Friday, February 12, 2010
Edward Lynch for Representative in Florida's 19th
This man is a non-nonsense straight shooter who is confident, competent, and bright. Let's help this man get elected in the Florida special election April 13th! That's just two short months away, folks.
Lynch's MoneyBomb begins at 12 pm eastern time. In honor of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president, the donations are preset to increments of $16.
From http://www.electlynch.com:
Issues [Full]
Health Care
I believe improvement to our Health Care system can be achieved through free market, inter-state competition solutions, that include Medicare/Medicaid fraud elimination, tort reform, healthy living and tax credits for the less fortunate.
National Security
The most important role of government is the protection of the American people and our homeland. Strong leadership on National Security is a must.
Energy
The answer to our energy "crisis" is a "use it all" approach, which will not only lessen our dependence on foreign sources but create quality, high paying jobs for our citizens.
Israel
I believe in a single state solution for Israel and unwavering support for Israel, without conditions.
Federal Budget and Spending
We need to aggressively cut taxes, reign in government spending, stop bailing out failing industries and get back to free market solutions to revive our nations economy.
Tax Reform
* Fundamental tax reform built on the principles of simplicity, fairness, and growth.
* A new tax code that gets the government out of our citizens' pocketbooks, while enhancing U.S. competitiveness abroad.
* Dissolution of the IRS as we know it.
It's time to reform our tax code and work toward the dissolution of the IRS as we know it. I believe current tax rates and complicated tax forms are a burden to the American people and a hindrance to economic prosperity.
Education
I believe that education for our children should be governed locally and teachers should be allowed to teach a curriculum. I am against "embedded assesments" programs.
Immigration
No amnesty. Period. We must secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws.
2nd Amendment
Every American citizen is born with the right to keep and bear arms
To contribute to Edward Lynch's campaign please go to: http://www.electlynch.com/moneybomb
Lynch's opponent has recently stated that "hell will freeze over" before a Republican wins in Florida's 19th. The Democrats must have thought the same thing before Scott Brown decided to run for Senator in Massachusetts. Well, let's send another chill through Washington to go with its 2-3 feet of snow by electing Edward Lynch!
The Anti-Avatar: "I Believe in Philosophy"
In an atmosphere of cultural decay and corruption, it is things like these that make you go on living. I have just seen Agora, a film that exceeded my wildest expectations. On the most fundamental level, it is the Anti-Avatar.
The movie is set in Alexandria Temple of Serapis
Hypatia, the main protagonist, embodies the spirit of Hellenic culture. When asked how she dared not to believe in God, she said: "I believe in philosophy."
But barbarians were already at the gate. In contrast to the eulogized savages in Avatar, Agora shows the forces of unreason for what they really are. As opposed to Avatar's call for destroying civilization, Agora is an ode to the glorious achievements of the human mind.
Eventually, the Christian hordes pounced on their prey. The heart of the civilized world beat no more. It was torn out by Christianity.
But Hypatia's efforts were not in vain. It would beat again…
This is Freaking Crazy
From Gallup:
Socialism Viewed Positively by 36% of Americans
Majority of Americans positive on capitalism, entrepreneurs, free enterprise, and small business
by Frank Newport
More than one-third of Americans (36%) have a positive image of "socialism," while 58% have a negative image. Views differ by party and ideology, with a majority of Democrats and liberals saying they have a positive view of socialism, compared to a minority of Republicans and conservatives.
Comrade Khruschev must be laughing his ass off in hell.
Socialism Viewed Positively by 36% of Americans
Majority of Americans positive on capitalism, entrepreneurs, free enterprise, and small business
by Frank Newport
More than one-third of Americans (36%) have a positive image of "socialism," while 58% have a negative image. Views differ by party and ideology, with a majority of Democrats and liberals saying they have a positive view of socialism, compared to a minority of Republicans and conservatives.
Comrade Khruschev must be laughing his ass off in hell.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Politico: Obama Edges "Nobody" in 2012 Election
From Politico:President Barack Obama only leads a generic Republican candidate by 2 percentage points in a potential 2012 match up, according to a new Gallup Poll out Thursday that also shows a continued drift of independents from Democrats.
Obama leads 44 percent to 42 percent, a statistical dead heat, against a nameless Republican, according to the survey of 1,025 adults nationwide.
Not surprisingly, the poll shows that Democrats strongly believe the president should be reelected, while Republicans would like to see one of their own in the White House.
But among independent voters, 45 percent would back a Republican and only 31 percent would favor the president. Twenty-four percent of independents are not sure if they would vote for Obama or a Republican candidate. [More]
Operation Moshtarak
It just sounds nasty. From The Jawa Report:
We're softening them up before the big assault. Folks, this is the biggest planned and coordinated assault in years. Operation Moshtarak involves tens of thousands of troops moving in to the last Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province:
SAS men and US Navy SEAL teams killed the 50 insurgent leaders in a series of dramatic covert operations deep inside southern Afghanistan's Helmand badlands.Their objective was to destroy the Taliban command structure - and military sources labelled the daring raids "a great success"....
Patrols of around four men would have used the tried and tested "find, fix, strike" method to locate and destroy their prey.
Their tactics are veiled in secrecy. But they would have moved by night, covering their tracks as they went. Then they would strike with lethal force before vanishing to seek new targets.
The American Republic vs European Democracy
Below, I attempt to analyze two examples that demonstrate the fundamental difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic.
Separation of powers. The U.S. is a presidential republic, where the executive, legislative and judicial branches are absolutely independent from each other and do not report to each other. By dividing government, this system weakens it and prevents it from growing strong enough to overstep constitutional bounds.
Most European governments are parliamentary systems - i.e. absolute democracies where the parliament has virtually unlimited power. It is restricted neither by the executive (presidents and monarchs are nominal figureheads, while prime ministers represent the parliamentary majority), nor by the courts, which have much less power than the U.S. judicial system. The main principle of despotism is to centralize as much power in one body as possible. Whether this undivided and absolute power is wielded by a monarch or a democratic majority does not matter. There have been attempts to introduce at least some degree of separation of powers but they were inefficient. The legislative branch remains supreme, with all other authorities being subordinate to it. Some countries (such as France) have switched to a compromise between the parliamentary and presidential systems (a semi-presidential republic), but the high degree of power centralization still prevents a limited government from emerging.
The independence of the judiciary. The contrast between the American and European judiciary systems largely stems from, respectively, their common-law and civil-law traditions. So the U.K. and Ireland are exceptions, though their parliamentary systems make the judiciary less independent than in the U.S.
In the U.S., a life tenure for judges has been a long-running tradition that is intended to prevent executive influence on the judicial system. But this is not enough for making judges fully independent. U.S. judges determine law according to precedent and are not restricted to interpreting statutory law passed by legislatures. Anglo-Saxon common law (as opposed to statutory law) is, as it were, a realm independent from legislative assemblies, "a law unto itself." Though legislatures still adopt statutory laws, the judicial system's common-law roots nonetheless make it an independent source of power, not a subservient clique of bureaucrats. As if this power were insufficient to restrict the executive and legislative branches, the U.S. political system put yet another obstacle in the way of tyranny - juries. Such is the importance of this institution that the concept of "jury nullification" emerged - the idea that juries have a right to judge not only the facts but also the law - i.e. nullify unjust and tyrannical laws (this power, as any other, can be abused but, if applied properly, it is a check on government power). Moreover, in the U.S. adversarial system, the judicial process is largely driven by the parties themselves, represented by their attorneys (not only by judges), which puts yet another important check on the power of government.
In Continental Europe, judges used to be bureaucrats who could be appointed or dismissed at the whim of a monarch. This is no longer the case but traces of their subordinate and secondary role remain. Unlike in common-law systems, judges cannot "make law" and can only interpret acts passed by legislatures. The jury trial is much less important in civil-law countries and even absent in some of them. Civil-law courts are based on the inquisitorial system, where judges (appointed by the executive or legislative branches) play a dominant role, while attorneys ("the private-sector" element, as it were) are subordinate.
The bicameral legislature. In the U.S. constitutional structure, the House of Representatives and the Senate have equal powers and balance each other. The House is traditionally more "popular" and represents the union, while the Senate is more "aristocratic" and conservative and represents the states. The Senate has historically impeded the progress of democratic tyranny. One of the glorious Senate traditions that thwarted the onslaught of statist legislation has been the filibuster.
In Europe, the principle of bicameralism is not strictly observed. In Portugal and Scandinavia, the legislatures are unicameral. In the rest of Europe, they are mostly bicameral but the upper house usually has far less authority than the lower one and is not a real check on its power. In the U.K., the House of Lords has been gradually emasculated and turned into a rubberstamping shadow of its former glory. The trend toward unicameralism is a manifestation of power centralization and unlimited government.
Federalism. The division of authority between the states and the union is the cornerstone of the U.S. constitutional system. Separation of powers between the three federal branches would perhaps be insufficient to rein in government appetites. Federalism puts another important check on the powers of government. Originally U.S. federalism was so strong that states' rights to secession and nullification were asserted. Unfortunately, these rights have been largely lost as the U.S. government became less limited.
Most European countries are unitary states. Some are federations but much less pronounced ones than the U.S. States generally have less authority and sway than in America. Germany's Bundesrat, which is supposed to represent states' interests on the federal level, has authority only over some issues and cannot affect others. Moreover, votes are not equally allocated for each state and different states' delegates have different voting powers. Recently, however, there has been a certain trend towards "federalization" - Belgium became a federation, while regions received more autonomy in France and Spain, which still remain unitary governments, nonetheless.
