You Are Strangely Nonchalant

You voted for these leaders. Yet you are strangely nonchalant about their spending habits and the damage they are doing to the economy. Why?

Perhaps you weren't really upset about the GOP spending too much but merely used the issue as a brickbat to express your mindless rage. For now you are strangely quiet. Meanwhile, others get it:


We are probably moving into a multi-year depression like the one bloated government spent us into in the 1930's. I think you like the idea. It's a sort of catharsis to you, isn't it? Having lived in affluence for your whole life, you see poverty romantically, don't you? All the while, you suspect that you will do fairly well during the depression, working in the public sector which causes it. You know in the back of your mind that the suffering won't draw too near to you. Your hatred for those who don't share your fascistic vision but who just want a small government and who value mainly liberty, self-reliance and charity instead, has driven you to this. Who managed to put this vision into your mind long ago? What fueled it over the years? Do you have strong arguments for maintaining it? You don't, do you? You have only mindless verbiage, such as "For me but not for thee" and "Let the devil take the hindmost" which you convince yourself are the core of the American values you hate. You do not understand what you hate, yet you do not know this.

You are strangely quiet.

It galls you that conservatives give far more to charity than leftists do, doesn't it?

Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household

So, what really is the substance of your vision? It's certainly not concern for the poor any more than Lenin and Stalin's was. What, then, is it? What are your solid arguments for it? You need to think about that very carefully. That vision is destroying the American economy right now. What are you really up to? Who has put you up to it? What caliber of people were they?

UPDATE: You might consider other points of view:

Sixty-two percent (62%) of Americans say it’s always better to cut taxes than increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their own money.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 20% of adults disagree, and 18% are not sure.

Do you live in a way such that you only converse with people who agree with your progressive vision? Perhaps you live in an intellectually stagnant hole. But you can't tell. Does the notion of fiscal conservatism in politics make you angry and reach for epithets such as "racist," "callous," "oppression of the poor," and the other two I mentioned before? Do you feel that you want to label fiscal conservatives and supporters of small government and the free market "fascists"? If so, let that paradox sink in for a moment. It entails that the Founding Fathers were fascists. Of course, supporters of the free market favor interference with the market place that stops monopoly, fraud, and the like. So, take that off the table. Your belief that the free market and limited government are fascistic is based on the fact that in such a system, there will be losers who end up poor, isn't it? This is why you indulge in the mindless pap of "For me and not for thee." And yet, you give little to charity and you do not volunteer at soup kitchens. So, what is really the substance of your concern? Perhaps you find it a quick and easy way to install a facsimile of moral depth and seriousness into your soul. Perhaps you envy successful, happy people and want to bring them down. Liberty, self-reliance and charity, on the other hand, are not a facsimile and are not easy. They are also inconsistent with envy. As Franklin said, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." You are ready for masters, now, aren't you? You call for them: experts in Washington to control most of the economy, to destroy private health insurance, and to control businesses. And yet you label opponents of this goal "fascists."

Leftists usually label their opponents "fascists" or "right wing," whether their opponents are competing leftists (as in the case of the international socialists' labeling the national socialists) or not (as in the case of your labeling the thought of the Founding Fathers fascistic.) Yet, are you sure that you aren't a fascist? Do you want a drastic increase in government power, along with a control of business by government? Do you think that government should implement many more regulations of American life? Did you have impulses to partake in a cult of personality surrounding Barack Obama? Do you feel a slight sensation of euphoria when contemplating a state in which all people are one in will and mind?

You've Been Had

VDH sums it up.

You voted for a charlatan who had never accomplished anything in his life and who has difficulty speaking in paragraphs when the teleprompter isn't around. Yes, you are really that shallow and ignorant. He tripled the deficit. The depression will be your fault. And the double-digit unemployment which will last for years. And the rationing of health-care. Perhaps we can dismantle and clean up your mess in the '20s. Probably not.

At least we can get a chuckle out of his doing rendition and torturing white-collar criminals. Yes, at least there's that. Of course, you're screaming for his impeached for that, right? I, sorry, I forgot. He's a leftist. So, it doesn't bother you.

You've been had. Wait until the next generation finds out what you did.

UPDATE: Enjoy your totalitarianism. Pity about the loss of liberty and prosperity though. Oh, well, at least you've satisfied your fetish for leftist ideology. How do you like it?

