War on Poverty Part I: The Founders’ Thoughts

While living in Europe during the 1760s, Benjamin Franklin observed that the more public provisions made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves and the poorer they became. On the contrary, the less done for them and the more they did for themselves, the richer they became.

Many have completely lost sight of that simple truth. Instead, when it comes to helping the poverty stricken, the common refrain for government intervention is to do what the Bible says or what Jesus would do. But here’s what Jesus actually said while addressing the rich man claiming to obey every commandment since his youth:

And Jesus said unto him, if thou will be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give unto the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven, and then come and follow me. (Matthew 19:21)

It’s vital to note that Jesus told the man to sell what he had and give it directly to the poor. He didn’t say, go and pay your taxes and hope that Caesars will redistribute your wealth properly to those who need it. Jesus never mentioned the government had any role in taking care of the poor. It was for individuals to do. Our Founding Fathers held the same belief.

The Founders made no mention of the federal government caring for the poor. That responsibility was left to the individual, families, churches, and if need be, local governments. Assistance was to be temporary, minimal and only on the condition of work. In other words, the poor would have to work for the welfare they received, if they were able-bodied. Franklin also said the government should assist the poor in overcoming poverty as expediently as possible. He famously said, “I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”  [read more]

When individuals, families, and churches give they do it out of caring. When gov’t gives, its usually a way for families to be hooked on gov’t aid so families will be perputual gov’t supporters (read: Democrat voters) through future generations. Then when someone wants to cut federal aid the Dems say call that person mean and uncaring.

Why Socialism Failed

From FEE.org:

Socialism is the Big Lie of the twentieth century. While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny. Equality was achieved only in the sense that everyone was equal in his or her misery.

In the same way that a Ponzi scheme or chain letter initially succeeds but eventually collapses, socialism may show early signs of success. But any accomplishments quickly fade as the fundamental deficiencies of central planning emerge. It is the initial illusion of success that gives government intervention its pernicious, seductive appeal. In the long run, socialism has always proven to be a formula for tyranny and misery.

A pyramid scheme is ultimately unsustainable because it is based on faulty principles. Likewise, collectivism is unsustainable in the long run because it is a flawed theory. Socialism does not work because it is not consistent with fundamental principles of human behavior. The failure of socialism in countries around the world can be traced to one critical defect: it is a system that ignores incentives.

In a capitalist economy, incentives are of the utmost importance. Market prices, the profit-and-loss system of accounting, and private property rights provide an efficient, interrelated system of incentives to guide and direct economic behavior. Capitalism is based on the theory that incentives matter!

Under socialism, incentives either play a minimal role or are ignored totally. A centrally planned economy without market prices or profits, where property is owned by the state, is a system without an effective incentive mechanism to direct economic activity. By failing to emphasize incentives, socialism is a theory inconsistent with human nature and is therefore doomed to fail. Socialism is based on the theory that incentives don’t matter!  [read more]

Yea, socialists are completely delusional. But they don’t care if they are delusional.

The author says the free-market system strength can be attributed on three Ps: (1) prices determined by market forces, (2) a profit-and-loss system of accounting and (3) private property rights. The failure of socialism can be traced to its neglect of these three incentive-enhancing components. So, true.

Hillary’s Health Gives Trump Huge Opening

From Dick Morris.com (Sept. 15):

Hillary’s health now gives Donald Trump a second chance to make a good first impression — something as rare in politics as it is in life. Already polling is suggesting that Trump is surging in the wake of her collapse at the 9/11 ceremony. The New York Times/CBS has the race even among all voters and gives Trump a two point lead among likely voters. Rasmussen has The Donald two ahead. Reuters has it tied. LA Times/USC gives Trump a six point lead.

Animating the data is a sense that she may be far sicker than she is letting on. Check out this video by a Parkinson’s doctor correlating her episodes of fainting etc. with the more serious illness. Click here to view video.

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Already Trump has begun to fill the bill, triggering his surge over the past three weeks — prior to 9/11. His visit to flood-ravaged Louisiana, his meeting with the Mexican president, and his policy pronouncements on national security, the economy, immigration, and child care all projected a presidential image effectively.

