, they kept their arms, practiced marksmanship, attempted to disarm the outsiders and hired skilled gun hands as sheriff when they needed to. Some died.

The answer is in the concept of Utopia.  They wish to that Man was not what he is.  They wish that God were not real and Man is good if only led in the right direction (by themselves).   In their Utopia they are God.  Whatever it is, say it and it is so.  So if I say Guns are evil and Man is not... is  it so? 

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Let them reap what they have sown

I haven't yet consolidated my thoughts on the election but here is an article that summarizes the downside.  I am still looking for the upside.  It may be that conservative response to this election result should be to gorge the beast on its own success.  Let him have it all.  Pass all his bills.  Increase the debt.  Once the consequences of his policies are experienced by all citizens, some of them may see the error of their ways.

If Obama continues on his present course the economy will collapse and dependent America will be directly affected.  Monetization of the debt will devalue US currency, inflation will set in and the ignorant masses that elected BO will suffer the fruits of their greed.

An alternative result of these conditions may be that the Obama administration creates government projects with government jobs in the tradition of FDR and hires his supporters while leaving the other 50% to fend for themselves.  He might move through executive fiat to favor one half the population (reward his friends) and expel the other half (punish his enemies).  This is the more likely scenario and could lead to serious  confrontations between states trying to protect their citizens and the federal government trying to redistribute their wealth to support the favored classes.  From observation this is well within the bounds of reality from this president.

There will likely be wars in the Middle East including the "Big One" between Iran and Israel with the US on the sidelines while Israel fights alone and the power vacuum created by Obama's feckless policies is filled with violence and chaos.  It is further likely that emboldened by the O administration's weakness, entrenched middle eastern terrorists who are already in the US and along our borders will bring the jihad to our shores as they have done elsewhere in the certainty that Obama will make their excuses for them.  By this time the O administration should be able simply take a government produced anti mohammed video off the shelf and use it to excuse whatever atrocity is committed, execute the producer (not the real one) and ignore the "bump in the road".

I am not optimistic.  I almost believe we should give it all to him and say "go get 'em big boy" knowing full well the depths of failure and blood that await.  Like new employees at the chocolate factory we say "eat all you want" and in a short time they are ill at the sight of chocolate and the theft and snacking is no longer a problem.  Perhaps we should accelerate the process, see if we can help it commit suicide from its own success.

Just saying.


http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/11/06/catastrophe/

Thursday, August 09, 2012

A Man of the People? Depends....

Here's another example of the Ideologist in Chief's no holds barred war on anything he that violates his green and leftist sensibilities.  Reality be damned!  We don't need no stinkin Indians anyway.  Where is Custer when we need him?
PHOENIX —
The federal government is a bull that has found yet another china shop, this time in Arizona. It seems determined to inflict, for angelic motives and progressive goals, economic damage on this state. And economic and social damage on Native Americans, who over the years have experienced quite enough of that at Washington's hands.
Read the whole thing.
 Effects of Washington's regulatory heavy hand

Barack Obama - Two Year Old with a New Country to Play With

On the day that Barack Obama stated (twice in different speeches) that he wants to do the same thing with manufacturing throughout the nation that he did with GM I became aware of this article.  Barack speaks as America's Hugo Chavez, ignorance and charisma being his dominant characteristics.

The EPA foolishly attempts to destroy the nation's coal industry

Sunday, August 05, 2012

Collectivist Ideology and Gun Control - Opiates for the Ill Informed

This is an overly long fb response to a comment that I considered particularly short on credulity.


I have tried to consider whether even to respond to your several comments to my few posts. Apparently I hit a hot button.

IS COMMUNISM DEAD AND GONE?  ANSWER: NO!


1.) Your assertion regarding the '50's is that Communism is now somehow irrelevant because of the fall of the Soviet Union.

Marxism, Leninism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism are different flavors of the same broth, based upon the Industrial Revolution era social observations of an academic (Marx) supported by a member of the elite (Engels. The published the "Communist Manifesto in 1848. The implementation of this ideology resulted in the murder of over a hundred million people, largely by their own governments, during the 20th century. Do you actually believe that the murderers of these millions simply put away their ideology and disappeared when the Berlin Wall fell? No. They were assimilated, ideology intact, into surviving societies. An obvious example of this is Russia, now run by the KGB remnants and actively undermining US positions worldwide, notably with China, Iran and Syria where they are suspected to have troops on the ground.

