Two Visions Three Questions

July 13, 2025 Leave a comment

Next year is America’s 250th anniversary. By then I will have lived 70+ years of America’s independence history. Born of the USA I now say that the American experiment has been successful.

I’ve experienced the independence, responsibility, adaptations, and hard work required to flourish in America. I have benefitted from the good that others before me have established and I am grateful.

My 70+ years as an American have not made me an optimist nor a pessimist nor an end of-history utopian. I am an American realist. I see things as they are and work from there. I don’t whine and complain and blame others and demand change (except for positions held by representatives in the political realm) to make my life better in some way.

Two Visions in America

I have viewed life with a “constrained” vision – one of two basic visions defined by Thomas Sowell in his book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.

The “constrained” vision and the “unconstrained” vision of the “self-anointed” discussed in the book are summarized here. (Along with my Christian understanding of man’s sinful nature, this book aided my understanding of what fosters the political divide in our country.)

As an American realist I decry the “unconstrained” vision of Progressivism and all its hideous tyrannical ‘solutions’ working to fashion new people with its socialist ideology, top-down programs, control of information, and now with AI.

If you view America with an “unconstrained vision” you likely don’t think the American experiment is a success. You’ll likely be dissatisfied with things and think the whole ‘thing’ has to come crashing down and be rebuilt with state institutions that dole out equity, i.e., a communist system of government.

Here are a few quotes from A Conflict of Visions:

“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”

“While believers in the unconstrained vision seek the special causes of war, poverty, and crime, believers in the constrained vision seek the special causes of peace, wealth, or a law-abiding society.”

“The greatest danger of the concept of social justice, according to Hayek, is that it undermines and ultimately destroys the concept of a rule of law, in order to supersede merely “formal” justice, as a process governed by rules, with “real” or “social” justice as a set of results to be produced by expanding the power of government to make discretionary determinations in domains once exempt from its power.”

“In the constrained vision, each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late. Their prospects of growing up as decent, productive people depends on the whole elaborate set of largely unarticulated practices which engender moral values, self-discipline, and consideration for others. Those individuals on whom this process does not “take”—whether because its application was insufficient in quantity or quality or because the individual was especially resistant—are the sources of antisocial behavior, of which crime is only one form.”

“In short, attempts to equalize economic results lead to greater—and more dangerous—inequality in political power.”

“Whenever A can get B to do what A wishes, then A has “power” over B, according to the results-oriented definition of the unconstrained vision… But if B is in a process in which he has at least as many options as he had before A came along, then A has not “restricted” B’s choices, and so has no “power” over him, by the process definition… characteristic of the constrained vision.”

Three Questions the American Experiment Requires

Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, economic historian, social philosopher and political commentator. A onetime Marxist turned conservative economist and commentator, Sowell has argued that most causes of the left can be dismantled with three simple questions.

As nothing happens in a vacuum, context is important in understanding the outcomes you desire and perhaps voted for. Promoting any issue or candidate should be evaluated by the answers to these three questions:

1. Compared to what?
2. At what cost?
3. What hard evidence do you have?

One Example:

The Biden regime, the globalist left, and the “welcoming the stranger” Christian orgs didn’t ask Sowell’s three questions regarding an open border policy that let in 20-30+ illegal immigrants.

Open borders policy compared to what alternatives? Compared to controlled legal immigration with background checks and that promotes assimilation of American values. Societal integrity. Safety. Sanity. Sovereignty.

Open borders policy at what cost? The cost of more crime. More disease. More fentanyl and drugs. More gangs. More death. More chaos and dysfunction. More missing and trafficked children. More government. More taxes. Serving the interests of the Democratic party and their wealthy donors who need cheap labor. Overwhelming the healthcare system. (Cheap lettuce is not worth overpriced healthcare.) “Fundamentally transforming” the country into a third world country ripe for globalist dominance.

Victor Davis Hanson writes about The Immorality of Illegal Immigration and The Labyrinth of Illegal Immigration, where the truth is always more complex — and can reveal self-interested as well as idealistic parties.

Employers have long sought to undercut the wages of the American underclass by preference for cheaper imported labor. The upper-middle classes have developed aristocratic ideas of hiring inexpensive “help” to relieve them of domestic chores.

Listen, if a Christian pontificates that love does not consider the cost, understand that the “no cost” part is the individual’s cost of discipleship, and not your family’s, your neighbor’s, your community’s or your country’s.

Immigration laws are for the benefit of the American people — not for the benefit of people in other countries who want to come here. And sabotaging those laws to benefit your need to do something with your empathy or for crops or for domestic help or for anything else is illegal.

What hard evidence do you have that an open borders policy is a good decision? Your feelings? Your empathy? Any talk about “welcoming the stranger” in the abstract is not hard evidence in support of an open borders policy. Is the evidence your need for cheap labor? Democrats Once Again Concerned About Who Will Pick Their Crops

No cities announce that they will provide “sanctuary,” so that American shoplifters, or even jay-walkers, will be protected from the law. But, in some places, illegal immigrants are treated almost as if they were in a witness protection program. – Thomas Sowell, Immigration Sophistry

Sowell notes that times have changed: “When I was growing up, we were taught the stories of people whose inventions and scientific discoveries had expanded the lives of millions of other people. Today, students are being taught to admire those who complain, denounce, and demand.”

The three simple questions the left poses today:

Compared to yesterday, what can I complain and protest about today?

What can I denounce and destroy today without costing me anything?

Will you show me evidence of your affirmation of my “unconstrained” ways . . . or else?

~~~~~

“When the anointed say that there is a crisis this means that something must be done —and it must be done simply because the anointed want it done.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision Of The Annointed: Self-congratulation As A Basis For Social Policy

Mike Rowe: Salena Zito was four feet from President Trump when the shots rang out in Butler, PA, nearly one year ago. She was immediately thrown to the ground by security and caught up in the ensuing chaos. I was watching on TV when it happened and recognized the lady face down on the ground by her signature boots, as did many others.

The Fight For America’s Heartland | Salena Zito #442 | The Way I Heard It

~~~~~

Lest anyone think that I am an “ignorant hillbilly” and can be known by my smell (Peter Strzok), lest anyone think that I am a rube and an uncaring Christian xenophobe nativist, and lest anyone think that I haven’t traveled outside my shire and am not cosmopolitan, know that I have traveled to many parts of the world and have met and worked with many different people during my 70+ years. I am not a misanthrope.

My travel, mostly for engineering work, included a trip to Seoul South Korea and within five miles of the DMZ, to Dhahran and Jubail Saudi Arabia and the oil fields worked by Saudi Aramco, to Warsaw and Bialystok Poland, to England during the Queen’s silver jubilee, to Rio De Janeiro, to Mexico  – Tuxpan and Tampico, Mexico City, and Sonora state, to many of the provinces of Canada, including Saskatchewan when it was 40 degrees below zero, and to most of the U.S.

I did love coming home to the U.S. after each trip to some distant place.

Filed under 2025 Current Events, Immigration, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism Tagged with , , , , ,

Polly Want a Crisis?

April 14, 2024 Leave a comment

If only it was something that remained on the pages of a dystopian novel . . .the ways the anointed ones deal with us. But the stark reality is that the anointed ones have learned that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and that a manufactured crisis affords the anointed the opportunity to wield total power for its own sake.

“When the anointed say that there is a crisis this means that something must be done —and it must be done simply because the anointed want it done.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision Of The Annointed: Self-congratulation As A Basis For Social Policy

The fourth anniversary of “15 days to slow the spread” has come and gone. But the harm inflicted upon our lives and our country during the COVID “crisis” has not. More “public health” strategies are being developed to tyrannize us into “wellness” (See the WHO treaty below.) We will be made to follow “the science” even into hell if it suits the anointed ones.

