Only the Self-Reliant Remain Free

An interesting essay by Terence P. Jeffrey:

Who had more freedom?

Was it the pioneer who rode horseback across the Midwest, settled in a wide-open space without paved roads, grocery stores or hospitals, and had to build his own home, cultivate his own food and educate his own children?

Or was it the less-adventuresome brother he left behind in an Eastern city who lived next door to a hospital, across the street from a public school and kitty corner from a grocery store — but in his later years could only get to work if he rode a public transit line and if the transit line ran on time?

I vote for the pioneer. He was not dependent on government. His brother was.

Self-reliance and freedom are inseparable. Americans once knew this in their very souls. Now, coaxed by those with a socialistic vision of government, we are beginning to forget it. We are becoming ever more dependent on government and putting our freedom at risk.

It is as simple as that.

The Census Bureau recently published some remarkable data. As of the end of 2011, it said, there were approximately 151,014,000 who received one or more benefits from the federal government. That was 49 percent of the population of the country, which then stood at 306,804,000. [read more]

So, true. America needs to get back to what made this country great: self-reliance and innovation. It’s what socialistic countries don’t have and that’s why most don’t have productive economies.

A Twelve Step Plan for Understanding the Free-Market

1. Admit that government solutions are a problem.
2. Have faith that people can interact peacefully and that economic blessings are available for all.
3. Surrender to the fact that certain social ills cannot be irradiated by force or politically will.
4. Ask yourself do I want to advocate self-sufficiency and voluntary means or do I want to look to politicians every time I don’t like something.
5. Survey the past record of governments when it comes to economic planning or other allegeds improvements.
6. Learn to look for the hidden costs of government intervention rather than the superficial benefits.
7. Understand the role of market prices and why tampering with them interferes with the job they have to perform.
8. Study history. Examine whether governments that violated private property rights stayed out their citizens other affairs.
9. Before condemning a market outcome is unjust first understand why it occurs.
10. Study other spontaneous social institutions such as language and science where no-one is in charge and yet the outcome is quite orderly.
11. When politicians propose a new program remember how much they said it would cost at the outset. Compare that number to the actual amount spent.
12. Go through the newspaper and discover how government meddling causes or exacerbates the conflict in virtually every story.

Source: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism (2007) by Robert P. Murphy, Ph. D.

This is good advice for everyone but especially for the ones in power since they are the ones that make policy.

Le Contrat Social (1922)

This an interesting essay written by H.L. Mencken:

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: Its one permanent object is to police him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. Thus one of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives.

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly no politician. Nor was he a patriot. Nor had he any democratic illusions in him: he held the Viennese in even more contempt than he held the Hapsburgs. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the sharp criticism of the Hapsburg government that he used to loose in the cafes of Vienna had its effects that some of his ideas of 1818, after a century of germination, got themselves translated into acts in 1918. Beethoven, like all other first-rate men, greatly disliked the government he lived under. I add the names of Goethe, Heine, Wagner and Nietzsche, to keep among Germans. That of Bismarck might follow: he admired the Hohenzollern idea, as Carlyle did, not the German people or the German administration. In his “Errinerungen,” whenever he discusses the government that he was a part of, he has difficulty keeping his contempt within the bounds of decorum. [read more]

So, true now as it was back then. Nazism hadn’t completely taken over Germany then (that would be in ten years) but like communism and socialism what he described is very similar for all three ideologies. Remember during WWII the Soviet Union made a pact with Germany which Hitler promptly broke. But why would the communist Stalin back then even make a pact with a national socialist like Hitler in the first place if there were no commonality between their ideology?

The Reichstag Fire, 1933

The alarm was sounded on the evening of February 27, 1933 signaling not only a fire, but the arrival of a crucial moment in German history. The Reichstag Building in Berlin, the seat of the German Parliament, was ablaze. By the time firefighters arrived, the Reichstag was overwhelmed by the flames. In addition to destroying the physical embodiment of democracy in Germany, the conflagration provided the first step down a path that led to the solidification of Hitler's dictatorship and to the most devastating war the world has ever known. This pivotal inferno was no accident.

