Going For A Walk

Terri Schiavo did not have a right to live. More to the point, neither Terri Schiavo, her husband, her family, the courts, nor any physician nor any politician had a right to kill her. Yet she was killed.

The common wisdom said that she was a vegetable and had nothing more to give to her family or her community. Yet, even frozen in her emaciated body, Terri accomplished in the last three weeks of her limited life what no non-handicapped person could have done: she surgically separated the three cultures of life and death in America.

There is a culture in America that promotes life, but does not know why.

There is a culture in America that promotes death, but has no foundation for that philosophy.

And there is a culture in America that defends life for specific and defensible reasons.

The first two cultures represent most (perhaps almost all) of the people. They use secondary reasons to defend their positions. Most arguments in defense of Terri's life rested on the arbitrary quality of Terri's life, the quality of her husband's character, the intelligence of the judicial, or the argument that there were people who were ready to care for her. The arguments in defense of Michael Schiavo's right to kill his wife rested on his legal standing, some hearsay comment he remembered years after her accident, the pitiful quality of her life, or even that providing food and water constituted "artificial" lifesaving means.

Neither side rests on the foundation of logic and neither conclusions are, therefore, defensible.

The only logical reason to defend Terri's life is this: the person who gave her life is the only person who has the right to take it. Michael Schiavo didn't give her life. The doctors didn't give her life. The courts didn't give her life. No one in government, no bureaucrat, no policy wonk, no commentator, and no bystander gave her life. Even Terri didn't give herself life. None of them, therefore, had the authority to take it.

Even Terri's mom and dad did not give her life. They acted as the surrogates through whom Terri's life was developed, but even they did not breathe life into her sinew. (Consult Mary Shelly for information on reanimating dead tissue. Other than the fiction of her master work, no one can do it.)

The single greatest challenge to our own sovereignty is our helplessness in the face of life and death. The God of the Universe (GOTU) is fully in control in this area. Humbling, isn't it?

Even when considering that some people may overstep their authority and kill another person -- thusly ending a life prematurely, no one may overstep their authority and restore a life or create a brand new one. Life and Death are in the hands of the GOTU.

When fully embracing this culture of life, the extension of this belief is that the GOTU is also in full control of the Quality of Life of those still living. Some are poor. Some are fat. Some are rich. Some are tall and thin and beautiful. Some are bald. Some are disabled. Some are geniuses. We're just not in charge of who is one way or the other. (The rhetorical assumption equates "Extreme Makeover" with those who would similarly disfigure someone. The issue is not whether one change is good or the other is bad, but that both are artificial.)

The GOTU gave us life. The GOTU also placed us our particular situation, with individual gifts and individual burdens. Our IQ is not up to us. Our innate abilities are not ours to choose. Our height is not ours to change. As the GOTU's son once said, "Who can, by worrying, add one single inch to his stature?" We're not even in charge of that.

Speaking to the "Extreme Makover" folks, there are instructions in each and every cell in the Made-Over recipient's body that mitigates against the artifice foisted on the victim in those dreadful shows. Doctors can add prostheses to the chins and cheekbones and breasts and buttocks. Hairdressers can bleach black hair blonde. Dentists can straighten crooked teeth and whiten smiles. But if this made-over beauty ever has children they will, most likely, have no chin, sallow cheeks, flat breasts, sunken butts, black hair and crooked, yellow teeth.

All our efforts are superficial and temporary. And the same goes for death.

We may artificially hasten death, but everyone is destined to die sooner or later. Our efforts -- taking the GOTU off his throne for our temporary tantrum -- does nothing but influence the time of death.

In a more fundamental fact, we can do nothing, ever, to change the creation of life. That area belongs solely and squarely in the power of the GOTU. We have no artifice.

The first recorded theft of authority from the GOTU was when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Interestingly enough, the punishment for that was death. The legal trick there was that they didn't die immediately. But all, from daddy Adam down, are now destined to die. And none of us know when.

The second recorded theft of authority from the GOTU is when Cain killed Abel. Death was already here. It was already our enemy. Cain just used it for his benefit. Should Abel have died for preparing a better sacrifice than his brother?

