No, I am not interested in the Pope's eyeglasses. I do find it distressing, however, that the Holy Father does not seem concerned with the optics surrounding his visit to North America. Specifically, doesn't it look like he is offering comfort and appeasement to Obama and Castro?
I firmly believe the pope is not intending to aid democrats and communists in a direct political way. But it is too easy to believe that the good Pope Francis is just to naive for the world scene.
Who won the fight over anti-Catholic guests at the scheduled White House meeting? We'll see how that whole thing plays out. And why offer the appearance of legitimacy to the murderous tyranny that is Cuba?
Don't hold your breath waiting for world-shaking words of courage from the pope. I will be happily surprised if he has a Brandenburg Gate moment while visiting down where the bananas grow: "Mr. Castro, tear down this police state!"
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
9/22/2015
10/07/2014
Libertarian Epidemic Response
By the way, have you noticed the silence from the Libertarian wing regarding the Ebola crisis?
No?
I understand. It is hard to hear what is not being said.
Other than some random bitching about how Gummint is Situation Normal All Fouled Up, Libertarians (even small-L libertarians) haven't been offering much. As far as I know, even Doctor Paul hasn't appeared in front of a microphone and a camera to offer expert advice in this instance. Okay, he was OB-GYN, but still.
I surmise that the Libertarian response is that market forces will take care of the whole thing by means of an invisible hand or some such.
Maybe some entrepre-freakin-neur will come up with a free-market cure for hemorrhagic fever. And if not, blame it on Gummint.
No?
I understand. It is hard to hear what is not being said.
Other than some random bitching about how Gummint is Situation Normal All Fouled Up, Libertarians (even small-L libertarians) haven't been offering much. As far as I know, even Doctor Paul hasn't appeared in front of a microphone and a camera to offer expert advice in this instance. Okay, he was OB-GYN, but still.
I surmise that the Libertarian response is that market forces will take care of the whole thing by means of an invisible hand or some such.
Maybe some entrepre-freakin-neur will come up with a free-market cure for hemorrhagic fever. And if not, blame it on Gummint.
8/11/2014
Not ex cathedra...
"War is not to be waged in the name of God!"
-- Pope Francis
... Um, if our cause is just; if we are acting in defense of life and liberty; if we are standing in the way of oppression and tyranny; then it is not only our right but our duty to wage war. And if we pray to the One True God® before the engagement, then I guess we can be said to be waging war "in the name of God."
It is also reserved to the laity to make prudential judgments about things like what (political) course to take.
No matter what Bill Donohue thinks.
The Islamic State sharia-or-bust movement is wrong, horrible, evil. But we oppose them because of what they do -- not because they say they're doing things for Allah.
I just hope Pope Francis was taken out of context. (Actually I think that about him a lot.) Otherwise somebody seriously gots ta 'splain things to that boy. (You listening, Holy Spirit?)
7/21/2014
Not THAT kind of federalism
I am not one of those people who believe the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights limits ONLY the central (Federal) government.
A Washington Examiner article on 20 July 2014 by Blake Seitz contains the phrase, "the constitutionally-enshrined authority of the 50 states to do wrongheaded things."
Oh geez please, Mr. Orthodox Libertarian!
California, for example, has already gone plenty overboard on the Wrongheaded Things, and the process of judicial Right-heading of these things seems injuriously slow. What should be unconstitutional restrictions on the first amendment right to free speech are tolerated in California and elsewhere because of some people's unscientific but strongly held belief that the murder of unborn children has overriding benefits. What should be unconstitutional restrictions on the second amendment right to keep and bear arms are tolerated (method-of-carry bans, ammo bans, handgun roster bans, rifle and shotgun bans by type...) because of some people's unscientific but strongly held belief that, well, guns are scary. Or something. I am sure that California would try to figure out a way around the third amendment to quarter troops (or surplus prison population?) in the homes of citizens if Sacramento politicians could find a way to make a buck out of it. Same with all of the Bill of Rights.