The Constitution. Though there had been similar documents in the past (American colonial charters, England's Instrument of Government of 1653, the Swedish Instrument of Government of 1772, the Corsican Constitution of 1755), U.S. state constitutions and the U.S. federal constitution were perhaps the first constitutions in the modern sense. Ironically, they have been the most enduring ones, and the U.S. constitution has not been replaced by another one even once. Nowhere is the respect for constitution so entrenched as in America.
In Europe, constitutionalism has fared much worse. The U.K., though the homeland of modern constitutionalism, has so far failed to pass a written constitution, which may be attributed to the parliament's unwillingness to subject its arbitrary power to any restrictions. Moreover, much of the original "law of the land" and the original "rights of Englishmen" - the cornerstone of the ancient English constitution - have been effectively repealed. France, Sweden and the Netherlands have had constitutions since the 18th century. In most of the rest of Europe, constitutional government was only firmly established around the mid-19th century (though there had been earlier abortive attempts to introduce constitutions).
European constitutions tend to have been frequently amended, replaced and suspended. The basic principle of constitutionalism - the immutability of law - has thus been totally subverted.
The Bill of Rights. The U.S. Bill of Rights is the fundamental document that makes all other aspects of the constitutional system meaningful, the heart that pumps the blood of the body politic. It is individual rights that are the justification of government authority, and whenever government violates them, as opposed to protecting them, its authority is rendered null and void and the body politic is dissolved. A constitution without a bill of rights is a meaningless document.
In Europe, there are no real equivalents of the U.S. Bill of Rights. Most of the provisions of the English Bill of Rights (1689) have been repealed by the parliament. The French constitution, though it pays lip service to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), is not actually bound by it. Some other European constitutions (e.g. the Spanish, Italian and German ones) have lists of "basic rights" but it is specifically stated that they are subject to restrictions and can be limited by law.
Nor are the basic rights protected by the U.S. Bill of Rights recognized in Europe. As to the First Amendment, the U.K., Denmark, Norway and Iceland still have established churches, while in other European countries the church and state are still closely intertwined. Unlike in the U.S., there is no absolute guarantee of free speech in European countries, which makes such idiotic stuff as "hate speech" and Holocaust denial laws possible. This also entails state ownership of major media. The right to bear arms is not protected in Europe either. Some European constitutions also stipulate positive rights (e.g. to education, healthcare, labor), the absurd concept that effectively overturns negative rights listed alongside them and renders them meaningless.
To sum up, the US, at least as conceived at its founding, is a federal constitutional republic - a government of laws, and not of men. To a certain extent, it is a limited government.
Most European countries are unitary democracies with ineffective constitutions - governments of men, and not of laws. In a certain degree, they are absolute, unlimited governments.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Organized Liberty vs. Centralized Government
Statists often equate liberty with a state of near anarchy. This erroneous point of view assumes that liberty is synonymous with lawlessness and license. But on the contrary, it is the authoritarian state of the central planners and the statist politicians that leads to chaos and disorder.
Liberty and anarchy are often-confused among the political class. After all, we can't just have people running around doing whatever they want, can we? Why surely, social tumult and chaos will reign! Such a point of view is intellectual baggage carried over from the progressive era, when "anarchists" were on the loose blowing up buildings and one even assassinated an American president.
Liberty is rarely used by serious political theorists to mean freedom to act however one desires, whether moral or immoral. It assumes that individuals have rights, which the government is charged to protect. A political system founded on liberty is not anarchic, but assumes that power is vested in the citizenry. It is not a system with no government, it is a system of self-government. It is not disorganized, it is self-organized. Yet statists often conflate the absence of government with the absence of order. Due to such popular misconception, we are moved to qualify liberty by adding the modifier "organized."
It is perhaps inevitable that an education system whose very means of functioning is dependent on the state would become systematically biased against liberty, and thus insinuate that it leads to disorder. The reverse argument appears to be that order is brought about by government control.
Yet order and control are not necessarily related concepts. Do fish who swim in schools or birds who fly in formations need guides? "But man is not an instinctive animal," one rightly objects, "man is by nature a rational being." (Even if one argues that man is an "irrational being," this presupposes that man developed rational faculties and is now acting against them, therefore negating one's own contention. Of course, one could argue that civilization developed simply out of holding hands and thinking "happy thoughts.")
What does it mean to be rational? It means that man is a self-guided agent who uses his faculties to perceive and then interpret the world around him in order to survive. As Ayn Rand points out in The Virtue of Selfishness, man is not strong enough to live according to his physical qualities alone, which are comparatively meager to meet the demands of life in the state of nature. Man must use his mental faculties, in other words, he is compelled to be rational.
Man is not by nature an instinctive animal nor a passive being who can live well according to the dictates of others. Man is, as Aristotle put it, a political animal. This implies that he seeks power over his own life; self-empowerment is what a man rightly needs in order to survive or thrive. Yet when given the opportunity, a malignant man may seek power over others.
So what is order among men who seek not only power over themselves, but in some cases, power over others? It is first the power granted to the individual to determine his own life, to succeed or fail according to his own virtues or lack thereof. And second, it is a system of decentralized power where the ambitious can aspire to influence, but the laws prevent the rise of a tyrant who usurps the power of the individual over his own life.
Thus we have arrived upon the idea of divided powers, which James Madison framed so beautifully in The Constitution of the United States. The document embodies a system of federalism, divided powers, state's and individual rights, private property, and checks and balances. But there is more to The Constitution than is made express. It assumes by glaring absence the federal government's lack of power to control the economy, in any other manner than to facilitate trade, sign treaties, regularize bankruptcies, and to levy taxes sufficiently to raise funds so that the government can carry out its explicit duties.
What is assumed in the founding document is that there will be a civil society, which men will color with their freely chosen arts, music, education, businesses, churches, and social gatherings. Men are to spontaneously form those associations that seem best to them to be to their mutual benefit, due to their nature as political animals. Men are to be citizens of the United States, meaning, again to draw from Aristotle, that they will participate in the administration of justice.
When an Aristotelian understanding of human nature is combined with Jeffersonian thinking that power is best decentralized to the local level, because men can more easily agree on matters familiar to them, and when there are fewer of them needed to agree, then we have a political system that approaches the problem of encouraging a free people to remain free from both ends; in other words, we have acknowledged man's political nature, and we have a political structure that incentivizes participation without leading to widespread systematic corruption and centralized tyranny.
It is no small contributory factor to the success of the United States that the American ideal principle of a free market, where private property and the rule of law is respected, has encouraged many ambitious men to seek wealth instead of power. The centralization of power, in the government and in the central bank, has given rise to a destructive symbiosis of government and business, just as Jeffersonian thinking predicted.
Centralized government control creates massive systemic problems for precisely the opposite reasons that a system of organized liberty is conducive to order: Centralized government, by virtue of its very creation, misunderstands the human beings it rules and abstracts them away as numbers to be calculated or inanimate objects to be instrumentalized in social engineering schemes; it also leads to a political structure that issues overly blunt or insufficiently elaborate laws from a center of power that creates unintended consequences over the diverse landscape and for millions of unique individuals. An additional complicating factor for central planners is that the unforeseeable needs, preferences, and actions of individuals make it extraordinarily difficult for bureaucrats or politicians to predict the effects of laws over time.
Thus we can put it simply that centralized government control leads to disorder and chaos over time due to a lack of information on each given individual citizen's characteristics, needs, preferences, and activities at any given point in time, as F.A. Hayek articulated beautifully in his treatise The Road to Serfdom.
For every government action in an authoritarian state, not simply in economics but in such fields as law and social policy, there are millions of reactions. If the government action, or lack of action, is not consonant with productive and healthy human motivation and behavior, then it can lead to societal decay and widespread disorder. Even the wisest central government planner is always a step behind solving problems that naturally arise in the state. The owl of Minerva flies at dusk, so to speak.
In contrast, a system of organized liberty assumes that people at any given point in time are autonomous agents, not automatons that can be programmed by the state as it sees fit. The role of the state in a system of organized liberty is not inconsiderable: It must protect the person, his life and his personal property. There is good moral justification for this. In a system of organized liberty, the people are the nation, they are not the property of an all-powerful state. It is unjust on its face that an individual can be born into this world as the property of another. It seems hardly controversial to recognize that each person belongs to himself, including by extension his life and his labor, yet that is the very premise of government that statists implicitly deny.
The individual in an ordered system is free to use his rational faculties to interact and learn in his environment, in a manner that bureaucrats and institutions cannot do for him. This schema ensures that human beings are assimilating and acting on local information, and that no "political architecture" can be erected over a large heterogeneous area that can become unstable at the concentrations of power and collapse the entire system. (This is why such institutions as the Federal Reserve Bank are dangerous; monolithic credit policy ignores infinite heterogeneity in local economic conditions and leads to widespread market instability.)
The actions of a central government in many ways tend to interfere with the individual's learning and adaptation process, which often requires experience of positive and negative consequences for productive and unproductive behavior, respectively. When a central government incentivizes unproductive or even destructive behavior, or attempts to remove the negative results from evil or misguided behavior, the long-term consequences for the nation as a whole is a break with objective reality, which dictates in ways that the state cannot. (When local governments in a republic engage in destructive policies, there is at least the option for the individual of "voting with his feet.")