The cultures of life and death have been at odds ever since. The Egypt of the Pharos was a culture of death. Caesar's Rome was a culture of death. World War II Germany and Japan held cultures of death. The current Jihadists soak in their own culture of death. The only cultures where life was esteemed are those who retained their humility toward the GOTU and embraced the idea that life is amazing and death is the sentence for disobedience.

Further reasons that no one besides the GOTU has the right to take a life are found in our (past) courts. Only those courts who convict and sentence the accused have jurisdiction to carry out the sentence. Even though Scott Petersen is a convicted murder, sentenced to die, no individual has the authority to carry out that sentence. Only the courts whose laws were broken, who convicted and sentenced the accused, may carry out a sentence.

In the same way, although each of us is condemned to die, no individual has the authority to carry out our just and coming sentence. Only the GOTU has that right. In the same way our jails will put a suicide watch on a condemned criminal, none of us are really free to decide when to "cheat the hangman," so to speak.

Those other cultures, the 99 percent who do not cede full authority to the GOTU in areas of life and death, are illogical in their positions. The saddest segment of our society are those who argued in affirmation of Terri's life, but do not have consistent or logical reasons. It is tragic irony to be right for the wrong reasons.

Terri's life belonged to the GOTU. He had a right to take it. He was in control when she was reduced from energetic and animated woman to bed-bound disabled wretch. Yet, the GOTU had a purpose for her life and an established time for her death. (Arguing that the GOTU had planned for her death in just the manner it occurred would be a good argument. But the GOTU knowing that the life would be prematurely and criminally taken does not make the act pleasing or justifiable.)

Those who would argue for one side or anther without first acknowledging the proper ownership of Terri's life argue the position without foundation. Their arguments must, then, originate and extrapolate from what are called States or Properties.

In these arguments, one's State (not in the sense of Texas or Florida, but in the sense of condition) becomes the determinant of life's justifiability or death's desirability. Terri's "state" was unenviable. But she was alive and nothing -- except an overt act of homicide or a merciful act of grace by the GOTU -- would end that life. Terri's properties were never fully known. Could Terri see? Could she hear her mother talking? However, these became side issues that justified one position or another. They were as unimportant as whether Terri's hair color was blue or her chin had implants.

Some argued Michael Schiavo's properties as a good husband or those of a heartless cad. Still others argued that they would not want to live without properties of speech or movement; justifying their conclusion that it was better for Terri to die.

The other Property arguments included legal properties (not in the sense that she was the "property" of one person or a court, but whether a court or a person held legal standing in her stead or behalf). One could argue that Michael Schiavo had legal standing. Others argued that the Shindlers had legal standing. In reality, the courts overstepped all their legal authority and tried to grant to one or the other a property that neither could ever hold and that the court did not have the right to grant.

All of these arguments and excuses are irrelevant. For the courts to grant anyone besides the GOTU authority to give or take a life is the equivalent of a court ruling granting Michael Schiavo the right to walk off a 100-story building and land gently on the sidewalk below.

The courts, even the Supremes, just don't have the authority to contravene the Laws of Gravity. Any ruling of this sort would be met with hilarious laughter, general ridicule, and a large, messy spot where Michael Schiavo would have suddenly discovered the impropriety of the court.

Even Michael Schiavo -- whose own moral interpretation led him to conclude that murder is preferable to divorce -- isn't stupid enough to walk off a tall building based on the decisions of a rogue and degenerate judiciary.

Good news for the courts, though. The rest of us are.

It Can Only Last A Lifetime

The Schiavo case is just too easy.  The Schiavo case is just too complex.  A woman is alive.  A woman is barely alive.  Someone wants to care for her.  Someone wants to kill her.  There is a right to live.  There is a right to die.  The judges are insane.  The judges are right. 

It would take the wisdom of King Solomon to figure this one out.  Or would it?  We obviously need better judges, but we also need to decide what is right and wrong.  The wisdom of Solomon and the universal truths that guided him haven't changed since he built his temple and judged over his people.  They are available to us in the here and now.  So, too, are the liberal ideologies and situational relativism that confuses our culture.  These are the two sides of judicial temperament.