We (the remnant) somehow lived through the “something must be done” ill-treatment by means of the public health anointed: Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, Rochelle Walensky, Francis Collins, and others of the anointed ilk.

And somehow, we lived through the abrogation of our freedom by the anointed ones. We came out the other side of the social experiment with the knowledge that the anointed ones conceived the abuse done to us and will do it again. What we had to endure mentally at the hands of the anointed arch-COVIDians was horrible: their fearmongering, their lies, their scientism, their silencing of contrary evidence, and their absurd mandates – clearly a test of wills as common sense was not considered “the science.”

The introduction of the anointed anxiety-soothing shot – the SOMA serum – has had devastating implications on the health and livelihoods. Many have suffered the loss of loved ones with an “unexpected death”, the loss of livelihood, and the loss of health. It has only been recently reported that the anointed of the CDC intentionally HID more than a quarter of a million adverse effects reports for the COVID-19 “vaccines.”

We continue to be subjected (via the anointed one’s talking heads) to the badgering about a (non-existent) climate “crisis.” We are told to do away with gasoline-powered vehicles and natural gas ranges and with all thought of fossil fuels as an energy source. We are told to become completely dependent on weather-dependent turbines and solar panels, and on hydropower and on their “climate science” directives for the energy to power a modern industrial economy.

(See my post Earth Day – Don’t Re-Greta Green Energy | Kingdom Venturers where I wrote about the exploitation of children and poor countries to secure the minerals needed for millions of electronic products e.g., rechargeable lithium batteries, sold year after year. The anointed ones have hearts of darkness.

“. . . cobalt, mined by the Congolese (and the Uyghurs in China), is a coveted substance in man’s conquest of earth. And we find, if we dare to look, that Green Energy-based colonialism is no different than the ivory-based colonialism talked about in [Joseph Conrad’s] Heart of Darkness.”)

The anointed of the World Economic Forum (WEF) had included “Climate-related risks” as “the biggest future threat facing the world.” The WEF have since moved on to “misinformation and disinformation” as the biggest risk near-term risk (to their narratives), followed by extreme weather events, social polarization and armed conflict.

Citing soaring energy and food prices resulting in inflationary pressures and a cost-of-living crisis, social unrest, conflicts, carbon emissions and future pandemics, the anointed of the WEF have created a new word for the cascading and connected crises they envision: Polycrisis.

For, the anointed of the WEF must make alarming predictions and announce sweeping solutions to create a demand for their services. These “Teflon prophets” (Thomas Sowell) predict that there will be future social, economic, or environmental problems in the absence of their anointed intervention.

It will be noted by those with an expanded personal bandwidth (informed common sense), that the cost-of-living crisis has been caused by the massive deficit spending and reckless energy policies of the anointed ones in our government. They also know that the shutdown of our economy during COVID was caused by the public health anointed ones. Wars are caused by the anointed ones. Carbon emissions have not risen to any threatening level except in the “acceptable” papers the anointed present to the WEF and the UN.

The WEF will not let their Polycrisis go to waste. They are conspiring to centrally plan the world because “something must be done” and done “for our own good.” Did anyone ask you about wanting a Great Reset?

Public health anointed ones are setting up for the next medical “crisis”. The World Health Organization (WHO) wants complete sovereignty (To call the shots!) over our health . . . and anything it calls a “crisis”. A “crisis” would include the climate, the water supply, gun ownership, how food is produced – basically, anything they can claim is an existential threat to humanity.

For these anointed ones to have complete say and sway over us, they must make an end run around to subvert our own physical sovereignty and the sovereignty of the U.S.

Dr. Meryl Nass: ‘We’re undergoing a soft coup’

Dr. Meryl Nass explains how the WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty will enable the WHO “to take over jurisdiction of everything in the world by saying that climate change, animals, plants, water systems [and] ecosystems are all central to health”. In addition to that, it will remove human rights protections, enforce censorship and digital passports, require governments to push a single “official” narrative, and enable the WHO to declare “pandemics” on a whim.

In a nutshell, the WHO is all in for whatever it takes to promote disease-related pharmaceutical interventions, including surveillance, digital health passports, tracing, the ability to impose lockdowns, and mandating vaccines, even experimental ones like the mRNA COVID-19 shots. (Emphasis mine.)

More on this here: Short Videos – Sovereignty Coalition

“The COVID-19 mandates and resulting lockdowns taught us that, given the chance, governments worldwide will seek to control citizens if a pandemic emergency is declared. The World Health Organization (WHO) closed its negotiations on May 27 with the production of an accord consisting of two treaties that could meaningfully impinge on our sovereignty as Americans. The proposed WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty threatens to give unprecedented power in real or maybe even perceived “public health emergencies of international concern.” -Wendi Strauch Mahoney

The WHO Accord: Global Governance is a Real Threat to American Sovereignty | uncoverdc.com | uncoverdc.com

If only it was something that remained on the pages of a dystopian novel . . .the ways the anointed ones deal with us.

Coming May 2024!!!!!!!!!

Global Health Project – Protecting the Health & Future for All Humans – The Global Health Project

You may be clutching your pearls and saying “I don’t know what to think or do.” Does Polly want a crisis so that Polly can find out what to think and do from the anointed ones?

Take Action Now!!!!! At this link: “Not Now” on the Surrender of Our Sovereignty to the WHO | AlignAct

Listen. We can’t change the past. But we can continue to learn from it and work to prevent it from happening again, so the next “crisis” doesn’t represent the death of our Constitution, our livelihood, and our freedom.

For what has happened During COVID, we must demand answers. We must demand accountability. We must demand that those who perpetrated this be tried and, as appropriate, fined and sent to prison.

The takeover of our lives “for your own good” by the anointed ones must stop now.

I am not vaxxed and not because of some partisan influence or misinformation as the Leftist media is wont to claim. I took the time to read and understand the science from various sources and I knew my own almost seventy-year old body.

I did not comply during the COVID “crisis”. I did not come to love Big Brother. I raised my voice and held strong. (See my posts since March 2020). Unfortunately, many swallowed the slogans and were like sheep led to the mRNA slaughter.

All I want from the government or any authority is information to make my own decisions. I do not want, unless authorized by me, to have decisions made for me. (One might say that a transmissible disease warrants strict compliance to “health standards” or someone might die. But there would be no evidence of such transmission, only speculation and finger pointing.)

The United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the First and Second Amendments are the Supreme Law of the Land – not the WEF, not the WHO, and not a warrantless FISA.

The eclipse came and went but the tax man cometh again and again to overshadow our lives. April 15th – the day when the work of our hands is conscripted into the service of the oligarchical ruling class.

Characteristics of the anointed one’s Big Brother approach:

Increasing depression, despondency, mental illness, and suicides.

Ugliness in tone, in art and architecture – beauty is deemed subversive.

Truth, facts and language are manipulated (Newspeak).

There is a militant focus on “misinformation and disinformation” (Ministry of Truth).

History is destroyed (doublethink).

Constant surveillance.

Systematic brainwashing (Ministry of Love). 

There is obsession with population control and control of population.