Just Keep Scrolling

Dennis is on a roll these days.

Have a read.

You're Getting Played

You are getting played for a fool. But then, you elected him, so why wouldn't he assume you were a fool?

Take a look at Palin on tort reform. Specific problem, specific solution.

Also, how about making it illegal for states to stop health insurance companies from selling across state lines? How about giving tax write-offs for catastrophic insurance but not for full insurance? Etc. There are specific problems with the system and they have specific solutions. Anytime a government official tells you he needs to replace the entire system, you're being played for a fool. Follow the money and the power. The official ends up with the power and the money if you agree to his plan, doesn't he?

Posers

Dennis is right a lot.

Indeed. If you're an economic egalitarian you have a duty to impoverish yourself by giving all of your excess money to charity. Either there is an injustice in your having more than someone else or there isn't.

Not a single leftist complies with this duty. They're all malcontents and posers.

Okay, the tedious objection: "We object to the system as it is. It's not fair that only we and no other wealthy people should give our money to the poor. So, we are justified in keeping our new Volvos and IRAs until the system is changed."

Reply: Uh, huh. Some people are in a burning house. You are in a crowd of onlookers standing outside. None in the crowd will help, despite your pleas. You could save some of the people in the house, but it's not fair that you be the only one. So, you decline to offer help and you go on sipping your $4 latte.

Hogwash. Sorry, but if you are on the left and you are rich, then you are a hypocrite.

Blogs

Stop by M. K. Freeberg's. Free stuff to think about. No nonsense.

May I suggest Dennis? I call him DtheP, as Samuel called him in the old days. Dennis will cut through the day's news for you. Using implements such as a chainsaw, flamethrower, bulldozer, a nuke.

New kid on the block, a philosopher: Simplicius Simplicissimus.

Heh. These guys' blogs are feeling the awesome power of the philolanche right about now.

Whoops a Daisy

Presidents of Canadian Medical Association:

We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," [incoming CMA president] Doig told The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."

Oh, my.

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. [Current CMA president] Ouellet has been saying since his return that "a health-care revolution has passed us by," that it's possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and "that competition should be welcomed, not feared."

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

Oh dear, oh dear. Haven't they heard that limiting government power is fascistic?

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., you want to socialize the health insurance industry in the U.S. because you hate rich people. And you think leadership is having a bunch of lobbyists write a 1000-page bill and signing it by Tuesday. Meanwhile, in your universe, anyone who speaks out against this travesty is a racist.

UPDATE: Treacher notices some chutzpah.

Rasmussen:
Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) disapprove.

Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove....

Gee, I can't think why. When he said his health care bill would save us money and the CBO said, "Um, no. It will explode the deficit," Obama said, "Great, Congress better have it on my desk next week for me to sign. I'm not familiar with what's in the bill, but let's pass it before our vacations. The American people want it."

There were only minor details out of place, such as: 54% Say Passing No Healthcare Reform Better Than Passing Congressional Plan. They didn't even think it would be better than nothing. Huh.

Plus, they haven't forgotten this:



Oh, well. It's weird, though. You would have thought he would be able to accomplish something, given all the accomplishments on his resume.

UPDATE: Wheels are coming off. What's going on there, one might wonder? There is no there there. You hired a bunch of boobs.

Hennesy Analyzes the Health Care Bill

Read the whole thing.

But It's Not Fascism

What is it called when big business gets strong-armed by a socialist party to give up dough and political patronage? Kleptocracy? Ah, yes. Fascism.

Oh, really? Oh, really. Sadly, yes.

Well, you voted for this asshole because you wanted hope and change, because he was black, and because your resentment of perceived Republican "wars for oil" gave you a sense of moral purpose which he preyed upon. Could you possibly be any more shallow and gullible? Well, if you also pulled the lever for Nancy or Barney you could.

When totalitarians take power they do so partly by convincing the resentful that the more conservative elements vying for power are totalitarians. They're very good at this. They even make you believe that those who favor limiting governmental power are fascists in cahoots with big business. Such confusion!

UPDATE: Ouch, ouch, and ouch. What's a lefty to do? Keep making stuff up, as usual.

DtheP: Nailed...

Well, yeah.