A key feature of Communism is that it assumes a ruling class drawn from the worker class, the "vanguard" that will rule until the worker's paradise is achieved, then voluntarily abdicate their authority. Private property, the basis of capitalism, is abolished and the State owns all. Individuals may use property and acquire goods only at the pleasure of the State. "You didn't build that" "There are plenty of smart people", "There are lots of hard working people" are reminders of the power of the State and its elite who administer it. Since Marxism is class based, it is hostile to individualism. Hmm? Once the individual is accepted as unimportant in the grand scheme of society bad things become permissible. Self described communist (Discover the Networks) Bill Ayers embodies the attitude permissible once the individual is irrelevant.

Here is testimony about Obama's friend and mentor Bill Ayers from an FBI informant quoted in Wikipedia:

"Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant who infiltrated The Weather Underground, testified before Congress that Ayers wanted to overthrow the United States government. In an interview in January 2009, Grathwohl stated that:

"The thing the most bone chilling thing Bill Ayers said to me was that after the revolution succeeded and the government was overthrown, they believed they would have to eliminate 25 million Americans who would not conform to the new order."[60]" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ&feature=player_embedded
While the testimony is horrific it is contested by Ayers. Here is Ayers' own statement about himself:
"Also in 2001, Ayers expressed his enduring hatred for the United States: “What a country. It makes me want to puke.”

At a 2007 reunion of former members of the Weather Underground and Students for a Democratic Society, Ayers reemphasized his contempt for the U.S., asserting that the nation's chief hallmarks included "oppression," "authoritarianism," and "a kind of rising incipient American form of fascism." "
and some interesting information regarding Barack Obama and Ayers from Discover the Networks.
"In 1994 Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Michael Klonsky were among those listed on a "Membership, Subscription and Mailing List" for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence, an offshoot of the Communist Party USA.

In 1995, Ayers and Dohrn hosted meetings at their Chicago home to introduce Barack Obama to their neighbors and political allies, as Obama prepared to make his first run for the Illinois state senate."

"In March 2011, Ayers addressed an Occupy Wall Street contingent in New York City and told them: "I get up every morning and think, today I’m going to make a difference. Today I’m going to end capitalism. Today I’m going to make a revolution. I go to bed every night disappointed but I’m back to work tomorrow, and that’s the only way you can do it.""

During the first 30 - 50 years of the 20th century Marxist ideology was seen by many, notably leftist scholars and literary types in America, as the next evolution of governance destined to replace capitalism. Despite its track record it is still seen as such by many today.

I mention all of the above to make certain that you know that political ideologies like religions (indeed, AS religion) are very powerful forces capable of ignoring plain evidence of success or failure. Bill Ayers is an example of a communist who went mainstream through academia to pursue his revolutionary ends.

Marxism is not dead and is still taught in American Universities as it should be. It should not be taught as a Utopian solution to the ills of Capitalism. It should be taught in the light of Hayek's work as the viral destructive ideology reflected in the "Black Book of Communism" responsible for death, destruction, dictatorship, and economic failure virtually everywhere it has been implemented.

While Marxism/Socialism inevitably leads to totalitarian government, economic failure (Soviet Union), it is always sold as the answer to the afflicted masses' frustration at their situation in life via claims of class discrimination by the Middle and Upper classes. If this sounds familiar it should. Just listen to Obama's campaign rhetoric.

Read Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom", "The Fatal Conceit", "The Constitution of Liberty" to gain insight into this mechanism or bury your head in the sand and suffer the consequences if the President gains another term.

IS GUN CONTROL A SOLUTION TO GUN CRIME?  ANSWER: NO!  (THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE)

2.) Your expressed sympathy for the victims of the shooting in Aurora is admirable. Your desire to ban the tools used by the madman is not. As many leftists are wont to do you embrace a feel good solution that is proven to be ineffective and actually encourages the behavior it purports to inhibit. Why would anyone think that it would reduce gun crime to deny honest citizens the right to bear arms for self defense?

Chicago, President Obama's hometown, has some of the most stringent gun laws anywhere. It is also one of the most dangerous cities in the world and currently more dangerous than Afghanistan. http://rt.com/usa/news/chicago-afghanistan-city-us-108/

Gun crime rates in Great Britain and Australia have soared since the banning of virtually all firearms and the use of the law to prosecute citizens who protect themselves from crime with force. All the laws have done is create a nation of sheep waiting for slaughter.