King Solomon stands at the extreme righteous end of the measure of judges. 

Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?  And God said unto him, Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enemies; but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment; (1Ki 3:9,11) 

Solomon asked for wisdom to rule according to righteousness.  And we still remember his wisdom and his right judgments.  He asked for special insight into the universal truths that do not change and do not shift according to our whims.  That kind of wisdom is rare today.

Contemporaneous judges rule via social comfort and prevailing attitude.  There can be no greater chasm than that between our judges and Solomon.

Millennia stand between us and such Godly wisdom.  We are left trying to decide what is right and what is wrong in our world and issues like those of Ms. Schiavo are the crucible in which our assumptions are separated from our facts.  We search for facts and we get sophistry.  We look for truth and we get rhetoric.

Our media are a font of rhetoric.  From the ABC poll that slanted the idea that Terri is brain-dead to CBS posing the issue as a political one, there is no solid logic in the rhetoric that gives direction for the future.  Should we, as a culture, find ourselves in the same place sometime in the future, what shall we do?  We must explore it now before it overtakes us by renewed surprise.

Rhetoric provides no answers.  Rhetoric seeks to persuade.  Facing critical and deadly decisions such as those illuminated by Terri Schiavo, we need answers, not persuasion. But rhetoric can provide a venue for discussion.  Regardless of it's poor use by our media, rhetoric can provide a useful process.  Francis Bacon said, "The duty and office of rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will."  Standing on the firm foundation of known truths, working with logic and reason, we can apply rhetorical tools as a means to decipher signals from static.

More than one life is at stake in this debate.  Most of us are fully unprepared for this situation  Once upon us, situations like that of Ms. Schiavo do not allow us much time to consider our options.  Like a pilot flying into poor weather, we must sometimes be wary when we are reaching the limits of our abilities or experience.  Training and experience teaches the pilot to establish the limits of every theoretical situation.  Regardless of what the regulations allow or what the law prohibits, each pilot establishes those limits and decides, beforehand, not to cross them.  Therefore, when an emergency arises, or even when some marginal event occurs that could increase his risk, he knows ahead of time how he will react.  The choices are made under little stress and with plenty of time to debate.  These individual limits are called personal minima. 

We must also have personal minima in our day-to-day lives.  Otherwise we will encounter a situation, like that facing the husband and parents of Terri Schiavo, where we are making it up as we go.  When pilots in bad weather attempt such haphazard approaches, they are called accident statistics.  When we personally crash upon our own haphazard attempts to handle crises, our personal lives can do little more than serve as a warning to others.  It is much easier to prepare than to clean up the mess afterward. We are engaged, though, in more than risk avoidance.  The Terri Schiavo debate demands that we seek, and find, real truths.

The spiritual and philosophical truths we seek must exist completely within the confines of logic and reason -- which are set firmly within objective truth.  If logic, within the process of rhetoric, can lead us to a philosophical truth we must avoid sophistry and remain committed to reason.  The principle tool of rhetoric, invention, should never push us beyond what is real, but should extend our thoughts to the edge of possibilities.  Cleverness is not invention, it is manipulation.  We should not be clever, but using our knowledge and understanding, build truth upon truth. 

Asking the hard questions and inventing scenarios where our assumptions are tested, we can examine our conclusions for logical integrity.  As we invent different situations, we can measure each conclusion for consistency and integrity.  Real life may even take us beyond the edge of possibilities.  We must, therefore, explore the effects of our beliefs at the edges so we can be prepared to act when the time comes.

We search for philosophical truth that retains its integrity, even out to extremes.  We stress-test our ideas.  If a position collapses at an extreme, it is no truth.  We may use it for a "rule of thumb," but it cannot be truth.  Nor can we simply accept a "rule of thumb" when we ultimately seek a truth.  All current philosophies proposed and promoted in the Terri Schiavo case collapse under minimal stress; like the central arguments about Ms. Schiavo.

In her case and many like hers, some medical ethicists suggest that there exists some point where life is not worth living.  This is the current philosophy supporting most rationalizations of Ms. Schiavo's right to die.  Objective truth demands, then, that there exists some identifiable point of demarcation between the life that is worth living and the life that is not worth living.  We should be able to firmly fix that point, either by observation or analysis.  However, we cannot. 

