Thoughts of The Buddha

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

Observe the life by cause and consequence. Explore the life by wisdom. Treat the life by equality. Complete the life by love.

The evils of the mind are covetousness, hatred, and error.

Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.

I am not a Buddhist but these are pretty good. Even the last seven could be interpreted as conservative principles. The third one is my favorite quote.

In Buddhism there is what is called the Five Powers:

1. Faith- trust and confidence in yourself, knowing that you can overcome obstacles through the power of practice.
2. Energy- not being physically or even mentally lazy.
3. Mindfulness- being fully present, not lost in daydreams or worry.
4. Concentration- to become so absorbed that all distinctions between self and other are forgotten. This is similar to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of flow. 
5. Wisdom- only from direct, and intimately experienced, insight. It does not come from crafting intellectual explanations.

The heart of Buddhism is self-control and self-discipline. Which is also the heart of conservatism.

The Principles of a Rational Tort System

Principle #1: Victims of torts should be fully compensated—no more, and no less.

Principle #2: Those who commit torts should pay the full cost of their harmful acts—no more, no less.

Principle #3: Whenever possible, damages should be determined in the marketplace (e.g., the market price to repair the damage).

Principle #4: Structured awards are generally preferable to lump sum awards.

Principle #5: Parties should always be free to alter by contract a court- determined award.

Principle #6: Reasonable limits should be set on damages for pain and suffering, subject to market-based rebuttable evidence.

Principle #7: Punitive damages are justified only if there are social costs over and above the victim’s private costs.

Principle #8: Contingency fees should be paid entirely by the defendants, with meritorious exceptions.

Principle #9: Attorney’s fees should be awarded in cases of bad faith.

Principle #10: The first nine principles do not apply to settlements.

Source: Priceless.

Better Solutions for Pre-Existing Conditions

• Encourage Portable Insurance. Most of the time, the problem of pre-existing conditions arises precisely because health insurance isn’t portable.
• Allow Special Savings Accounts for the Chronically Ill.
• Allow Special Needs Health Insurance. Instead of requiring insurers to be all things to all people, we should allow plans to specialize in or more chronic conditions. Plans could specialize, for example, in diabetic care. heart care. or cancer care, and they would be able to charge a market price (say, to employers. other insurers. and even risk pools), and price and quality competition should be encouraged.
• Allow Health Status Insurance. To facilitate the market for chronic illness insurance, we should encourage two kinds of insurance: Standard insurance would cover the health needs of people during the insurance period, while health status insurance would pay future premium increases people face if they have a change in health status and then try to switch to another health plan. You can think of this as a way of insuring against the emergence of a pre-existing condition.
• Allow Self-Insurance for Changes in Health Status. The tax law allows employers to pay for current-period medical expenses with untaxed dollars. But there is no similar opportunity for either employers or employees to save for a future change in health status—one that will generate substantial increases in medical costs.
• Give Individual Buyers the Same Tax Break Employees Get.
• Allow Providers to Repackage and Reprice Their Services Under Medicare and Medicaid. We should encourage providers to create innovative solutions to the care of diabetes, asthma, cancer, heart disease, and other chronic health issues. Along these lines, providers should be able to offer a different bundle of services and be paid in a different way so long as they reduce the government’s overall cost and provide a higher quality of care.
• Allow Access to Mandate-Free Insurance. Studies show that as many as one out of four uninsured Americans—most of them healthy—have been priced out of the market for health insurance by cost-increasing, mandated benefits. At the same time, however, these mandates raise premiums for the chronically ill and divert dollars away from their care. There is no reason a diabetic should have to pay for other peoples’ in vitro fertilization, naturopathy, acupuncture, or marriage counseling, in order to obtain diabetic care.
• Create a National Market for Health Insurance. More competition, especially among the special needs insurers, would be a huge benefit for the chronically ill. Being able to buy insurance across state lines would encourage that competition.
• Encourage Post-Retirement Health Insurance.If the past is a guide, more than 80 percent of the 78 million baby boomers will retire before they become eligible for Medicare. This group has the greatest potential for denial of health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Fortunately, one out of every three baby boomers has a promise of post-retirement healthcare. However, two out of three do not, and even for those who have a commitment, almost none of the promises are funded. A solution: give post- retirement health insurance the same tax encouragement as active-worker insurance and allow pre-retirement insurance to be portable.

Source: Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis (2012) by John C. Goodman, Ph.D.

The History of the Minimum-Wage

Sidney Webb, English economist and co-Founder of the Fabian Society in the early 1900s, believed that establishing a minimum wage above the value of “the unemployables” as he called them, would lock them out of the market thus eliminating them as a class.

“Of all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites the most ruinous to the community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete as wage earners,” Webb said.

That was actually a common sentiment in America at the time. in America shared this belief as well.  Around the same time, a Princeton economist said this:

“It is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work… better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.”

