Afternoon Aliens
September 7, 2012 Leave a comment
Any exhaustive research into my childhood would reveal several close encounters with aliens.
You would learn that these encounters occurred primarily on Sunday afternoons but also sometimes on Saturday nights. You would read that the aliens would slowly pull up in front of my parent’s home and then park right smack in the center of our view, a view framed by our front room picture window. (I wanted to say “frontroom” because it’s the Chicago way.)
For our family Sunday mornings meant going to church – the hell-fire-and-brimstone-preaching-shouted-from-revved up lungs-quivering jowls-and-leaps and-bounds-of-a-Baptist-minister-kind of church. Such a fire-breathing monster would let us know in no uncertain terms that redemption came only by turning from our sins and by walking down the aisle or raising our hand. I did wonder why he didn’t sell exercise videos out in the foyer – “Pilate Your Way Out of Purgatory: Fit and Fundamental Workouts.”
Now my mom and dad are God-fearing people who have always been very hospitable. Often, after a Sunday morning service or an evening service, my folks would invite friends, speakers, missionaries or relatives over for a meal. As I said, this happened a lot.
There were also a few Sundays when my parents decided to have an afternoon home alone with the kids. On those days we would come home from church to the salivating smell of pot roast. The roast would cook while we sat in church pondering our short comings and our eternities. The record will show that I had aromatic visions of pot roast as I turned from sin, walked down the aisle and raised my hand.
Back at home my mother would take the pot roast out of the oven and cover it with aluminum foil. Apparently the fat needed to rejoin the roast in a final cattle roundup. Mom and dad would then prepare the sides – all kid friendly: corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls. And, upon occasion my mother would make butterscotch pudding for dessert. As a devotee of such fine cuisine I sat in the basement far out-of-the-way of the chefs. Down there I watched Warner Oland play Charlie Chan on our B & W TV: “So sorry.”
Besides being wafted to Kid Heaven by the smells I knew that my parents were not just making a scrumptious Sunday meal. They were not going to take any chances with me going far from the straight and narrow. They knew that the way to tether a kid’s soul and keep him close to home was with pot roast and butterscotch pudding.
Well, on one of those blissful Sundays when my tummy was ballooned to its fullest pot roast-iest extent I lay on the floor rolling and reading the funny papers. Nancy and Sluggo. Dick Tracy and Flattop. Brenda Starr and…my brother.
Daryl ever the antagonist always wanted to read the same few square inches of the comics that I was reading. I swear. He would daily invent ways to aggravate me. That day his pointed elbow to my side almost burst me. In retaliation I poked him back and then he poked back harder. This went on for ten minutes until my father said, “You two cut it out or no butterscotch pudding for you.” That settled things for the next five minutes. The thought of Butterscotch pudding had a calming effect on me. An added dollop of whipped cream would also keep me in check – for at least a half-hour.
It was within the cautious serenity of those five minutes that I saw my father suddenly leap up out of his swivel rocker. The Chicago Tribune fell to the floor splayed open. My dad turned to my mother who was sitting on the couch half asleep. With a look of petrified horror he said, “The Gephardts are here!” That was the day I would have my first sighting of aliens in our own front yard.
Absolutely beside himself, my dad thought for a moment: perhaps we could make it look like we weren’t at home. But then he saw the visitors looking at him through the picture window. The alien father on the front lawn was yelling “Hi Bob.” My dad then looked down at his two young children, children who just came home from re-dedicating their lives to Jesus and to pot roast looking up at him. Instantly changing his mind my dad scrambled in two directions at once. In the same step he first bolted toward the kitchen but then turned and flew to the back of the house. Things were put away, hidden from view. Rooms were “straightened.” Food stowed deep in the refrigerator. Our Schnauzer Bobbie took the cue and hid under my bed whimpering. My brother and I hid all of our toys. The quiet afternoon had morphed into the afternoon of the living Gephardts.
Now the Gephardts were good people my folks said, “They’re just a little different.” Yeah, as different as earth and mars I would soon find out.
After greeting the family of five, my dad said he had to get “some things” at the grocery store. An hour later my mother looked concerned, abandoned concerned, angry concerned. As the time crept, my mother sat patiently listening to Mrs. G. wonder out loud if her little “Ronnie was really over the chicken pox.” (I kid, (scratch, scratch) you not.)
My brother and I stood across from the three alien kids, two boys and a girl, and wondered what to do. Mom suggested that we go to a nearby field and play baseball until the FBI had located our father. So off we went.
I can not recall whether it was my brother or whether it was me who was hit in the head with a baseball bat by a Gephardt boy. It must have been me who received the carom because great a swath of my memory has been forever displaced. The oldest kid swung right though an imaginary fast ball which was in fact my head. Let the record show that silly remained intact though. (I have had three concussions in my life: one from a right-handed batter on sugar, one from a concrete wall that halted my fifty yard dash at 55 yards and one as an adult when a humongous lead pipe-carrying truck used my car as a brake – my head bounced around like a pin ball in a Dukes of Hazzard pinball game. Three concussions may explain my David Lynch-like persona, my dream-state reality and my stuttering posts.)