In 1932 the democratic government of Germany, dictated by the Versailles Treaty at the close of World War One, was in political chaos. The Nazi Party was the largest political party within the Reichstag but did not have a majority of seats. After several failed attempts to form a new government in the latter part of that year, German President Hindenburg appointed Adolph Hitler Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Having achieved political power, Hitler and his Nazi cohorts looked for a way to solidify their position. The destruction of the Reichstag Building was their answer.

Evidence discovered after World War Two indicates that the fire that engulfed the Reichstag twenty-eight days after Hitler's ascendency to Chancellor was planned and executed by his henchmen, Herman Goering and Joseph Goebbels, Hitler publicly blamed the Communists, an accusation that allowed him to arrest the Communist members of the Reichstag and thereby eliminate his major political opposition. A young, mentally deranged Communist Dutchman by the name of Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested, tried and convicted of setting the fire.

In late March 1933, Hitler presented legislation to the Reichstag that would transfer its powers to himself. The members easily voted themselves out of existence and proclaimed Hitler the sole leader of Germany. His total control of the country was democratically reconfirmed the following year when, in a plebiscite, 90% of the voters approved of Hitler's dictatorial leadership. He was acclaimed as der Fueher. He had learned a bitter lesson years earlier when he sought to achieve power through violence and failed (see Adolph Hitler Attempts a Coup, 1923). Now, he attained his goal through the skillful use of the tools of democracy. A fire during the night of February 27, 1933 paved the way. [read more]

I am not sure that Hitler had one of his henchmen start the fire. Herman Goering joked he started the fire. Maybe that is why the Eye Witness to History.com website talked about “evidence discovered.” Either way Hitler and the National Socialist Party exploited the fire so Hitler could gain power. They didn’t let a good crises go to waste.

It was the Enabling Act that was passed that gave Hitler dictatorial powers. As Britannica.com stated the Act “’enabled’ Hitler’s government to issue decrees independently of the Reichstag and the presidency.” Sort of like executive orders.

Was Hitler taking over an example of Van Jones top down-bottom up-inside out-strategy? Well, not completely. There probably wasn’t really any top-down part. The bottom-up part was the arsonist himself. The inside-out part was the economic chaos that happened before the fire then the fire itself which didn’t help matters. Hitler was smart enough to exploit the chaos like any good radical.

Russia Wants Monitoring Stations in America

From The Blaze.com (Nov. 16):

The CIA and Pentagon have been trying to halt a State Department plan to let Russia’s space agency (Roscosmos) construct within the United States a handful of monitor stations, according to American officials, the New York Times reported.

The fear is that the stations could aid Russian efforts to spy on the U.S. and bolster the accuracy of Russian weaponry, the officials told the Times, adding that the Russians said the monitor stations would dramatically improve their version of the Global Positioning System.

The CIA and other U.S. spy agencies, along with the Pentagon, believe the monitor stations would provide Russia with better accuracy with weapons and an opening to spy on the U.S., the Times noted.

In addition members of Congressional intelligence and armed services committees regard Moscow’s GPS — a.k.a. Glonass (i.e., Global Navigation Satellite System) — with suspicion and want answers from the Obama administration.

“I would like to understand why the United States would be interested in enabling a GPS competitor, like Russian Glonass, when the world’s reliance on GPS is a clear advantage to the United States on multiple levels,” said Representative Mike D. Rogers, Republican of Alabama, the chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee. [read more]

More and more I think that the Obama administration is clueless about international affairs. I wouldn’t put it past Russia’s leadership to spy on America with those monitoring stations.

Congressman Warns of Obamacare “Secret Security Force”

From Infowars.com (Nov. 15):

During an appearance on the Janet Mefferd Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) warned that a provision within Obamacare could create an armed “secret security force”.