Thus what is needed for the individual to thrive is the protection of his person and property and a civil society that is an independent sphere of economic, political, and social interaction. In this way, individuals can exert influence over their own lives and correct for real-world circumstances and solve personal and local problems through spontaneous self-organization.
Spontaneous orders should not be confused with democracy, which is akin to rule by mob whim. Democracy fails for much of the same reasons that centralized authoritarian governmental policies fail; and in ruling principle, democratic and authoritarian government are not mutually exclusive political types but actually overlap. Rule of the majority is no different in its consequences for our purposes than the rule of a single tyrant; what we are concentrating on is the use and abuse of centralized power and its tendency to provoke chaos and disorder.
The state sows the seeds for its demise by seeking to control human beings, who by their very nature must control themselves. The state can bully, it can brainwash, it can break things, but it cannot recreate man as a passive being without a sense of agency.
If the state crushes man's ability to use his rational faculties and his desire for freedom to live as he desires, then the state will wither his sense of purpose, alienate him, and erode the very foundations of the authoritarian "order" the state seeks to erect through spreading demoralization, social anomie, moral corruption, economic stagnation, and systemic collapse.
Liberty and anarchy are often-confused among the political class. After all, we can't just have people running around doing whatever they want, can we? Why surely, social tumult and chaos will reign! Such a point of view is intellectual baggage carried over from the progressive era, when "anarchists" were on the loose blowing up buildings and one even assassinated an American president.
Liberty is rarely used by serious political theorists to mean freedom to act however one desires, whether moral or immoral. It assumes that individuals have rights, which the government is charged to protect. A political system founded on liberty is not anarchic, but assumes that power is vested in the citizenry. It is not a system with no government, it is a system of self-government. It is not disorganized, it is self-organized. Yet statists often conflate the absence of government with the absence of order. Due to such popular misconception, we are moved to qualify liberty by adding the modifier "organized."
It is perhaps inevitable that an education system whose very means of functioning is dependent on the state would become systematically biased against liberty, and thus insinuate that it leads to disorder. The reverse argument appears to be that order is brought about by government control.
Yet order and control are not necessarily related concepts. Do fish who swim in schools or birds who fly in formations need guides? "But man is not an instinctive animal," one rightly objects, "man is by nature a rational being." (Even if one argues that man is an "irrational being," this presupposes that man developed rational faculties and is now acting against them, therefore negating one's own contention. Of course, one could argue that civilization developed simply out of holding hands and thinking "happy thoughts.")
What does it mean to be rational? It means that man is a self-guided agent who uses his faculties to perceive and then interpret the world around him in order to survive. As Ayn Rand points out in The Virtue of Selfishness, man is not strong enough to live according to his physical qualities alone, which are comparatively meager to meet the demands of life in the state of nature. Man must use his mental faculties, in other words, he is compelled to be rational.
Man is not by nature an instinctive animal nor a passive being who can live well according to the dictates of others. Man is, as Aristotle put it, a political animal. This implies that he seeks power over his own life; self-empowerment is what a man rightly needs in order to survive or thrive. Yet when given the opportunity, a malignant man may seek power over others.
So what is order among men who seek not only power over themselves, but in some cases, power over others? It is first the power granted to the individual to determine his own life, to succeed or fail according to his own virtues or lack thereof. And second, it is a system of decentralized power where the ambitious can aspire to influence, but the laws prevent the rise of a tyrant who usurps the power of the individual over his own life.
Thus we have arrived upon the idea of divided powers, which James Madison framed so beautifully in The Constitution of the United States. The document embodies a system of federalism, divided powers, state's and individual rights, private property, and checks and balances. But there is more to The Constitution than is made express. It assumes by glaring absence the federal government's lack of power to control the economy, in any other manner than to facilitate trade, sign treaties, regularize bankruptcies, and to levy taxes sufficiently to raise funds so that the government can carry out its explicit duties.
What is assumed in the founding document is that there will be a civil society, which men will color with their freely chosen arts, music, education, businesses, churches, and social gatherings. Men are to spontaneously form those associations that seem best to them to be to their mutual benefit, due to their nature as political animals. Men are to be citizens of the United States, meaning, again to draw from Aristotle, that they will participate in the administration of justice.
When an Aristotelian understanding of human nature is combined with Jeffersonian thinking that power is best decentralized to the local level, because men can more easily agree on matters familiar to them, and when there are fewer of them needed to agree, then we have a political system that approaches the problem of encouraging a free people to remain free from both ends; in other words, we have acknowledged man's political nature, and we have a political structure that incentivizes participation without leading to widespread systematic corruption and centralized tyranny.
It is no small contributory factor to the success of the United States that the American ideal principle of a free market, where private property and the rule of law is respected, has encouraged many ambitious men to seek wealth instead of power. The centralization of power, in the government and in the central bank, has given rise to a destructive symbiosis of government and business, just as Jeffersonian thinking predicted.
Centralized government control creates massive systemic problems for precisely the opposite reasons that a system of organized liberty is conducive to order: Centralized government, by virtue of its very creation, misunderstands the human beings it rules and abstracts them away as numbers to be calculated or inanimate objects to be instrumentalized in social engineering schemes; it also leads to a political structure that issues overly blunt or insufficiently elaborate laws from a center of power that creates unintended consequences over the diverse landscape and for millions of unique individuals. An additional complicating factor for central planners is that the unforeseeable needs, preferences, and actions of individuals make it extraordinarily difficult for bureaucrats or politicians to predict the effects of laws over time.
Thus we can put it simply that centralized government control leads to disorder and chaos over time due to a lack of information on each given individual citizen's characteristics, needs, preferences, and activities at any given point in time, as F.A. Hayek articulated beautifully in his treatise The Road to Serfdom.
For every government action in an authoritarian state, not simply in economics but in such fields as law and social policy, there are millions of reactions. If the government action, or lack of action, is not consonant with productive and healthy human motivation and behavior, then it can lead to societal decay and widespread disorder. Even the wisest central government planner is always a step behind solving problems that naturally arise in the state. The owl of Minerva flies at dusk, so to speak.
In contrast, a system of organized liberty assumes that people at any given point in time are autonomous agents, not automatons that can be programmed by the state as it sees fit. The role of the state in a system of organized liberty is not inconsiderable: It must protect the person, his life and his personal property. There is good moral justification for this. In a system of organized liberty, the people are the nation, they are not the property of an all-powerful state. It is unjust on its face that an individual can be born into this world as the property of another. It seems hardly controversial to recognize that each person belongs to himself, including by extension his life and his labor, yet that is the very premise of government that statists implicitly deny.
The individual in an ordered system is free to use his rational faculties to interact and learn in his environment, in a manner that bureaucrats and institutions cannot do for him. This schema ensures that human beings are assimilating and acting on local information, and that no "political architecture" can be erected over a large heterogeneous area that can become unstable at the concentrations of power and collapse the entire system. (This is why such institutions as the Federal Reserve Bank are dangerous; monolithic credit policy ignores infinite heterogeneity in local economic conditions and leads to widespread market instability.)
The actions of a central government in many ways tend to interfere with the individual's learning and adaptation process, which often requires experience of positive and negative consequences for productive and unproductive behavior, respectively. When a central government incentivizes unproductive or even destructive behavior, or attempts to remove the negative results from evil or misguided behavior, the long-term consequences for the nation as a whole is a break with objective reality, which dictates in ways that the state cannot. (When local governments in a republic engage in destructive policies, there is at least the option for the individual of "voting with his feet.")
Thus what is needed for the individual to thrive is the protection of his person and property and a civil society that is an independent sphere of economic, political, and social interaction. In this way, individuals can exert influence over their own lives and correct for real-world circumstances and solve personal and local problems through spontaneous self-organization.
Spontaneous orders should not be confused with democracy, which is akin to rule by mob whim. Democracy fails for much of the same reasons that centralized authoritarian governmental policies fail; and in ruling principle, democratic and authoritarian government are not mutually exclusive political types but actually overlap. Rule of the majority is no different in its consequences for our purposes than the rule of a single tyrant; what we are concentrating on is the use and abuse of centralized power and its tendency to provoke chaos and disorder.
The state sows the seeds for its demise by seeking to control human beings, who by their very nature must control themselves. The state can bully, it can brainwash, it can break things, but it cannot recreate man as a passive being without a sense of agency.
If the state crushes man's ability to use his rational faculties and his desire for freedom to live as he desires, then the state will wither his sense of purpose, alienate him, and erode the very foundations of the authoritarian "order" the state seeks to erect through spreading demoralization, social anomie, moral corruption, economic stagnation, and systemic collapse.
Monday, February 8, 2010
We're All "Low-Profits" Now
In the United States, socialists are devising clever new ways to infiltrate and corrupt the capitalist economy. One of the most unusual is the development of a mutated non-profit organization, known as an L3C or "Low-Profit Limited Liability Corporation."
Non-profit organizations, as I can personally attest to, are socialist hotbeds that receive grant funding to sustain their operations without being taxed. "Low-profits" would be held to similar lenient rules of taxation as long as they promote the Marxist-statist transformational agenda.
One of the biggest umbrellas for these government outposts in the private sector is radical environmentalism, which does not seem to go away no matter what sane and scientifically literate Americans do. The size and scope of grants for environmental research and activism is now in the order of billions and increasing exponentially.