There are limits to the "constitutionally-enshrined authority of the 50 states to do wrongheaded things." Limits that are and of right ought to be imposed by the United States upon the several states. Yes I am in favor of strong central government within the limits of Madisonian (Constitutional) Federalism.
What kind of conservative are you, anyway! (I can hear straw Libertarians jeering like a line of stoats and weasels behind the fence.)
I guess I'm just much closer to being a Theodore Roosevelt conservative than I am to being a Murray Rothbard pro-abort eugenist holocaust-denier anarcho-libertarian.
A Washington Examiner article on 20 July 2014 by Blake Seitz contains the phrase, "the constitutionally-enshrined authority of the 50 states to do wrongheaded things."
Oh geez please, Mr. Orthodox Libertarian!
California, for example, has already gone plenty overboard on the Wrongheaded Things, and the process of judicial Right-heading of these things seems injuriously slow. What should be unconstitutional restrictions on the first amendment right to free speech are tolerated in California and elsewhere because of some people's unscientific but strongly held belief that the murder of unborn children has overriding benefits. What should be unconstitutional restrictions on the second amendment right to keep and bear arms are tolerated (method-of-carry bans, ammo bans, handgun roster bans, rifle and shotgun bans by type...) because of some people's unscientific but strongly held belief that, well, guns are scary. Or something. I am sure that California would try to figure out a way around the third amendment to quarter troops (or surplus prison population?) in the homes of citizens if Sacramento politicians could find a way to make a buck out of it. Same with all of the Bill of Rights.
There are limits to the "constitutionally-enshrined authority of the 50 states to do wrongheaded things." Limits that are and of right ought to be imposed by the United States upon the several states. Yes I am in favor of strong central government within the limits of Madisonian (Constitutional) Federalism.
What kind of conservative are you, anyway! (I can hear straw Libertarians jeering like a line of stoats and weasels behind the fence.)
I guess I'm just much closer to being a Theodore Roosevelt conservative than I am to being a Murray Rothbard pro-abort eugenist holocaust-denier anarcho-libertarian.
5/27/2014
Calls for tighter screening for mental illness make me nervous.
The legacy news media loves to focus its spotlights on instances of violence that tickle their socio-mythic Gräfenberg spot. When what they term a "mass murder" has occurred, the bass beat booms out, the disco lights start to flash, and the spotlights converge, and the blood dancing begins. That's sick, really. Probably mentally ill.
Immediate conjecture about the Motive of the perpetrator ensues. My bet is that Motive is something the media types learned from cop shows on TV, and that most of them could not define Motive, nor come up with a story about what Motive has to do with the etiology of a crime event. As I understand it, Motive is irrelevant as to the fact of guilt in a court of law. If the facts are substantiated, you will be found guilty of vandalizing your neighbor's car with no regard to why you did it. Yet Motive continues to be a sparkly bauble to the media magpies.
Then, eventually, we hear those magpies accuse the perpetrator of insanity. He's crazy. Mentally ill. Those who seek Safety Above All call for gun control, knife control, insanity control.
"We need better ways to screen out those who pose a danger to society."
Oh, really? Listen to what you're saying. Do you really want to go there?
Calling a spoiled liberal-gone-wrong "mentally ill" is an affront to our millions of mentally ill who suffer and function, more or less, every day all around us, and who even in their darkest moments of depression or self-harm, would never cross the line into homicide.
Look at the history of the 20th Century. Who were the greatest mass murderers? Governments -- far and away, more than all the wars, hugely and in a wholesale manner that would be unimaginable and unbelievable were it not for the gut-wrenching fact of the number of those culled by socialist regimes during that bloody century -- the seekers of the perfect society, destroyed their own.
You're more likely to go on vacation somewhere and get killed by a falling coconut than walk around America and get killed by a kid with a grudge. But you're far more likely to be killed by a powerful socialist state. So I for one do not want to give my progressively more socialist government any more information about myself than necessary. And my health records are not necessary, except in specific cases of competency at law, and similar situations. And mental health records are health records. No one's visit to a psychologist should be subject to a review by some Safety Bureau.
