Why Don’t We Waterboard Criminals?
The original version of this article, with the horrifying, graphic depictions of neocons in their natural habitat, is here.
The neocons have been making a big deal of how waterboarding and other “psychological” tormenting of prisoners is not actually torture, unless you cause permanant, serious harm or death.
They also say that we GAIN things by using these “harsh interrogation techniques”, so that makes it OK:
The End Justifies the Means.
Well, yes, that is a Marxist/socialist slogan, which has produced millions of deaths and more suffering than any other idea in history.
And sure, real Conservatives spend their lives fighting against the End Justifies the Means philosophy…but we’re talking about neocons, RiNOs. The Neocon movement originates with self-described Trostyites, which is why they still have most of the underlying Marxist mindsets.
Anyway, I’m wondering why we’re wasting this technicality, in our own justice system.
Why Not?
If we can harm suspected terrorists in case it might make us safer, why not suspected criminals?
Protect Us from Criminals
Why not waterboard a possible serial killer, and then flush his bible (don’t ask me why so many psychopaths are strongly religious) down the toilet, in order to find out who he’s killed?
Why not strip an accused child molester naked, have women laugh at him, leave him in a forty degree room (still nude) all night with no sleep, in order to find out whether he did, and to whom?
These things are not torture, and anyway they are justified because we profit from them.
The neocon talk show hosts, and surviving neocon politicians (vote carefully, next primary) will quickly protest “but the 8th amendment bans that”. Apparently, interrogation can be cruel and unusual, yet not be torture, even though many court cases citing the 8th amendment actually bandy about the T-word interchangably.
But then we need only use a constitutional amendment to revoke this man-made priveledge.
Or why even bother…why not pass a law suspending the citizenship of anyone accused of a serious crime? And then rent space in an Indian/riverboat casino to conduct the Harsh Interrogation off of US soil?
Frankly, I need the neocons to answer the question, at that point, because I don’t see how their Philosophy of Cowardice could but DEMAND that we do this, in order to have greater safety from murder and rape.
Why Not
But I can explain why, to an actual Conservative, classic liberal, or any other decent human being, we must not “harshly interrogate” criminals.
We should probably set aside basic human decency versus evil, because if you don’t get THAT reason, then you probably never will.
Rights
Let’s start with that 8th amendment:
Yes, it (and a number of other parts of the Constitution) prohibit “harsh interrogation”.
But they do not grant a man-made priveledge only to Americans, that you can suspend with some Clintonian wordplay, the way the neocons and other socialists argue.
In fact, the 8th amendment protects a Natural Right. You, I, and any other sapient being are BORN with a right to freedom of speech, religion, self-protection, and many other choices, including not to be tortured without our consent.
The Founders knew this, and said specifically they were only mentioning certain rights in the Constitution to keep future sociopaths from finding excuses to violate them…but that ALL natural rights were still to be universally protected.
So using some technicality to violate those rights would not magically make them go away. Torturing the criminal would still be wrong.
And remember, “universally protected”: The Founders did not believe that those natural rights only apply to Americans. That wouldn’t be very “natural”.
They simply did not have the power to force the French government to protect natural rights. But they intended the protections to apply against the Federal government of the US, which was what the Constitution created and limited.
So when the Federal government violates the rights of a foreigner, it is absolutely against the spirit of the Founders. Something, once again, a Conservative understands, but a Marxist-cum-neocon does not. That, obviously, includes torturing them, as well as censorship and the many other violations the Bush administration committed against foreigners, showing themselves not to be Conservative at all, just neocons.
Principles
When people try to justify evil means, because the end is desirable, they are like a child who wants to spend his money on candy now, instead of saving it so they have enough to eat supper later.
This is because the “end” is always something short-sighted. You are giving up the thing that causes more good in the long run, the investment, in order to get a quick fix, the instant gratification.
Short-sighted is not always short-term:
Perhaps you’re going to kill ten million people now, so that in a generation your empire is small enough to feed itself. Ask Stalin and Mao about that. But you’re still abandoning the principles (everyone has a right to determine his own life) that makes society stable and healthy in the big picture. Even “easy way to feed the next generation” is short-sighted, if you’re murdering to do it.
So violating people, no matter what euphamism we use, brings harmful, evil precedents into our society. The REAL, long-term end is violated, even the safety that the neocons pretend to value above all else.
We cannot let government officials torment suspected criminals, because we are setting a precedent of condoning that evil behavior. If it’s OK to non-torture molesters and mass murderers, then why not rapists? How about people who stole, and still have hidden, the life savings of elderly people? Regular investors? Tax cheats?
Not protecting your principles makes the slippery slope, sometimes a fallacy, become real — nearly inevitable.
This is why we throw out ANY evidence gotten in violation of the Constitution or our natural rights.
And it’s why letting our government ever violate natural rights is wrong.
The very minimum standard for how we treat foreigners should be “Would we tolerate treating an American, who accused of a crime, this way?”
Beware the Coming [insert non-threat] Pandemic!!!