The creation of low-profit organizations is clearly designed to depress the economy by incentivizing mediocrity and limiting economies of scale, while smuggling social activism into the private sector. Who knew fascists could be so creative?
Non-profit organizations, as I can personally attest to, are socialist hotbeds that receive grant funding to sustain their operations without being taxed. "Low-profits" would be held to similar lenient rules of taxation as long as they promote the Marxist-statist transformational agenda.
One of the biggest umbrellas for these government outposts in the private sector is radical environmentalism, which does not seem to go away no matter what sane and scientifically literate Americans do. The size and scope of grants for environmental research and activism is now in the order of billions and increasing exponentially.
The creation of low-profit organizations is clearly designed to depress the economy by incentivizing mediocrity and limiting economies of scale, while smuggling social activism into the private sector. Who knew fascists could be so creative?
Capitalism and Socialism: Warring Visions and the Path to Restoring Freedom
Capitalism and socialism cannot co-exist. Each system's underlying values are anathema to one another, and they cannot be synthesized in a pragmatic manner. The result of blending capitalism and socialism is not a "mixed" or "balanced" economy, it is a fascist economy leading to totalitarianism. Why is this?
Because capitalism is not a system in the sense that socialists conceive of it. Capitalism can be summed as follows, "Assuming private property and sound money, capitalism is the freedom of the individual to expend one's life, liberty, and property in the pursuit of self-interest; assuming also that one's actions do not infringe on the individual rights of others."
Capitalism as such is a spontaneous order, a system without guiding controls and a limited set of rules. It assumes that people's lives are their own, and their fortunes are what they can make of them.
Socialism is the antithesis of the spontaneous order of capitalism. It seeks to establish controls, regulations, and rules that manipulate individuals and employ them in the service of abstract causes and eventually the state.
The method is simple: Pitch statism, which can take on various manifestations, in terms that the audience understands or will approve of; this can be "green" energy, national pride, social or economic "justice," or even Christian morality. When the statists have the people following a given movement, which can be created, manipulated, or co-opted by the state, typically one headed by a charismatic leader, the statist then pulls a bait-and-switch using "big lies." These big lies, or as the intellectuals conceive of them, "noble lies," are made believable by rendering the individual unable to accurately conceive of objective reality.
The statist project of mass brainwashing basically entails a handful of central tenets to be put into practice.
First of all, an epistemology of subjectivism, or the idea that one's interpretation of the world is truth. This renders the individual helpless in unfamiliar situations or when faced with countervailing information or negatively stereotyped ideological adversaries to assimilate evidence that contradicts one's worldview.
Secondly, the stripping of rational faculties, such as critical thinking skills and one's ability to evaluate the world based on evidence and according to one's own judgment. This can be roughly demonstrated by proxy with plummeting mathematics and science scores in national comparative testing.
Thirdly, the big lies of the statist are reinforced through mass indoctrination, including appeal to authority ("experts") and repetition, spouted through the "public" schools, the universities, and state-run or state-manipulated media. The media includes not just news media, such as newspapers, magazines, and television news, but also numerous other aspects of culture, such as music, movies, and television series.
The ultimate goal of the statist is to persuade people when the totalitarian transformation takes place that the change that they are seeing or feeling is not real; that they are just paranoid; that those who are alarmed are ideological extremists, and so forth.
In general, there needs to be a majority of the population who are mostly in agreement with the principles animating the statists in order for a totalitarian revolution, properly speaking, to be accomplished. Otherwise, the opposition cannot be effectively marginalized. Without the widespread perception of legitimacy underwriting a nascent socialist regime's fresh hold on power, then chaos, resistance, and possibly bloodshed can cripple that regime.
Since socialism and communism tend to be unpopular when the population has experience of freedom and a stable market economy, most socialists and communists come to power after severe, prolonged periods of corruption; an endemic absence of the rule of law; economic depression; and/or war. While socialists will usually frame their power-grabs as "popular revolts," "revolutions," or "democratic" in nature, these technically entail a far greater base of mass support than is typically the case.
Barring a majority of supportive sentiment, the statists otherwise need operational control of the military, intelligence, and police forces and a largely unarmed populace to be successful in maintaining power. It is simplistic to think that superior military force can overwhelm a nation of 100 million armed Americans, for example. Overwhelming and suppressing a populace is not merely a matter of force, but the will to use that force. While pure socialists may have no problem with the mass murder of millions of freedom-loving citizens, only in extremely demoralized cultures will the military have no compunction against slaughtering their co-nationalists, though in some cases, they may even take perverse pleasure in it.
That is why in states that socialists cannot take over by force outright, as characterized above, the preparatory path to socialism is a long process that does not entail Marxist indoctrination of the masses, per se, but a demoralization process, rooted in nihilism, which can take on many forms, including: political correctness, multiculturalism, diversity, and moral and cultural relativism. These off-spring of nihilism tend to undermine the individual's sources of ideological resistance. Once the individual's mind is wiped clean of the ability to resist indoctrination or suggestion, then the statists' manipulation of his interpretation of reality can be truly effective.
The "change" in a nation's make-up usually appears to those not adequately versed in the statists' strategy and tactics as a haphazard form of massive corruption, usually justified in pragmatic terms. The transformational state usually engages in "hit-and-run" assaults on the economy, society, and national security before its opposition can catch on and then organize to put up concerted resistance to a given cause. This is why it is very important for the operative who seeks to implement organized liberty in his country to ideologically understand his enemy; only then will he be able to see the big picture and put the pieces together. In America's case, it is essential that one knows the deep underlying nature of pragmatism.
Pragmatism, which can be seen as an ideological cousin of nihilism, as such is a form of corruption and a perversion of absolute moral standards of right and wrong, including those based on individual rights. Pragmatism, narrowly and philosophically speaking, gives the government carte blanche to fix any and all "problems," even those it creates, in an ad hoc fashion. It is no coincidence that Saul Alinsky conceived of himself as a "radical pragmatist." The danger of the pseudo-philosophy of pragmatism can be seen in the areas of economics and national security. Pragmatism is usually cast as short-term, expedient fixes to problems, whether those problems are endemic or transient; it is analogous to a physician treating symptoms and not the disease.
Socialists, when operating in states where their philosophy is largely unpopular with the masses, as they are able to recognize it, and where the socialists are unable to directly take over a nation using direct force, pervert the nation in several spheres: legal, governmental, educational, and cultural; until the free-market capitalist system is incrementally obliterated. This tactic can be broadly termed Fabian socialism, and includes the preferred form of statist economy, Keynesian economics.
Simply put, the series of events that government-introduced controls set off distorts the economy, which ostensibly justifies further economic intervention. After years of government meddling, the capitalist economy collapses from distortion. Most people, when put in a vulnerable position economically, trade their freedom for the fleeting economic security that the government promises to provide. The result is dependence on the government for the means of sustaining one's life; this can be assessed by a ballooning in government-funded, that is, taxpayer- or printing press-funded jobs; massive social welfare programs; and government grants and loans. A people dependent on the government cannot be free; this is the general principle underwriting much of socialist policy.
America indeed has enemies worldwide, and no sane and honest person can dismiss that fact. But the American government has used the threat of terrorism specifically to persuade Americans to accept infringements of their liberty that would otherwise be considered unacceptable. The Department of Homeland Security, domestic spying by such agencies as the NSA, and experimental technology like full-body scanners being employed by the Transportation Security Administration are piecemeal steps in the direction of a police state that patriotic Americans must not accept. Since these agencies and measures are introduced using the premise of "common sense" and pragmatism, most people see their installment as a necessary and proper defense of their lives and the lives of others. Yet it should be pointed out that the measures the government has introduced in the name of security in the United States is entirely disproportionate to the threat. The odds of being killed by a terrorist are negligible; and in general, terrorists should be fought using an offensive strategy that preserves liberty.
The socialist in a freedom-loving country proceeds by fits and starts; he pushes forth the statist agenda and retreats. Corruption of the capitalist system becomes embedded and systematized until accepted. Infringements on individual rights are justified as temporary pragmatic measures, and then permanently embodied in the system of laws. The military, intelligence, and police is expanded disproportionately to that needed to fend off the nation's adversaries, and then is turned against the people. The nation is pushed and pulled in the direction of statism, and the compromise of the current "conservative" opposition is but an inconsiderable anchor on the state's otherwise predetermined course. Not even stopping the state is sufficient to prevent the economic and social chaos impending in our nation, barring serious concerted action. Without a reverse of course, America will continue to be "transformed" into a socialist basketcase that will be the midwife of a totalitarian dictatorship.
The proper course for the conservative who does not want to inspire economic and social chaos is to first liberate as much of the market as possible; to seek out and end corruption, including subsidies and regulations; to simplify the tax code and to lower it to a minimum as an interim course on the way to near eradication; to introduce alternative currencies until the Federal Reserve is stripped of its regulatory and fiscal power and then abolished (i.e., free banking); to reduce the size and scope of the security agencies, including the disbanding of the Department of Homeland Security and the elimination of several of its agencies; to end military Keynesianism; to free Interstate commerce; to liberate alternatives to public education, to end the Department of Education, and then to abolish "free" government-run education; to repeal national power and to promote state's rights in every conceivable manner; to begin privatizing social security, until it is the responsibility of each American to prepare for one's own retirement; to deregulate the insurance market, which would bring prices down through increasing competition; essentially, what is needed is a "Fabian capitalist." in other words, a systematic incrementalist approach. While simply revolting and overthrowing the state is appealing in theory to a small minority of Americans, in practice it would lead to the kind of chaos that leads to tyrannies.