If we say the point exists where mechanical means are continually used to support life, then Terri Schiavo is on the side that is worth living and Christopher Reeve was on the side that is not.  If we fix the point where food and water must be administered for life to continue then both Terri Schiavo and every suckling baby falls on the side of the life not worth living.  We must start adding conditions and exceptions to maintain our extemporaneous and shifting sense of control.  We quickly walk away from reason and logic and wrap ourselves in unsupportable opinions.

These irrational beliefs cannot be the kind of truth for which everyone is looking.  After some contemplation, only two positions can long stand the stress of such analysis.

• All life -- even marginal life -- is precious.
• All life -- even the ideal life -- is worthless.

The first position that retains integrity is that of ultimate, universally precious life.  In this philosophy all life, even that of brain damaged and severely handicapped men and women, is precious.  This position provides clear, logical, and consistent guidance in the cases like Ms. Schiavo.  It provides clear, logical, and consistent guidance in cases like Christopher Reeve or Dr. Stephen Hawking.  It provides clear, logical, and consistent guidance, even in cases of severely brain-damaged children who will never even show any response to stimuli and require round-the-clock care.  It even provides clear guidance for cases where a person is living a normal, unremarkable life.

The only other position that retains integrity is that of the worthless life.  In this philosophy all life is transitory, limited, and is of no supernatural consequence.  The living do so in a meaningless state of eventual termination.  Living is meaningless.  Dying is meaningless.  Any incompetence or weakness is an opportunity to humanely let the suffering die. 

This position holds that there are no interim decisions about quality of life or what constitutes an extraordinary effort to extend life.  There is no life that has any quality.  All efforts to extend life are extraordinary.  The only life worth saving, therefore, is the life that does not need saving.   Vaccinations, antibiotics, defibrillators, and all manner of respirators and feeding tubes qualify as extraordinary actions to extend life.  Denial of any of these resources -- and many more -- would constitute logical actions toward a worthless life.

Society is not founded on the worthless life, so the concept may be a little shocking.  But it is logically consistent to the extremes.  The baby that cannot survive outside of his mother's womb would be considered incompetent and termination would be logical.  The grandparent who could not open a can of beans would be considered weak.  Termination of the weak would be considered humane.

It is certainly beastly, but it is consistent.

Unfortunately, as a culture we do not like the idea of the precious life, either.  We, therefore, perform the cognitive soft-shoe-shuffle and pick and choose based on the situation.  Questions arise and we try to mix and match to sound compassionate and simultaneously distant.   The result is a jumble of irrational, inconsistent, and contradictory laws, phobias, decisions, and precedence that cannot be reconciled.

There cannot be two more divergent possible views about life's value than those above.  Both stand the scrutiny of logical exercise.  One, though, sounds better than the other.

Solomon has been in his grave more than 2,800 years.  You must judge.  The precious life stands on one side.  The worthless life stands on the other.  Both argue, logically, for the life of Terri Schiavo -- possibly even for your life, if not more.

Solomon's throne is empty.  His bench is silent.  You decide.

 

~ Dexter

The Strange Attractor

What is the attraction of socialism, the nanny state, and the abandonment of self-determination?

Activist judges in the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have systematically dismantled the Constitutional limitations imposed on the U.S. federal government.  They have done this, by their own admission, based on the changing attitudes ot the American population.  Of those, lower federal courts have trod heavily on the most individually-empowering prohibitions found the Bill of Rights. The most obvious of all of these, the Second Amendment states, "... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  If interpreted literally, the Second Amendment presumes a citizen's self-sufficiency and independence -- with regard to the federal government -- better than any full-length legal tome.  It's prohibition cannot be more succinct than "shall not he infringed."  Yet, infringed it is.

Individuality -- the sovereignty of the individual -- is at the core of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth amendments in the Bill of Rights.

The courts must presage a liberal shift in American philosophy.  The Second Amendment, because it is so obviously a recognition of individual power, is the Constitutional and philosophical canary in the coal mine.