As you know, we’re all preparing for the devastating Swine Flu epidemic, which has reached our shores and infected eighty-something people.
It is destined to be the latest pandemic, taking its place alongside the millions of deaths America suffered during the BIRD Flu epidemic, West Nile epidemic, SARS epidemic, Mad Cow Disease…the list goes on, all of them heirs to the mass death of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.
And they all have this subtle trait in common:
They turned out to be sheer nonsense.
Nobody in the US has been killed by Bird Flu. Only already-sickly people in third-world countries like China, where a common cold can kill you, too.
A few Americans have actually died from West Nile, but only 1/10th the number who died from swimming pools, far less than 1/100th of the number who died from the common hospital infection, staph, in the same period.
Even in third world countries, SARS has a mortality rate of less than 10%. In the US, its mortality rate is ZERO.
And the same is true of Swine Flu. At the time of this writing, 80+ Americans have gotten it, and NONE have died. The normal flu is more dangerous.
And, of course, they can’t prove anyone’s ever really even GOTTEN mad cow, much less died from it.
For decades, people have been claiming to recognize what the next big 1918 Flu Pandemic heir will be.
But they always have to refer back to 1918, because 91 years ago is the last time it happened.
Why?
Because medical technology is so advanced that it’s not likely to EVER happen again.
In 1918, most of the ideas and techniques now ingrained in medicine were in their infancy. It was, really, the last good opportunity for a big pandemic to happen. Now, it’s too late.
So why do we keep hearing that the Next Big Epidemic is coming?
The same reason we keep hearing that we’re in imminent danger from asteroids and global warming:
Fear Equals Funding.
Because of budget-padding witch doctors at places like the CDC and NIH.
See, those guys have EXACTLY the same motivations as a tobacco scientist; Money.
Except that they have an even worse dependency upon money than a tobacco scientist. They have a budget that depends almost purely on fear.
DC bureaucrats actually use the phrase Fear Equals Funding, when discussing why they make things they know to be unlikely or harmless sound like doomsday.
Do a quick search for “CDC budget request” or “NIH budget request” on Google. You get results like this fearmongering from the Director of NIH, asking for more money for the next budget:
New threats and diseases constantly emerge. For example, soldiers suffering from blast injury highlight the importance of additional knowledge on traumatic brain injuries. Infectious diseases remain among the leading causes of death worldwide. More than 30 newly recognized infectious diseases and syndromes emerged in the last three decades alone, including HIV/AIDS and SARS. Infectious diseases that once seemed to be fading, such as tuberculosis and malaria, have resurged. New drug-resistant forms of once-easily treated microbial infections are emerging at a rapid pace. New strains of influenza occur each year. There is concern that a new influenza virus may emerge with the capacity for sustained human-to-human transmission, possibly triggering a pandemic similar to what occurred in 1918, 1957, and 1968.
Doom and gloom fearmongering. He is STILL robbing the taxpayer with the SARS bogeyman, years after Southpark mocked its irrelevantly low mortality rate:
Stanley, listen to me. I have SARS. There’s only a ninety-eight percent chance that I will live.
Likewise, you can find the CDC terrorizing the public with threats of “avian flu”, even though it’s caused ZERO deaths:
“Concerns that avian influenza (H5N1) could become the next influenza pandemic”
They also emit girlish shrieks about SARS and West Nile, in the same budget request.
The Swine Flu panic is not about saving people from imminent death, but about greed.
NIH/CDC official = Tobacco Scientist
The “Global War On Terror” is a Lie
The neocon philosophy of cowardice demands that we surrender our essential freedoms, in return for the promise of temporary safety
The neocons are parroting Conservative words, loud and shrill, these days. Suddenly they’re against the very same socialism and police state that they defended when Bush was doing it.
But you can be reminded that they’re neocon frauds, when they start fearmongering “terrorism”, which they seem unable to stop doing.
Recently, it’s been this insane pretense that the Somali pirates are terrorists.
Of course, you and I and every other rational person know:
Terrorists commit random acts of destruction/killing, to create an environment of fear, in order to work toward some political goal.
Pirates attack vessels in order to obtain wealth, either by looting or ransom. In a way, they are the opposite of terrorists.
The Somali ship-stealing guys are doing nothing but attacking vessels for loot/ransom. They are pirates, not terrorists.
Really, given the two definitions above, it takes a fool incompetent in the subject to confuse them.
Great way to identify some of the neocon fakes in talk shows and punditry.
But it doesn’t stop with the pirates.
They still pretend the resistance fighters in Iraq are terrorists.
Resistance fighters attack a foreign occupation force, in order to drive it from their country.
That’s what is happening in Iraq.
But the charade isn’t just one of pretending anything they don’t like is terrorism. The neocons also have double standards about whether terrorism is bad.
They support, for example, the training and funding of terrorists, as long as their mass murder is useful to us.
- When we trained and supplied Al Qaeda in the 1980s in Afghanistan, it was at their behest.
- When we supported Saudi Arabia’s building of Wahabi hate schools all around Asia in the 80s and 90s, the neocons were the reason.