If we value the life part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," then access to the means of defending life is a necessary condition of a free society. A free society entails some risk. Sorry, no promise that All is Safe Here. Regardless of FDR's rhetoric, you don't have a right to feel safe. You have a right to pursue your own happiness by making yourself safe as you care to -- without running over my right to pursuit of happiness.
When the Safety Bureau, by whatever name it comes to be called, begins to screen out the rights of the mentally ill, it's only a tiny baby step to screening out the lives of the odd, the weak, the undesirable. The perfect (and perfectly safe) society always ends with people being thrown into the ovens and the killing fields.
Don't go there.
Immediate conjecture about the Motive of the perpetrator ensues. My bet is that Motive is something the media types learned from cop shows on TV, and that most of them could not define Motive, nor come up with a story about what Motive has to do with the etiology of a crime event. As I understand it, Motive is irrelevant as to the fact of guilt in a court of law. If the facts are substantiated, you will be found guilty of vandalizing your neighbor's car with no regard to why you did it. Yet Motive continues to be a sparkly bauble to the media magpies.
Then, eventually, we hear those magpies accuse the perpetrator of insanity. He's crazy. Mentally ill. Those who seek Safety Above All call for gun control, knife control, insanity control.
"We need better ways to screen out those who pose a danger to society."
Oh, really? Listen to what you're saying. Do you really want to go there?
Calling a spoiled liberal-gone-wrong "mentally ill" is an affront to our millions of mentally ill who suffer and function, more or less, every day all around us, and who even in their darkest moments of depression or self-harm, would never cross the line into homicide.
Look at the history of the 20th Century. Who were the greatest mass murderers? Governments -- far and away, more than all the wars, hugely and in a wholesale manner that would be unimaginable and unbelievable were it not for the gut-wrenching fact of the number of those culled by socialist regimes during that bloody century -- the seekers of the perfect society, destroyed their own.
You're more likely to go on vacation somewhere and get killed by a falling coconut than walk around America and get killed by a kid with a grudge. But you're far more likely to be killed by a powerful socialist state. So I for one do not want to give my progressively more socialist government any more information about myself than necessary. And my health records are not necessary, except in specific cases of competency at law, and similar situations. And mental health records are health records. No one's visit to a psychologist should be subject to a review by some Safety Bureau.
If we value the life part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," then access to the means of defending life is a necessary condition of a free society. A free society entails some risk. Sorry, no promise that All is Safe Here. Regardless of FDR's rhetoric, you don't have a right to feel safe. You have a right to pursue your own happiness by making yourself safe as you care to -- without running over my right to pursuit of happiness.
When the Safety Bureau, by whatever name it comes to be called, begins to screen out the rights of the mentally ill, it's only a tiny baby step to screening out the lives of the odd, the weak, the undesirable. The perfect (and perfectly safe) society always ends with people being thrown into the ovens and the killing fields.
Don't go there.
5/02/2014
Remember your history, my children!
When President George W. Bush left office, the Iraq war was won. All we needed to do was work out the details of our ongoing presence there. It would have been nice to have had a kind of Rhine-Main Air Base Southeast, in the middle of the Arab picnic ground. President Bush was looking to the big picture, to gradual education in freedom throughout the region. Now the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress are out of Iraq. As of late 2013, not a single U.S. combat soldier is left in Iraq. How long before Congress has given away all the gains? This administration, and this Senate majority leadership, have a very different Big Picture in mind for Iraq policy, one that has more to do with personal political expediency than the spread of freedom. Bad for us, bad for the people of Iraq, bad for the region.
The American thing is not just an idealism.
But because we do not have a continuity of ideals in Washington D.C., but seem rather to oscillate from American to Socialist on an irregular basis, the effect of the selling-out of our friends in and around Iraq is that America gets judged as just another idealism, and just as full of lies. But American foreign policy failure is not the fault of the American ideal. It isn't Eisenhower's fault or Nixon's fault or Reagan's fault or Bush's fault. It's Democrats' fault.