Mexico has a right to bear arms in its constitution that has been gutted by regulations over the past 100 years. How is that working out? Only the criminals and the notoriously corrupt military have guns and the citizens are at their mercy.

John Lott in "More Guns Less Crime" details the actual facts about this phenomenon.
rt.com
If you’re planning a visit to Chicago soon, don’t forget your sunscreen. The Win
dy City gets ungodly hot in the summer time, with temperatures peaking above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in early August.


Thursday, March 22, 2012

VINDICATION - SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SAYS CLIMATE CHANGE REQUIRES "CHANGING THE WORLD"

Finally, someone either "gets" or admits the truth about all this climate change talk. I have been writing about this for years. The fact is that it doesn't matter whether or not the planet is warming. It matters who uses it as an excuse to gain control. 

The real question, after the argument is over, if the alarmists are vindicated, is: Are you willing to give up your personal and and national
autonomy, independence and economic freedom to some world government where we Americans are grossly outnumbered, in order to "save the planet?" I think not. Some excerpts:

"I’ve come to the conclusion that the technical details are the easy part. It’s the social engineering that’s the killer. Moon shots and Manhattan Projects are child’s play compared to needed changes in the way we behave," and:


"Unfortunately, far more is needed. To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers"


http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/03/17/effective-world-government-will-still-be-needed-to-stave-off-climate-catastrophe/

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Politics by Any Means Necessary in Obamaland

I sense an Acorn moment in the world of "Chicago Way" Presidential politics.  First BO attacked the Catholic church using Kathleen Sebelious at Health and Human Services a long time pro abortion activist to attack the First Amendment protections for free religious practice.  HHS would mandate that religious backed organizations (hospitals, schools, etc) pay for contraception, abortion and other "reproductive services" whether they are contradictory to the beliefs of the religion or not.  The key here is that the Government, through HHS and Obamacare, asserts its primacy and power over religious entities, all of them.  It truly is not about contraception.

When it became apparent that things were not going his way, people were focused on what was the real issue, not the sex, the President changed the subject, activating the backup plan, via Ms. Sandra Fluke.  The plan, implemented via Anita Dunn, former Obama communications advisor and now Managing Director of the public relations firm SDKnickerbocker.  This bit of information was hidden carefully until unearthed by the Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.
“Anyway, we’re having trouble tracking down just who is sending Sandra around to the media,” he continued. “It’s very strange. So far, the 30-year-old activist has appeared on eight national news programs where she was not challenged at all. Last week we called Sandra on her cell phone and invited her on ‘The Factor.’ She didn’t call back. Very unusual.”
O’Reilly also said there was a man named Mike who was pushing her out to the media, but that no last name or contact information had been given.
and:
“There was no other public contact for the woman,” he said. “Just her cell phone. A man named Mike has booked her on a few programs, but we can’t even get his last name. And Mike doesn’t provide call-back numbers with those to whom he speaks. So Mike, who are you? And why the subterfuge?”
O’Reilly went on to reveal that SKDKnickerbocker, a PR agency whose managing director is former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, is now representing Fluke. Dunn is perhaps best known for her attack on Fox News and for naming Chinese revolutionary and Communist leader Mao Tse Tung as one of her favorite political philosophers back in 2009.

Ms Fluke, a relatively  unknown crusader for public financing of recreational sex, a liberation dream never imagined in the '60's, attempted, apparently uninvited and arriving out of nowhere, to testify at a House Oversight Committee meeting whose topic was the intrusion of HHS on freedom of religion via mandated  coverage of contraception.  Ms. Fluke's favorite subjects it so happens are insurance and contraception.  She was, of course, turned down as she was neither invited nor on topic.  She wished to testify about contraception and reproductive rights as if those issues somehow trump freedom of religion.

Having been rejected she was predictably offered the opportunity (by election challenged House Democrats) to testify at a House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee where among other things, she claimed that it costs a struggling student as much as $3000 over a law school career for contraception, a necessary expense burden for a struggling yet liberated and sexually (very) active, lawyer to be.  The Wall Street Journal in an article entitled "Sandra Fluke's Amazing Testimony" helpfully pointed out that:
 "One Georgetown student group reportedly handed out 4,500 "free" condoms during one recent semester. Or the law students could buy condoms online at $40.25 for a package of 100. At about 40 cents a condom, the Georgetown students could have sex twice a day, 365 days a year, for all three years of law school, for just $881 dollars.