- When we backed, and funded, the Pakistani fundamentalist Islamic dictatorship’s overthrow of the Afghani government by the Taliban, it was to the joy of the neocons.
Of course this hypocrisy extends beyond terrorism…the neocons fought to keep us openly supplying Weapons of Mass Destruction technology to Saddam Hussein in the 80s. But we’re dealing with their fake Terror War here, not their general sociopathic nature.
So, getting back to the topic, the neocons have undermined democracy in the middle east, refusing to deal with the elected government of Palestine, claiming they won’t support former “terrorists” in government…and yet backing, no matter what war crimes they commit, the former terrorists who run the Israeli government.
Blowing up buildings full of innocents in a land where you were not even born, as the future rulers of Israel did in the 1940s, is OK, but blowing up soldiers occupying your homeland and keeping you in concentration-camp conditions today is “terrorism”
Actually, it’s not. They’re resistance fighters, of course. Whether the Jewish people who moved to Palestine in the 1940s and started killing people there count as resistance fighters (you’re supposed to be locals fighting foreigners) is debatable. But there’s no question the Palestinian fighters are resisting foreign occupation.
Side Note: Precedent
We were all disgusted when the mass-murdering Russian government started calling resistance fighters “terrorists”, to parrot Bush. The problem is that Bush set that precedent, by abusing the word just as laughably.
Precedent is one of the practical reasons to not blindly defend “your guy” when he’s doing something wrong. Bush built many of his abuses on Clinton’s precedents. Clinton coined the phrase “war on terror”, and attacked both Iraq and Afghanistan in order to distract from domestic problems, while claiming to fight terrorists…a perfect lead-in for Bush. Likewise, Obama’s current socialist agenda, nationalizing banks, spending trillions on fake “stimulus”, is identical to what Bush was doing before he left office.
But, getting back to terrorism, precedent is its most ugly with the case of Obama using the police state Bush created, for his own domestic agenda. Verbally supporting liberty is literally being described in official government documents as terrorist, by the new, unconstitutional, and definitively police state Department of Homeland Security.
On the other hand, he has stopped referring to our inconsistent, hypocritical foreign policy as a “war on terror”, to the horror of the neocons, who are essentially saying this amounts to treason.
There is no actual Global War on Terror. Just a bunch of dishonest men advocating evils that they appear to believe will benefit themselves, while using fear to get you to submit to it. THAT is preying upon terror, as much as anything.
Unemployment Benefits INCREASE Unemployment
The recent increases in unemployment benefits, rather than helping fight unemployment, have actually increased unemployment dramatically
Subsidies Cause Surplus
If you wanted to have too many apples, you could simply get the government to pay billions of dollars to apple growers. You can do this with almost anything; it’s called a subsidy.
Aside from the many problems intentional subsidies always cause, there are many “unintentional” subsidies. Perhaps the worst of these is the unemployment subsidy.
When you give people money for each apple you grow, more people choose to grow apples, and apple growers choose to make more. It creates an imbalance, producing more apples than the society really finds worthwhile.
When you give people money based on how unemployed they are, you likewise cause more people to be unemployed, and people to be unemployed longer. I don’t even need to go into how that creates an imbalance, as (unlike apples) more unemployment is obviously, universally, bad.
Some people, mostly those who have little real-life experience (like a Kennedy or Bush family member) might say “But nobody would CHOOSE to stay unemployed, just for benefits”.
Second, they’re wrong…but I’ll get back to that.
First
FIRST, it doesn’t matter if nobody does it on purpose. When the Fed raises interest rates just 0.25%, fewer people buy houses. Not one human being actually says “I am not buying this house, because the Fed raised rates by a fraction of one percent”. It isn’t even raising home loan rates (it has no control over those), just the rate at which it lends to banks. Yet the trickle-down effect is fewer homes bought, in part because home loan rates creep up a tiny bit.
The same is true of unemployment. There is a trickle-down impact, over the span of 300,000,000 people, where some stay unemployed longer, and more BECOME unemployed, because unemployment is subsidized. As even a tiny increase in home loan interest rates invisibly pushes a few people over to the side of not buying a house, an increase in unemployment subsidy pushes a few people over into being unemployed.
Over the span of hundreds of millions of people, that is dramatic, in both cases.
And now we can get back to “second”:
Second
The ivory tower “nobody would choose to stay unemployed” people are wrong.
People DO choose not to work because they know they have an unemployment buffer.
They choose not to work as hard or otherwise volunteer to be the one laid off, choose not search as hard, pass up jobs they would otherwise take, and even actively stay unemployed, because of the unemployment benefits.
We who have real-life experience probably ALL, right now, know people who are doing this. Many of you, in fact, probably have done it. I am a consultant, so I don’t get unemployment benefits, but I’m sure it would influence me if I did.
I certainly have friends who actively cite the unemployment benefits as allowing them to take their time working. I even know someone who says they are glad the benefits have been extended, as they will be able to go for a year without looking for a job, now.