Again.
Somebody besides me does remember the end of the Vietnam war. Good old Bruce Herschensohn even wrote a book telling the truth about the Vietnam war: An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam and Cambodia (Beaufort Books, 2010). The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973; the Republic of (South) Vietnam surrendered to the communists on 30 April 1975 -- the picture of the "last helicopter out of Saigon" comes to mind. Such a turnaround. And all due to the Democrat-controlled 94th Congress pulling the plug on our friends. Then came the Vietnamese boat people and all the rest. At least the Democrats were able to turn the lie into something "everyone knows": Nixon lost the war in Vietnam, it was a defeat for America. No, we won the war. Congress lost the peace. It was a defeat for the people of Vietnam and freedom-loving people everywhere.
The similarities to the scenario unfolding in Iraq are chilling.
The American thing is not just an idealism.
"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."Because one of America's ideals is Truth, the real American speaks the truth, and the last thing he will do for the Truth is lie.
-- J.A. Schumpeter
But because we do not have a continuity of ideals in Washington D.C., but seem rather to oscillate from American to Socialist on an irregular basis, the effect of the selling-out of our friends in and around Iraq is that America gets judged as just another idealism, and just as full of lies. But American foreign policy failure is not the fault of the American ideal. It isn't Eisenhower's fault or Nixon's fault or Reagan's fault or Bush's fault. It's Democrats' fault.
Again.
Somebody besides me does remember the end of the Vietnam war. Good old Bruce Herschensohn even wrote a book telling the truth about the Vietnam war: An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam and Cambodia (Beaufort Books, 2010). The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973; the Republic of (South) Vietnam surrendered to the communists on 30 April 1975 -- the picture of the "last helicopter out of Saigon" comes to mind. Such a turnaround. And all due to the Democrat-controlled 94th Congress pulling the plug on our friends. Then came the Vietnamese boat people and all the rest. At least the Democrats were able to turn the lie into something "everyone knows": Nixon lost the war in Vietnam, it was a defeat for America. No, we won the war. Congress lost the peace. It was a defeat for the people of Vietnam and freedom-loving people everywhere.
The similarities to the scenario unfolding in Iraq are chilling.
1/23/2014
Remember the Pueblo. And the Benghazi consulate.
On this day, 23 January, 1968, the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea, well outside the 12 mile limit off the North Korean coast.
Alone and overpowered, the ship was forced west. When Pueblo stopped outside the 12 mile limit, the ship was fired upon and Navy seaman Fireman Duane Hodges was killed. Pueblo was boarded, its crew mistreated; ship and crew were taken to Wonsan harbor.
President Lyndon Johnson was asleep at the time.
The White House response from Johnson and his crew of smart guys was to minimize confrontation with the communists at all costs. Negotiations at Panmunjom at last produced the release of the crew (and Hodges' remains) across the DMZ into South Korea on 23 December 1968 -- following a formal written apology by the USA to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Pueblo is still in North Korean possession.
By the apology, Johnson set a precedent for bowing to foreign dictators.
After 1968, one could see a few "Remember the Pueblo" bumper stickers. But memories are short. The official response had set a precedent of "what difference, at this point, does it make?"
By the way, today is exactly one year since Hillary blew off Senator Ron Johnson's question about why she lied about events leading up to the attack on our consulate in Benghazi and the murder of ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Alone and overpowered, the ship was forced west. When Pueblo stopped outside the 12 mile limit, the ship was fired upon and Navy seaman Fireman Duane Hodges was killed. Pueblo was boarded, its crew mistreated; ship and crew were taken to Wonsan harbor.
President Lyndon Johnson was asleep at the time.