Ms. Fluke and her friends could go to Walmart or Target, whose lists of inexpensive drugs include the oral contraceptive Tri-Sprintec priced at $4 for a 28-day supply. Total cost, assuming continuous use for three full years (including the summer after graduating law school or before starting): about $150."
 At this point enters Rush Limbaugh.  Like the Grizzly Bear who stumbles into the trap laid by the expert hunter hoping to capture lesser prey, Limbaugh stepped right into this one.  For if one computes the frequency of sexual activity indicated by a $3000 contraception cost over three years, as many did after her claim made news, it is a truly impressive number.  Ms. Fluke (rhymes with...never mind) apparently, at market prices, was entertaining herself with sexual activity requiring contraception some 2.75 times per day, 365 days a year for three years.  If she occasionally took a few days off the daily occurence would be even more impressive.  One can only imagine the thoughts that went through the minds of President Obama, David Axelrod and Anita Dunn as they gazed into their trap and found the wild and much hunted Limbaugh trapped there.  What joy they must have experienced at the sight of this raging beast, the right's Michael Moore (credit to Paul Theroux for this description), caught using words reserved for use by the Left's interlocutors.  In the words of Paul Theroux in the Daily Beast article Condemnation of Rush Limbaugh Shows Our Hypocrisy:
At first I didn't know whether I’d yawn or puke when I read what Rush Limbaugh said reacting to the Georgetown Law student and self-described Reproductive Rights Activist, Sandra Fluke. “What does it say about the college co-ed Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps — the johns. No, that’s right — pimp is not the right word.”

All of this is offensive hyperbole – and the confusion of “pimp” and “john” is odd for the man whose idea of a good time is a week in the Dominican Republic with a bagful of Viagra. But it is little more than flapdoodle. Did anyone really think that the earnest, scholarly Sandra Fluke was a prostitute?
The happy circumstance of having unexpectedly caught the Limbaugh in the Contraception Trap raised the question all trappers eventually must confront when they catch a skunk, or a rattler or a mountain lion; "how do we kill it without ending up with blood or stink on ourselves?"  Paul Theroux indicated the direction this might take when he said in the same article:
Virtually everyone in public life condemned Limbaugh, some mildly, some harshly, and none were more strident or hypocritical – as Sarah Palin was later to point out – than the hordes of liberals, Fluke-like in their sanctimony. Limbaugh had been offensive! Ms Fluke said she was contemplating a lawsuit – for what? Apoplexy was rife.
  The erstwhile trappers made the only decision that a political long hunter could reasonably make.  They decided to bring in the lawyers.  They needed a special kind of lawyer, one of the small but dominant subset that eschews traditional values and mores of legal practice in pursuit of fame, fortune and power at any cost.  They needed one with no pride, no sense of decency and no regard for the facts at all.  This subset of lawyers are known amongst the common people these days as the only persons that can legally enter a courtroom and invent testimony.  They have single handedly destroyed the trust of Americans in the American legal system and the reputations of lawyers as a group.  These lawyers have become the assassins for hire in the modern age.  The idea that every citizen deserves the benefit of a competent legal defense has been morphed into the idea that any tactic is acceptable in pursuit of the goals of a legal client.  Thus lawyers have become assassins on behalf of those perceived as "victims" and on behalf of clients in general. 

The President and his minions need to extend the life of this diversion from the Obama administration's attack on the Catholic church and are pursuing this with the help of the mainstream media and the despicable toads of the once proud legal profession.  Never mind that in the interim this woman has been revealed as a long time political activist who is not 23 years old as originally claimed, she is a 31 year old career student with an axe she has been busily grinding for many years, and she has finally hit the big time.  She received a sympathy call from the President for having been bullied by the evil Limbaugh and had her lubricious feelings muddled.  Enter Gloria Allred speaking through the Left wing Politico this morning:
“Mr. Limbaugh targeted his attack on a young law student who was simply exercised her free speech and her right to testify before congress on a very important issue to millions of American women and he vilified her. He defamed her and engaged in unwarranted, tasteless and exceptionally damaging attacks on her,” Allred told POLITICO Friday afternoon. “He needs to face the consequences of his conduct in every way that is meaningful.”
 One has to admire the skill and adaptability of the Obama election troopers who obviously think well when confronted with unexpected events.  As sociopathic manipulators they have few equals outside the maximum security block of federal prisons.  As they deftly work to kill off the Limbaugh and keep the subject changed to obfuscate once again their true goals and actions, the primacy of the State over Religion, they have largely succeeded so far in controlling the game.  In the process they have characterized the Limbaugh as the "leader of the Republican Party" in an opportunistic attempt to breath life into a characterization that would benefit the President.  Once again Paul Theroux punches a hole in the noxious gas bag proffered by the President's minions:
Limbaugh is referred to as “the virtual leader of the Republican Party.” Oh, really? If you believe that a cracker like Rush with a radio show is the “virtual leader” of the Republican Party, you need a good proctologist to reposition your head.
We are currently confronted with the prospect of a war over (or with) nuclear weapons with a demonstrably messianic group of madmen in Iran; the ascendance of Putin who is congratulated on his ill gotten gains by President Obama; the murderous results of the DOJ plan to guarantee that 90% of the guns in Mexico came from the US; violations of the Constitution and usurpation of authority by the Executive; the massive, insurmountable mountain of debt run up by this administration in pursuit of...what?; and last of all the prospect that this Obama might actually overcome all and be reelected.