Sure, most states have some sort of fake attempt to require people to look for and take jobs. But there’s no way to actually make this work. It would cost more than unemployment benefits provide, to actually verify all the claims people make on their “looked for a job” forms. And any cheaper means of proving it would be draconian against all the people who were honest.
The Unemployment Subsidy
So yes, that’s exactly what the Liberals’ unemployment extension has done:
Increase unemployment, by subsidizing it.
We will have higher unemployment rates, and suffer this depression longer, because of the benefit increases. Yet another example of government’s coercive “help” making the problems they attack worse, instead of better.
Monkeys Don’t Kill People; Xanax Does
Which is more responsible for the isolated incident of a lady being mauled by a chimp...this pigmy marmoset, or the drug the 200 lb ape was taking, that is known to cause violent aggression?
You’ve probably heard, in tedious detail, about the chimp, Travis, who ripped the face off some old lady.
What’s creepy about this story, more than it sounding like people are keeping pets that can kill them (as can horses and dogs), is the way power-hungry politicians are exploiting it, contextually lying, in order to pass unconstitutional laws we’d otherwise never tolerate.
The facts of the story are that a 200 lb chimp, who’d been raised as if a child by some woman who strikes me as emotionally akin to a “cat lady“, was secretly given the drug Xanax in his tea. Yes, she fed him tea. A few minutes later, he freaked out and bolted outside. When the lady’s friend, who apparently had a new hairstyle rendering her a “stranger”, showed up to help, Travis attacked her.
You may have noticed a detail that’s not normally mentioned, above. Travis was given a mood-altering drug, of which he was unaware. Xanax is a drug that is used to control people’s minds, but it has a well-documented “paradoxical” side effect of sometimes causing people to fly into insane rages, becoming violent and aggressive.
In fact, experts say that Xanax may very well have been the cause of the rampage. Why did journalists mostly ignore this detail? Who knows…perhaps it’s because they’re so likely to be under mood control drugs, themselves. /shrug
Now even people who know they’re taking that drug, and that it may cause them to become criminally aggressive, can be driven to act nuts by it…imagine some animal that doesn’t even know there’s a drug involved (probably doesn’t even understand the concept), who is being drugged.
I wouldn’t want to be around a collie or retriever who’d been driven mad by drugs, nor riding a horse in such a state.
So what’s the response of Big Brotherment to this incident?
Why, to ban the sale of ALL PRIMATES, of course.
Yes, that’s right; they are passing a ban on the sale of 1 inch long mouse lemurs, and all other primates, because some idiot prescribed a drug drug that can cause violent rages, to a 200 lb chimp.
If we were actually going to try to pass some over-reaching law to retroactively prevent this laughably rare, even isolated incident, surely it’d be something like “you can’t give huge apes drugs that might make them insane”, or even a ban on mood-control drugs entirely, which would be a loss ONLY insofar as prohibition is bad.
The truth is, of course, that one of the most vile things politicians do is try to pass laws based on single incidents. The already-suicidal chick who killed herself after someone else’s mom mocked her online has spawned a host of vile laws that are already being extended to speech outside their original intent, for example. Or the crazy Brady Law, that effectively banned only weapons that were not using in the shooting of its namesake. Or the ridiculous “security” measures set up after 9-11, that do zero to actually prevent future terror attacks. How, precisely, will you hijack a jumbo jet with nail clippers and a four ounce sippy cup?
Of course such laws are almost never passed by people who care about the incident at hand. They’re dishonest people who are actually attempting to forward some agenda of their own. In the case of Representative Blumenauer, author of the primate ban, he’s apparently one of those “pets are slaves” PETA nut-jobs, who has openly said that reptiles are next on his list of ban victims.
What we need, really, is fewer laws, not more of them. Banning the sale of lemurs so small that they’re are in danger of being eaten by mice, in response to the drugging of a man-sized ape, seems like one of those “Romans got brain damage from lead-lined aquaducts, and then things all went to hell” moments.
Representative Blumenauer appears to think these baby monkeys should be banned as a choking hazard.
Attacking AIG-style Bonuses Will Cause MORE Companies to Fail
Recently, I wrote an article about how Golden Parachutes are important for our economy, instead of bad.
And yet now we have people objecting to AIG fulfilling its contractual obligations to people who might otherwise have abandoned the company to collapse years ago.
This needs to be re-explained, in simpler, clearer terms:
- If a company is struggling, it needs the best people it can get, in order to TRY to save itself.
- If you are the best man for the job, then you don’t need to work for a struggling company. You are almost certainly going to choose a healthy, growing company where your job is secure.
- In order to obtain your services, a struggling company must either:
- Offer you far more money up front, which it probably can’t afford to do, or
- Offer you protection against the company failing, like a bonus that you will get even if, or only if, something goes wrong despite your best efforts
- In order for struggling companies to have a chance to survive, benefiting the entire economy and all of we who are in it, you must therefore have:
- The power to offer bonuses in case the company fails despite a manager’s best efforts
- enforcement of that bonus contract, so the potential managers trust it’ll get paid, and
- freedom from punishment for receiving such a bonus
The problem, here, is not AIG honoring a style of contract that is absolutely necessary for the health of our economy.