As a pro-freedom movement, the "tea party" activists need to seriously think about and debate a program that can be pitched to the citizenry as a long-term solution to restoring American greatness. It is my contention that such a program should be ideologically consistent and based on the philosophy of freedom. In this way, we will be able to conceive in our minds a systematic approach to defeating statist, totalitarian objectives.
Because capitalism is not a system in the sense that socialists conceive of it. Capitalism can be summed as follows, "Assuming private property and sound money, capitalism is the freedom of the individual to expend one's life, liberty, and property in the pursuit of self-interest; assuming also that one's actions do not infringe on the individual rights of others."
Capitalism as such is a spontaneous order, a system without guiding controls and a limited set of rules. It assumes that people's lives are their own, and their fortunes are what they can make of them.
Socialism is the antithesis of the spontaneous order of capitalism. It seeks to establish controls, regulations, and rules that manipulate individuals and employ them in the service of abstract causes and eventually the state.
The method is simple: Pitch statism, which can take on various manifestations, in terms that the audience understands or will approve of; this can be "green" energy, national pride, social or economic "justice," or even Christian morality. When the statists have the people following a given movement, which can be created, manipulated, or co-opted by the state, typically one headed by a charismatic leader, the statist then pulls a bait-and-switch using "big lies." These big lies, or as the intellectuals conceive of them, "noble lies," are made believable by rendering the individual unable to accurately conceive of objective reality.
The statist project of mass brainwashing basically entails a handful of central tenets to be put into practice.
First of all, an epistemology of subjectivism, or the idea that one's interpretation of the world is truth. This renders the individual helpless in unfamiliar situations or when faced with countervailing information or negatively stereotyped ideological adversaries to assimilate evidence that contradicts one's worldview.
Secondly, the stripping of rational faculties, such as critical thinking skills and one's ability to evaluate the world based on evidence and according to one's own judgment. This can be roughly demonstrated by proxy with plummeting mathematics and science scores in national comparative testing.
Thirdly, the big lies of the statist are reinforced through mass indoctrination, including appeal to authority ("experts") and repetition, spouted through the "public" schools, the universities, and state-run or state-manipulated media. The media includes not just news media, such as newspapers, magazines, and television news, but also numerous other aspects of culture, such as music, movies, and television series.
The ultimate goal of the statist is to persuade people when the totalitarian transformation takes place that the change that they are seeing or feeling is not real; that they are just paranoid; that those who are alarmed are ideological extremists, and so forth.
In general, there needs to be a majority of the population who are mostly in agreement with the principles animating the statists in order for a totalitarian revolution, properly speaking, to be accomplished. Otherwise, the opposition cannot be effectively marginalized. Without the widespread perception of legitimacy underwriting a nascent socialist regime's fresh hold on power, then chaos, resistance, and possibly bloodshed can cripple that regime.
Since socialism and communism tend to be unpopular when the population has experience of freedom and a stable market economy, most socialists and communists come to power after severe, prolonged periods of corruption; an endemic absence of the rule of law; economic depression; and/or war. While socialists will usually frame their power-grabs as "popular revolts," "revolutions," or "democratic" in nature, these technically entail a far greater base of mass support than is typically the case.
Barring a majority of supportive sentiment, the statists otherwise need operational control of the military, intelligence, and police forces and a largely unarmed populace to be successful in maintaining power. It is simplistic to think that superior military force can overwhelm a nation of 100 million armed Americans, for example. Overwhelming and suppressing a populace is not merely a matter of force, but the will to use that force. While pure socialists may have no problem with the mass murder of millions of freedom-loving citizens, only in extremely demoralized cultures will the military have no compunction against slaughtering their co-nationalists, though in some cases, they may even take perverse pleasure in it.
That is why in states that socialists cannot take over by force outright, as characterized above, the preparatory path to socialism is a long process that does not entail Marxist indoctrination of the masses, per se, but a demoralization process, rooted in nihilism, which can take on many forms, including: political correctness, multiculturalism, diversity, and moral and cultural relativism. These off-spring of nihilism tend to undermine the individual's sources of ideological resistance. Once the individual's mind is wiped clean of the ability to resist indoctrination or suggestion, then the statists' manipulation of his interpretation of reality can be truly effective.
The "change" in a nation's make-up usually appears to those not adequately versed in the statists' strategy and tactics as a haphazard form of massive corruption, usually justified in pragmatic terms. The transformational state usually engages in "hit-and-run" assaults on the economy, society, and national security before its opposition can catch on and then organize to put up concerted resistance to a given cause. This is why it is very important for the operative who seeks to implement organized liberty in his country to ideologically understand his enemy; only then will he be able to see the big picture and put the pieces together. In America's case, it is essential that one knows the deep underlying nature of pragmatism.
Pragmatism, which can be seen as an ideological cousin of nihilism, as such is a form of corruption and a perversion of absolute moral standards of right and wrong, including those based on individual rights. Pragmatism, narrowly and philosophically speaking, gives the government carte blanche to fix any and all "problems," even those it creates, in an ad hoc fashion. It is no coincidence that Saul Alinsky conceived of himself as a "radical pragmatist." The danger of the pseudo-philosophy of pragmatism can be seen in the areas of economics and national security. Pragmatism is usually cast as short-term, expedient fixes to problems, whether those problems are endemic or transient; it is analogous to a physician treating symptoms and not the disease.
Socialists, when operating in states where their philosophy is largely unpopular with the masses, as they are able to recognize it, and where the socialists are unable to directly take over a nation using direct force, pervert the nation in several spheres: legal, governmental, educational, and cultural; until the free-market capitalist system is incrementally obliterated. This tactic can be broadly termed Fabian socialism, and includes the preferred form of statist economy, Keynesian economics.
Simply put, the series of events that government-introduced controls set off distorts the economy, which ostensibly justifies further economic intervention. After years of government meddling, the capitalist economy collapses from distortion. Most people, when put in a vulnerable position economically, trade their freedom for the fleeting economic security that the government promises to provide. The result is dependence on the government for the means of sustaining one's life; this can be assessed by a ballooning in government-funded, that is, taxpayer- or printing press-funded jobs; massive social welfare programs; and government grants and loans. A people dependent on the government cannot be free; this is the general principle underwriting much of socialist policy.
America indeed has enemies worldwide, and no sane and honest person can dismiss that fact. But the American government has used the threat of terrorism specifically to persuade Americans to accept infringements of their liberty that would otherwise be considered unacceptable. The Department of Homeland Security, domestic spying by such agencies as the NSA, and experimental technology like full-body scanners being employed by the Transportation Security Administration are piecemeal steps in the direction of a police state that patriotic Americans must not accept. Since these agencies and measures are introduced using the premise of "common sense" and pragmatism, most people see their installment as a necessary and proper defense of their lives and the lives of others. Yet it should be pointed out that the measures the government has introduced in the name of security in the United States is entirely disproportionate to the threat. The odds of being killed by a terrorist are negligible; and in general, terrorists should be fought using an offensive strategy that preserves liberty.
The socialist in a freedom-loving country proceeds by fits and starts; he pushes forth the statist agenda and retreats. Corruption of the capitalist system becomes embedded and systematized until accepted. Infringements on individual rights are justified as temporary pragmatic measures, and then permanently embodied in the system of laws. The military, intelligence, and police is expanded disproportionately to that needed to fend off the nation's adversaries, and then is turned against the people. The nation is pushed and pulled in the direction of statism, and the compromise of the current "conservative" opposition is but an inconsiderable anchor on the state's otherwise predetermined course. Not even stopping the state is sufficient to prevent the economic and social chaos impending in our nation, barring serious concerted action. Without a reverse of course, America will continue to be "transformed" into a socialist basketcase that will be the midwife of a totalitarian dictatorship.
The proper course for the conservative who does not want to inspire economic and social chaos is to first liberate as much of the market as possible; to seek out and end corruption, including subsidies and regulations; to simplify the tax code and to lower it to a minimum as an interim course on the way to near eradication; to introduce alternative currencies until the Federal Reserve is stripped of its regulatory and fiscal power and then abolished (i.e., free banking); to reduce the size and scope of the security agencies, including the disbanding of the Department of Homeland Security and the elimination of several of its agencies; to end military Keynesianism; to free Interstate commerce; to liberate alternatives to public education, to end the Department of Education, and then to abolish "free" government-run education; to repeal national power and to promote state's rights in every conceivable manner; to begin privatizing social security, until it is the responsibility of each American to prepare for one's own retirement; to deregulate the insurance market, which would bring prices down through increasing competition; essentially, what is needed is a "Fabian capitalist." in other words, a systematic incrementalist approach. While simply revolting and overthrowing the state is appealing in theory to a small minority of Americans, in practice it would lead to the kind of chaos that leads to tyrannies.
As a pro-freedom movement, the "tea party" activists need to seriously think about and debate a program that can be pitched to the citizenry as a long-term solution to restoring American greatness. It is my contention that such a program should be ideologically consistent and based on the philosophy of freedom. In this way, we will be able to conceive in our minds a systematic approach to defeating statist, totalitarian objectives.