In the meantime, consider this list, catalogued by WND.com, of Hillary’s health episodes:

• In 1998, while campaigning in New York, her right foot started swelling causing her pain. Bethesda Naval Hospital doctors diagnosed a large blood clot behind her right knee.
• In February, 2005, she fainted during a campaign speech and her aides had to catch her to break her fall. They blamed a gastrointestinal problem.
• On June 17, 2009, she fell and fractured her right elbow while walking to her car. The break required surgery.
• In 2009, Hillary also had a second blood clot that was diagnosed as “deep vein thrombosis,” dangerous because the clot could break lose and cause a pulmonary embolism.
• On January 12, 2011, Hillary tripped and fell boarding a plane.
• On December 15, 2012, Hillary had to cancel an overseas trip due to a stomach virus. While ill, she fainted and fell, sustaining a concussion. Husband Bill said that her injury “required six months of very serious work to get over.”
• On December 31, 2012, during a follow-up exam at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, doctors discovered another blood clot (her third) in a large vein along the side of her head between the brain and the skull.
• Throughout 2015 and 2016, Hillary has had prolonged coughing fits while giving speeches. She attributes it to seasonal allergies.
• On July 21 of this year, Hillary had what appeared to be a seizure while campaigning. Recorded on video, her head seemed to move uncontrollably for about ten seconds.
• On September 11th, at a memorial service, she had to leave the event while it was still in progress. She had to be propped up as she walked to her van and collapsed getting in, losing a shoe in the process. She revealed later that she had been diagnosed for pneumonia on September 9th but attended the event anyway.

We are entering unexplored territory here. We have never had a presidential candidate who had to pull out before the election. If Hillary resigns, the Democratic National Committee, two from each state, will choose her replacement. While Tim Kaine would get consideration — and Bernie would get none — Joe Biden is the likely choice. And he is harder to beat. Be careful what you wish for.  [read more]

Man, how is she still walking around? The bumper sticker than Dennis Miller made up on the O’Riley Factor-- “Kaine and Unable”--sure fits this situation. She’s unable to climb stairs without help, unable to enter vans without help, unable to tell the difference between classified and unclassified emails, unable to help four American citizens in an American embassy in Libya, unable to tell the truth, etc. I could go on but you get the point.

She is able to take donations from countries that oppress women and homosexuals and take money from big Wall Street donors though.

Yea, Joe Biden might be harder to beat if he replaces Hillary.

One of the Greatest Entrepreneurs in American History

From FEE.org:

In 1962, Ayn Rand gave a lecture titled “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business” (collected in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal), in which she identified two types of businessmen. Burton W. Folsom Jr. later called these “economic and political businessmen.” The first were self-made men who earned their wealth through hard work and free trade; the second were men with political connections who made their fortunes through privileges from the government.

James Jerome Hill, builder of the Great Northern Railroad, was the only 19th century railroad entrepreneur who received no federal subsidies to build his railroads. All other builders, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, received aid. Perhaps more than any other American, Hill helped to transform the American Northwest by opening it to widespread settlement, farming, and commercial development. In the process, he became one of the wealthiest men of the Gilded Age, amassing a fortune estimated at $63 million.

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Early Career

After the [Civil] war, Hill became an agent for the First Division of the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad. At the time, the line used wood for fuel. Hill believed rightly that coal would be cheaper, so he made a contract with the company to supply it. He also formed a business with Chauncey W. Griggs, a Connecticut man in the wholesale grocery business. Together, they created Hill, Griggs & Company, a fuel, freighting, merchandising, and warehouse company.

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Hill purchased rails, rolling stock, and locomotives and hired laborers who laid more than a mile of track a day. In 1879, the tracks were connected at St. Vincent, Minnesota, to a Canadian Pacific branch from Fort Garry. Since the Canadian Pacific’s transcontinental route was not yet completed, all traffic through Fort Garry had to use Hill’s route. He received two million acres of land through the Minnesota Land Grant for completing the rail line on time. He also renamed his railroad the St. Paul, Minneapolis, & Manitoba. His timing was perfect since the area experienced two exceptional harvests that brought extra business. In addition, a major increase of immigrants from Norway and Sweden allowed Hill to sell homesteads from the land grant for $2.50 to $5.00 an acre.