The real problem here is the same that we face whenever there is government intervention with our taxpayer money:
This form of socialism will always cause conflicts of interest, that will harm the recipient, the taxpayer, and the economy ever more, in a snowball effect.
Think of how people were trapped on welfare, from the 1970s through 1990s.
The government bailed out people in need, but then had to punish them if they ever made any progress in getting out of poverty, because it would be irresponsible to keep paying them the same amount of welfare, when they got even a little of their own income.
Likewise, many state governments violate your freedom of choice on health-related issues, on the premise that those states are paying for some people’s health care. They impose gigantic taxes on tobacco, alcohol, even convenient food, claiming that people who use them are raising government health care costs.
In all three cases, the freedom of private people is violated as a natural domino cascade starting with government taking your taxpayer money, and bailing people out with it.
Our response to this obvious conflict of interest, between bailouts and people’s free choices, should be to legislate against bailouts, not liberty.
Tired Today? Thank Government Arrogance.
What could be more megalomaniacal than declaring time, itself, wrong by an hour?
If our arrogant Congress announced that it was going to pass a law forcing you to get up an hour earlier, go to work an hour earlier, eat supper an hour earlier, et cetera, because this is somehow “in your own best interest”, it would not be tolerated.
It would be pointed out that the Federal government, as we all know, has no legitimate power to do this. Not only is no such power listed in the Constitution (its only source of authority, outside of threat of violence), but the very principles of liberty upon which our country is founded say that NO government could ever rightfully have such authority.
And yet here we are, getting up an hour earlier, dragging to work an hour earlier, eating supper an hour earlier, trying to make ourselves sleep an hour earlier, even though studies say this is harmful for us, can even shorten our lifespans and doing so for two extra months, this year.
Why?
Because that power-mad government, a while back, found a way to game the system. It can’t get away with telling you when to go to work, but it can simply declare TIME ITSELF to be wrong.
Is there a stronger word than simply “arrogant”?
The sun, the Creator, the cosmos…all of it is off by one hour, because some megalomaniacs in DC think that it’s better if we are forced to get up earlier.
If you wish to get up earlier, to save electricity or match your schedule to banks or farmers, that is your right, and should be your choice. If anyone were to pass a law forcing you to get up later, it would be a crime against you.
But the same is true in reverse. People should not be forced to get up earlier, jeopardizing their health, increasing their stress, or even simply inconveniencing themselves. It is their natural right to choose, just as it is yours.
So aside from increasing the sleep deprivation that shortens lifespans, risk of heart attack, traffic accidents, childhood behavior problems, business costs, and so on, it also puts the US behind Kazakhstan (who ended forced daylight savings time) on the protection of your natural rights.
We can choose to save electricity by getting up earlier, or our lives by sleeping in...we don't need Big Brotherment to violate our choices "for your own good"
Super-Sizing Sour Grapes
What Americans have, even in the midst of an economic depression, is an embarrassment of riches.
When the citizens of other countries complain that Americas eat too much, what they are really saying is “We are jealous of America’s plentiful food”; Despite (or because of) all their redistributive, anti-choice socialist programs, the typical European has less access to food, in diversity or amount, than even the poorest fifth of Americans. Maybe nobody in Europe goes hungry, but they don’t really prosper, either. (facebook readers beware; the rest of the article is after the picture, don’t ask me why that happens)
A Fox found a bunch of grapes, on a vine over a lofty branch. Turning round with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no success. At last he had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour, anyway." MORAL: It is easy to despise what you cannot get.
And when they say “Americans are too fat”, what they mean is “Americans are more affluent”. Americans don’t need to walk as much, or otherwise engage in as much involuntary physical labor. Even poor Americans have more comfortable homes, more access to cars, more video games and computers, infinitely better television, more leisure, even without the Europeans’ governments forcing them to suffer the pay cut imposed by a mandatory six week vacation every year.
Of course their response to this being pointed out is “more leisure? More entertainment? More living space? Bah! What kind of horrible way of measuring quality of life! People must be equal, not happy, you dirty materialist!” And yet, of course, everything about socialism is materialistic, an endless class war of envy and hate, worrying about who has more than whom, redistributing wealth, controlling our choices. That is the reason Marxists called it the Materialist Dialectic.
But it turns out that socialism traps people in stagnancy and perpetual shortages, while freedom allows people to have many more things. So, naturally, the actual materialists had to turn around and claim that prosperity is “decadent”, and “greedy”. How it can be more greedy than wanting to redistribute other people’s money for oneself, I don’t know.
Americans have a tendency to be hard workers. They are, statistically, the most productive society on the planet…but people, in general, who have access to more food and more leisure have to learn how to balance that with the need to choose to maintain physical fitness. Even if Americans, as a society, do learn that, the percentage of individuals who do not will still drag down the “average”.