If only it was something that remained on the pages of a dystopian novel . . .the ways the anointed ones deal with us.

~~~~~

There are those who see themselves as morally and intellectually superior to the general public and therefore superior to Democracy and its laws created by elected representatives.

Ad hoc justice, not established rule of law, is one product of their superior ways as is remaking society with inegalitarian means to create equal outcomes. Promoting the hatred of whites to promote blacks is another product of their superior ways.

Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Angelo Codevilla had this to say about America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution:

“This dismissal of the American people’s intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance is the very heart of what our ruling class is about. Its principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows things and operates by standards beyond others’ comprehension . . .

“Because ordinary people will pervert reason with ideology, religion, or interest, science is “science” only in the “right” hands. Consensus among the right people is the only standard of truth. Facts and logic matter only insofar as proper authority acknowledges them . . .

“That is why the ruling class is united and adamant about nothing so much as its right to pronounce definitive, “scientific” judgment on whatever it chooses . . .

“The fact that the “hockey stick” conclusion stands discredited and Mann and associates are on record manipulating peer review, the fact that science-by-secret-data is an oxymoron, the very distinction between truth and error, all matter far less to the ruling class than the distinction between itself and those they rule.”

~~~~~

Anointed ones run our cities:

The Democratic-run city of Denver, Colorado, plans to defund its police department to pay for illegal immigrants.

Denver’s police department will be hit with an $8.4 million reduction — about 1.9% of its total operating budget, the city confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Blue City Plans To Defund Its Police Force To Pay For Illegal Immigrants | (dailycallernewsfoundation.org)

The anointed ones who run our cities into the ground want to create new hell holes:

Hamster cages for humans, the 15-minute cities, are on city planner agendas. Soy boys and girls can walk around the city and look at their screens without a worry – “the idea is that every need is fulfilled within a 15-minute walk or short bike ride.”

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“Democracy!” is in crisis, according to the anointed ones on the Left: Trump is on the ballot and might be elected! Anointed talking heads want to tell you what to think and do about it: “Whatever you do, Don’t Think. Accept what is said about Trump and “Democracy!””

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.
—Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals

(Replace “liberty” with the Left’s “crisis of Democracy!” and you will understand what they are after.)

Tucker Carlson: For the Third Time in Three Consecutive Cycles, Secretive Federal Agencies are Trying to Rig Our Presidential Election – This Is What They Call ‘Democracy’ (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

~~~~~

You won’t get the common sense found in the words and writings of Thomas Sowell from the anointed ones.

Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society (youtube.com)

Sowell argues that American thought is dominated by a “prevailing vision” which seals itself off from any empirical evidence that is inconsistent with that vision.

“…the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

The vision of the anointed — with Thomas Sowell (1995) | THINK TANK (youtube.com)

Thomas Sowell and a Conflict of Visions (youtube.com)

Original air date: October 12, 1995

~~~~~~

Were you assigned George Orwell’s 1984 in school? I wonder if it’s being assigned in schools today.

We are living in an age that is increasingly characterized by the eerily prophetic 1984. Authoritarianism and coercion. The censoring of speech. The mandates. The propaganda. Utopia for the brotherhood elite. Dystopia for the rest.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell’s dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength – and Big Brother is watching you

Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell

BBC Radio 4 – In Our Time, Nineteen Eighty-Four

~~~

Novel Conversations: “1984” by George Orwell

 1984 follows the life of Winston Smith, a low-ranking member of ‘the Party’, who is frustrated by the omnipresent eyes of the party, and its ominous ruler, Big Brother. Orwell effectively explores the themes of mass media control, government surveillance, how a dictator can manipulate and control history, thoughts, and lives in such a way that no one can escape it.

“1984” by George Orwell

“1984” by George Orwell | Evergreen Podcasts

~~~~~~

Mike Johnson Is Fighting to Protect the Government Spy Program Used on Trump (youtube.com)

Filed under 2024 Current Events, 2024 Election, cultural Marxism, Economic World Forum, Health, Political Commentary, Progressivism, propaganda, social commentary, totalitarianism, WEF, WHO Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Freedom – Everywhere in Chains

January 31, 2021 Leave a comment

Are you less free now than a year ago?

Are you currently free to flourish as a human?

Are you currently told to wear a mask, stay home and wait for release from house arrest?

Are you being told how you can gather with your family and your church?

Are you being told that you will need a vaccine passport so that you can travel and participate in society once again?

Has your business license become a noose around your neck?

Do you feel free to make choices about dealing with COVID-19?

Do you feel free from coercion? From arbitrary power?

Are you being told how to live your life by those who do not know you?

Do you agree with the following?

“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now–independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors–are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.” (emphasis mine)

― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

Collectively decided to be good is principle the 18th century Swiss philosopher and French Revolution muse Jean Jacques Rousseau was after: the “general will”, as penned in his 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Some equated Rousseau’s “general will” with an agreed upon rule of law that would ensure freedom and equal treatment in society. This, at first glance, appears to be beneficial for society. Yet, freedom can be quickly disposed of when the “general will” becomes a demand for obedience and conformity to its rules and laws. Dictators and totalitarian leaders – Democrats, specifically – and their media amplifiers have no problem creating a “general will” and dispensing with your freedom.

As you have witnessed, the Democrats/Left define and perpetrate “general will” in their own ideological (and theological – “social justice”) terms. The Left has no desire for input from anyone else.

The Left’s concocted “general will” is hawked by the predominately Leftist corporate media as the generally accepted will of the people. And, since the lie is in the NYT and on MSNBC, CNN and now on Fox News, people get the impression that what they are being sold is the real deal. The critical race theory based “1619 project” is just one example of what is being peddled. Mask wearing is another. Salvation from COVID-19 by vaccine is another

Those who do not abide by the “general will” Groupthink are rubes, “bitter clingers”, “deplorables”, “racists”, and not worthy of a social media voice in the controlled “general will” narrative.

Does any of this sound familiar in light of this past year of politics playing medicine, of mandates, lockdowns, the stolen election, and the stolen “general will”? Freedom – everywhere in chains because of the imposition of “general will”.

Collectivist’s lies may make you feel like you are in sync with the “general will.” Therein, you may feel safe. Collectivism talks of multiculturalism, of humanism, of a “better world for everyone.” Individual freedom is of no importance to collectivists.

If you care about your freedom, then throw off any attachment to the collectivist “void”. Put to death the collectivist impulse once and for all. Resurrect the human that is you. I return you to the words of Friedrich Hayek.:

“Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s own conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.”


And

“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.”

******

The opening sentence to Rousseau’s The Social Contract:

“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.”

Rousseau, like many since, assumed that man is by nature a free and innocent being. He would tell you that man is not the problem. In The Social Contract he stated “Men are not naturally enemies”. He pointed to social institutions as the problem. Fast forward. Remember Barack Obama talking about the “fundamental transformation of America?”

Such a distorted vision of man is behind the ruinous ideology, i.e., Marxism, which has devasted and destroyed the lives of millions. In the effort to produce equality of results, the only equal result has been death by ideology.

Such a distorted vision of mankind is also behind the ad hoc justice being dispensed to today as “social justice.” Accordingly, people are not to be held accountable for crimes against another because of their social situation – environment is the problem, not the man. Yet, as anyone can see under ad hoc justice, a socially “just result” for the criminal does not produce an equally socially “just result” for the victim. The Left cares for one result but not the other.

As I write this, more and more of American institutions are becoming corrupted to serve the coming globalist collective. Man, who is “born free”, is willingly taking on the “chains” supplied by the institutions of the globalist collective.

To learn more about the “unconstrained vision” and before you read anything else this year, read …

A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggle by Thomas Sowell

*****

Here are two men who have shown “readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority” (“general will” majority):

Economist Thomas Sowell:

A word about the COVID-19 hysteria from Pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson

Added 2-1-2021. The truth about COVID-19, masks and the lies we are being fed …

This informative video is found at the following link:

Unmasking The Truth – Dr. Lee Merritt -Omaha, Nebraska

Filed under 2021 current events, cultural Marxism, pandemic, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, social justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Perspectives on Race Relations

September 6, 2020 Leave a comment

 

“…this country, despite its sins, also is a country for the last sixty years has truly transformed itself morally. And, Americans today are a different people in regard to all these issues [discrimination, oppression] …” Shelby Steele, How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country

 

Parallel Perspective

April 1968. I was sixteen when I heard of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. I read the Chicago newspapers and watched the local news.