Expanding the Line

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Only a year after purchasing the St. Paul & Pacific, Hill decided to extend his railroad to the Pacific. Many thought that he could never do it. Never before had someone tried to build a railroad without government land and grants. Railroads like the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and Northern Pacific were all given millions of acres of government land to build their transcontinental routes. People thought that even if Hill could achieve his dream, he wouldn’t be able to compete with government-funded lines. His quest came to be known as “Hill’s Folly.”

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After speedy construction using 8,000 men and 3,300 teams of horses, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, & Manitoba reached Great Falls in October 1887. Hill connected it there with the Montana Central Railroad, which went on to Helena, bringing lots of new business. In 1890, he consolidated his railroad into the Great Northern Railroad Company.

Hill also encouraged settlement along the lines by letting immigrants travel halfway across the country for $10. In addition, he rented cheap freight cars to entire families. These strategies, rarely used by other railroads, encouraged even more business.

Views on Government

Hill was a great champion of free markets. He was particularly critical of tariffs, calling them “a great enemy of conservation” and pointing out that by prohibiting imports of such products as timber from other countries, the United States was accelerating the depletion of its own. Regarding the federal government’s ability to conserve resources, he once said, “The machine is too big and too distant, its operation is slow, cumbrous and costly.”

A 1910 speech to the National Conservation Congress in St. Paul summarizes Hill’s views on government. He remarked,

Shall we abandon everything to centralized authority, going the way of every lost and ruined government in the history of the world, or meet our personal duty by personal labor through the organs of local self-government, not yet wholly atrophied by disuse…? Shall we permit the continued increase of public expenditure and public debt until capital and credit have suffered in the same conflict that overthrew prosperous and happy nations in the past, or insist upon a return to honest and practical economy?

Hill once said, “The wealth of the country, its capital, its credit, must be saved from the predatory poor as well as the predatory rich, but above all from the predatory politician.”

A Classic Entrepreneur

In May 1916, Hill became ill with an infection that quickly spread. He went into a coma and died on May 29 at the age of 77. At 2:00 p.m. on May 31, the time of his funeral, every train and steamship of the Great Northern came to a stop for five minutes to honor him.

Hill exhibited the classic traits of a successful entrepreneur. He diligently studied all aspects of his businesses, such as which mode of transport was best for carrying track to be laid: caboose, handcar, horse, locomotive, or passenger coach. He did all the analyses of grades and curves himself and often argued with his engineers and track foremen, demanding changes that he felt necessary. He insisted on building strong bridges made with thick granite and on using the biggest locomotives and the best quality steel.

At the end of his life, a reporter asked Hill to explain the reason for his success. He replied simply that it was due to hard work. His hard work earned him the title “the Empire Builder,” and at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, he was named Minnesota’s greatest living citizen.

Hill was remarkable because he developed an area that most people thought never could be developed. His railroads made Minnesota and the Dakotas major destinations for huge waves of immigrants. In fact, Hill sent employees to Europe to show slides of western farming in efforts to urge Scotsmen, Englishmen, Norwegians, and Swedes to settle in the Pacific Northwest. As a result, more than six million acres of Montana were settled in two years. And because of Hill, the small town of Seattle, Washington, became a major international shipping port.

James Jerome Hill has rightly earned a place as one of the greatest entrepreneurs in American history.  [read more]

He is certainly a rare businessman. Definitely not a crony capitalist. 

Abortion Part II: Margaret Sanger

The year, 1957. Mike Wallace interviewed 78-year-old Margaret Sanger, the founder of what eventually became Planned Parenthood, a group that now receives nearly half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money to function as America’s largest abortion provider.

Near the beginning of the interview, Wallace sought to determine her motives for birth control. Even a young Mike Wallace seemed shocked by some of what he heard from Margaret Sanger that day, including her belief that “the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically, delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things, just marked when they’re born.”

Sadly, and strangely, Wallace never asked Margaret Sanger about the most controversial aspects of her character — her association with eugenics, and the ample evidence of her racism. In her autobiography, Margaret Sanger wrote about a speech she gave in 1926 at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Silver Lake, New Jersey. The Planned Parenthood founder bragged about the fact that afterward, she was invited by 12 other Klan chapters to speak at their events.

Because of Margaret Sanger’s vision, there are, in fact, disproportionately fewer blacks in America than any other race. Since 1973, legal abortion has killed more African-Americans than AIDS, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and violent crime combined. Every week, more blacks die in American abortion clinics than were killed in the entire Vietnam War. African-American Pastor Clenard Childress has said, “The most dangerous place for an African-American to be is in the womb of their African-American mother.”