An embarrassment of riches is a wonderful problem to have. “Oh no, too many people want to date me!” “Oh woe, I’ve grown so many tomatoes, I must give them away!” “Pitty me: now that I’ve won the lottery, people keep asking me for money!”
Who would seriously choose a life of more hunger, less choice, and more involuntary struggle over one where they need to choose to struggle a bit to stay in good physical condition?
In tests, lab animals that go somewhat hungry live longer. This probably is true of people as well…but what benefit is the added life, if it’s a result of being forced to do with less?
We’re better off being faced with the need to control how much to work out, to watch our diet, et cetera, than being lean because we haven’t the chance to be flappy even if we were irresponsible. To be free to choose whether to life short, fat, comfortable lives, or strive for longer, healthier lives.
Some of us will chose wrong…but that isn’t necessarily limited to the ones who choose leisure.
For some people, the effort may make life less worthwhile. For others, the working to “stay fit” might actually be more fun, as well as healthier.
Americans are free to choose, whereas the victims of socialism in the rest of the world have what is supposedly best forced upon them “for your own good”, in a one-size-fits-all solution. People are better off being free to determine their own size.
That’s why even the most enlightened, economically and socially homogeneous European country still has more citizens wishing to become Americans, than Americans (despite our larger population) wishing to move to that country.
The price of choice, is the risk of mistakes. Even life-altering ones. But, overall, the benefit far outweighs the cost.
Americans can be proud to have the freedom that allows us the prosperity to choose whether to supersize their meals. The reason the rest of the world complains, ultimately, is that they are deprived of even the option. They have super-sized Sour Grapes.
Stopping Piracy on the High Seas
Now that a ship of the evil, but highly influential, Saudi tyranny has been hijacked by pirates, suddenly the long-standing problem of piracy in the Indian ocean is headline news.
Crackpot neocons like Michael Savage, and his imitator Mark Levin, are calling for the US Navy to run around destroying boats and slaughtering people suspected of piracy.
Socialists/Liberals are proposing the normal, faux-pacifist solutions of more international committees and taxpayer funding to bureaucratically consider the problem, and more handouts, and of course trying to force an authoritarian central government on Somalia, sort of a reverse-Iraq, nation-destroying project.
But the real solution is, as usual, not one of more governmental intrusion, but one of more individual liberty and responsibility:
Allow private craft to be armed.
Now, most people probably don’t realize this, but there are complete bans on boats or ships carrying defenses in most nations where you might come to port. These leave craft largely helpless against piracy, even though the ban on defense has no practical benefit.
Imagine how easy it would actually have been for a ship the size of an oil tanker to defend itself, against pirates in a speedboat, armed with rifles and grenades. Especially considering the expenditure that would be justified by the value of its cargo. How good a defense could YOU afford, if you were shipping $100,000,000 worth of oil?
The pirates reportedly captured the supertanker with rifles and grenades, in a speedboat. Imagine if the tanker were legally allowed to defend itself...
Allowing/encouraging craft to defend themselves would have the added benefit of making it safer for any craft to NOT defend itself. Even pacifists, who did not arm their boats, would be protected, because any potential pirates could not know whether the boat is armed, or not. So ALL people would be safer, if only SOME would arm themselves well enough to make piracy too dangerous.
This is, of course, the story of Big Brotherment mentality, where the governments constantly arm themselves better, but tell the individuals that arming yourself is bad…and yet fail to protect the disarmed people WITH the government’s massive weaponry.
Meanwhile, of course, criminals arm themselves BETTER, because of the disarmed masses. What is easy to buy on the black market is whatever desirable thing is most wrongfully banned by a government.
Even a small boat could take out an attacker with a single shot…and yet, of course, pirates would not profit if THEY took out victims with a single shot. You don’t make any money from ransom, nor gain any loot, if you sink your target.
Therefore, if ships were allowed to defend themselves, there would BE no pirates, because it would be far more risky, with modern weaponry, than profitable.
Problem actually solved.
If, instead, we have government deal with the problem of piracy…well, when’s the last time government actually solved a problem? Actually fixed the thing they claimed to be fighting, so that the problem was simply gone, and the powers usurped to deal with it were returned to the people?
Has that ever happened?
Let’s go with liberty, letting ships defend themselves, instead of bureaucracy, spending billions to probably make the problem worse.
Trickle-Down Taxation
Item #2 of the Communist Manifesto: "A heavy progressive or graduated income tax". What isn't mentioned is that this was a way Marx could make the poor even poorer and weaker, not the rich. Marx gained power from the strife caused by poverty.
One of the best-sounding of the freebies that Obama is offering to hand out (if it’s not just another politician’s empty campaign promise) is exempting everyone who makes under $200K from the income tax. This one even tempts me. Lower taxes are good for the economy, for economic freedom, and of course for everyone who earns less than that amount of money.
But there’s a serious down-side to this. How do we fund all of the other freebies he is giving out, if we are going to cut government tax revenue with this one?