In the face of all of this we are skillfully led to a debate over publicly subsidized recreational sex as if it is a serious issue.  This is not an unintentional dead end destination, it is a destination created by a cynical administration intent on foisting its hidden, racist, antisemitic, anti religious, leftist,  ideology on an unsuspecting and naive public both of the Left and the Right, both incapable of believing what is happening before its eyes. 

What will it take to realize the colossal insult that is being aimed at the entire American People by this messianic, politician, unrestrained by truth, law, founding documents, common decency or respect for the collective intelligence of the voting populace?  The cynicism and disrespect that is present in this campaign of misdirection reveals the current administration's belief in the stupidity of the People.  He also reveals that he will say and do literally anything to be reelected.  One must ask "Who is Barack Obama?" and in answer I quote Hunter Thompson on Richard Nixon the natural political ancestor of Barack Obama.
He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.
 He is back.

Thursday, February 02, 2012

My cat as an Avatar of what the Founders saw in Man


I have a cat named Kramer. Kramer is jet black. As a kitten she lived the first four or five months of her life with a friend of mine in his bachelor apartment when he was between wives or girl friends. She was so aggressive and possessive that when she was about a month old her mother took the other kittens and marched west into the Arkansas outback and left her with Jimmy.

Jimmy was wise enough not to leave her in the apartment by herself because, if she got bored she would find something to break. He tried to take her to the office but his employees (he owns a sign company) rebelled. So Kramer ended up living with Jimmy, riding wherever he went on business in his pickup, staying in his office when he was there, and bonding with the dominant male in her life.

As luck would have it, one day I needed a sign at my business and I called Jimmy. He arrived the next day, cat in hand, opened the pickup door and I watched as, the soon to be named, Kramer, vaulted from the vehicle onto the sidewalk and surveyed her new domain with the yellow eyes of the predator she naturally embodies.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Hayek and the Doom of Democratic Socialism

In my innocence I posted on Facebook a link to Zero Hedge's site where, alongside a reprint of Friedrich von Hayek's chapter from "The Road to Serfdom" entitled "The Great Utopia", mention is made in the short introduction of (bold font is mine):
“the most important election in the history of the United States, in which the US public will be promised nothing short of utopia by virtually every candidate except the one who really knows that fixing America would require pain and sacrifice
Why?

The coming election is extraordinarily important because the Obama administration is making a concerted attempt to change our form of government.  The change would be from its original form as a Democratic Republic that protects the Individual from the power of the State to a Democratic Socialist Republic in which the "greater good" is paramount, the State is supreme and the individual is meaningless.   Hayek explains the mechanics better than any other.

Regarding Hayek and Philosophy in General,  (with which I am much more familiar than lingerie):

Philosopy is nothing more than a philosopher's observations of humanity and other topics, assembled into a theory of how the World works.  Call any particular philosopher's observations his (or her) hypothesis.  Sort of like science but without the math. 

Over time, observation (known as history) confirms or invalidates the hypothesis which is then adjusted, destroyed (cast into the dust bin of history) or affirmed by the intellectual descendants of a particular philosophical line.

Seldom has a philosopher's work (or an entire school of philosopher's works), purported to support civilized life, commerce, civil society and uplift the downtrodden, so completely proven to produce the exact opposite result, as in the case of the "Isms" (socialism, communism, fascism, et al). In fact, the history of the "isms" indicates that while government is unable to create a "Utopia on Earth" it is more than capable of creating "Hell on Earth".