At What Temperature is Capitalism Combustible? >451 degree F?

The Day of Rage and the Night of Irrational Fairness:  The “passionate intensity” (see the previous post) to dispose of the lessons of history and Capitalism for the “paradise of communism”.

History has shown that Capitalism has proven its economic worth by providing liberty, free and diverse choices and for our nation’s well-being.  Capitalism provides the opportunity for each person to make exchanges what each person needs and wants.

These Wall St. protestors seek to promote, in place of Capitalism, the historically documented as bankrupt socio-economic systems of socialism and communism under the new banner of Democratic Hope and Change. These protestors have no sense of history and no financial sense whatsoever.  They appear to only have a sense of self.  They live in the universe of self and that is the reason for the cry of “fairness”. Everything is relative to “self”.

“…And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed – the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference.”

This quote is from the chapter titled GREED in David Mamet’s recent book,  The Secret Knowledge: On Dismantling of American Culture

*****

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euw7aW1CAaw&feature=player_embedded

The Blood-Dimmed Tide

Referring to a prophetically ominous poem written by William Butler Yeats (The Second Coming) and to modern liberalism’s effect on America legal scholar Robert Bork wrote in 1996,

 (Yeats) can hardly have forseen that passionate intensity, uncoupled from morality, would shred the fabric of Western culture.  The rough beast of decadence, a long time in gestation, having reached its maturity in the last three decades, now sends us slouching towards our new home, not Bethlehem but Gomorrah.

From the opening of Slouching Towards Gomorrah:  Modern Liberalism and American Decline by Robert H. Bork, copyright 1996

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

 

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Mal-lady of Progressivism: Elizabeth Warren

Here’s Progressive Elizabeth Warren on the debt crisis and fair taxation. To support her Massachusetts Senate Campaign,

*****

*****
We the people (47% % of us who don’t pay any taxes) made you wealthy. We the people (47% of us who don’t pay any taxes) made you safe and secure. We the people (47% of us who don’t pay any taxes) are the roads to your success.”

Feel good now? How about a social contract that makes everyone an investor in America?

Progressives like Elizabeth like to shame people into a response to her ‘humane’ cause. Don’t be shamed. Give to others out of a heart of love. Leave others to do the same.

If Elizabeth and her progressives buddies want to help others there are many ways to do so other than conscripting another’s personal property for their own ends.

It should be noted:  Many people left socialist and communist eastern European countries (and Cuba) and came to America to be free from the tyranny of economic despotism created under the banner of “the common good”. Modern day examples of “common good” socialist systems beginning to fold:   Greece, Spain & Portugal.  “Don’t do these things!”

It also should be noted:  Any country which increasingly embraces secularism will become progressive in its politic. A social-economic-moral vacuum is created thereby.

The Lord Hears The Cry Of The Poor, All Others Listen Up

The answer to poverty in our lifetime is not government.  It is not voting for someone who will make us feel better about the situation. It is not the vicarious experience of giving offered by paying a little more taxes. This type of arm’s length indifference is much like the behaviors of the priest and the Levite who had each passed a man lying on the road. 

This man, a Samaritan, had been accosted by robbers, leaving him penniless.  Both priest and Levite were well versed in the rules and regulations that governed their lives.  They both acted out of those rules and regulations and not out of love. They both gave at the office.

Progressives like to think of themselves as Good Samaritans and yet they vote like how the priest and Levite responded – this problem is beyond me, the system should fix this.

Giving is meant to be a one-on-one intimacy – the poor are to be helped directly.  The answer is personal involvement. In doing so, both parties benefit and, more importantly, God, not government, is honored.

We are told in Scripture that we are to do our giving in secret. The right hand should not know what the left hand is doing.  Yet, we have politicians on the Left (hand) and social gospel gurus who publicly demand that government be the arbiter of who is poor and the benefactor to the poor.  They take great pride in their social justice message.  It is their platform.

 It is common among progressive voters to look for deep pockets and then to vote in politicians who will enact laws and regulations which will divest those pockets of wealth in order to provide for the poor (basically, everyone not rich).  This is wealth redistribution and it is at the heart of ‘been-there-done-that’ socialism.

 Many college kids (taking worthless courses) and liberal college professors (those unable to find real jobs) voted for Obama because of his campaign rhetoric calling for wealth redistribution.  Class warfare has become a war cry of the progressive voter – pitting one group against another.  This is not Christ.  This is not being a Good Samaritan. This behavior is more akin to Pharisee-ism than anything else. Pretense veils the eyes of many in this group of voters.

 Common sense should tell you that with less government there is less need for tax money.  And, with less tax money being taken out of your pocket there is more money left for you to give to the poor. But, undoubtedly, it is human nature to submit to the group thinking of socialism rather than to act individually. It is also human nature to want someone else to be responsible for a problem and for us to look good applying ourselves to that end.  In other words, we, like the Levite in the Good Samaritan story, tend to be Pharisaic by staying away from the problem, letting others become involved directly.

 If you want to help the poor then look around you.  Get involved with your neighbors.  Get off your ass (see the Good Samaritan parable for more detail),  stop texting ‘socialisms’ to your buddies and do the best thing for the poor – give of yourself.

*****

Liberalism is a parlor game, where one, for a small stipend, is allowed to think he is aiding starving children in X or exploited workers in Y, when he is merely, in the capitalist tradition, paying a premium, tacked on to his goods, or subtracted from his income, for the illusion that he is behaving laudably (cf. bottled water).

David Mamet from his book The Secret Knowledge: On Dismantiling of American Culture

Cash Flow and a Curmudgeon In a Coffin?

Problem:  1.) We are all victims and 2.) Rich people have money we do not have.

Solution:  If we could just induce the rich to stand on their heads without getting directly involved we could have a redistribution of wealth without picking their pockets.  We do want to appear progressive and respectable at the same time.

********

Paradise’s Believe It or Not:

Original:  σορός
Transliteration: soros
Phonetic (sor-os’)
Short Definition: coffin

Word Origin:  a prim. word
Definition:  a cinerary urn, by anal. a coffin

********

 We can all profit from Hayek:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNbYdbf3EEc&NR=1

Bye, Bye My American Pie

Our President BO spends much of his time golfing, bobbing in and out of church and backyards for photo ops and in dividing up the American Pie into finer slices. Instead of making a bigger Pie with business incentives, tax breaks and laissez-faire government, BO wants to make sure that our current pie is filled with plenty of our tax money and that the pie is sliced evenly. (Of course, he hands more slices to labor unions and to his own self-preserving interests.) In fact, BO defines his appeal (his bribery) to the American people with his ‘hands-on’ ‘pie-slicing’ type of administration.

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner
Eating his Christmas pie,
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum
And said “What a good boy am I!”

BO wants to serve us his version of my American Pie. But, I’m not buying it and I’m not eating it- not after his hands have been in it.

Smart Money Talks, Greed Walks

Milton Friedman, an American economist and Nobel Prize Winner, talks about greed.

The redistribution of wealth touted by Obama and progressives is actually a government distribution of the greed and envy that some people hold towards others who they consider are better off.