Superbowl Ad Pitches Eco-fascist Comedy
This "green" Audi advertisement ran during the Super Bowl this year, and needless to say, most people who saw it were not amused. Before the ad ran, I was discussing with a friend of mine his city's recent ordinance to separate recyclables or face a $1000 fine! My comment - soon they will be busting down your door to inspect your lightbulbs. Well, lo and behold, Audi illustrates my only slightly facetious statement on a nationwide commercial only minutes later! The people who saw the ad were disturbed by it and are now convinced not to buy Audis.
If this ad was someway of trying to make eco-fascism more palatable by portraying it as funny or absurd, nice try. What it showed instead is that the trend is very much heading that way, and the general threat is real.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
A Voice in the Wilderness
Judging by the trailer, Spanish English-language film Agora (already released in Spain, to be released in the U.S. in the first half of 2010) is definitely worth watching. It tells the story of Hypatia, perhaps the last person who stood for reason and freedom in the Greco-Roman world. As the Roman Empire was being plunged into the Dark Ages, she sought to revive the noble heritage of Hellenic science and philosophy in a way reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s efforts to put an end to the modern civilization’s decline. She was killed by Christian fanatics, who entrenched irrationality and tyranny in Rome. Does the same fate await Ayn Rand’s followers?
Friday, February 5, 2010
The State of the Planet Address
Distinguished members of the United Nations Intraglobal Panel on Climate Confidence, members of the Political Bureau of Environmental Affairs, herbivores, omnivores, honorable flora, fauna, microbial life forms, and residents of the United States...
We stand here now, on the tenth anniversary of our sacred refounding, persons of diverse colors and genders - men, women, transsexuals, hermaphrodites all - united in one vision to bring forth from the bowels of history, one utopian dream, one audacious hope for all life on this planet, to usher in the progress of real change.
Together as one, looking forward to a brighter tomorrow, one of darkness, one of... collapsing industrial infrastructure, abandoned oil refineries, and out-of-business coal plants, until one day, one glorious day, America's Atlantic seaboard will resemble a night satellite picture of the grand experiment once known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. May it rest in peace.
There are some who will doubt us. Heck, some may even mock us a little. But it is the calling of each and every generation to get behind the people and to push forward repeatedly until they are excited enough to get beyond the quaint and antiquated ways of their ancestors, to dismiss the old pieces of paper that enslave us to the past, so that we may accomplish the historic task of fundamentally transforming this world the way that we, as one people, see fit.
To realize our grand vision of a post-industrial society demands the complete replacement of our economy of yesterday with a leaner, greener one. That is why I propose a bold new energy strategy for the United States, one that you think you might have heard before but is actually a little bit different this time - one incorporating windmills, waterwheels, and yes, even steam power. We must get beyond the old way of thinking that says nuclear energy is the way of the future. We must not fall prey to the temptation that argues that drilling offshore and on American soil are solutions to our ongoing addiction to foreign oil. We must forgo even the empty promise of natural gas, which, though our critics claim it is a "clean" source of energy, is yet just another form of the poisonous carbon gas we can ill afford to be monkeying around with.
If I might respond to those who say that they have freezed their keisters off since the onset of the so-called "Little Ice Age," which I might point out is a direct consequence of the now over-fulfilled consensus of manmade global climate change, no one said it was going to be easy. But if we can get the markets, the banks, and the entrepreneurs to get out of the way, our government can accomplish anything we set your minds to.
Right now the government is dispensing billions and billions of dollars in grants to companies to develop energy technologies that might be called too "inefficient," "expensive," or "unreliable" to cut it in what is left of the marketplace. But I'm not going to accept that way of thinking. We might have had a little rocky period, a decade-long recession that is undoubtedly the fault of my predecessor, but the economy is well on the way to recovery. Now there have been some grumblings about a 'jobless recovery," which has led to persistent unexpectedly high unemployment of say, fifteen to (unintelligible) percent - but help is on the way.
Just this year, we hope to create or save tens of millions of jobs by hiring all the young, enthusiastic people of our nationwide mandatory GreenCorpse...ummm, I think there might be a typo there...to promote our green jobs programs, to pick up the litter that plagues our highways and national parks, and simply by not crushing what little industry remains left. Those companies who want to continue to do business are going to have to do it according to our terms, and hell, if they kick a little back to a Democrat in need, they may even be allowed to keep a greenback or two.
Now some have called this fascism. Let me be clear. A meek and conservative form of fascism was tried under FDR and it failed to reach the kind of results we are looking for. No, we are looking to create a new form of superfascism that not only incorporates all aspects of the national economy, but looks to fuse it all together under the umbrella of global governance, while meeting the challenges of addressing the spectre of climate change. Let me now speak to this crucial issue, which is of such vital importance to ourselves, our children, the planet, and of course, polar bears.
To those who think we can continue the status quo of climate change, let me just say that the time for delay is over. If we are going to overcome this perpetual crisis, we are going to have to think big. That is why why we must once again raise the global carbon tax, to regulate excess temperatures out of existence. We might even see a day when the world's temperature is permanently set on a slightly warm but temperate 72 degrees. Of course, we can argue whether or not it should be 68 degrees. Democracy can be messy.
Our critics will say that we are dreaming impossibly big dreams. They may say they're humongous or even ginormous. But let there be no doubt. The failure of their imaginations must not lead to the crisis of our consciences. We must move forward, with all the certainty of a moral crusade, to lead the world to complete climatelessness and environmental homeostasis by the end of this decade. The consequences are too grave to neglect. The death of the old order, and the rebirth of a new dawn, with or without man, requires courage and sacrifice. These are extraordinary times.
All species, since the beginning of time, have struggled with the ever-present threat of climate change. We human beings, along with the complete effort of all animals, from the three-toed sloth to the ring-tailed bandicoot, from the humpback whale to the duckbill platypus, must now work together to make worldwide climate equality a reality.
We stand here now, on the tenth anniversary of our sacred refounding, persons of diverse colors and genders - men, women, transsexuals, hermaphrodites all - united in one vision to bring forth from the bowels of history, one utopian dream, one audacious hope for all life on this planet, to usher in the progress of real change.
Together as one, looking forward to a brighter tomorrow, one of darkness, one of... collapsing industrial infrastructure, abandoned oil refineries, and out-of-business coal plants, until one day, one glorious day, America's Atlantic seaboard will resemble a night satellite picture of the grand experiment once known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. May it rest in peace.
There are some who will doubt us. Heck, some may even mock us a little. But it is the calling of each and every generation to get behind the people and to push forward repeatedly until they are excited enough to get beyond the quaint and antiquated ways of their ancestors, to dismiss the old pieces of paper that enslave us to the past, so that we may accomplish the historic task of fundamentally transforming this world the way that we, as one people, see fit.
To realize our grand vision of a post-industrial society demands the complete replacement of our economy of yesterday with a leaner, greener one. That is why I propose a bold new energy strategy for the United States, one that you think you might have heard before but is actually a little bit different this time - one incorporating windmills, waterwheels, and yes, even steam power. We must get beyond the old way of thinking that says nuclear energy is the way of the future. We must not fall prey to the temptation that argues that drilling offshore and on American soil are solutions to our ongoing addiction to foreign oil. We must forgo even the empty promise of natural gas, which, though our critics claim it is a "clean" source of energy, is yet just another form of the poisonous carbon gas we can ill afford to be monkeying around with.
If I might respond to those who say that they have freezed their keisters off since the onset of the so-called "Little Ice Age," which I might point out is a direct consequence of the now over-fulfilled consensus of manmade global climate change, no one said it was going to be easy. But if we can get the markets, the banks, and the entrepreneurs to get out of the way, our government can accomplish anything we set your minds to.
Right now the government is dispensing billions and billions of dollars in grants to companies to develop energy technologies that might be called too "inefficient," "expensive," or "unreliable" to cut it in what is left of the marketplace. But I'm not going to accept that way of thinking. We might have had a little rocky period, a decade-long recession that is undoubtedly the fault of my predecessor, but the economy is well on the way to recovery. Now there have been some grumblings about a 'jobless recovery," which has led to persistent unexpectedly high unemployment of say, fifteen to (unintelligible) percent - but help is on the way.
Just this year, we hope to create or save tens of millions of jobs by hiring all the young, enthusiastic people of our nationwide mandatory GreenCorpse...ummm, I think there might be a typo there...to promote our green jobs programs, to pick up the litter that plagues our highways and national parks, and simply by not crushing what little industry remains left. Those companies who want to continue to do business are going to have to do it according to our terms, and hell, if they kick a little back to a Democrat in need, they may even be allowed to keep a greenback or two.
Now some have called this fascism. Let me be clear. A meek and conservative form of fascism was tried under FDR and it failed to reach the kind of results we are looking for. No, we are looking to create a new form of superfascism that not only incorporates all aspects of the national economy, but looks to fuse it all together under the umbrella of global governance, while meeting the challenges of addressing the spectre of climate change. Let me now speak to this crucial issue, which is of such vital importance to ourselves, our children, the planet, and of course, polar bears.
To those who think we can continue the status quo of climate change, let me just say that the time for delay is over. If we are going to overcome this perpetual crisis, we are going to have to think big. That is why why we must once again raise the global carbon tax, to regulate excess temperatures out of existence. We might even see a day when the world's temperature is permanently set on a slightly warm but temperate 72 degrees. Of course, we can argue whether or not it should be 68 degrees. Democracy can be messy.