Referring to a section of the gargantuan Obamacare law which discusses “the president’s own commissioned and non-commissioned officer corps,” Gohmert drew attention to the notion that under the pretext of a “national emergency,” such individuals could be used to impose some form of medical martial law.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the Ready Reserve Corps is directed to “assist full-time Commissioned Corps personnel to meet both routine public health and emergency response missions.”

“It says it is for international health crises, but then it doesn’t include the word ‘health’ when it talks about national emergencies,” said Gohmert.

“I’ve asked, what kind of training are they getting….I want to know are they using weapons to train, or are they being taught to use syringes and health care items?” asked the Congressman, adding that “no clear answers” had been forthcoming on the issue.”

Combined with the continued DHS arms build up along with the federal agency’s hiring of armed guards with “Top Secret” security clearances, Gohmert characterized the issue as “very disturbing”. [read more]

Spooky. I wonder if the Ready Reserve Corps is going to be like the KGB in the old Soviet Union? Nah.

Beware of “False Flags”

From US Concealed Carry.com (Nov. 6):

Anti-gun zealots have recently been creating more and more fake “gun rights” groups, often duping unsuspecting gun owners into contributing to them. What’s most diabolical is that the money collected is then used to attack gun owner’s rights, not protect them.

Probably the best example of a “False Flag” gun rights group is the infamous “Americans for Gun Safety,” started in 2001 and bankrolled by Monster.com mogul Andrew McKelvey. After digging into the group’s origins and supporters, writer James L. Pate noted:

“With an initial start-up budget of more than $12 million of his own fortune, McKelvey created AGS as a new national coalition of local and state anti-gun groups. AGS was designed to move debate from Capitol Hill into state legislatures and to bring various state anti-gun activists under one umbrella.” [Emphasis ours.]

Other states have similar stories. “Iowa Gun Owners” is a recent example of a previously unknown group appearing out of nowhere, run by folks with suspiciously anti-gun backgrounds. So stay alert. These “Trojan Horse” outfits sound pro-gun, but often betray their agenda with phrases like “common sense” gun laws, “sensible” restrictions, or “closing loopholes.” [read more]

This is SOP for the Left. Especially the far left. Like for instance, in the Virginia governor race the libertarian candidate wasn’t really a libertarian at all. Even Ron Paul didn’t support him. He was a false flag candidate funded by the Left. That’s why a voter should never vote on just the party itself. Look deeper.

It won’t surprise me if the Left does other false flag activities like for instance saying they are pro-life or pro-school choice when they are not. Just be cautious.

Wickard v. Filburn

Here is an example of federal abuse of power. In 1942, a farmer was fined for not following the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 guidelines. The farmer was growing “wheat crop which was available for marketing in excess of the marketing quota established for his farm.”  Here is more on the case from the docket:

“The appellee for many years past has owned and operated a small farm in Montgomery County, Ohio, maintaining a herd of dairy cattle, selling milk, raising poultry, and selling poultry and eggs. It has been his practice to raise a small acreage of winter wheat, sown in the Fall and harvested in the following July; to sell a portion of the crop; to feed part to poultry and livestock on the farm, some of which is sold; to use some in making flour for home consumption, and to keep the rest for the following seeding.”

So, basically the farmer was just minding his business not hurting anyone and he got in trouble with the gov’t.  He wasn’t even really selling all that much wheat. Just a little bit and using the rest for his farm and family.

5 Pillars of Becoming a Self-Aware Leader

From Fox Business.com (Sept. 16):

Americans are obsessed with doing. We like to be in constant motion even if we don’t always have a clear sense of exactly where we are going. As long as we are moving, we feel productive. But this steady movement is often unnecessary and unproductive, and professor Hitendra Wadhwa from Columbia University, is trying to change this mentality.