In Sanger’s 1922 book, Women, Mortality, and Birth Control, she wrote, “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social service backgrounds and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

In her magazine, Birth Control Review, Sanger wrote, “Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”

If it sounds familiar, it should. It’s essentially the same policy advocated and carried out by Germany’s Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, whose sterilization policy Sanger openly praised. Most people associate eugenics with Hitler and the Nazis. And while the Nazis may have perfected the movement, they did not start it. It began in England and spread to the United States very early in the 20th century.

Margaret Sanger was, in fact, a racist and eugenicist who advocated for the, “extermination of the Negro population.”

Source: Abortion Part II: Margaret Sanger from Glenn Beck.com.

There is a part III and part IV of this series too.

Under Margaret Sanger’s system Beethoven would have been aborted. Because his father had syphilis and the mother had tuberculosis (TB). They already had four children. One was blind, one died, one was deaf and dumb, and the fourth had TB too.

When you kill an unborn child not only do you take away its future but also a possible contribution to society. The reader might ask what about Hitler or any murderer? If they were aborted there would have been no future victims. A baby is amoral until he/she gets old enough to know the difference between good and evil. Only God knows what possible futures a baby would have.  Mankind has no clue what a baby that grows up will do. Hitler was a fine arts student before he became an evil dictator.

Basically, Margaret Sanger and eugenicists like her were playing God.

Hillary’s Latest Lie: Makes Up Story About College Bullying

From Dick Morris.com (Sept. 11):

On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton told another whopper about her background — a blatant lie designed to make her look more human and vulnerable.

She related the story of taking the LSAT, the test to enter law school, and being harassed by men in the room also taking the test who claimed that she should not be taking their place in law school since they would lose their draft deferments.

She claims that “one of [the men] even said: ‘If you take my spot, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I’ll die.’ And they weren’t kidding around. It was intense. It got very personal. But I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t afford to get distracted because I didn’t want to mess up the test. So I just kept looking down, hoping that the proctor would walk in the room.”

Good story, but a made up yarn.

Up until February 16, 1968, the young man in Hillary’s story would have had a case. Law students were exempt from the draft prior to that date. So any woman entering law school would, indeed, be taking the place of a man who could be drafted. 

BUT…the deferment for law school students (and most graduate students) ended in February, 1968. After that date, law school offered no protection at all from the draft. [read more]

Dick Morris goes on to say in Hillary’s book Living History she never mentioned the incident.

This isn’t the only case where she makes up incidents from her past. In Mr. Morris’ book Armageddon: How Trump Can Beat Hillary he talks about a story she made up during a speech about a “ethnic” high school goalie in a girl’s soccer game.  She claimed the goalie told her on a cold day when she was in high school that “I wish people like you would freeze.” The problem with the story is, back when Hillary was a high-school student high schools didn’t have organized girl sports like they do now. Dick Morris says she makes up stories because she doesn’t know how to relate to audiences so she fabricates stories just be relatable.

Then her campaign blames her coughing spells on allergies.  Now the public finds out she had pneumonia. Who knows for sure what she had. It could be bronchitis, tuberculosis,  congestive heart failure, etc. She and her staff has a problem with the truth.

When Socialism Works

From FEE.org:

Because of Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the presidency, many Americans are asking if “democratic socialism” is possible. Can there be a form of socialism that really includes the voices of all the people?

In a March 17 feature at FEE.org, economist Sandy Ikeda offered some strong reasons to doubt it (see “‘Democratic Socialism’ Is a Contradiction in Terms”). What Ikeda says is right, but notice what his argument does notimply: that democratic socialism will fail in all contexts. His critique addresses the application of democratic socialism to a large-scale heterogeneous group. But if we think about very small, more homogeneous groups, something like democratic socialism can work. Not only can it work; it largely does work within such small groups all throughout the modern liberal, capitalist order. In fact, the liberal order can be seen as the unplanned interaction of lots of little socialist institutions.

To see this point, we need a brief detour into the long history of humanity to explore an important distinction that F.A. Hayek makes in his later work: We humans spent most of our evolutionary past in small, kin-based groups of several dozen people. As a result, our brains evolved in ways that were adaptive for that environment. (See Mike Reid's "The Myth of Primitive Communism" on why communal property was also a cultural adaptation.)