At some point my dad came back from the store with a pie, a cherry pie and a can of whipped cream. He offered to heat it, slice it and even remake it -anything so as to not have to talk to Mr. G who I now know was dead ringer for Randy Quaid. Mr. G sat in our front room – greasy tee shirt, flys buzzing and all. The three G kids all could have walked off a page of the Addam’s Family comic strip. It’s all a blur. On purpose.
Mr. G was a junk collector by trade. He collected “fine” items no longer of use to their owners. He resold his JIT inventory on Maxwell Street. Did we have anything that we didn’t want any more? I imagined that my father wanted to say “Yes, you here.” But my dad, a generous and good man, kept to his busy ways and went looking for a ‘fine item” that would spur Mr. G into immediate sales activity. My dad “sacrificially” retreated to the basement where after a half hour of searching everywhere including a Walter Cronkite newscast he found a lamp on its last light bulb and handed it to Mr. G. who was pleased with his salable good but continued to eye my mom’s china cabinet. My mother seeing Mr. G’s honed gaze locked onto the china cabinet stood up between Mr. G and the cabinet as she continued to talk to Mrs. G. The “over-my-dead-body” look must have told Mr. G all he needed to know. He backed down.
After some warmed cherry pie and coffee and a shake down of each the kids to see if they had taken anything from our rooms we said goodbye to the G’s and to the afternoon. It was now evening. Exhausted we all fell back into the couch to watch a “really big shew.” We had seen the Outer Limits.
Over time the Gs would show up again and again unannounced. Somehow we were ever on their radar though my parents only slightly knew them as neighbors at a previous address in Chicago. But finally these afternoon aliens did stop showing up.
I suspect they stopped coming when our house looked eerily uninhabited: with all the curtains pulled my dad started taking long Sunday afternoon naps on the couch in the dark, cool basement of our house. My mom who loved our dad took us three (by now) perturbing kids for a long drive in the country – all of us far from afternoon aliens.
(Any truth in this account, real or perceived, is totally up to you.)
© Sally Paradise, 2012, All Rights Reserved
Cindy Wity 
The Hand That Feeds You
September 24, 2012 Leave a comment
Photo added, H/T LegalInsurrection
“You didn’t build that.” We’ve all heard those dismissive words in the news recently.
Luckily, for all I involved, when I heard those words I didn’t jump up run out and burn an effigy of BHO or stampede my local DMV. I guess that’s because I didn’t inherit the Islamist strain of thin-skinned believer DNA that makes one go berserk at the mere thought of someone trivializing what they hold to be true. I did yell at the TV, though: “You’re full of yourself BHO.”
I am an ardent believer in the constrained view (see below), the view that incentives, individual hard work and prudent trade-offs builds houses on stone foundations. The unconstrained view of good intentions, big government and “divined” solutions builds houses on sand. And we all know what happens to each house when torrential rain comes. And, we all know what Liz Warren’s government built road to hell is paved with.
There is a reason why BHO diminishes the individual effort. BHO, of the central planning view, wants joy-stick control of the “invisible hand.” And I am not talking about “Thing” from the Addams Family comic or the other-worldly operator of the Ouija board.
The “invisible hand” of the market is a metaphor used by the father of modern economics and capitalism Adam Smith. Simply put, the metaphor describes the self-regulating behavior of the market place. Individuals seek to maximize their own gain in a free market society where goods and services are traded in a free exchange between both parties. For Smith the” invisible hand” guides individuals into mutually beneficial exchanges. Moral and socially beneficial behavior is evoked through the process. Fairness is part and parcel of market practices. Obeying the rules (i.e., standard weights and measures) is the order of the day in the market place. Contract laws were developed to help enforce agreements. If an agreement was broken a resolution in a court of law would be required. This is just and fair to everyone involved, because everyone is involved in protecting their own interests. Free market capitalism offers “The possibility of cooperation without coercion” as Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics once said. Regarding one-on-one resolution Jesus did say, “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.
Adam Smith theorized that the self-interest of individuals acting independently will lead to a socially optimal outcome. From Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 2:
Free market exchange encourages a man to, let’s say, go fishing. The man may eat the fish he caught or he may trade for something that will benefit himself. The fisherman is not coerced into doing either. He is free to do as he pleases with his fish. And another is free to trade with the fisherman – say, bread for fresh fish and both parties therefore benefit from the trade-off. The second party is also free to simply say “No, I don’t want your fish. I want to make tacos al pastor today.”
Again Adam Smith,
On the other very visible hand, the well-intentioned-solutions hand, the government confiscatory and coercive hand taxpayer money is simply thrown at problems. Data abounds showing that well-intentioned-solutions (i.e., food stamp programs, Obamacare, minimum wages laws, etc.) never ever ever fix problems they were intended to solve. The “solution” is never a mutually beneficial exchange. Rather the solution is a one-way, one-time meal ticket that will always end up requiring more taxation, more regulation and less of your liberty. The only fishing taking place is in the mail box for the food stamps. BTW: The hand that provides the food stamps is an iron fist – “Do as I say or you will end up hungry,” “Buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty.”