The White House response from Johnson and his crew of smart guys was to minimize confrontation with the communists at all costs. Negotiations at Panmunjom at last produced the release of the crew (and Hodges' remains) across the DMZ into South Korea on 23 December 1968 -- following a formal written apology by the USA to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Pueblo is still in North Korean possession.
By the apology, Johnson set a precedent for bowing to foreign dictators.
After 1968, one could see a few "Remember the Pueblo" bumper stickers. But memories are short. The official response had set a precedent of "what difference, at this point, does it make?"
By the way, today is exactly one year since Hillary blew off Senator Ron Johnson's question about why she lied about events leading up to the attack on our consulate in Benghazi and the murder of ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
1/01/2014
Crazy-ass Federalism
Michael S. Greve at LibertyLaw.com has some thoughts about how political polarization among the States within these United States of America is a good thing. He describes the system as "competitive federalism" -- which basically boils down to "if you don't like it, you can always move to Texas" or some other "free" State:
What kind of crazy-ass federalism is that? Is that some kind of Libertarian crazy-ass federalism?
If the government of the United States does anything, it is supposed to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity". Does it do that by allowing any kind of penny-ante tyrant to control any of the individual States? Why is there a Bill of Rights if States have rights? Dude: individual persons have rights. States don't have rights. States have power. Because the States have power, we needed the Bill of [Individual Personal] Rights.
If I had faith the size of a mustard seed, I realize, I would be able to say to my family dwelling, "Be uprooted, and transported to Texas!" And it would be the same thing to say it and for it to be.
Unfortunately I have neither the spiritual nor the financial power to be able to engage in Mr. Greve's version of "competition". I doubt most people could. Is he saying that freedom is only for the rich? Is freedom really only for those well-to-do enough to buy that home (in many cases a second home or retirement home) in Oregon or Wyoming or Texas or some other State more free than California?
We shouldn't be talking about the benefits of live-and-let-live among the states and if you don't like it lump it or move to Texas. There should be real questioning about the extent to which individual states can go with their systemic tyranny before the constituted government of the United States must step in to secure the blessings of liberty. I know that isn't going to happen under the present Congress or Supreme Court any more than liberty is spontaneously going to break out in deeply "Blue State" California.
You can laugh at California. Yeah, we're so screwed. (Unless rich enough to uproot and be planted anew elsewhere.) But Californification is creeping sleeplessly into everything. It is already in the Federal Government. It shows how far we are from Constitutional rule. Friend, wherever you may move to, we're all so screwed.
For now there may be places that are "more free" -- less infected by Left/Liberal/Progressive craziness. But no place is immune to the infection. And the infection only spreads.
Does that mean there is no hope? No. There is hope.
In the end we win, they lose. (I keep telling myself that.) But there will be a time when it will be very rough. Everywhere. Thanks a lot, you crazy-ass federalist Libertarian asshole that moved to Oregon or wherever. All you did was postpone the date the infection goes critical, and help insure that the bump at the bottom of the fall will be harder.
"Competitive federalism satisfies preferences. A thoroughly blue or red United States would leave one half of the country very unhappy. That’s not true under federalism—not when preferences are heterogeneous across states and (relatively) homogeneous within states. As, increasingly, now. "
What kind of crazy-ass federalism is that? Is that some kind of Libertarian crazy-ass federalism?
If the government of the United States does anything, it is supposed to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity". Does it do that by allowing any kind of penny-ante tyrant to control any of the individual States? Why is there a Bill of Rights if States have rights? Dude: individual persons have rights. States don't have rights. States have power. Because the States have power, we needed the Bill of [Individual Personal] Rights.
If I had faith the size of a mustard seed, I realize, I would be able to say to my family dwelling, "Be uprooted, and transported to Texas!" And it would be the same thing to say it and for it to be.
Unfortunately I have neither the spiritual nor the financial power to be able to engage in Mr. Greve's version of "competition". I doubt most people could. Is he saying that freedom is only for the rich? Is freedom really only for those well-to-do enough to buy that home (in many cases a second home or retirement home) in Oregon or Wyoming or Texas or some other State more free than California?