In such an environment, which Hayek termed an “intimate” order, we know everyone we interact with personally. We know what they like and what they need. That intimacy enables us to make rough interpersonal utility comparisons in ways we can’t otherwise. It therefore enables us to be collectivist and altruistic. In other words, we can structure such groups with forms of socialism because of their small size, intimacy, and homogeneity.

These contrast with what Hayek called the “anonymous” order of a market-based commercial society. In the market, many of our dealings are with people we do not know personally. Think about how many people you interact with directly in market transactions where you know absolutely nothing about them. Do you know anything about the cashier at the grocery store? Now extend that out to the people you deal with over the phone or the Internet. And now extend that to the millions of people who contributed directly or indirectly to making your clothes, or that pencil you’re using. We rely on millions of anonymous others every single day.

Hayek advises us that anonymous social orders cannot be collectivist or altruistic or socialistic. There’s no way for any one person or group to acquire enough knowledge about everyone’s preferences or about how best to use existing resources to make the things others might want. This is the classic debate over the possibility of rational calculation under socialism. But both Hayek and Ludwig von Mises understood that the impossibility of socialism did not apply to small, intimate, homogeneous social units where those knowledge problems did not exist.

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So we should be careful when we say democratic socialism “can’t work.” What we should be saying is that it can’t work for a society of any size beyond the smallest and most intimate. As Hayek says, even the broad, extended, anonymous order of the great society will contain within it numerous small groups of deliberate organization. The key is ensuring that those groups can interact in ways that produce peace, prosperity, and social cooperation — and that goal requires a market. Pursuing such aims through democratic socialism will only produce conflict, poverty, and totalitarianism.  [read more]

Bernie Sanders and others like him would never get the point of the article because socialism is a religion to them. They have blind faith in it. But the article makes perfect sense. Socialism might work if the members of the society share not only the benefits but the costs. Even in a family setting that might not be the case.

Impossible People

A commentary by Eric Metaxas on Break Point.org:

In the opening scene of the 2001 film adaptation of “The Fellowship of the Ring,” Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel whispers hauntingly, “The world has changed. I can feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it.”

Western Christians in 2016 can relate. Something has shifted. The world we inhabit seems to have become disenchanted, and so many of those around us have entered a state in some ways worse than atheism—a state of indifference toward God and the supernatural.

All of this has made evangelism and discipleship a lot more challenging. As sociologist Peter Berger wrote, we live in “a world without windows.” And for the inhabitants of windowless late modernity, questions about sin, salvation and ultimate meaning just don’t matter that much.

So, how did we get here? And more importantly, what does being a Christian look like in this context? Os Guinness, who needs no introduction, says the only right response today is to become what he calls “Impossible People.” That’s the name of his latest book, appropriately subtitled, “Christian Courage, and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization.” Folks, this book is a manifesto for our moment—a guide on how to live counter-culturally in what Os describes as our “cut-flower civilization.”

But what about the bizarre term “impossible people”? Where does that come from? Well, it was originally applied to eleventh-century Benedictine reformer, Peter Damian. Among other things, this “impossible man” spoke out against the practice of selling church positions for money as well as against widespread sexual sin among the clergy. His commitment to Jesus alone was so fierce that he won a reputation for being, as Os puts it, “unmanipulable, unbribable, and undeterrable.”

“Impossible people,” Os explains, “are different people. And different they are called to be or they will be irrelevant.” But that’s not easy in our cultural moment. We live in a civilization that has rejected its own foundations and embarked on a project to build what he calls a new, secular Babel. But it’s becoming ever clearer that this secular Utopia can’t hold together.

Why? Because the very belief in freedom that made Western liberal democracies uniquely successful is crumbling, replaced by the concept of consensus. As Os points out, the Christian doctrines of the Imago Dei, of Original Sin, and transcendent truth undergird our belief in freedom. Secular modernity lacks these foundational doctrines. Like a cut flower, it can maintain its beauty only so long without its roots. Soon it will wilt, and ultimately die.

“Impossible people” are here precisely to arrest this decline—to frustrate the secular project by consciously living out a belief in a supernatural reality beyond our windowless world.  [read more]

The “unmanipulable, unbriable, and undeterrable” should be conservatives’ manifesto too especially when it comes to saving this America and defending the Constitution like Ted Cruz did in the senate. Hillary Clinton doesn’t have the first two traits. Not sure about the last one.  Donald Trump probably has the second. The first I am worried about—he wants to be loved. The last I am not sure about for him either.