I'll say it again: Barack Obama is an utterly conventional, inside-the-box thinker. He has spent a life time carefully studying, and then dutifully repeating, what he was taught by his Leftist Elders. For doing so, he was handsomely rewarded.

Now Obama is called to do something he has never done before - think for himself - and he is at sea. And because he cannot think through to the new processes he promised, he must - by default - fall back on the old ones. The health care debate has cruelly exposed this, and it is exactly why so much of the health care industry is finding itself quite comfortable dealing with this Administration.

In Barack Obama, special interests now completely understand they have exactly the sort of man they have always dealt with in the past. You can't blame them for being tickled to death.

Read the whole thing. Add to this the narcissism, amorality and mediocre intellect, and you get the whole picture.

Why Oppose Government Health Care

These are the reasons (from a comment I left over at JOM):

1. Individuals have a right to form private insurance contracts without undue interference by federal and state government. These rights are already being violated and will be even more seriously violated under the proposed enormous increase in government interference.

2. Insurance companies have a right to do business without having to compete against a government insurance agency which sells its product cheaper and at a loss and which funds the program by forcing Americans who don't want it to pay for it against their will. People will pay for it against their will every April 15 via the IRS, which will use force to collect, even from Americans who do not participate in the government insurance plan.

3. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are broke, so it would be foolish to create yet another big government welfare program and expect it not to go broke.

4. As in Canada and England, U.S. government health insurance will have to ration health care because of the enormous pressure to avoid bankruptcy. After the government has driven private insurance out of business through unfair practices, this means that all Americans will have their health care rationed. It follows that Americans will suffer and die as a result of government infringement of their liberty to form private contracts.

Also, you have to look at the problem you are trying to solve. What is the problem? 1. Inefficiency in the health care industry. 2. The approximately five million Americans who can't afford health insurance and don't qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, some of whom may be good people in dire straits and therefore deserving of a little assistance.

These problems have many alternative solutions which do not reflexively resort to big government programs. Let insurance companies sell across state lines, for example. De-regulate the coverage they are required to provide, so that catastrophic insurance/HSA packages become more prevalent, tort reform, etc., etc., etc. There are loads of great ideas which increase liberty, prosperity, and charity. There are loads of experts in this field who understand the value of liberty and the burden on it and prosperity posed by big government and who have great ideas on how to fix the health insurance problems. (Just one example: Michael F. Cannon.) There is no reason to opt for government insurance, and there are plenty of reasons not to do so.

Oops, Someone Read the Health Care Bill

John Lewis read the bill. It's not pretty. If you support the bill, then you support waste, rationing and lack of individual control of health care. Desire to insure the five million Americans who can't get health insurance couldn't explain such an action. Only resentment of wealthy people could explain it. It is only when we are driven by resentment do we knowingly and wrongly violate our own interests.

Lefist Modus Operandi

1. The leftist will brand conservative opponents as "right wing" - somehow fringe, extreme. The irony is that right and left are flavors of socialism - one fascistic and one communistic. So, anyone in the leftist's audience who accepts that conservatives are "right wing" is deeply confused. The leftist is able to drive the confused audience away from conservatism by depicting it as leftism in its fascistic flavor. The left-right spectrum is a trick of the leftist. It is incoherent as a depiction of the actual array of possible political positions.

2. The leftist will disparage the motives of opponents' argument as merely brute manifestations of economic forces. Marx's great success was to spread the tactic of depicting the opposition to leftism as merely the attempt of the wealthy and their deluded servants to protect the free market system. By depicting the opposition in this way the leftist persuades the audience that there is no need to examine the opposition's arguments. Better yet, he may be able to convince the audience that there are no such arguments. The point is that leftism inculcates a reluctance to analyze arguments which run counter to leftism. It does this by characterizing any such disposition as itself merely the tool of the capitalist and free-market system to protect monied interests. This is one of the reasons why college graduates of sociology, English, anthropology, and history are unable to think critically. They have been taught that criticism is merely the ascribing of causes to belief, rather than the analysis of reasons for belief. Marx was a great success. He severely debilitated the modern mind. This debility is part of the reason for the success of leftism, even after its 100 years of ghastly failure.