In the days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in more than 130 cities, hundreds of thousands of black Americans let their anger and grief boil over into collective rage. In Chicago, more than 48 hours of rioting left 11 Chicagoans dead, 48 wounded by police gunfire, 90 policemen injured, and 2,150 people arrested. Some two miles of the commercial heart of Lawndale on West Madison were little more than charred rubble.

West Madison Street, 1968, Encyclopedia of Chicago

 

Chicago is my home. I have lived here during the 60 years of fundamental transformation that Shelby Steele describes in the epigraph. Prior to that tragic day in 1968, I was aware of strife in the country. The civil rights movement began during my childhood as did the Vietnam war. I watched the nightly news reports with my father. Both were covered.

In high school social studies class, I read Black Like Me and Cry, the Beloved Country. Civil War history was also taught. I was given excerpts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates to read (Essentially, Douglas, a Democrat, wanted states to be allowed chose slavery if they so desired. Lincoln, a Republican, wanted a nation without pockets of slavery. I would later learn that a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.) Later, in the 1980s, I read Stephen B. Oates’ Let The Trumpet Sound: The Life Of Martin Luther King, Jr. after the book came out. I wanted to gain insight into MLK’s life.

From my various readings I understood why Martin Luther King and black Americans were protesting. I also understood, from my visits with my grandparents, that there was something in the human heart that was prejudicial and could act to discriminate against another human being.

My father and mother would take my brother and me to see his Dutch parents. My grandparents lived in a small house in Bellwood on Chicago’s west side. They prided themselves on their perfectly manicured landscape which included a rose garden in the backyard. The frontroom’s (a Chicagoism) sofa and chairs were covered with plastic slipcovers. Having lived through the depression, everything they owned was protected and meant to last.

On the drive over to their house, my father warned us kids that grandpa (definitely an Archie Bunker archetype) had issues with black people (and other ethnic groups). We would hear grandpa talk about the “niggers” moving into the neighborhood. Grandma would try to shoosh him with “little ears!” I heard my dad trying to move grandpa beyond prejudice, but grandpa, a gruff truck driver, was set in his ways.

My Dutch father was like my Dutch grandparents in that he loved order and cleanliness. But he was not like them in his attitude toward black folk. From what I could gather from my visits, the antipathy that my grandparents held toward blacks seemed to circulate in the attitudes of those who attended their local Dutch Christian Reformed Church. I listened to the conversations when the members gathered outside the church after the service. As a young man, my father attended a different church, dated my mother, discovered Jesus and rejected his father’s ways in the process. That fundamental transformation made the difference for his children’s understanding of race relations.

Now, I don’t pretend to know what it is like to be black. But over 67 years I did gain perspective on black American life. I empathized with the black American’s anger over Jim Crow laws. I empathized with their loss of MLK who called out the injustice. But I did not then and do not now sympathize with the rioting, looting and violence of protestors. These acts are the antithesis of MLK’s non-violent approach to protesting. Such “mindless mimicry of anger and resentment” (Shelby Steel) and destruction only sets back the cause of race relations. Such behavior comes from a very dark place. MLK exemplified Proverbs 16:32:

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty,
    and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

 

Progressive Perspective

Anyone who has watched Monty Python’s Flying Circus will remember the Dead Parrot sketch. Mr. Praline comes into the pet shop to complain that his recently purchased parrot is dead. The owner of the shop denies any of Mr. Praline’s claims with exasperating excuses.

Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.

(pause)

Owner: Well, o’course it was nailed there! If I hadn’t nailed that bird down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent ’em apart with its beak, and VOOM! Feeweeweewee!

Mr. Praline: “VOOM”?!? Mate, this bird wouldn’t “voom” if you put four million volts through it! ‘E’s bleedin’ demised!

Owner: No no! ‘E’s pining!

Mr. Praline: ‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

This hilarious satire of customer service works because of the two opposing perspectives: the real versus the absurd. Bring these two perspectives into any serious discussion of societal or economic matters and it becomes glaringly obvious that there can be no resolution or reconciliation. (In the sketch, the shopkeeper, after repeatedly responding to Mr. Praline’s protests with nonsense, goes off on an absurd tangent, declares that he always wanted to be a lumberjack and begins singing the lumberjack song.) I have had similar back-and-forths when I was on Twitter.

Engaging activists and their Progressive followers on a Twitter thread, I would ask “What is racist about America?” These ‘shopkeepers’ of racism would respond that “America is racist” or “there is injustice” or “there is unfairness”. I would ask again and again for examples – proof of life that racism was alive in America. I would receive the same blanket replies: “America is racist”, “there is injustice”, “there is unfairness”. They were trying to justify what they thought by parroting the same things over and over again. Emotions flared and words were written, but nothing was said to prove that America was a racist country.

(The latest generation of Americans seem to have come out of “How do you feel about that?” therapy. They are hot-wired for emotional response. Hence, the “safe space” mentality that is meant to protect them from emotional overload when confronted with realities beyond the existential.)

Thomas Sowell, like Shelby Steele, has consistently contended against the race narrative posited by the Left. And, like many other blacks who disagree with the Left, is labeled “Uncle Tom”. Sowell is a ninety-year old black American economist and social theorist who is currently a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Here are just a couple of his rejoinders to the Left’s hype of racism:

Racism does not have a good track record. It’s been tried out for a long time and you’d think by now we’d want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.

The word ‘racism’ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything – and demanding evidence makes you a ‘racist.’

It’s been my experience on social media, with its “safe space” anonymity, that there is more than just stonewalling buzzwords repeatedly being stacked up. The ad hominems also pile up. The pejoratives “racist” and “bigot” are used on social media and in print for anyone who does not comport with the narrative proffered by the ‘shopkeepers’ of race. Saul Alinsky’s Rule #5 in his Rules for Radicals handbook is put to use:

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.”

(What makes any discussion about race relations (or any relationship) even more bizarre and destructive is Progressivism’s identarian politics: dividing people into boxes with labels to pit “victims” against the “oppressors”. This dissection of society is the opposite of reconciliation. And it is rank Marxism.)

“Black votes matter to many politicians — more so than black lives. That is why such politicians must try to keep black voters fearful, angry and resentful. Racial harmony would be a political disaster for such politicians”. Thomas Sowell

Despite what is parroted on social media and in the ‘news’ media, things have changed with regard to race relations in the last 60 years. But the Black Lives Matter cabal denies the reality of that change as do those who buy the BLM propaganda and bring it home.

I see “woke” Americans placing a “Black Lives Matter” sign on the well-manicured lawn of their far-west suburban Chicago homes. Apparently, they want to signal to others that they are down with the manufactured cause. I do not share their token empathy for dead parrot racism, no matter how many times agitators and rioters rattle cages to make it appear to be alive.

We laugh at the Dead Parrot Sketch. It makes perfect sense to us that Mr. Praline is exasperated to no end with the shopkeeper. Likewise, we are exasperated when anyone or a group maintains fixed false beliefs (2 + 2 = 5, 50+ genders, people are poor because of the rich, Progressive Woodrow Wilson was not a racist, “Defund the Police”, white privilege, critical race theory, America is inherently racist, etc.)  even when confronted with facts. We become even more exasperated when we learn that a person or a group grapples for political power to establish fixed false beliefs as truth. The inordinate craving for power comes from a dark place, as philosopher Leszek Kolakowski notes in his essay Politics and the Devil:

“To the extent that politics is the sheer struggle for power, it is bound, in Christian terms, to be the realm of the devil by definition; it then simply releases our libido dominandi as a drive that expands, as it were, for the sake of its own expansion and has no objective beyond itself. As in all other areas of human life, however, the devil distorts and poisons the good natural order.” [i]

Progressivism’s delusional perspective can be summed up as ”Dead Parrots Matter”. It can be applied to any cause it raises, including racism and socialism, as both these ‘causes’ have been dealt with definitively in the past.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists’. -Thomas Sowell

 

Professor’s Perspective

In the 80s I came across Thomas Sowell in a series of Free to Choose videos, including Frances Fox Piven vs. Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman  and Thomas Sowell on the Welfare System. Today, one does not come across the discussion and debates shown in these videos. (See Delusional Perspective above for the reason why.)