He founded the Institute for Personal Leadership to modify the way budding young leaders view leadership. His goal is to “invite people to dissolve boundaries” and learn to practice their core values in all circumstances. He says there is a “hunger in our society for self-awareness” and the practice of introspection can greatly benefit America’s emerging young business leaders.

The business world and pop psychology have long tried to create false boundaries between our inner-selves and our business-selves with the belief that trying to separate the two is somehow healthy, explains Wadhwa. But our experiences, values, emotions and beliefs all act to shape how we think and act across all circumstances. He points out that you just can’t separate your inner-self from your business-self and expect to function in a healthy way.

Wadhwa details five pillars of personal leadership that we should all strive to embrace in order to achieve a more holistic and fulfilling life. [read more]

The five pillars are:

1. Purpose
2. Wisdom. According to Wadhwa, wisdom is about mindset and the ability to “harness your emotions and thoughts to allow yourself to be at your peak performance at all times” regardless of the circumstances.
3. Self-awareness
4. Growth
5. Love. Wadhwa’s not talking about romantic love, but that leaders need the desire to win through others and genuinely take joy in their success.

The best pillar is love. Second best is wisdom. Even though these pillars are meant to be for business leaders, any kind of leader could use them.

The Nature of Jesus Christ

1. A man of deep concerns, with a passion to communicate, but he did not hammer away. Rather he clothed his concerns in stories that showed the profoundest respect for the intelligence of his audience*, Jesus spoke on one occasion of casting out demons by God's gentle power (“the finger of God”). The same could be said of his approach to teaching. Not harsh harangue, but gentle, sometimes humorous, sometimes biting image and winsome evocation consistently characterize his effort at counteracting what he felt to be destructive tendencies in the spirit of his time.
2. In the parables, perhaps as nowhere else, we can get a feeling for the priorities of Jesus' concerns. By taking the stories as a whole one begins to sense where the real weight of his thinking lay, where its focal centers were—the points to which it returned again and again. These can be summarized very simply. He felt the world to be radiant with the gracious, forgiving, healing activity of God. It was a disaster to him that the people of his time, the leaders especially, were so hostile to those who were most alienated and therefore most in need of this God. He felt that the "religious" just had to face up to what they were doing, and that they were indeed capable of doing so. The active goodness of God, the summons to faith, to compassion and love, and the urgency that men and women do something about their most obvious responsibilities toward each other— these are the notes that sound again and again through the stories we have just studied.
3. One theme above all, however, surfaces in these parables: the inherent dangers of self-righteousness, the supreme worth of humble repentance. To a too-reverent seeker who had called him good Jesus once replied: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18). In parable after parable he says the same thing. Surely Jesus is the humblest of world religious leaders. It is dangerous, yes fatal, he insists, not to face up to our fallibility and sin and learn to forgive and be forgiven.
4. Surprising is the simplicity and down-to-earthiness of the stories that Jesus fashioned to convey this message. They testify to the way his mind dwelt on the ordinary. If Jesus did speak of an apocalyptic future, a time when God would shatter the fabric of history, and introduce a totally new world, one must say that this was not by any means what preoccupied him. What preoccupied him, the parables would suggest, was the interrelationship of the ordinary and the spiritual. The goodness of God became manifest to him in the bumbling response of a friend at midnight, and the kingdom of God in the everyday miracle of leaven in dough. The profoundest issues of life were forcefully displayed by two men in prayer, and how a man should act could be seen in a scoundrel scrambling for a place for himself in the wake of precipitous dismissal from his job. That we are surprised by this down-to-earthiness of his teaching testifies no doubt to the plastic image of Jesus that has been too long dominant in Christendom.

Source: Step by Step through the Parables: A Beginner's Guide to the Modern Study of the Stories Jesus Told; Their Meaning in His Time and Ours (1981) by John W. Miller.