Who was that Princeton economist? Royal Meeker, U.S. Commissioner of Labor, under Woodrow Wilson. [read more]

In 1896 in Victoria, Australia, an amendment to the Factories Act provided for the creation of a wages board.  The wages board did not set a universal minimum wage; rather it set basic wages for six industries that were considered to pay low wages.  First enacted as a four year experiment, the wages board was renewed in 1900 and made permanent in 1904; by that time it covered 150 different industries.  By 1902, other Australian states, such as New South Wales and Western Australia, had also formed wages boards.

Also in 1894, New Zealand enacted the first national minimum wage laws that, unlike the wages board of Victoria, were enforced by compulsory arbitration.

In the United States, statutory minimum wages were first introduced nationally in 1938; some states enacted them as protective laws starting in 1912 until they were ruled illegal, but they applied only to women and children.  For example, Massachusetts was the first and its laws "had the power only to investigate conditions and recommend changes". [read more]

I think if you have to have a minimum wage law make it optional for the employee. Make it so he or she can wave the minimum age so s(he) can be an apprentice or get his/her foot in the door. After all this is about empowering a person to get a job right? A wage should be negotiated between the employer and employee and the gov’t has no business in deciding what the wage should be. Then again those who distrust business and think business’ exploit and even oppress their employees will never allow the potential employee to wave the minimum wage. Those same people also believe the common class is helpless without them.

One final thought. If there should be a minimum wage why not a minimum salary? I mean is there really a difference other than the amount of money?

Frederick Douglass' Principles of Success

Since this month is Black History Month I thought I’d highlight a little about Frederick Douglass. First, his principles of success:

I.  The Proper Use of Power Is To Promote the Common Good.

II.  Give Up Something You Want In Order To Help Someone Else.

III.  Overcome Doubt and Fear.

IV.  Understand Why and How To Control the Human Ego.

V.  Do What Is Right and Proper Even If No One Is Looking.

VI.  Use Knowledge and Understanding Wisely.

VII.  Overcome Indecisiveness.

VIII.  Make Gratitude a Part of Every Thought And Action.

IX.  Practice the Skill of Listening Carefully Before Making Judgments.

X.  Remain True To Your Word.

XI.  Hold a Vision For the Desired Future.

XII.  Recognize That Your Success Is As Much a Motivation To Others As To You.

Those are good principles to live by. Most of them, I dare say, sound like conservative principles. Well, he was a conservative republican. As he put it:

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

Here are some more quotes from him:

No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty.

We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!!

The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

You don’t hear this from blacks on the Left.

President Grover Cleveland

Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States; as such, he is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885–1889 and 1893–1897) and to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents. He was the winner of the popular vote for president three times—in 1884, 1888, and 1892—and was the only Democrat elected to the presidency in the era of Republican political domination dating from 1861 to 1913.

Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, inflation, imperialism, and subsidies to business, farmers, or veterans. His crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era. Cleveland won praise for his honesty, self-reliance, integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism.  He relentlessly fought political corruption, patronage and bossism. Indeed, as a reformer his prestige was so strong that the like-minded wing of the Republican Party, called "Mugwumps", largely bolted the GOP presidential ticket and swung to his support in the 1884 election.

His intervention in the Pullman Strike of 1894 to keep the railroads moving angered labor unions nationwide in addition to the party in Illinois; his support of the gold standard and opposition to Free Silver also alienated the agrarian wing of the Democratic Party. Furthermore, critics complained that he had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic disasters—depressions and strikes—in his second term.

Cleveland used the veto far more often than any president up to that time

Source: Wikapedia.

The Moral Case for Free Enterprise

Arthur C. Brooks’s free enterprise principles from his 2010 book  The Battle.  How the Fight  Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future:

• The purpose of free enterprise is human flourishing, not
  materialism.
• We stand for equality of opportunity, not the equality of income.
• We seek to stimulate true prosperity, not treat poverty.
• America can and should be a gift to the world.
• What truly matters is principle, not political power.

The “we” he is talking about is the majority of American people. These principles republicans should get and understand. The principles democrats especially the progressive ones will never know.

Will the Real Socialist Congress Person Please Stand Up

Well, it looks like there are 70 Democrats who are socialists according to the Socialist Party of America (SPA). They belong to the SPA caucus. Here is a partial list of the names:

John Conyers

Luis Gutierrez

Maxine Waters

Sheila Jackson-Lee

Dennis Kucinich

Bernie Sanders (he is the only self-declared socialist member of Congress)

Keith Ellison

Barney Frank

Alan Grayson

Jesse Jackson, Jr

John Lewis

Jim McDermott

Charles Rangel

Linda Sánchez

[read more]

Inside North Korea Part 2

The songbun system: Every N. Korean belongs to one of three strata: “loyal,” “wavering,” or “hostile.” In most cases people are classified in accordance to what the person or his/her direct male ancestors did in the 1940s and early 1950s. Children and grandchildren of former landlords, Christian and Buddhist priests, private entrepreneurs, and clerks in the Japanese colonial administration, as well as descendants of other “suspicious elements” (like say, courtesans or female shamans) are classified as part of the “hostile” strata. People, whose direct male ancestors greatly contributed to the establishment or defense of the Kim family regime are considered members of the “loyal” stratum. As a rule, only members of this stratum are eligible for the most prestigious jobs. Another rule is that one cannot change not only one’s own place in this hierarchical system but also the place of one’s children. Only in exceptional cases can a humble “bad sonbuner” be reclassified and promoted—for example, it would help if she or he saves a portrait of Kim II Sung from a flooded house or does something equally heroic. Songbun is inherited through the male line.