Hypothetically, the individual interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms places very dangerous weapons within reach of each and every person.  Those choosing such awesome power also shoulder an awesome responsibility and acknowledge that responsibility to their community.  Many modern analysts dismiss the individual interpretation, but they appear to be in error.  (Even the U.S. Justice Department recently published an official opinion that the Second Amendment was an individual right.)

The Second Amendment is not an isolated anomoly in the Bill of Rights. The Constitution and the first 10 amendments are clear in their language, warning the federal government that it has no limiting authority over such individual power and responsibility.  On the contrary, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights are the official "limiting documents" on the federal government.  Individuality -- the sovereignty of the individual -- is at the core of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth amendments in the Bill of Rights.  (Many more touch on that assumption.)  More than any other article of amendment, the Second Amendment to the Constitution demonstrates the martial and destructive autonomy of the citizen.  That is why Constitutialists so fiercely defend it as an individual right (not a corporate right of militias).  Liberals rhetorically undermine the clear historical meaning of the Second Amendment.  They realize that individual sovereignty supplants federal sovereignty.

Of course, interpreting the Second Amendment as an individual or aggregate right foreshadows a person's attitudes toward self-determination and sovereignty. Logically extended, were the Second Amendment universally acknowledged to mean the People in the same way that the First Amendment means the People, those who reject a society built on self-sufficiency and unalienable rights would be outcast. In such a free society -- with a limited government, socialists and nanny-state liberals would lose political and personal power.

Political power, though, is as elusive a goal as securing a player position in the National Football League.  There are thousands of candidates for every position and only one makes it.  Assuming there are 50 million possible socialists in America (counting those who voted for John Kerry as candidates for liberal power), there cannot be a place of power and prestige for everyone in the socialist state once power is achieved.  The rest will be relegated to contributing "according to his abilities" and only receiving "according to his needs." 

What, then, is the attraction of socialism, the nanny state, and the abandonment of self-determination?

Two great forces motivate human action:  the hope for success and the fear of failure.  One animates and invigorates.  The other paralyzes and terrifies.  Regardless of the dominant character in any person, there will be degrees of success and degrees of failure in every life.  We gladly own our success.  We shy from our failures.  The hardscrabble fight necessary for many forms of success is difficult, even for the strong.  Bearing the burden for failures -- even those that have not befallen -- may be too much for the weak.

"...Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain­slack brain workers, nor heart­sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition..." [A]

Rather than personally exert such energies or bear such burdens, liberals forfeit the rewards of success to purchase a safe harbor from the penalties for failure.

Liberals flout their preemptive capitulation as evidence of their moral superiority.  Advancing the notion of their surrender in the marketplace as a sacrifice, liberals lobby for social gratitude (and presumably public support).  Quite frankly, liberals' self-serving actions weary the usual observer and annoy the presumed audience, if there is one.

At the same time, conservatives -- energetically pursuing their own independence, autonomy, faith, philosophy, commerce, economy, and goals -- largely ignore the inert, self-absorbed, self-sidelined liberals.  As Newton once observed, bodies at rest tend to remain at rest . . .  completely avoidable by self-deterministic bodies in motion who can navigate around the bodies at rest.

Rather than personally exert such energies or bear such burdens, liberals forfeit the rewards of success to purchase a safe harbor from the penalties for failure.

Interestingly, these liberals, whose moral superiority depends, to a great extent, on the abandonment of religious objective standards and the destruction of the nuclear family, also destroyed the historical sources of the social safety net.  The church had been refuge of the oppressed, the font of social welfare, and the comfort of the working class for thousands of years.  Liberals contrived, possibly even by design, to voluntarily abandon the exertion of accomplishment and simultaneously dismantle the safety net that would protect them when they failed.  When Time Magazine declared "God is Dead" in the '60s, liberals cheered.  The west-bound locomotive of fear and sloth was steaming toward the east-bound locomotive of hunger and cold.  The train-wreck between personal economic failure and societal decay engendered the two emotions that still identify the liberal:  irrational anger and general confusion.