I have always enjoyed Professor Sowell’s down-to-earth perspective regarding economics, social issues and government. He provides great insight into the problems affecting blacks. Sowell deals in reality and not in the fallacies, myopia or the jejune foot-stomping responses of the Left. The video below, Myths of Economic Inequality affirms this. Therein, his perspective and some of the wealth of his comprehensive understanding of the matters that affect society. The video presents Sowell’s background and his early bent toward Marxism. You will also hear about his book A Conflict of Visions. This was the first book of his that I read. I consider it a primer to understanding the “unconstrained vision” and the “constrained visions” so prominent and at odds in America today.

 

Here are just a few of the videos offering Professor Sowell’s perspectives:

The Real History of Slavery

Intellectuals and Society

The Ethnic Flaw – Economics and Race, culture as a variable in success and failure

Discrimination and Disparities

 

Penetrating Perspective

With this post and my previous post, I am offering counterpoints to the delusional thinking of the race shopkeepers. I presented Shelby Steele’s and Thomas Sowell’s perspective and my own which parallels theirs of the last sixty years. These perspectives run counter to the populist notion that America is inherently racist and whites should be guilt-ridden about it. Yet, along with Steele and Sowell and many others, I have witnessed the fundamental transformation of America. And it happened long before Barack Obama came along with his Marxist Liberation theology/Jeremiah Wright version of “fundamental transformation”.

I would advise staying clear of broadcast media and op-eds with their myopic flash-point inducing ‘journalism’. Their version of racism is not worth your time. Rather, read to gain a new perspective and a comprehensive understanding of the issues facing America today and how they can be resolved. Below is a recommended list of books, an article and a link to begin with.

 

A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell

The Thomas Sowell Reader by Thomas Sowell

The Courthouse Ring: Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism, by Malcolm Gladwell

Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and, Reconciliation, by Miroslav Volf

Watershed at the Well    -A short story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well. The Jews and the Samaritans are at odds. Jesus challenges their ethno-centric understanding of God and worship that provokes hostilities between the two groups.

Added 9-18-20:

“Go to the website for the Black Futures Lab, a venture of Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza, and click on the “Donate” button. It will ask you to send your money to an obscure organization, the Chinese Progressive Association, explaining that “Black Futures Lab is a fiscally sponsored project of the Chinese Progressive Association.”

This BLM Co-founder and Pro-Communist China Group are Partnering up

Added 9-29-20:

https://youtu.be/AWvEiAzZ5LA

[i] Leszek Kolakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990, 175-176

Filed under 2020 current events, Culture, Current Events 2020, Political Commentary, Progressivism, Race Relations Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Utopia Has No Room for You… in the Inn

April 2, 2016 Leave a comment

 

Utopia comes from the Greek: οὐ (“not”) and τόπος (“place”) and means “no-place“, a non-existent place.

…..

And now a few clarion words from Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Angelo M. Codevilla:

 

“This dismissal of the American people’s intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance is the very heart of what our ruling class is about. Its principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows things and operates by standards beyond others’ comprehension.

While the unenlightened ones believe that man is created in the image and likeness of God and that we are subject to His and to His nature’s laws, the enlightened ones know that we are products of evolution, driven by chance, the environment, and the will to primacy. While the un-enlightened are stuck with the antiquated notion that ordinary human minds can reach objective judgments about good and evil, better and worse through reason, the enlightened ones know that all such judgments are subjective and that ordinary people can no more be trusted with reason than they can with guns. Because ordinary people will pervert reason with ideology, religion, or interest, science is “science” only in the “right” hands. Consensus among the right people is the only standard of truth. Facts and logic matter only insofar as proper authority acknowledges them.

That is why the ruling class is united and adamant about nothing so much as its right to pronounce definitive, “scientific” judgment on whatever it chooses. When the government declares, and its associated press echoes that “scientists say” this or that, ordinary people — or for that matter scientists who “don’t say,” or are not part of the ruling class — lose any right to see the information that went into what “scientists say.” Thus when Virginia’s attorney general subpoenaed the data by which Professor Michael Mann had concluded, while paid by the state of Virginia, that the earth’s temperatures are rising “like a hockey stick” from millennial stability — a conclusion on which billions of dollars’ worth of decisions were made — to investigate the possibility of fraud, the University of Virginia’s faculty senate condemned any inquiry into “scientific endeavor that has satisfied peer review standards” claiming that demands for data “send a chilling message to scientists…and indeed scholars in any discipline.” The Washington Post editorialized that the attorney general’s demands for data amounted to “an assault on reason.” The fact that the “hockey stick” conclusion stands discredited and Mann and associates are on record manipulating peer review, the fact that science-by-secret-data is an oxymoron, the very distinction between truth and error, all matter far less to the ruling class than the distinction between itself and those they rule.

By identifying science and reason with themselves, our rulers delegitimize opposition. Though they cannot prevent Americans from worshiping God, they can make it as socially disabling as smoking — to be done furtively and with a bad social conscience. Though they cannot make Americans wish they were Europeans, they continue to press upon this nation of refugees from the rest of the world the notion that Americans ought to live by “world standards.” Each day, the ruling class produces new “studies” that show that one or another of Americans’ habits is in need of reform, and that those Americans most resistant to reform are pitiably, perhaps criminally, wrong. Thus does it go about disaggregating and dispiriting the ruled.” (emphasis added)

Beyond the excerpt:  I commend Codevilla’s entire article to you.  In fact, I urge you to click on the link and print out the article.  Sit and read it and be forever changed by its content. I pray that the article opens your eyes and that moral courage arises in your heart.

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution by Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Angelo Codevillano_room_at_the_inn_postcard

 

Now, perhaps, you know these culprits,  the Unconstrained Visionaries, by their characteristics:  snobbish, name-calling bullies; cliquish; desiring kinship w/other like-minded people; seeking power by government association; demanding rule by ‘right’; believing themselves morally and intellectually right; saying “You must obey us because we know better”; blinded to their  ‘well-intentioned’ actions leading to horrible unintended consequences; believing they know better than you; applying a “living constitution” template to every legal decision; using science as leverage without any depth of scientific knowledge; posturing “settled science” to quash dissent;  believing they “have the one true faith”; deeming that intentions and not results matter most; obtaining snobbery wielding government power;… combining attitude with government power, coercive.

…

Utopia Has No Room for You (and Swaddled Truth) in the Inn.

Us Christians, we abide in Christ wherever we are.  We’ll leave the Light on.

…

Background on the Constrained and Unconstrained Visions, the intuitive assumptions that shape our worldview:

Filed under Christianity, Culture Tagged with , , , , ,

Nightmare on Envy St.

February 21, 2016 Leave a comment

Nightmare on Elm st 1Envy St. has been the road most travelled from the start. Covetousness and self-deception have been the vehicles of choice. The serpent promised the first couple that they could become like God – their projected 1%.