Now, Adam Smith, and later Noam Chomsky invoking Adam Smith, warned of an unrestrained free market society where the “vile maxim of the masters can be pursued without undue interference.” In other words they thought government regulation (Smith much less, Chomsky much more) would hold the free market in check. One example: the fisher folk would not be allowed to restrict the wee folk from fishing, thereby preventing a monopoly on the fish market.
From what I can tell, both BHO and Chomsky see big corporations and Capitalism in general as behemoth American Devils who suck the air out of the world leaving societal corpses in their path. In each their own measure they see the free market, left on its own, turning into unconstrained selfishness. Yet, they see themselves as altruistic. And as a result of such myopic views of the free market and of themselves they are eager to throttle the life out of the free market with very visible “hands”, the hands of government regulation, taxation and confiscation – the hands of coercion. They truly believe that an unrestrained socialist statist (central planning) government under the guise of a (small “d”) democracy would be superior to an unrestrained free market within a big “D” democracy. But government, if you haven’t already noticed, is a monopoly. It is an all-powerful, ready-to-inflict pain monopoly. Who is holding the tyranny of government back? Not good intentions. Not nebulous open-ended “social justice” solutions. Not the voters. Take a look at congress – there are a lot of visible hands in the pie, grabbing at taxpayer money. They’ve want their clutches on your property because controlling redistribution is a means of staying in power.
The so-called “unrestrained super-national corporations” are in reality restricted to what the markets will accept. Countries all around this world invite corporations into their realms because they see the benefits. These corporations are not coercive like government is. And don’t think for a moment that your vote will restrain government. Those in power like to stay in power and to wield that power. They pass laws to keep themselves in power as State CEOs. Good intentions and redistribution solutions are simply “goodies” thrown out during the campaign parade. The public is left with the big mess after the parade.
My answer: Laissez-faire – a “hands-off” economic environment made possible by a majority vote for smaller government (big D, small g), less regulation and fewer hands in the pie. Vote for the person and party that will let you keep your money and control your life. You know what I am saying– restore LIBERTY. The end result will help generate the dynamic green energy needed for human flourishing. Human flourishing will then enable people to not have to think so hard about scrapping together an existence or worry about whether the hands of government will snatch away your property. Human flourishing will also allow more time for the sublime.
So, put your hand in the hand, the “invisible hand,” and let conscience be your guide, not the government.
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” (A free will-free market exchange moved by the Invisible Hand of love.)
“Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” Proverbs 10:4 (A statement of fact from the wisest man who ever lived – Solomon.)
Sally Paradise: “I built it with my own two hands.” Invisible hand: “And I helped.”
Definitions:
Laissez-faire (i/ˌlɛseɪˈfɛər–/, French: [lɛsefɛʁ] (listen)) is an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from tariffs, government subsidies, and enforced monopolies, with only enough government regulations sufficient to protect property rights against theft and aggression. The phrase laissez-faire is French and literally means “let [them] do”, but it broadly implies “let it be,” “let them do as they will,” or “leave it alone.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire
Constrained view: The constrained vision sees man as he really is: self-motivated. This realistic vision sees man as selfish and greedy but also willing to respect tradition and rules and certainly able to make prudent trade-offs based on knowledge gained from centuries of accumulated knowledge and wisdom, knowledge and wisdom not confined to an omnipotent Decider. One with a constrained vision doesn’t have all the answers. He or she must operate with humility, tolerance and cooperation in order to support the freedom and liberty within which they seek to live.
Unconstrained view: The unconstrained vision relies heavily on surrogate decision makers, men or women of “superior” intelligence and virtue, to make our decisions for us. The implication of this vision is that the common man does not know what is good for himself and for those around him. But those with super-rational intelligence and sincerity do. And because of our lack of “fair and just” decision making, we the people need an over-arching Decider – someone to rein in society. (Recall Obama’s statement: “You didn’t build that.” He’s trying to rein in economic activity and attribute a man’s own blood, sweat and tears to government largesse!)
See my post What’s Left? To Be Decided for more information on the Constrained and Unconstrained Views, terms derived from Thomas Sowell’s book Conflict of Visions.
Statism/centralized government: Course Correction Needed 2012
Things to ponder:
Michael Boskin: Obama and ‘The Wealth of Nations’
Thomas Sowell: The Fallacy of Redistribution
Obama “Goodies:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio&feature=player_embedded
“You didn’t build that. Yadda, yadda, yadda.”
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Filed under 2012 election, Article, commentary, Conservatism, Political Commentary, Progressivism, Writing Tagged with 2012 Presidential campaign, adam smith, capitalism, Economics, free market economy, Liberty, Obama, politics, socialism, wealth of nations, wealth redistribution, You didn't build that