3. The leftist will over-regulate the economy, creating dysfunctions and crises. These will usually be precipitated by businessmen acting in their self-interest. Blame the crisis on the businessmen, take power, regulate even more. The 2008 credit mortgage insurance crisis and the current inefficiency of American health care are due to government over-regulation. Of course, where the businessmen precipitated the crisis one could make the case that this might have been prevented by more regulation. The naive will fall for this. What the Marxist has done in that case is to shift the game into his stadium where you're either on the big government team or the totalitarian team. Those who call for less government regulation have to cut through an entire frame of reference in order to make their case. What is required is a smart and educated public. If this is unavailable, the leftist wins.

4. The leftist will lie. Of course, all people are tempted to prevaricate and sometimes succumb. But Marx argued that all morals are mere manifestations of economic forces. He was a nihilist and he inculcated this stance in his followers. Lying poses no problem for such people. It is the rare leftist who simply wants to uncover the truth about political and moral issues. Leftism is political movement to a totalitarian state. It is not a set of ideas aimed preserving truth in political and moral beliefs. In that sense of "ideology", in which ideology turns on epistemic issues of truth and justification, leftism is not an ideology but a social movement. It is no accident that there is not a single formidable argument for leftism. Marx had none. Rawls had the best but it was very poor.

Of course, the common American liberal is only partly infected by leftist intellectual and psychological dysfunction. He adopts these modus operandi only partially.

Leftist Modus Operandi: Mortgage and Health Care

First take a few decades of using government to interfere with the free market, creating "crises."

For example, over-regulate the mortgage industry by lowering interest rates, putting pressure on banks to make mortgages to people who can't afford them, and creating MBS and CDS in order to sop up the risk. Don't worry, there will be a hole in the plan somewhere. Ah, yes, there it is. The risk will nevertheless concentrate itself in these CDS holders because many in the mortgage industry will see a chance to make a killing in such a system and there will be a housing price bubble. It will pop and you will have your crisis. As the Leninist says, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." In this overregulated system, where the free market is sufficiently crippled that it cannot correct itself by throwing the losers to the curb, there will always be little holes of underregulation where statism is incomplete. These leaks will precipitate the crisis. You may plausibly blame the crisis on underregulation. The people, in their ignorance of the byzantine system you have created, will not know the difference. They will believe that the free market is to blame. You may plausibly blame everything on greedy businessmen and seize power.

Another example is the health care. Regulate the heck out of health insurance. Tell insurers what they must offer. Make it so that they can't compete in a free market across state lines. Make the justice system cause doctors to perform 25% of their tests for no medical reason but only so that they will not be sued. Crippled by government, the system will become very inefficient, provoking what the people may be ignorant enough to think is a crisis caused by the free market. You may plausibly blame everything on greedy businessmen and seize power.

There will always be idiots and immoral slime in the business world. There will always be such people in every walk of life. What the leftist does is to use government over-regulation to cause crises, inefficiency and waste in the economy that get exacerbated in certain cases by businessmen's idiocy and greed. The regulation will not be totalitarian enough to prevent these businessmen's wrongdoing. Then the leftist steps in, blames the problems on under-regulation of the economy. If the people are ignorant and gullible enough, they will assent. Then they will get totalitarian regulation of the economy.

The alternative is good, minimal regulation of the economy: regulation that prevents the most egregious crimes, monopolies, and crises and does nothing else - regulation that lets fools who make bad mortgages lose, regulation that allows insurance companies compete to offer cheap insurance. That is the kind of regulation that creates a free market economy. America should try having a free market economy. We wouldn't have had the mortgage crisis and we wouldn't have such inefficiency in the health insurance industry.

Suggestion

Remember these values?

• Liberty
• Self-reliance
• Hard-work
• Property
• Community
• Charity
• Limited government
• Non-covetousness (refraining from envy)
• The formation of society as people prefer, unrestrained by government.
• Anti-megalomania (e.g., George Washington)
• Low taxes
  

These are values to be treasured. Productive of good lives, protective of rights, they are at the core of American values. Cherished less and less in America, they fade away.

Consider these values:

• Economic equality: everyone having the same amount of wealth.
• Large welfare state, unlimited in its power to take from the rich and regulate life.
• Security and ease of life, not having to worry about taking care of oneself.
• A society designed, top-down, and the design implemented, top-down, by leaders in government.