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.” Genesis 3: 4, 5

And so they believed the lie that having the same quality as God would create equality with God. They believed they could transcend their humanity and become Singularity.  They democratically voted “Yes,” and bit off more than mankind could chew.
~~~
Man as Singularity – Freddie Kruger voters:  freddy_krueger
“Since the end of the second world war…a new ethic has, astonishingly, come into being, according to which envious man is altogether acceptable. Progressively fewer individuals and groups are ashamed of their envy, but instead make out that its existence in their temperament proves the existence of “social injustice,” which must be eliminated for their benefit. Suddenly it has become possible to say, without loss of public credibility and trust, “I envy you. Give me what you’ve got.”  (emphasis added) Helmut Schoeck, sociologist
~~~
The Day Democratic Socialism Died:

In his final semester, Trevor had earned enough credits to graduate.  Trevor had worked long and hard.  He would graduate in the top 1% of his class. And, as expected, Trevor’s school loan would come due a year from graduation. Trevor would need to find work. But.

 Trevor, a student of required Karl Marx readings, was told that 90% of his credits now must be redistributed to other classmates who were lacking credits. Trevor was taught that socialism is the way of the future and that he must submit.

Trevor, now, would need to apply for another student loan to earn more credits to graduate. And though tenured professors did not have to redistribute their years of teaching to create tenure for other teachers (some people being more equal than others), Trevor accepted his plight….by saying, “Hell no!”
~~~ Bernie Sanders bernie a true socialist
The push for equality through Democracy, equality tied to a certain feature of your neighbor’s life, is not unlike an out of control spender charging every purchase to a credit card to keep up with the Joneses or the Kardashians or the Real House Wives of Orange County and then paying the minimum due every month.
~~~  Frederic Bastiat Quote
“And it is a good thing that many ideas have a relatively short shelf-life. Some because they are bad, even pernicious ideas: the Master Race, the class struggle, the Oedipus complex, and Socialism are four bad ideas with wretched consequences that come immediately to mind.”
bernie sanders unicorn
“Being an anti-capitalist and hence being able to blame capitalism—often known more simply as “the system”—for any failure I might encounter through my own lack of talent or absence of energy not only provided me with a fine fallback position, but permitted me to view anyone who labored at a workaday job in the system with a rather lofty contempt.”  bernie sanders unicorn 1.gif
― Joseph Epstein, A Literary Education and Other Essays
~~~
More required reading. Credit applies to graduating with honors in saying “No” to socialism:

“This Presidential election looks more like an election in Europe than one from America. On the Democratic side you have a 74 year old self-avowed socialist and a 68 year old progressive. On the GOP side you have forgotten the message of Reagan where Government was the problem, now it’s just badly managed. At the GOP debate last week you had a debate over whether Obama is incompetent or an ideologue.”

Karl Marx’s 10 Point Checklist to Communism – Where Does America Rank?

“What Keynes succeeded in doing was to provide a rationale for what governments always like to do: spend other people’s money and pander to special interests.”

The Follies and Fallacies of Keynesian Economics

Thomas Sowell – Common sense economist
https://youtu.be/XzT21b-BMQk
Socialism: The Force Is Not With You

Added, #FeeltheBern of socialism in Sweden:

“When leftists fantasize about Northern Europe, the first thing they think of is the region’s enormous public spending and its overly generous welfare state. However, as with all dreams, the time is coming to wake up. Along with several other social services, Sweden’s iconic “free” healthcare system’s days are numbered.”

Socialist Paradise of Sweden Reportedly Moving TO PRIVATE HEALTHCARE

This Is How Bad It’s Got In Latin America’s Socialist Utopia

Filed under Economics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The Invasion of the Wealth Snatchers

November 1, 2015 Leave a comment

“The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.”

– Thomas Sowell, economist

~~~

On the heels of a previous post, Resident Evil: Redistribution, I now dispatch a warning about recent alien attacks on human flourishing. And in this brief post, I will also present you with some initial understanding of wealth disparity so that you will be able to withstand the alien invasion.

First, the humanity invading spores of socialism:

Run for your lives! Wealth snatchers are coming!

Run for your lives! Wealth snatchers are coming!

The socialist spores, planted next to you while you sleep in the twilight of Progressive thoughts, will make you into “pod people.”

As explained by the alien Democratic Socialists, after the takeover of your mind, body and soul by the socialist spores “life loses its frustrating complexity, because all emotions and sense of individuality vanish.”

Spores en route to your home.

Spores en route to your home.

 

Marxism, the origin of leftist thought, and its Progressive offshoot Democratic Socialism will require the means ultimately to abolish the individual and their private property along with the elimination of truth and religion. This will be done to accomplish the ends of redistribution of wealth and the creation of proletarian banality.

In its negation of the individual to further collective materialism, Marxism must necessarily denigrate humanity down to the lowest common statistic. Marxism does so through exacting means: you are forced to live within the lie once you allow the lie to overtake you. It is your vote to elect a Democratic Socialist that makes you complicit with the lie. In so doing it would appear that…

Pod hatcing

Pods hatching

“Each person somehow succumbs to a profane trivialization of his or her inherent humanity…In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life. This is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse: it is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself.” –Vaclav Havel

The tearing down of your sacred humanity begins after socialism spores have attached themselves to you:

“When the [revolutionary] political state…comes violently into being…[it] can and must proceed to the abolition of religion, to the destruction of religion.” -Karl Marx

Because…

“…”to abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness; the demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs that needs illusions.” –Karl Marx

What is the “illusion” of religion being replaced with in Marx’s scheme and in neo-Marxist Bernie Sander’s scheme? The “un-masking” of collectivized materialism. Nothing more, nothing less.

Oh, and this, too…

“The historian of ideas Leszek Kołakowski said that Marxism (the philosophy) and Karl Marx (the man) had become fetishized and rendered into commodities; that such a form of intellectual reductionism could be construed as a secular, materialist faith that substituted for supernatural religion.” (emphasis mine)

Self enserfment: your vote for and your surrender to Democratic Socialism will, as history has shown, evolve into acquiescence to totalitarian rule. Then you will live hand to mouth:

“Totalitarian regimes created a debilitating psychology of complicity. Because they owned and controlled everything, and recognized no limits to their own power, every mouthful of food, every moment of rest, every item of consumption, was enjoyed solely by their grace and favor, which could be withdrawn at a whim.” -Theodrore Dalrymple, The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World.

Enter the neo-apparatchik: the contemporary followers of Marxism, the beguiling ideological sycophants called Democratic Socialists, will destroy the growth of wealth and prevent human flourishing for the sake of centralization and the commodification of one’s life. Under them, truth becomes what is commanded to be believed by State – unsalable things becoming salable.

The Democratic Socialism political ads are enticing commercials promoting a prescription of socialism spores. They are, of course, presented without contraindications.

Uncle Sanders wants...your wealth!