We shouldn't be talking about the benefits of live-and-let-live among the states and if you don't like it lump it or move to Texas. There should be real questioning about the extent to which individual states can go with their systemic tyranny before the constituted government of the United States must step in to secure the blessings of liberty. I know that isn't going to happen under the present Congress or Supreme Court any more than liberty is spontaneously going to break out in deeply "Blue State" California.
You can laugh at California. Yeah, we're so screwed. (Unless rich enough to uproot and be planted anew elsewhere.) But Californification is creeping sleeplessly into everything. It is already in the Federal Government. It shows how far we are from Constitutional rule. Friend, wherever you may move to, we're all so screwed.
For now there may be places that are "more free" -- less infected by Left/Liberal/Progressive craziness. But no place is immune to the infection. And the infection only spreads.
Does that mean there is no hope? No. There is hope.
In the end we win, they lose. (I keep telling myself that.) But there will be a time when it will be very rough. Everywhere. Thanks a lot, you crazy-ass federalist Libertarian asshole that moved to Oregon or wherever. All you did was postpone the date the infection goes critical, and help insure that the bump at the bottom of the fall will be harder.
9/26/2013
Left Coast Twilight of History
On 25 September 2013, the California legislature passed AB10 to raise the minimum wage to $10 by 2016. The bill was passed in both houses late on 25 September and was signed by Governor Brown the same day.
The signing took place in Los Angeles, not California's capitol Sacramento.
The minimum wage in California is set to raise to $9 per hour on 1 July 2014. The timing of the first increment is calculated to diminish the felt effect of economic damage until after the 2014 elections. The minimum wage under the bill rises to $10 per hour 1 January 2016.
The only news stories I am finding as of this writing (26 September 2013, 0740) are the bullshit AP wire feed. I heard but cannot find in text some audio from the signing ceremony (the first signing ceremony in L.A. -- there will be another one later in Oakland) in which Governor Moonbeam basically said, "Oh yeah, and screw you, California small businesses."
I remember back in the Clinton years, in response to being asked about the economy-crippling consequences of her proposed health care bill, Hillary Clinton said, "I cannot be responsible for every undercapitalized business in the country." Basically that is the Democrat party platform. Screw the job creators. Because to them, there's no way to turn the graft key on small business. There's no payback to the party on supply-side economics.
Minimum wage laws actually hurt low-income workers as a class. As the minimum wage rises 25%, watch while hours and jobs are cut. I would be surprised if the first $1 jump does not cost a quarter of a million entry level jobs.
Just looked again for the off-hand remark at the first signing ceremony. Can't find. Well, Governor Moonbeam can't be responsible for every undercapitalized business in California, I guess.
The signing took place in Los Angeles, not California's capitol Sacramento.
The minimum wage in California is set to raise to $9 per hour on 1 July 2014. The timing of the first increment is calculated to diminish the felt effect of economic damage until after the 2014 elections. The minimum wage under the bill rises to $10 per hour 1 January 2016.
The only news stories I am finding as of this writing (26 September 2013, 0740) are the bullshit AP wire feed. I heard but cannot find in text some audio from the signing ceremony (the first signing ceremony in L.A. -- there will be another one later in Oakland) in which Governor Moonbeam basically said, "Oh yeah, and screw you, California small businesses."
I remember back in the Clinton years, in response to being asked about the economy-crippling consequences of her proposed health care bill, Hillary Clinton said, "I cannot be responsible for every undercapitalized business in the country." Basically that is the Democrat party platform. Screw the job creators. Because to them, there's no way to turn the graft key on small business. There's no payback to the party on supply-side economics.
Minimum wage laws actually hurt low-income workers as a class. As the minimum wage rises 25%, watch while hours and jobs are cut. I would be surprised if the first $1 jump does not cost a quarter of a million entry level jobs.
Just looked again for the off-hand remark at the first signing ceremony. Can't find. Well, Governor Moonbeam can't be responsible for every undercapitalized business in California, I guess.