Of course the answer is simple: We are going to tax the people who make OVER $200K so much more that it makes up for the loss. Obama says it’s only fair, to “spread the wealth around”.
Now this may not be quite as bad as it sounds:
- First, people who make over $100K or so pay most of the taxes, already. Unfortunately, Bush’s tax cuts were not really all that “for the rich”, and “wealthy” people already pay almost all of the taxes. It was pointed out today that there are some companies, in fact, that are forced to pay more taxes per year, individually, than 66% of all families. It’s famous that the top two percent of earners pay something like 60% of the taxes.
- Second, tax cuts boost the economy, which increases tax revenue. Both Reagan and Kennedy both demonstrated this, cutting and simplifying taxes, and having tax revenue increase.
Unfortunately, those two things aren’t enough. The billions paid by people who earn less than $200K still adds up…and tax cuts don’t all work equally well.
For example, tax cuts that favor one group over another help the economy less, while ones that spread the burden evenly help everyone more. In fact, simply spreading the burden evenly, with NO tax cut, would boost the economy more than cutting taxes for some people, while raising it for others.
Especially when the taxes (as they already, are, and will now be more) are designed to punish hard work, success, and contribution to society.
Just as a slight increase in interest rates, so small it certainly doesn’t change any one person’s mind, has a large nation-wide impact on how much people borrow, so a tax that increases as you earn more money has a nation-wide impact on how much people earn, depressing income growth.
But there’s something involved, that’s more important than ALL of that:
WHEN Barak Obama raises taxes on people who earn more money, the wealthy will not pay a penny of it.
You will.
The counterpart to trickle-down economics (which points out that wealthy people who earn more money spend and invest more, allowing all of society to become more wealthy) is…
Trickle Down Taxes
When you raise taxes on the rich, they ALWAYS respond to defend their wealth. The more money and power they have, the better they can do this. They can give themselves raises, pay accountants to shelter their income, or otherwise make up for the new tax.
But where do they get the new money, to pay themselves enough to make up for the taxes?
From you.
Wealthy people and companies can, for example, raise prices to pay themselves enough extra to make up for the taxes. Guess who pays the higher prices.
They can also cut jobs or pay among their employees, in order to make enough to pay themselves more. Guess who the employees are.
Along with those two tools of passing along higher taxes, the rich and powerful can cut quality of products, again to save for themselves. Ice cream that was once two quarts is now 1.5 quarts, and the same price. Check Edy’s and Breyer’s, next time you’re shopping. Guess who ends up paying for all the reduced-quality/quantity food. Not the rich guys…the can afford to pay a premium for consistent quality.
Ultimately, ALL costs the government imposes on the wealthy, they pass down to you.
Oh, but the tax trickling isn’t done, yet.
If They Lose, You Lose More
Let’s say you, somehow, manage to force the wealthy and powerful to pay for their own taxes.
You are now shutting thousands of people out of jobs, and, causing more hunger and poverty.
Why?
Because the wealthy don’t put their money in giant Scrooge McDuck vaults, to play in while they cackle wickedly. Instead, they either spend or invest it. Spending it creates jobs directly. If they buy a car, someone built it, someone shipped it, someone sold it, people repair it, people clean it…maybe someone even drives it as their job. The less money ANYONE spends, the less work there is. But, let’s face is, the wealthy have more money, per person, than other people, and therefore supply more jobs with money.
Poor people have to mow their own lawns (if they have them). Middle class people may be able to pay someone to mow their lawn for them. A few dozen families might, between them, manage to keep one lawncare guy employed. But one wealthy dude may employ a half dozen lawn guys, all by himself.
Take away his money, and the rich guy may have to lay off his lawn people…perhaps one hundred times the job impact of a middle class person having to stop hiring a lawn guy.
But most of a wealthy guy’s money is not spent, so it doesn’t make jobs.
Well, not directly.
Investment Creates Jobs
The “capital” in capitalism is investment.
Rich people and companies are the reason most new jobs ever get created at all, because it requires investment to build the factory, or store, or restaurant, whatever it is. Even when poorer people start their own successful business out of pocket (something pretty rare, because of government regulation and taxes), they only create large numbers of jobs as they become successful and rich.
One of the many reasons the economy is so weak, now, is because investment is so rare, thanks to punishment of investment through taxes, regulation, deflation, and the preference for stagnating money shelters like bonds and treasury notes, over the stocks to which government has proven to be so hostile.
If we are to get back on the road to economic growth, we must first get on the road to economic freedom for all, including the wealthy, who just happen to pass on ALL effects we try to have on them, good or bad.
Thanksgiving: Happy Conservatism Day!
Thanksgiving, as it exists in America, is very special, right up there with Independence Day, as a celebration of true Conservative principles, and a repudiation of what we now know as Liberalism.
Against Collectivism
For example, what the Pilgrims were celebrating was an abandonment of the collectivist/socialist ideals they’d adopted when they first tried to form their colony.
The first colonists had starved, suffering the inefficiency and laziness bred by a “share the wealth” philosophy, where everything went into a common pool, and everyone got an equal share, much like Europe and the Clintons of the world embrace today.