Uncle Sanders wants…your wealth!

~~~

Sadly, as I quoted in my previous post (linked above) regarding the Me Generation…

“What do students value, and are those values any different from those of previous generations? … [studies of] students…reveal further characteristics that distinguish Generation Me from prior cohorts. A consistent trend in these data is the decline in interest in abstract and intellectual concerns and the increase in practical and materialistic ones.” –Jean M. Twenge, The Rise of Self and the Decline of Intellectual and Civic Interest, The State of the American Mind by Mark Bauerlein and Adam Belllow, copyright 2015 Templeton press (emphasis mine)

I prescribe the following:

Read history. Read The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World.

Do this in order to find out what the socialist world becomes via a personal eyewitness account provided by Theodore Dalrymple.

If you can care about your sacred humanity over and above collectivized material concerns then maybe there is hope for you and this generation.

Your Dead Meat Under Democratic Socialism!

You’re Dead Meat Under Democratic Socialism!

Most important, if you carry an attitude of thanksgiving with you wherever you go and use it in every situation, then envy won’t fester into “income inequality” obsession. Thanksgiving EveryDay is the best immunization against envy and materialism and the pursuit of other’s money.

If you can keep from taking in the poisonous alien banter about “income inequality” then you will be better able to flourish in a healthy and natural way, as opposed to allowing another life form to take over your pocket-book and leaving you dependent and devoid of humanity.

The videos below provide some intellectually organic safeguards against socialism’s spores. To further inoculate yourself you will need to read the accessible Basic Economics and Wealth, Poverty and Politics. Both books are by economist Thomas Sowell. In doing so you will gain a basic understanding of economics, an understanding that is currently deficit in the general public’s intellect. You will also then be able to comprehend the dire warnings I have presented here and will be able to guard yourself against the soul-encroaching socialist spores and The Invasion of the Wealth Snatchers.

Ahhh...

Ahhh…

~~~

Before I turn you over to the videos I must not leave this out: The earmark of socialism is shortages. First and foremost, socialism must unsettle you with a shortage of certainty:

Added 11-3-2015, no shortage of common sense:

Filed under Short Story Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Living in a Material world, The Impoverished Thinking of “Income Inequality”

July 11, 2015 Leave a comment

It’s a mystery to me

We have a greed with which we have agreed

You think you have to want more than you need

Until you have it all you won’t be free

Society, you’re a crazy breed

I hope you’re not lonely without

 

Though the message of the above song resonates within me throughout and though I have seen others on the same road as Alexander Supertramp I do not recommend walking away…

~~~

Two recent events reveal the impoverished thinking of populist economics and “society’s crazy breed”: A mandated minimum wage increase in Chicago (Chicago-Minimum-Wage-Notice) and Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman’s macro-hypocrisy increase.

Let’s start with the subliminal wage increase.

It feels so “Oprah-kind” to know that the minimum pay for your effort will be set at a fixed rate by Big Brother. Big Brother, of course, is not paying for the increase but he is certainly gaining political capital and tax revenue from your increased paycheck.

The media abets the ravenous pols by constantly bombarding us with income deltas as if materialism is the bread of life. Karl Marx did care about how much someone else made, he dined out on it.

On a daily basis I find some financial webpages and articles written about comparative CEO salaries. OMG! Reporter, get the socialist’s dirty needle out of your arm! Are you reporting these numbers so as to invoke class-ic envy?

“There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest, For I did dream of money-bags to-night.” William Shakespeare

~~~

Thomas Sowell, economist

Thomas Sowell, economist

“Minimum wage laws make it illegal to pay less than the government specified price for labor. By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market. The result is a surplus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of farm produce and labor.

Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount….” Quote from Thomas Sowell, economist, “The Thomas Sowell Reader”.

~~~

Nothing happens in isolation. Consider also that the Obamacare/health “coverage” is also mandated. So, a worker’s hours are restricted to ensure that a business remains profitable to ensure employee jobs. And, a worker who doesn’t fulfill the Obamacare mandated-Justice Ruth Ginsburg-and-Justice John Roberts-mandated requirements is fined or taxed-actually, both. Big Brother has the gun law of coercion to your back.

~~~

Under the “People should and do trust me” department…

Hillary Clinton and Income Reality Inequality! Hillary Clinton Broke?

Why “income inequality”? Because good money is thrown after bad. 

Paul Krugman, pop economist

Paul Krugman, pop economist

Paul Krugman Sticks It To Poor People With $225,000 Salary To Study Income Inequality

By Eric Owens, Education Editor:

“This week, trustees of the cash-strapped, taxpayer-funded City University of New York (CUNY) system approved a hefty annual salary as well as the fancypants title of “distinguished professor” for Paul Krugman.

New York City’s public college system pays Krugman $225,000 each year to analyze the vexing problem of income inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Luxembourg Income Study Center, Gawker notes.

Krugman’s $225,000 salary — which is $18,750 per month — does not include his undisclosed earnings from other ventures, the sum of which could be substantial.”

 

Why “income inequality”? (You don’t have to pay me!)

A Fool and his money are soon parted. Duh!

A Fool and his money are soon parted. Duh!

-Folly:  A fool and his money are soon parted.” That’s what state lotteries and casinos count on.

-Government and Progressive Income tax: I made a few dollars as a store clerk at age thirteen. Now I make a whole lot more money closer to retirement. And this is because I have worked a lifetime to obtain skills that have been of value to my employers. Should I be taxed more because I make more money due to the manifest effort on my part to take care of my family and to pay my bills, just to satisfy the ‘social justice” gnosis?

–Time and experience: Over the course of decades I have had “income inequality” every year of my life. Should I demand equal pay because someone is making more at some point in time? No way! I need to make myself of more value to my employer and then ask for an increase in pay or find a better paying job. This brings me to my next point…

-Denial: Degreed Millennials, as an observation, think that their academic credentials buy them a ticket to ride without much effort on their part. Some even think that blue-collar labor is beneath them. This denial of reality of their situation and a lack of healthy self-awareness is the result, in part I believe, of the effects of psychotherapy’s delusional self-awareness pharmacopeia on our culture. Psychotherapy provides the illusion that you can live an existence free of any tension over time, through endless sessions of… therapy. An analysand’s every thought must be reviewed, be given equal doses of “hmmm” and then before the open-ended session’s time is done, be given equal value. “You are not to blame yourself. XYZ is responsible. Look, our time is up. See you next week. Pay up front.” And, psychotherapy’s moral deficit is not a cure for a person’s lack of awareness of the obvious-many a Millennial thinks he is entitled. And, of no value is the politician’s “Hope and Change” pharmacopeia. A Minimum wage is not a cure at all. It is a placebo that generates no economic health whatsoever. In fact it denies the existence of bad economic choices an individual has made. Yet, perverse politicians say “it’s not you. You didn’t build that problem. The institution of big business is the problem. It must take our ‘medicine’ for your cure.

-Misdirected Self-awareness:  Millennials tend to think of only what they need and not what an employer needs. Naiveté.

Money Well Spent?!? sodahead.com

Money Well Spent?!?
sodahead.com

-Some people have a spending problem: Some people reinvest their money and create jobs. Others will spend their money and ask “Why am I ‘poor’ when others are rich?” The makeshift poor will demand the doctors of politics to up their dosage of cornucopian wealth.

-Lack of wisdom: “He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.” William Shakespeare

-Lack of wisdom: “It is senseless to pay tuition to educate a fool, since he has no heart for learning.” Proverbs 17:16

-Lack of wisdom: “Lazy people want much but get little, but those who work hard will prosper.” Proverbs 13:4

-Lack of wisdom: “Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!” Proverbs 14:23

~~~

In a twist of a Thomas Sowell quote, ”It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn their prejudices into law.” I say, ”It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to insure them against their bad decisions.”

~~~

Added 7-15-2015:

Thomas Sowell – Minimum Wage Exploitation (Economics 101)

Filed under Current Events 2015, Economics Tagged with , , , , ,

Immigration Fiat Meet Multiculturalism or Don’t Pass the Fiat Fondue Melting Pot

November 22, 2014 Leave a comment

Remember when your parents said, “Eat your supper, eat your peas or go to your room without supper.”?  no peas

 That is the Eat-Your-Supper-Fiat. Whether you liked the food or not your were required to eat whatever was set before you because, “I said so.” You were offered two choices:  “accept what I am demanding of you or face the consequences of not obeying me.”

 As adults, as voting adults, as voting adults with representatives we are now told by Dear Leader Obama that we must swallow his Executive Fiat without representation. And, we must also accept the consequences of not loving him with supine obedience:  a renunciation of the U.S. Constitution and a negation of our elected representatives.