These are not values to be cherished. They are not at the core of American values. They are the values of statism (the phenomenon which at its extreme is totalitarianism, at its weakest is the European, Canadian and American socialist welfare state and in its flavors is any of the forms of leftism: communism, socialism, or fascism.) These values are not productive of good lives or protective of rights. Yet, their role in American society increases. During the last eighty years, with the rise of leftism in Europe and America, they have been replacing the American values.

The two sets of values are incompatible. You must choose which side you are on. Europe has chosen. America has been choosing and is still choosing. It must choose the American side or the statist side.

Say, out loud, "capitalism, free market economy." Do you feel a certain disdain, a hatred, and anger in the pit of your stomach? If so, then you have been trained to choose statism already. Who would have done such a thing to you? Who would stand to gain power from your support for statist policies? You should review that decision.

You must decide which society you will give to your children.

Poverty and Rights

Ever go camping? Recall what it's like. The tent. Scraping together a fire and a latrine. No fridge. Now imagine the camping continuing for the next fifty years, or however long you lasted. That's poverty. That's dire straits.

Now imagine you have a car, refrigeration, heating and air conditioning, free education through twelfth grade, and adequate medical care, nutrition, and clothing. You have little else, but you have the opportunity to gain much more simply by graduating from high school, not getting pregnant, not staying intoxicated, getting a job, and doing your best at the job every day. That's not poverty. It's not dire straits.

Outside of contracts, there is only one positive right: the right of innocents in your community who are in dire straits to be assisted by you. When someone in your community bleeds, you provide first aid. When a child in your community falls into poverty, you help him out. This assistance may require some transfer of wealth. The principle of charity is at work here. Whether we should use government to provide the assistance and to transfer the wealth is a question I leave open at the moment.

Americans are for the most part in fulfillment of its duties regarding positive rights. They provide the assistance necessary for Americans to avoid poverty.

More important are negative rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. The American governmental system is in serious violation of Americans' negative rights. It is not a limited government. It crosses the line.

Your Beloved Leader

Well, you voted for this asshole. Watch the video. Yup, that's him alright.

You know, it's funny. He sure seemed like an asshole when you picked him. How strange that it turned out that that's what he was.

Historical Oddities: Liberty and Prosperity

They're linked. They causally reinforce one another. Oddities. More often there is oppression, poverty, disorderly anarchy, death, disease, etc. Think liberty and prosperity are here to stay, indelible features of the social world? Think you can create a bloated and wasteful government which spends more money than the private sector and have your liberty and prosperity too?

For the sake of the ease of not having to look after oneself and for the sake of economically equal outcomes, we will relinquish liberty, with which an enormous government is incompatible. Prosperity will evaporate. But we will have no ease and we will have a tiny group of wealthy masters above us. We will return to the usual: oppression and poverty. Liberty and prosperity will return to their normal abode, the history books.

You Are Insane



Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are broke. We are out of money and have only creditors to float on. There is a depression. The unemployment rate will be double-digit for the foreseeable future. Yet, you want to start another government health care program on the grounds of fiscal responsibility. And you want to raise taxes. You also want to hamstring any industry which emits greenhouse gases - any industry which uses energy - even as the earth's temperature has been flat for the entire decade, exploding the global warming models.

$400B deficits were considered monstrosities a decade ago. Now we accept permanent deficits of over $1T without objection. Consider the woman who used to feel horror at her husband's imbibing six glasses of scotch every night. Now she willingly purchases the entire bottle he imbibes in the morning and the one he imbibes at night. Passive, dull, broken, she submits. She even shares in the delight he derives from drowning his resentments in booze. This is her life now. She no longer knows any other. She knows she lies to herself. She no longer cares.

Liberty, self-reliance, and limited government are not even memories anymore. The insanity has grown for the last eighty years. The patient is no longer the same person as the healthy young man he once was. You can still from time to time see something in the eyes, though. Something longing, something panicking, a frenzied resolve to turn things around, unable to move. A light of awareness. A sorrow. But the light is usually not there in the eyes, which usually glower, dull, ignorant and brutal, while the morbidly obese body plods on, wallowing in its own waste, bellowing in pride as it erects a throne of feces at the bottom of the grave which it took eighty years to dig for itself. It will be dead before it can be buried alive. When the earth is dumped in only its children will be there to receive it, bewildered, doomed.