When they finally started requiring people to take responsibility for themselves, adopting what amounted to a precursor of Reagan/Paul Conservatism, with community property being replaced by private property, and central planning by liberty, they found prosperity, and stopped dying out.
We’ll be in pretty much the same situation, a few years from now, after yet more years of the “share the wealth” philosophy of big government, ultimately not much of a departure from Bush’s stealth Liberalism of the past eight.
Pro-Christian
Not only were the Pilgrims celebrating the abandonment of socialism, and resulting prosperity, but the tradition of having a feast to give thanks was theirs because it was a Christian tradition to do so. Thanksgiving was not a “harvest festival”, as the politically correct in the Establishment media and government schools would have you believe.
It was, in this case, celebrating a bountiful harvest, but the “thanks giving” part was a standard Christian tradition in England, who would do this at any time of year, to celebrate whatever blessing they felt God had given them, or even to remind themselves of what they still had, when things were bad.
Puritans and other devout Christians in England, any time in the previous century or more, might have a thanksgiving feast any time a baby was born, or loved one died, for example.
And, as we all know, Liberalism is very anti-Christian, however loudly they object to that being pointed out, in between rounds of banning voluntary religious expression in public places, unless it’s Jewish, Islamic, or something else not-Christian. In fact, even the Christian nature of Thanksgiving, as well as Christmas, has been stripped by Liberal media, schools, and government, or else I wouldn’t need to be writing this in clarification. 
Why Nobody Wants to Bail Out Automakers (except bureaucrats)
One thing you’ll notice about the debate over bailing out the automakers is that, even more than in general, everyone’s against it except corrupt politicians, panhandling automakers, and monopolistic union officials.
That’s because it’s a lose/lose situation if we do, but things might actually get better if we don’t.
First, let’s consider the big, fat lie that three million people would be put out of work.
We’ll ignore (for a moment) that bankrupcy will actually keep them in business and let them become more efficient.
Let’s pretend, instead that the automakers would actually [poof] ceased to exist. Only a couple hundred thousand workers, not three million, actually are employed by those car companies.
If the companies vanished, then all other 2,800,000 workers would not only continue to have jobs…
(continued after the spiffy pic)
They claim three million jobs are at stake, but the bailout would actually cost jobs, and make a few union management types rich
…but probably end up with better versions of their jobs. Why? Because people wouldn’t stop buying cars, they just would be buying DIFFERENT cars. Cars that need dealers, mechanics, parts sellers, and all the other jobs that the car companies are dishonestly counting as “three million jobs”. If you don’t buy a car from the Big Three oligopoly of panhandlers, you’ll buy one from someone else, instead.
Of course foreign cars often don’t need repairs and parts as often as American cars, but THAT would represent a savings for americans in general, that would create more jobs.
But, of course, the Big Three are in ZERO danger of magically vanishing.
Instead, they’d have to file for bankrupcy “restructuring”, which would be a way to allow them to fix a lot of the stupid inefficiency that laws and bureaucracy have trapped them with, WITHOUT them having to steal twenty five billion dollars (a number that will grow) from you and me, and then have Big Brother socialize them with mandatory “changes” that don’t represent what we consumers want, anyway.
And…well, really, that’s it. There are no other excuses for squandering $500 from the pocket of every middle-class family on yet another socialist bailout. Just “three million jobs” that is really only a couple hundred thousand jobs that would not go away, anyhow.
Sure, I could point out how restructuring, instead of a bailout, would break the back of the UAW monopoly, which forces American car companies to pay nine times as much for labor as foreign car companies. And how the UAW is therefore bribing the Democrats the way the Big Three automakers are bribing the fake-Republican neocons…which might just happen to be why they are all for the bailout, when everyone else is against it.
But, really, it boils down to “three million jobs is a lie”.
In fact, it boils down to the fact that americans would probably GAIN jobs from letting GM file for restructuring, while we will LOSE jobs by squandering more money on the bailout, which will ultimately come out of YOUR pocket, and mine. When the government wastes money, we lose the opportunity to spend the money on actual, productive things that employ people.
We need more economic freedom, to regain true American prosperity, not more handouts lifted from our own pockets.
About
This site has its origins before the word “Blog” existed. Back then its owner, Kaz, was simply thought of as having a website that published socio-political articles with regularity…But the only real difference was that the RSS/XML protocals were not yet used this way.
The website was known as Site of the Sentient, a reference to the famous Words of the Sentient, that Kaz had been editing for years previously.
When some random portal site hijacked the domain siteofthesentient.com, it was a dark time for the human knowledge quest. Fortunately, But Now You Know is striving to take up the slack, and even has some revamped versions of the original articles, for example Conscription, is it Slavery, and How to Get Out of Jury Duty, and be a hero instead of a bad citizen.
Kaz is a writer, graphic artist, and supplements his income by being a hardcore senior web developer.
Along with this blog, you can track his efforts with the dedicated facebook page here.
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Words of the Sentient- Tolkien, on Government
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