There is one characteristic of Jesus I would like to add to the list above that the author didn’t. And that is Jesus’ emphasis on the individual not on the group. Take for instance the parable of the lost sheep:

What man of you having a hundred sheep, and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety nine in the open and go after the lost one until he finds it? And finding it, he puts it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And coming to the house, he calls together the friends and neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that had been lost. I say to you that so is joy in Heaven over one sinner repenting, than over ninety nine righteous ones who have no need of repentance. (Luke 15:4-7)

The italics in the passage are mine. Notice that Jesus talks about a single sheep being lost not a group or collective of sheep being lost. Jesus says Heaven is happy when one person changes his or her life for the better. The sheep herder didn’t have to worry about the other sheep that didn’t stray. If the herder was a collectivist then the lost sheep wouldn’t have been saved because its life didn’t matter as much as the other sheep.  The lost drachma parable (Luke 15:8) is similar to the lost sheep parable.

 

*Too bad most politicians can’t have this attitude.

Epicycles and Obamacare

From FEE.org (Oct. 28):

Ever heard of Ptolemy? He’s the guy whose model of the universe lasted for more than 1,000 years. The earth, thought Ptolemy, is at the center of the known universe and the planets dance around the earth. But this is where things got unnecessarily complicated.

To explain the apparently strange planetary motions, Ptolemy and astronomers after him used epicycles. It took centuries before Copernicus figured out that the need for epicycles could be reduced by putting the sun at the center of the known universe. Improvements by Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Kepler and Newton eliminated epicycles altogether.

Regulators are much like Ptolemaic astronomers—only they can meddle directly in the economy to try to get it to fit their model. The regulators perceive some “market failure,” then apply their linear logic to justify an intervention. When the intervention fails or causes some perverse effect, the regulator’s epicyclical thinking kicks in. He decides to fix the bad consequences of the earlier fixes. Intervention begets intervention.

Take Obamacare. Regulatory interventions in healthcare since World War II have created an unnecessarily expensive healthcare sector. These interventions have created a cozy provider-insurance cartel, but they have also caused medical inflation, which has made healthcare and health insurance increasingly less affordable over time. Less affordability limits people’s access. [read more]

Copernicus was able to change the paradigm because he had mental flexibility and objectivity—the “earthcentric” view of the universe was not his theory so inverting the theory was no big deal to him. In other words, his ego wasn’t attached to the theory. Initially, it is easy to under why people back then believed the earthcentric view. It is what they observed with their eyes even after the invention of the telescope. 

To those whose ego and power is attached to Obamacare won’t look for other models of healthcare. Also, if you think you’re ideology or narrative is perfect then any system or theory you devise that is based on that ideology you won’t probably change since it will be perfect too. There is no mental flexibility if you believe your narrative or theory is right. Even if the facts say otherwise.

Are Anti-Bullying Programs Having An Opposite Effect?

From CBS local.com (Oct. 8):

NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) – A lot of schools spend countless hours trying to stop bullying. But some question if they are sending the right message.

It started as a simple look at bullying. University of Texas at Arlington criminologist Seokjin Jeong analyzed data collected from 7,000 students from all 50 states.

He thought the results would be predictable and would show that anti-bullying programs curb bullying. Instead — he found the opposite.

Jeong said it was, “A very disappointing and a very surprising thing. Our anti-bullying programs, either intervention or prevention does not work.”

The study concluded that students at schools with anti-bullying programs might actually be more likely to become a victim of bullying. It also found that students at schools with no bullying programs were less likely to become victims. [read more]

If the anti-bullying programs are those so-called “conflict resolutions” programs then it is not wonder the programs fail. You want to stop bullying? Expel the bully especially if he or she is a serial bully. That will send a signal to other bullies. Usually, kids that are bullies have parents that are bullies. Or the bully is being bullied by another kid or by a bunch of kids.

Maybe, the victims of bullies should take the RAGE approach next time they are bullied. Not bad suggestions by the author.