If a person can’t be an “impossible person” then maybe he/she can be a loving resistance fighter.  Both kinds of people are very similiar.

Haven’t read the book but it sounds interesting.

Bastiat, Socialism, and the Blank Slate

From FEE.org:

“It is evident,” the French economist and parliamentarian Frédéric Bastiat wrote a century and a half ago, “that the socialists set out in quest of an artificial social order only because they deemed the natural order to be either bad or inadequate; and they deemed it bad or inadequate only because they felt that men’s interests are fundamentally antagonistic, for otherwise they would not have recourse to coercion. It is not necessary to force into harmony things that are inherently harmonious.”¹

Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek made a similar point: “Much of the opposition to a system of freedom under general laws arises from the inability to conceive of an effective coordination of human activities without deliberate organization by commanding intelligence. One of the achievements of economic theory has been to explain how such a mutual adjustment of the spontaneous activities of individuals is brought about by the market, provided that there is a known delimitation of the sphere of control of each individual.”²

Bastiat spoke of a “natural harmony” between men, a “natural and wise order that operates without our knowledge.”³ Again this is similar to Hayek’s observation, drawn from the Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Ferguson, that social order is the result of “human action but not of human design.”

Bastiat argued that his views were based on reality and not on some ideological view of how man ought to be. The major difference between economists—by which he meant liberal market economists—and socialists was: “The economists observe man, the laws of his nature and the social relations that derive from these laws. The socialists conjure up a society out of their imagination and then conceive of a human heart to fit this society.”⁴

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Dream-making helps explain a striking feature on the left—while advocating love and peace it promotes hatred and war. Bastiat said that while collectivists “have a kind of sentimental love for humanity in their hearts, hate flows from their lips. Each of them reserves all his love for the society that he has dreamed up; but the natural society in which it is our lot to live cannot be destroyed soon enough to suit them, so that from its ruins may rise the New Jerusalem.”⁶ Aldous Huxley made the same point when he noted that “faith in the bigger and better future is one of the most potent enemies to present liberty: for rulers feel themselves justified in imposing the most monstrous tyranny on their subjects for the sake of the wholly imaginary fruits which these tyrannies are expected to bear some time in the distant future.”⁷

This conflict between Bastiat and the socialists couldn’t be more stark. For him, man was born with specific needs. Nature endowed him with certain faculties, and only by the application of such faculties is man able to sustain himself. For the socialist, man is merely, as Steven Pinker titles his new book, a “blank slate,” which can be written on as the planners wish in order to achieve the New Jerusalem. Pinker notes that Marx and Engels “were adamant that human nature has no enduring properties. It consists only in the interactions of groups of people with their material environments in a historical period, and constantly changes as people change their environment and are simultaneously changed by it. The mind therefore has no innate structure but emerges from the dialectical process of history and social interaction.”⁸

Mao Zedong wrote: “A blank sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful words can be written on it, the newest and most beautiful pictures can be painted on it.”⁹ Soviet writer Maxim Gorky said that to Lenin the working classes are “what minerals are to the metallurgist.”¹⁰

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Robert Owen, the man many credit with coining the term “socialism,” was clearly an advocate of remaking humanity to create utopia. “Any general character, from the best to the worst, from the most ignorant to the most enlightened, may be given to any community, even to the world at large, by the application of the proper means; which means are, to a great extent, at the command and under the control of those who have influence in the affairs of men.” This utopia, Owen said, “could be attained only [through] the scientific arrangement of the people.”¹⁴

Owen believed in the blank slate. For him no human being “is responsible for his will and his own actions.” Instead “his whole character—physical, mental and moral,—is formed independently of himself.”¹⁵ This led Owen to conclude that “it is futile to call individuals to account for their behavior. Instead, society should recognize its power to shape each of its members into a person of high character.”¹⁶ If Owen were allowed to “scientifically” arrange people, “There will be no cruelty in man’s nature, the animal creation will also become different in character.” The result would be a “terrestrial paradise . . . in which harmony will pervade all that will exist upon earth.”¹⁷  [read more]

The Left never will get human nature. They will always want to change human nature and create a utopia. And because of these two delusional impulses, peoples’ lives will always be miserable.