In the enforcement of the domestic travel control, as well as in the the general surveillance, a special role was played by a peculiar N. Korean institution known as an inminban or “people’s group.” These groups still exist, even though their efficiency as surveillance institutions has declined since the early 1990s. A typical inminban includes 20 to 40 families. In neighborhoods consisting of detached houses, that is in the majority of N. Korean neighborhoods, once inminban includes all inhabinants of a block, while in apartment buildings an inminban includes all families sharing a common staircase (or 2 or three adjacent staircases if the building is not so large). Every N. Korean of any age or sex belongs to an inminban. The inminbans heads (always a woman, usually middle-aged) are required to learn about the incomes, assets, and spending habits of all of their charges in their respective inminbans. The police supervise the inminban’s activities. Every inminban is assigned to a “resident police officer” who regularly meets its head (actually, her appointment must be confirmed by this officer). During such meetings an inminban head must report suspicious activities that have come to her attention.

North Korea was the only country that banned the use of tunable radios in peacetime. From around 1960 onward, all radios officially sold in N. Korea had fixed tuning, so that only a small number of official N. Korean channels could be listened to. If one bought a radio in a hard-currency shop or bought it from overseas (which was legal), the owner had to immediately submit the radio to police, where a technician would permanently disable its tuning mechanism. Since a technically savvy person can easily repair a radio that has been set to one station, all privately owned radio sets had to be sealed. During the above-mentioned random household checks, the inminban heads and police were required to make sure these seals remained unbroken.

The N. Korean authorities took care to isolate the populace not only from from the foreign media but also from the official publications of early years. All N. Korean periodicals and a significant number of publications on social and political topics were regularly removed from common access libraries and could only be perused by people with special permissions. With periodicals the removal was done automatically, with all newspapers published more than 10 to 15 years ago being made inaccessible for the laity. This rule was obviously introduced to ensure that the changes in the policy line of the regime would remain unnoticeable to the populace.

20% of questions like these are in math books: ” During the Fatherland Liberation War [N. Korea’s official name for the Korean War] the brave uncles of Korean People’s Army killed 265 American Imperial bastards in the first battle. In the second battle they killed 70 more bastards than they had in the first battle. How many bastards did they kill in the second battle? How many bastards did they kill all together?” “South Korean boys, who are fighting against the American imperialist wolves and their henchmen, handed out 45 bundles of leaflets with 150 leaflets in each bundle. They also stuck 50 bundles with 50 leaflets in each bundle. How many leaflets were used?”

Source: The Real North Korea. Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (2013) by Andrei Lankov.

News about N. Korea from Blaze.com:

March 7, 2013: North Korea Vows to Nuke U.S.

Apr. 5, 2013: 6 Things You Need to Know About North Korea This Friday

Jul. 19, 2013: North Korean Anti-U.S. Propaganda Is About as Unsettling as You’d Expect

Nov. 12, 2013: Reports: North Korea Executed 80 People for Watching TV and Owning Bibles

Jan. 3, 2014: North Korean Dictator Rumored to Have Used One of the Most Grotesque Ways to Execute His Uncle

Jan. 16, 2014: Human Rights Activists Are Combatting the North Korean Gov’t in One of the Most Innovative Ways Imaginable

President John Adams on Human Nature

That all men are born to equal rights is clear. Every being has a right to his own, as moral, as sacred, as any other has. This is as indubitable as a moral government in the universe. But to teach that all men are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as ever was practiced by monks, by Druids, by Brahmins, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French Revolution. For honor’s sake, Mr. Taylor*, for truth and virtue’s sake, let American philosophers and politicians despise it.

Nature, which has established in the universe a chain of being and universal order, descending from archangels to microscopic animalcules, has ordained that no two objects shall be perfectly alike, and no two creatures perfectly equal. Although, among men, all are subjects by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government, yet no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them; and whenever it becomes disputable between two individuals or families, which is the superior, a fermentation commences, which disturbs the order of all things until it is settled, and each knows his place in the opinion of the public.

All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue. 

 

These quotes, by the way, come from Russell Kirk’s book The Conservative Mind. From Burke to Eliot (1953). Kirk called John Adams the first American conservative.

 

 

*John Taylor. Adams was writing this in a letter to him.