Our critics will say that we are dreaming impossibly big dreams. They may say they're humongous or even ginormous. But let there be no doubt. The failure of their imaginations must not lead to the crisis of our consciences. We must move forward, with all the certainty of a moral crusade, to lead the world to complete climatelessness and environmental homeostasis by the end of this decade. The consequences are too grave to neglect. The death of the old order, and the rebirth of a new dawn, with or without man, requires courage and sacrifice. These are extraordinary times.
All species, since the beginning of time, have struggled with the ever-present threat of climate change. We human beings, along with the complete effort of all animals, from the three-toed sloth to the ring-tailed bandicoot, from the humpback whale to the duckbill platypus, must now work together to make worldwide climate equality a reality.
Comedy of Errors
A political showdown is brewing in Washington. It is David Axelrod versus....former SNL comedian Al Franken? From Politico:Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.
Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.
The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.
“There was a lot of frustration in there,” said a Democratic senator who declined to be identified.
“People were hot,” another Democratic senator said.
Democratic senators are frustrated that the White House hasn’t done more to win over the public on health care reform and other aspects of its ambitious agenda — and angry that, in the wake of Scott Brown’s win in the Massachusetts Senate race, the White House hasn’t done more to chart a course for getting a health care bill to the president’s desk. [Continued]
Apparently his royal highness King Obama is having trouble keeping his Scamalot of thugs, liars, and thieves together. Their pillaging and plundering of the wealth of this nation has left us in such an economic mess that not even the wizard of smart Lord Keynes can conjure up a way out.
And a court jester shall lead them...
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Google and the Central Gov: Partnering Up for the Police State
From the The Washington Post:
The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.
Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack.
Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google's policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans' online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users' searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.
The partnership strikes at the core of one of the most sensitive issues for the government and private industry in the evolving world of cybersecurity: how to balance privacy and national security interests. On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair called the Google attacks, which the company acknowledged in January, a "wake-up call." Cyberspace cannot be protected, he said, without a "collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners."
But achieving collaboration is not easy, in part because private companies do not trust the government to keep their secrets and in part because of concerns that collaboration can lead to continuous government monitoring of private communications. Privacy advocates, concerned about a repeat of the NSA's warrantless interception of Americans' phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, say information-sharing must be limited and closely overseen.
"The critical question is: At what level will the American public be comfortable with Google sharing information with NSA?" said Ellen McCarthy, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an organization of current and former intelligence and national security officials that seeks ways to foster greater sharing of information between government and industry. [Continued]
Fascism is in full wondrous flight in the great United State of America, and it is truly fantastical that Google has finally decided to collaborate with the central government in the interest of "cybersecurity." It is about time we all started getting with the program (and that means you too, Sweden!) And just in case you thought that some silly pieces of paper called "search warrants," which laughably imply that you are innocent until proven guilty, can get in our way - think again. You are completely naked to us, and trust me, it's not a pretty sight.
Now, don't forget to get your "portrait" done for the Census Bureau - and if you should forget, see our new ad, which will air during the Super Bowl. It only cost you $2.5 million out of the $340 million dollars we are spending for thecompilation of all personal information for the police state census, you might as well see what you paid for.
Ta ta! The Free Speech Czar
The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.
Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack.
Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google's policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans' online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users' searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.
The partnership strikes at the core of one of the most sensitive issues for the government and private industry in the evolving world of cybersecurity: how to balance privacy and national security interests. On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair called the Google attacks, which the company acknowledged in January, a "wake-up call." Cyberspace cannot be protected, he said, without a "collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners."
But achieving collaboration is not easy, in part because private companies do not trust the government to keep their secrets and in part because of concerns that collaboration can lead to continuous government monitoring of private communications. Privacy advocates, concerned about a repeat of the NSA's warrantless interception of Americans' phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, say information-sharing must be limited and closely overseen.
"The critical question is: At what level will the American public be comfortable with Google sharing information with NSA?" said Ellen McCarthy, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an organization of current and former intelligence and national security officials that seeks ways to foster greater sharing of information between government and industry. [Continued]
Fascism is in full wondrous flight in the great United State of America, and it is truly fantastical that Google has finally decided to collaborate with the central government in the interest of "cybersecurity." It is about time we all started getting with the program (and that means you too, Sweden!) And just in case you thought that some silly pieces of paper called "search warrants," which laughably imply that you are innocent until proven guilty, can get in our way - think again. You are completely naked to us, and trust me, it's not a pretty sight.
Now, don't forget to get your "portrait" done for the Census Bureau - and if you should forget, see our new ad, which will air during the Super Bowl. It only cost you $2.5 million out of the $340 million dollars we are spending for the
Ta ta! The Free Speech Czar
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Busted: Keynesian Economics
Stick this in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Keynes.Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate Economic Growth: Answering the Critics by Heritage Foundation.
Key Excerpts:
Why Government Spending Does Not End Recessions
Moving forward, the important question is why government spending fails to end recessions. Spending-stimulus advocates claim that Congress can "inject" new money into the economy, increasing demand and therefore production. This raises the obvious question: From where does the government acquire the money it pumps into the economy? Congress does not have a vault of money waiting to be distributed. Every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It is merely redistributed from one group of people to another.[7]
Congress cannot create new purchasing power out of thin air. If it funds new spending with taxes, it is simply redistributing existing purchasing power (while decreasing incentives to produce income and output). If Congress instead borrows the money from domestic investors, those investors will have that much less to invest or to spend in the private economy. If they borrow the money from foreigners, the balance of payments will adjust by equally raising net imports, leaving total demand and output unchanged. Every dollar Congress spends must first come from somewhere else.
For example, many lawmakers claim that every $1 billion in highway stimulus can create 47,576 new construction jobs. But Congress must first borrow that $1 billion from the private economy, which will then lose at least as many jobs.[8] Highway spending simply transfers jobs and income from one part of the economy to another. As Heritage Foundation economist Ronald Utt has explained, "The only way that $1 billion of new highway spending can create 47,576 new jobs is if the $1 billion appears out of nowhere as if it were manna from heaven."[9] This statement has been confirmed by the Department of Transportation[10] and the General Accounting Office (since renamed the Government Accountability Office),[11] yet lawmakers continue to base policy on this economic fallacy. [...]
Moving forward, the important question is why government spending fails to end recessions. Spending-stimulus advocates claim that Congress can "inject" new money into the economy, increasing demand and therefore production. This raises the obvious question: From where does the government acquire the money it pumps into the economy? Congress does not have a vault of money waiting to be distributed. Every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It is merely redistributed from one group of people to another.[7]
Congress cannot create new purchasing power out of thin air. If it funds new spending with taxes, it is simply redistributing existing purchasing power (while decreasing incentives to produce income and output). If Congress instead borrows the money from domestic investors, those investors will have that much less to invest or to spend in the private economy. If they borrow the money from foreigners, the balance of payments will adjust by equally raising net imports, leaving total demand and output unchanged. Every dollar Congress spends must first come from somewhere else.
For example, many lawmakers claim that every $1 billion in highway stimulus can create 47,576 new construction jobs. But Congress must first borrow that $1 billion from the private economy, which will then lose at least as many jobs.[8] Highway spending simply transfers jobs and income from one part of the economy to another. As Heritage Foundation economist Ronald Utt has explained, "The only way that $1 billion of new highway spending can create 47,576 new jobs is if the $1 billion appears out of nowhere as if it were manna from heaven."[9] This statement has been confirmed by the Department of Transportation[10] and the General Accounting Office (since renamed the Government Accountability Office),[11] yet lawmakers continue to base policy on this economic fallacy. [...]
Answering the Critics
Despite the foregoing evidence, some analysts maintain that governments can spend their way out of recession. Their common objections are addressed below:
Critics' Objection No. 1: People Are Saving Instead of Spending, and Banks Are Not Lending.By Borrowing and Spending these "Idle Savings," Government Can Circulate More Money Through the Economy. This is the most common defense of government stimulus cited by policymakers. Indeed, among proponents of government spending there is a strong focus on whether people are spending or saving, with the implication that spending circulates through the economy while savings effectively drop out.
But savings do not drop out of the economy. Nearly all people put their savings in: (1) banks, which quickly lend the money to others to spend; (2) investments in stocks and bonds; or (3) personal debt reduction. In each of these situations, the financial system transfers one person's savings to someone else who can spend it. So all money is quickly spent regardless of whether it was initially consumed or saved. The only savings that drop out of the economy are those hoarded in mattresses and safes. [Continued]
Despite the foregoing evidence, some analysts maintain that governments can spend their way out of recession. Their common objections are addressed below:
Critics' Objection No. 1: People Are Saving Instead of Spending, and Banks Are Not Lending.By Borrowing and Spending these "Idle Savings," Government Can Circulate More Money Through the Economy. This is the most common defense of government stimulus cited by policymakers. Indeed, among proponents of government spending there is a strong focus on whether people are spending or saving, with the implication that spending circulates through the economy while savings effectively drop out.