Socially adrift, economically becalmed, and indignant at the callousness of conservatives who understood that the liberal had created his own reality, they turned to Marx and Engels.  If they had no wealth and power, they would assure no one had any wealth and power.  When an individual uses the threat of a gun to take a man's wallet it's called robbery. When the government uses the threat of a gun to take a man's wallet it's called Congress. Political power is also much easier to obtain as a group than is wresting individual economic power in a free market.  Government is the answer when failure is the question.

Liberals conceive of a federal government to occupy those offices of authority and perform those duties of responsibility that, historically, were borne by society.  Liberals would prefer that a faceless, unaccountable bureaucracy within the federal government transform society from a meritocracy to one leveled by mandate, assuring equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity.  Liberals fear their own competitive impotence and would rather console themselves within outcome-based federal redistribution programs than fully engage in vibrant and invigorating competition. [B]

But still, someone must work.  Before there is redistribution, there must be unbalanced accumulation.

Labor is the source of all wealth, and of all civilization; and since it is only through society that generally productive labor is possible, the whole product of labor, where there is a general obligation to work, belongs to society, - that is, to all its members, by equal right, to each according to his reasonable needs.[C]

Whether by design or default, a class of people still exists who believe in individual sovereignty: the individual who retains his God-given rights, who bears responsibility and wields personal authority.  Conservatives will work, not solely for reward, but because the motivation is personal autonomy.  Certainly reward is a different motivator, but the underlying conservative beliefs promote productivity.  The philosophies of objective truth, individual responsibility, and spiritual redemption are the causal agent behind the accumulation of property and wealth, not the other way around.

When an individual uses the threat of a gun to take a man's wallet it's called robbery. When the government uses the threat of a gun to take a man's wallet it's called Congress.

Remove property and wealth, even by federal redistribution, and the conservative worker will restore his own property and wealth through the same means by which he first created it.  (Alternately, granting someone else's wealth to the liberal cannot assure him future success.  The philosophies that impoverished the liberal's pocketbook and spirit will eventually bankrupt him again, regardless of his current balance.)

The liberal doctrine that detests individual responsibility and eschews blame contends, even in the face of unremitting evidence, that failure is not the individual's fault.

"From the earliest ages it has been the practice of the world to act on the supposition that each individual man forms his own character, and that therefore he is accountable for all his sentiments and habits, and consequently merits reward for some and punishment for others. Every system which has been established among men has been founded on these erroneous principles.[D] [emphasis added]

Only two conclusions can be made from the above statement: 

1) the downtrodden occupy a static state that no force can change, or
2) external forces alone form each man's condition and only external forces can change it.

In the first conclusion, any wretch in the states of poverty, ignorance, addiction, crime or other crude affliction is condemned to that condition, and cannot hope to escape.  It would be better, humanely speaking, to destroy this wretch and terminate his misery.

In the second conclusion (and the one mostly adopted by liberals), since the individual is blameless and helpless, society is morally obligated to expend every effort, invent every engine, and exhaust every resource in the recovery and redemption of every wretch. 

Were this true, the external infusuion of a little money and education could reform every criminal and elevate every poor person out of poverty.  Our War on Poverty is the alias for the combined federal programs that redistributed over $5 TRILLION over the past 30 years to the poor (and federal bureaucrats working to end poverty -- especially their own).  Still, the poor are with us.

The liberal chant is, "We need more money!"  No one can tell how much more, but assuming the presupposition that some amount of money will eventually free the poor from poverty is to also presume that any failure of the War results from a lack of funding.

In direct opposition, conservatives point to their own success and beg for comparisons (rather than handouts).  They neither feed at the federal trough nor do they rely on quotas or entitlement programs for their success, yet they succeed. 

The two systems stand ready for review. 

The liberals consistently fail.  They are free from individual responsibility and connected to an endless redistribution pipeline.  They have abandoned objective standards and have invented their own measures of morality to protect themselves from judgmental invective.  And they consistently fail.

The conservatives consistently succeed.  They frolic in their individual responsibility and decline any offer of redistribution.  They humbly submit to an objective standard that they cannot ever hope to achieve and confess their own moral bankruptcy (compared to the God of the Universe).  Yet they consistently succeed.