9/11 Anniversary: 10 Lessons Learned From the 15-Year ‘Long War’

Commentary from Steven Bucci on The Daily Signal.com:

Having been in the Pentagon on 9/11, it does not seem as if it was 15 years ago that our lives and national trajectory were changed so much.

For those who have been in the middle of it all, the time has gone swiftly. To many others, it is ancient history. Some interns at The Heritage Foundation were only as young as 4 and 5 years old on that chaotic day. That said, what lessons could we learn from the trial of the Long War? Here are 10 worth considering.

1. Every nation is vulnerable, and democracies are even more so.
2. America is resilient.
3. Terrorism is a much longer-term foe than any nation-state opponent.
4. America must maximize both security and civil liberties.
5. Every American must know their principles. The American people as a whole must be engaged, and therefore must know what they believe. This is not an “Inside the Beltway” issue, but one for all Americans.
6. You don’t always get to pick your foe, or when you will fight them.
7. The “baddest” and best military in the world (and America has it) can still have trouble defeating an asymmetric foe. [America’s] military follows the laws of war, and asymmetric opponents do not. It does not mean we should change, but it must be recognized that a small, ideo logically driven foe can sometimes be tough to eradicate. That is not failure, it’s reality.
8. America’s leaders need to lead. America’s system is not quick or easy, but it is the best system of government in the world. Stop playing games, and do your jobs.
9. America’s youth is still superlative. The number of young people in government and around the country in business who have character, a fine work ethic, and a willingness to sacrifice are more than a critical mass to keep America moving forward. They “get it,” and are ready to take the baton. America’s future is bright.
10. Lastly, America is not perfect, but its people, and frankly the rest of the world, do believe it is exceptional, and expect it to act the part. Americans are not better than everyone else, but our country has been called to play a role that flows from the principles that the Founding Fathers built into the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. America is exceptional, and it must lead.

It has been a long, difficult 15 years. It has been a time of sacrifice and struggle that no American asked for, or wanted. There are lessons to be learned, and if they are heeded, America’s time is not over. [read more]

Good lessons to learn and so true. Hope the next president learns these lessons.

Abortion Part I: The Founders’ Views

While there is no specific language in the Constitution regarding abortion, the Founders did leave behind their beliefs on the topic. For that insight, we turn to author and historian David Barton.

After America separated from Great Britain and the Founding Fathers made their own brand-new and unique government, they still preserved and protected the legal position against abortion. This fact is made clear by founding father James Wilson. James Wilson was one of only six Founders who signed both the declaration and the Constitution. He was the second most active member at the Constitutional Convention, and he was placed as an original justice on the US Supreme Court by President George Washington.

Wilson began America’s first organized legal training, and he authored our first legal textbook for students in which he told law students, quote, with consistency, beautiful, and undeviating, human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law. In the contemplations of law, life begins when the infant is first able to stir in the womb by the law that life is protected, end quote.

American law was clear. As soon as it was known that there was life in the womb, at that point, that life was protected by law for the purpose of government was to protect all unalienable rights, including that of life. In the Founders’ day, they recognized that there was a right to life in the womb, so soon as James Wilson said, quote, the infant is first able to stir. That is, when movement can be felt inside and, thus, they knew for sure that there was indeed life within. But with today’s technology, it is now possible to know with a certainty that life is within the womb for only a few days after conception.

Regardless, whenever it is known that life was within, according to the documents penned by our Founding Fathers, at that point, unborn life was to be protected under the law.

In the late 1700s, America’s attitude on life stood out compared to the rest of the world. Because our Founders believed the things that they did about God and nature, there was a difference between the law here and elsewhere around the world. Across much of secular Europe, it was wrongly believed that parents — not God — gave life to their children. So under the law of those countries, parents had the right to take their child’s life. After all, they believed they had given it. But Americans knew that the life of a child came not from parents, but from God. Parents, therefore, had no right to deprive an unborn child of its life.

A signer of the declaration, John Witherspoon acknowledged, “Some nations have given parents the power of life and death over their children. But here in America, we have denied the power of life and death to parents.”