But savings do not drop out of the economy. Nearly all people put their savings in: (1) banks, which quickly lend the money to others to spend; (2) investments in stocks and bonds; or (3) personal debt reduction. In each of these situations, the financial system transfers one person's savings to someone else who can spend it. So all money is quickly spent regardless of whether it was initially consumed or saved. The only savings that drop out of the economy are those hoarded in mattresses and safes. [Continued]
Stand Your Ground
The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter, the rain may enter -- but the King of England cannot enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”
William Pitt, 1763
This is a brilliant description of an Englishman's home is his castle - the Castle Doctrine, on which Anglo-Saxon liberty is largely based. In the American tradition, the principle basically means every owner's absolute sovereignty over his home - and in this it differs both from the monarchical tradition, where a king (even a limited one) is the (nominal) owner of everything (all property titles are derived from the king), and the democratic tradition, where the republic (the state, the nation, the people as a whole) is the absolute and final owner. The remnants of allodial title testify to this glorious tradition - every American is the sovereign and king of his property, and no other king or democratic mob can deprive them of that sacred status.
Monday, February 1, 2010
A Withering Review of Avatar
The following is an outstanding review of Avatar, and by outstanding, I mean well-written. Of course the movie sucks.James Cameron’s Unbelievium by Stephen Hunter
Avatar, the latest cinematic science-fiction epic, turns out to be a half-a-billion-dollar case of reinventing the Ferris wheel. The final product is a hyper-gaudy, brainless attraction that goes round and round and deposits you exactly where it picked you up, only you’re poorer and dumber and you’ll never get your 2 hours and 40 minutes back.
The longtime dream project of writer-director James Cameron, the perpetrator of Titanic, Avatar is big, impressive, and stupid. In fact it’s so stupid, it might well be called stupefying. What is so mystifying about it is that a man of Cameron’s technical sophistication could be so blinded by the banality of his vision. Stylistically, Cameron draws his inspiration from two sources, the westerns of the 1950s and the Vietnam War of the 1960s, about which he is an expert, having watched it on television.
[Continued]
Stephen Hunter’s latest novel, I, Sniper, is out from Simon & Schuster. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2003
Kant and Sade
Of all the couples in the history of modern thought (Freud and Lacan, Marx and Lenin…), Kant and Sade is perhaps the most problematic: the statement "Kant is Sade" is the "infinite judgement" of modern ethics, positing the sign of equation between the two radical opposites, i.e. asserting that the sublime disinterested ethical attitude is somehow identical to, or overlaps with, the unrestrained indulgence in pleasurable violence. A lot-everything, perhaps-is at stake here: is there a line from Kantian formalist ethics to the cold-blooded Auschwitz killing machine?
The ABCs of Communism
The ABCs of Communism by Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky, 1919. (Redacted.) Key excerpts, edited, updated, and with additional commentary:The ABCs of Communism should, in our opinion, be an elementary textbook of communist knowledge. Daily experience of propagandists and agitators has convinced us of the urgent need for such a textbook. There is an unceasing influx of new adherents. The dearth of teachers is great, and we have not even a sufficiency of textbooks for such institutions as party schools.[...]
We have determined to fill this gap. We regard our ABC as an elementary course which is to be followed in party schools; but we have also endeavoured to write it in such a manner that it can be used for independent study by every worker or peasant who desires to acquaint himself with the party program. [...]
Every comrade who takes up this book should read it all through, so that he may acquire an idea of the aims and tasks of communism. [...]
Introduction
Every party must have definite aims, for otherwise it is not a party. [...] [T]hose who realize how they can best defend their own interests, organize themselves into a party. [...]
The Russian revolution of 1917 is being followed by revolutions in the west as well as in the east, by revolutions in which the working class raises its banner on behalf of the overthrow of capitalism. [...]
The primary aim of the working class is the realization of the communist order. This aim is a permanent aim. [...]
Our new (Moscow) program is the first program drawn up by the party of the working class since it attained to power some time ago. It is therefore necessary for our party to turn to account all the experience which the working class has gained in administering and building the new life. This is important, not only for ourselves, not only for the Russian workers and poorer peasants, but also for our foreign comrades. [...]
We have already said that it is wrong to manufacture a program out of our own heads, and that our program should be taken from life. Before the time of Marx, those who represented working-class interests were apt to draw fancy pictures of a future paradise, without troubling to ask themselves whether this paradise could ever be reached, and without seeing the right road for the workers and peasants to follow. [Emphasis added.]
Marx taught us another way. He examined the evil, unjust, barbaric social order which still prevails throughout the world, and studied its structure. Precisely after the manner in which we might study a machine, or, let us say, a clock, did Marx study the structure of capitalist society, in which factory owners and landowners rule, while workers and peasants are oppressed. Let us suppose we have noticed that two of the wheels of our clock are badly fitted, and that at each revolution they interfere more and more with one another's movements. Then we can foresee that the clock will break down and stop. What Marx studied was not a clock, but capitalist society; he examined it thoroughly, examined life under the dominion of capital. As the outcome of his researches, Marx recognized very clearly that capitalism is digging its own grave, that the machine will break down, and that the cause of the break-down will be the inevitable uprising of the workers, who will refashion the whole world to suit themselves. [End of Part A]
Editor's note:
Yet Marx was wrong dozens of times: On his misuse of the Iron Law of Wages, which argues that wages tend towards subsistence; that socialist revolutions will break out spontaneously in the most advanced capitalist nations - instead they were ushered in by putsches, coups, and armed revolutionary conflict in the most economically backward of nations; on his Labor Theory of Value, which he adapted from Ricardo and used for the basis of his Theory of Surplus Value, the key to his entire theory of capitalist exploitation; on dialectical materialism, his primary method of analysis, which literally cannot explain why many in the upper class are socialists and many in the lower class are not. Even such off-hand criticism pretty much demolishes any claim that Marxism is infallible, and the death of capitalism, inevitable.
Fully aware that Marx was wrong, the neomarxists have been trying desperately to salvage Marxism for nearly a century, and as such, their tactics have been thuggish arm-twisting, cultural subversion, infiltration, co-optation, and economic chaos and destruction, rather than rational argumentation and open debate. To draw from Bukharin's analysis here, they have reverted to no more than "drawing fancy pictures" of their imagined utopia, and ushering in the destruction of Western civilization in the hopes that by clearing all institutions and barriers to "freedom," which leftists interpret as absolute democratic spontaneity, paradise will magically appear. The history of democratic anarchy suggests otherwise: Social conflict, massive bloodshed, reaction, oppression, and tyranny awaits if we continue on our present "democratic" trajectory.
Principled opposition is needed to teach the faux-intellectuals on the left that they are destroying this nation for naught. Their pretensions that Marxism is "scientific" is an illusion, a myth, despite the allure of Das Kapital's heady and systematic method. Those dissatisfied with the capitalist system, and more specifically, the American system of government and economics, need to reacquaint themselves with reality instead of entertaining elaborate designs with no basis but in their collective imagination.
Free Trade, Free Speech and Free Immigration
The government's alleged right to regulate immigration is a statist abomination and is absolutely alien to the spirit of libertarianism. The freedom of movement in
The reason why I hate conservatives' anti-immigration rhetoric is that it is vague and incoherent. As many false ideas, it is based on a distortion of a real problem. The problem
However, the proposed cure - restrictions on immigration - is like curing a headache by cutting off the head.
Since it is a human being's natural right to do anything, except initiating coercion against others, immigration is a natural right. Natural rights, unlike contractual (civil, political) rights, are inalienable and apply to all people on Earth (in so far as they are not criminals). I emphasize that they apply not only to US citizens but to all non-criminals on Earth, including those who wish to enter the United States. Violating immigrants' natural rights for the purpose of defending America's freedom is a logical contradiction. Restrictions on individual liberty can never promote freedom - it is a dangerous and misguided game.
The root of the "Hispanization" problem is not immigration as such but the system that bestows voting rights (which ARE NOT NATURAL) on all adult citizens. This idiotic perversion of the representative principle is what ushered in socialism in the first place. Clearly, only those who uphold America's constitutional system should be given voting rights. Socialists are excluded by definition. So, the solution is giving voting rights ONLY to those immigrants who're not going to subvert the constitutional system.
As far as the cultural impact is concerned, the fundamental problem is not the influence of Hispanic culture but the weakness and impotence of the American cultural establishment. If America were dominated by a sound and rational elite, foreign influences would be absolutely unable to destroy its cultural vigor. The cultural atmosphere is shaped by the academia, not by the "hoods." If the education system were a healthy institution, it would be likely to influence the hoods (in a positive way), not the other way around.
The root of the welfare problem is, again, not immigration as such but the welfare state itself. It is absurd to argue that US citizens are more entitled to this state-sanctioned plunder than immigrants. No one is entitled to that. I wonder why conservatives do not support deporting US citizens who receive welfare, in addition to restricting immigration. For my taste, there is little difference.
It is indeed arguable which statist abominations should be abolished first - either restrictions on immigration or the welfare state or the voting system allowing everyone to rob everyone else. It may be argued that loopholes allowing immigrants to receive welfare should be abolished first and then restrictions on immigration should be lifted. But it should be absolutely clear than eventually immigration (of non-criminals) should be totally unrestricted. Just as trade and speech must be absolutely free, so should immigration. No compromise is possible. It is a matter of principle.
What I dislike about mainstream conservatives is that, while they partially understand some of the problems discussed here, they always fail to clearly enunciate them and give an uncontradictory logical account of their position. They don't seem to understand the difference between the sound opposition to liberals' attempts to subvert the constitutional system by using immigrants and the opposition to immigration per se. Though American conservatives are indeed different from European ones, they seem to borrow from their brethren across the ocean a primitive distaste for all things foreign just because they are foreign, which is absolutely unlibertarian.
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