4/10/2013
Kill It With Fire
"It can only be killed by fire while awake and by using the Rite of Exorcism if found in its grave during the day."
-- Vampire Universe: The Dark World of Supernatural Beings That Haunt Us, Hunt Us, and Hunger for Us, Jonathon Maberry. Kensington Publishing Corp: New York, 2006. p 16-17, from the Wikipedia article on Vampire folklore by region (South Slavic belief).
At the end of World War II, Hitler's body was burned, pulverized, and flushed into the sewers. Nazi symbols were destroyed and banned. Men like Eisenhower forced German citizens to face the atrocities they had actively or passively allowed. "Never again," they said.
They can never all be found and exorcised while asleep. The evil is always active while seeming dormant. We are the ones who sleep.
But the evil continues. Its undead hunger wakes.
"I think that September 11 ought to be made a day of mourning everywhere in the West. After all, it will undoubtedly be a day of celebration all across the Dar-al-Islam.
"We ought never to forget. Never, until the focus of this filthy plague is a hole in the ground, sowed with salt. Never, until Islam is one with the worship of Moloch and Baal. Never, until we can say, 'Mecca delenda est''."
-- Gerard Vanderleun, What I Saw: Notes I made on September 11, 2001 from Brooklyn Heights, re-posted at American Digest 11 September, 2012.
There is that evil that can only be killed by fire.
"I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar, the elfstone, Dunadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil's son of Gondor. Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again! Will you aid me or thwart me? Choose swiftly."
-- Aragorn, in Return of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien.
Tolkien knew that isolationism did not work -- regretted the fact, but admitted it; sometimes the Men of the West have to travel to the gates of Mordor because that is the right thing to do.
North Korean "President" Kim Jong Un threatens nuclear mayhem -- and U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel tells reporters on 10 April 2013 that Korea is "skating very close to a dangerous line." Hagel does not appear to be preparing use of a big Pacific Theater flame thrower to Kill It With Fire. His ilk seem to be off on another Carteresque episode of Why-do-they-hate-us and Is-this-Kim-crazy? Um, guys? When the man has the loaded gun pointed at you? Then it really doesn't matter why he wants you dead or whether he is sane. Kill It With Fire.
Every time.
Find it. Kill it. Burn it. Pulverize it. Flush it. Again.
4/06/2013
Never letting a crisis go to waste
After a trip to Russia shortly after the revolution, during which he and others met for six hours with Stalin, American economist and engineer Stuart Chase reported saying, "'Why should Russians have all the fun remaking a world?" The quote comes up in an interview in the January 2008 issue of Reason in which Nick Gillespie talks to Amity Shlaes, author of the history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man (Harper Collins 2007).
As a public service I offer this unguarded crystallization of policy, this clue to the mind of the old New Dealer, from one of his other books:
I leave the cleansing of America from the poison of such socialism as an exercise for the reader.
As a public service I offer this unguarded crystallization of policy, this clue to the mind of the old New Dealer, from one of his other books:
- - -
- A strong, centralized government.
- An executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial arms.
- The control of banking, credit and security exchanges by the government.
- The underwriting of employment by the government, either through armaments or public works.
- The underwriting of social security by the government – old-age pensions, mothers’ pensions, unemployment insurance, and the like.
- The underwriting of food, housing, and medical care, by the government.
- The use of deficit spending to finance these underwritings.
- The abandonment of gold in favor of managed currencies.
- The control of foreign trade by the government.
- The control of natural resources.
- The control of energy sources.
- The control of transportation.
- The control of agricultural production.
- The control of labor organizations.
- The enlistment of young men and women in youth corps devoted to health, discipline,community service and ideologies consistent with those of the authorities.
- Heavy taxation, with special emphasis on the estates and incomes of the rich.
- Control of industry without ownership.
- State control of communications and propaganda.
I leave the cleansing of America from the poison of such socialism as an exercise for the reader.
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