It may well be that America’s Founding Fathers didn’t specifically address the abortion issue because they couldn’t conceive of a people that would destroy the lives of 55 million unborn babies in a 43-year period of time. [read more]

Let’s see. A fetus has his/her own DNA. That’s been proven scientifically. So, that makes it human. Otherwise how would you classify a fetus? All I have to say is: Fetuses matter.

Ominous Signs for Turkish Christians

Commentary from Break Point.org by John Stonestreet (Aug. 8):

In once-secular Turkey, Christians have become targets of Muslim persecution. Here’s what you need to know.

For nearly the last hundred years, Turkey, straddling Europe and Asia, has walked a precipitous path. Turning its back on the brutal Ottoman Empire of its past, the nation of 80 million people had attempted to combine its dominant Muslim culture with a more Western-oriented secularism—allowing a measure of political and religious freedom not common in most other Muslim-majority states.

Well, it seems as if Turkey is now on its way to falling into an intolerant form of Islam—if it hasn’t already. How do I know this? By listening to the country’s beleaguered Christian minority, which has dwindled from 22 percent of the population to a microscopic 0.2 percent just over the last century.

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All [Turkey’s coup aftermath] of that is bad enough, but we are seeing something else in Turkey common in Muslim-dominant cultures when chaos breaks out: Christians become convenient targets. London’s Express newspaper reports that hardline Sunni Muslims, whipped into a frenzy by imams calling on them to take to the streets, targeted a small, Protestant church in a shopfront in Matalya. Shouting “Allahu Akbar,” the mob smashed the church’s windows, although no one was hurt.

“The attack on the church was light,” the pastor told the Express. “But it’s significant that it was the only shopfront attack in those three days. We were the only targets.” In one Black Sea city another group smashed the windows of the Santa Maria Church, breaking down its door with hammers. And the Turkish government has confiscated churches in the city of Diyarbakir.

Nine out of ten Turks believe that to be a Turk is to be a Muslim, so non-Muslims are automatically suspect. Such suspicion has led to violence against Christians even before the latest attacks. The Expressnotes, “In 2007, three Christian employees of a publishing house for Bibles in Malatya were attacked. After being tortured, their hands and feet were tied and their throats cut by five Muslim assailants.” [read more]

Yea, it’s sounding like Turkey is turning into Germany when Hitler was in power. It’s too bad.

Hillary Clinton: A Portrait of Power and Corruption

A commentary from FEE.org by Joey Clark:

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, a decaying painting is locked away to decay in its attic mausoleum as a symbol of a beautiful boy’s tarnished soul. By way of contrast, the embodiment of America’s ruling class now lives and breathes in the public persona of one person, Hillary Clinton.

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Many Americans agree there is something about the shadow and shade of Hillary’s portrait that leaves more questions than answers, a “touch of cruelty” seeping through the cracks in her carefully crafted façade.

In a word, many Americans find her “mendacious,” and the revelations regarding the appearance of the Clinton State Department’s “pay-to-play” scheme – delivering special access and favors to Clinton Foundation donors – is only the latest episode in a long series of scandals besmirching her trustworthiness.

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The Bargain

Hillary Clinton strikes me at once as a Faustian figure, but rather than making a deal with the devil for eternal youth or unlimited knowledge, she has asked for state power.

Spurred by her idealism to serve the poor and underprivileged, this victim of her own privilege has engaged in a bargain time immemorial: give me the power of the state to kill and steal and coerce other people with impunity, and I will use this power to bring social justice to the land. Like most before her who have made this pact, the promise of power consumes and corrupts her noble goals.

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The Radical Turned Establishment Figure

In 1969, Hillary Clinton wrote her senior thesis, titled “There Is Only the Fight,” on the work of that now infamous radical, Saul Alinsky. Alinsky seems to have played the same role for young Hillary Rodham that Lord Henry Wotton played for young Dorian Gray – the enchanting snake in the Garden of Eden. At the beginning of his own book, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky quotes himself:

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.

That said, Hillary diverges with her role model Alinsky in her thesis on one crucial point. Rather than rebelling against the establishment to win her own kingdom, she would become the establishment. [read more]

Hillary Clinton got interested in Alinsky because of a radical Leftist youth minister by the name of Don Jones she met when she was a teenager. Dick Morris has said that Hillary follows advice of advisors exclusively. Well, this Jones person could be called an advisor. He got her into Alinsky methods and idealogy.