 And here’s the excuse for just such a demand: there are “poor little children from other countries torn from their families, who do not have a regular meal to eat.” Sob. Sob. Sniffle. Sniffle. “Shame on you, taxpayers! You did not obey my commands!”

 How these children were torn from their families and became hungry is another story involving crossing our sovereign border and avoiding immigration authorities. They snuck into our country illegally in hopes of demanding to be fed and taken care of by U.S. taxpayer money as in “Illegal immigrants to be eligible for Social Security, Medicare”  BTW: They are illegal immigrants and not ‘undocumented” travelers on the road of life.

 Now that the ‘dinner’ has been served sitting in front of us is a smorgasbord multinational characters, some who may be Jihadists, felons, drug dealers, gang members, diseased and most certainly impoverished. Yet, we are informed by IL-Rep Luis Gutierrez that we the voters are uninformed children in need of Dear Leader’s guidance. Remember, we are the “stupid voters” ala Jon Gruber. We are not supposed to care what we are fed as long as “Change” is on the menu.

The Dear Reverend Hussein Obama has also blessed the meal. He used Holy Scripture to endorse his lawlessness and to promote his legacy of “Me, Myself and I”. The spirit of anti-Christ is crouching, ready to devour.

The Gospel-according-to-Progressive George Soros funded Illinois Voices For Immigration Deformity has also blessed the meal with their alliterative babble” “Bibles, Badges, Business.” They forgot to add “and Balkanization to boot.” Their “Call to Action” is the new Evangelical Gospel of antinomianism.

 Now that Dear Leader has served us his self made whipped up fiat fondue we are told to eat and like it: “If you don’t eat what I am serving, you can’t have any pudding, how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat what I am serving!” But there is more to this fiat force feeding than meets the throat.

Multiculturalism and Immigration Fiat now meet face to face-a few million times over.

 Forced multiculturalism, whether as found in England or Germany or France hasn’t worked out well. Many immigrants do not share the same values as their host country. In fact, the immigrants often isolate themselves into their own cultural collectives. And, the radical Islamists currently crossing our border make no distinction between church and state. They want us to be under their Sharia law. They will kill us to make this happen.

In The New Criterion article by Roger Kimball titled “Institutionalizing our demise: America vs. multiculturalism”, Kimball mentions a book by the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington

“Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity” (2004), Kimball writes:

“Does it,” Huntington asks, “take an Osama bin Laden … to make us realize that we are Americans? If we do not experience recurring destructive attacks, will we return to the fragmentation and eroded Americanism before September 11?”…

Multiculturalism is a moral intoxicant; its thrill centers around the emotion of superior virtue; its hangover subsists on a diet of nescience and blighted “good intentions.”

Wherever the imperatives of multiculturalism have touched the curriculum, they have left broad swaths of anti-Western attitudinizing competing for attention with quite astonishing historical blindness. Courses on minorities, women’s issues, the Third World proliferate; the teaching of mainstream history slides into oblivion. “The mood,” Arthur Schlesinger wrote in The Disuniting of America (1992), his excellent book on the depredations of multiculturalism, “is one of divesting Americans of the sinful European inheritance and seeking redemptive infusions from non-Western cultures.”

A profound ignorance of the milestones of American culture is one predictable result of this mood.”

 

Let it be known that Our Dear Leader, Supreme Professor of Cultural-Legal-Social-Economic-Self-Aggrandizement Studies, has enslaved us to Multiculturalism. His doting bureaucrats will feed his new slaves from the fiat fondue melting pot, a pot laced with every form of human depravity known to man. 

Dear Leader, in his great wisdom, has purposely created this ad hoc toxic milieu so as to dilute America’s melting pot with third world values. Progressive dictatorships feed off of this pot.

Equally as important to Dear Leader is creating millions of worshippers of Progressivism’s cult combine of language, morally relative values, lowest common denominator culture, Gaia-incensed global-warming and the rule of ad hoc law.

Dear Leader wants to amass voters who are submissive, “stupid” and obedient. And, like him, they must not care that there are laws to obey or boundaries to be wary of, or red lines to never cross. The illegal immigrants are to be his hapless ‘victims,’ Dear Leader is to be their Savior and America (always the oppressor in his anti-colonialism zeitgeist) will now submit to him. We are to be his colony of worker bees.

For the ‘victims’ there is to be the 1%’s pot of gold to be had and a third world free-for-all party to attend. “Go ahead. Break the law. Just don’t get caught. But if you do, we have liberal–minded judges who will ‘figure’ it out for you at the time. Remember, laws are meaningless under ‘social justice.”

How else can the Democrat/Progressive party survive? Only by mandating desperate, “stupid” and lawless voters out from shadowy existence and thrusting them into ‘daylight’ of the voting booth. That is how the Progressive Party survives. That is how illegal immigrants will be used. And, that is why Hillary Clinton nods her approval while awaiting her throne.

 

Here, the Rev. Robert A. Sirico speaks to the issue of Multiculturalism and the fact that all cultures are not equal:

 

 

And, Thomas Sowell, as well, about multiculturalism, affirmative action and the minimum wage, all of which comes into play with millions more people entering the country willy-nilly:

 

 

~~~~

Lest anyone think that I am not being Christian enough, insensitive to the plight of others and a bigot in my opinion post above, let me summarize my own situation and realign your thinking.

  I am a Christian woman who lives in an apartment building, not an ivory tower. Above me lives a Hispanic family. Below me lives another Hispanic family. Across the hall from me is a single black woman with her son. 

 The apartment buildings surrounding me are filled with a majority of Hispanics, some black Americans and some white Americans.

 The apartment building complex south of me is occupied mostly with Hispanics, with some black Americans and some white Americans.

Reader, can you say that about where you live?

 Mi amiga, Veronica, works in the food service cafeteria where I work.

 I have no problema with Hispanics or with legal immigrants. I do have a big problem with Obama’s edict and the illegal process he used and coercive multiculturalism.

~~~~~

SNL spoofing the executive fiat:

 Obama Shoves Legislative Process Down Capitol Steps

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The Vision of the Anointed is Our Nightmare; Ivy League Progressives and Creeping Racism

August 23, 2014 Leave a comment

Ferguson, Missouri; Michael Brown; the race industry’s huckster’s ‘Reverends’ Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson; “No Justice, No Peace”.

 Should we listen to and embrace the inflammatory NeveReverending racial rhetoric that bellows out from under a sheep skin, rhetoric that leads to societal schism? OR, should we listen to and follow the wise words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s niece Dr. Alveda King as she says: “Know peace and you’ll know justice”? You tell me.

 And, should Obama be just as arrogant as President Lyndon Johnson?

 Since the earliest days of my youth I have been seeking wisdom, knowledge and a good understanding. This pervasive endeavor was birthed in me as my mother read from the book of Proverbs at the dinner table each night after dinner.

 Please, please, please sit down with your coffee and listen to the wisdom, clarity and common sense that Thomas Sowell brings to the issues of race, affirmative action, minimum wage, the negative effects of today’s intellectualism, multiculteralism, social justice, environmentalism, political correctness, diversity and a host of other hot-button cultural and economic topics. You will be doing yourself a favor – wisdom is like that. 

 

Wisdom’s, Rebuke (Proverbs Chapter One)

 

Out in the open wisdom calls aloud
she raises her voice in the public square;
on top of the wall she cries out,
at the city gate she makes her speech:

 

“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
Repent at my rebuke!
Then I will pour out my thoughts to you,
will make known to you my teachings.
But since you refuse to listen when I call
and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand,
since you disregard all my advice
and do not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you—
when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.

 

“Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me,
since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the Lord.
Since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,
they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

Filed under Culture, Economics, Education, Politcal cartoon, Politics, Race Relations Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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