Even more so, many recovering liberals, such as David Horowitz, have found success and hope by discarding their liberal ideas and embracing conservatism and the historical patriotism of our founding fathers.  Conversely, anyone who only finds marginal success in conservatism and migrates to liberalism will almost certainly find complete failure. Failures in liberalism find success in conservatism. Successes in conservatism almost cetainly fail in liberalism.

Only those already-powerful "conservatives-in-name-only" who have publicly abandoned their conservative friends and embraced the liberalism in Hollywood or on Capitol Hill have found any kind of success (and only that by liberal celebrity). 

It is not a two-way street.

An unbiased analyst would be forced by logic to conclude that, regardless of the mechanics, the conservative method works and the liberal method does not.  But any attempt to show, to present in its softest light, the surety of liberal failure and the confidence of conservative success, is perceived as a personal affront to the failing liberal. 

Serious observers must assume that the liberal is fully aware of his condition.  He is no different from any other.  He desires success, but fears failure.  He repudiates the idea of sin yet carries the endless guilt of his own spiritual vaccuum.  He has run from failure only to find it perfected.  He has invented a religion of human idealism only to realize his own spiritual decay.  He believes he is not to blame!  Working within the liberal emotionalism of fear and anger, he must find someone else to blame.

The doctrines which have been and now are taught throughout the world, must necessarily create and perpetuate, and they do create and perpetuate, a total want of mental charity among men. They also generate superstitions, bigotry, hypocrisy, hatred, revenge, wars, and all their evil consequences. For it has been and is a fundamental principle in every system hitherto taught, with exceptions more nominal than real, 'That man will possess merit, and receive eternal reward, by believing the doctrines of that peculiar system; that he will be eternally punished if he disbelieves them; that all those innumerable individuals also, who, through time, have been taught to believe other than the tenets of this system, must be doomed to eternal misery.' [E]

The blame, according to liberals, rests fully on those conservative doctrines, and on those conservatives, who have sustained the "superstitions, bigotry, hypocrisy, hatred, revenge, wars, and all their evil consequences." There can be no blame on the liberal ideology or the liberal himself.

The personal journey from liberalism to conservatism is a hard one.  Like the 12-step programs say, "acknowledging that you have a problem is the first step."  In many ways, this is a very conservative idea, since admission also assumes personal responsibility.  And personal responsibility is the first act of self-determination.  Some choose to change, but most remain.

The two systems are there, ready for review. The liberals consistently fail. They are free from individual responsibility and connected to an endless redistribution pipeline. They abandoned objective standards and invent their own measures of morality and protect themselves from judgmental invective.  And they consistently fail.

Liberalism, therefore, entrenches its victims in their own victimhood.  There are no government programs for recovering liberals.  Recovering liberals face independence and autonomy without experience or skills in the marketplace.  Those who, like the good liberals they were, took things like "ethnic studies" and "the history of repression" in college are largely unschooled, too.

Starting with the competing forces of fear and reward, liberals have consistently chosen to respond to fear.  Consistent failures reinforce their desire for success, even if stolen from others.  Rejection of standards proves their own moral vacuum.  Beaten at every move, their only recourse is to finally depend on the rhetoric of Marxism and socialism: that those with money and power conspired to enslave them and they, unable to respond evil-for-evil, were powerless to resist.  Poorly informed, inexperienced, irrational, and mired in their own oppression, the liberal sees no escape and must cling to the hopelessness of liberalism.

Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! [F]

Liberals are like Ahab.  Drawn to the thing that will eventually destroy them; hating the thing that draws them; finally and bitterly aware of ultimate failure.  Their only fear becomes that dread of going on and on.  Accepting their own fate, they desire nothing more than to condemn all others to the same.  They cling to their beliefs.  Their allegiance, then, is to common destruction.  In defeat they commit themselves to the condemnation of the system that beat them.

Other than our own sin, can we ever meet a more truculent foe?

Liberalism is a spiritual addiction that traps its adherents and destroys cultures.  It is not attractive.  It is an encirling velvet noose.

________________________

 

[A] William Morris, How I Became A Socialist, (London: Twentieth Century Press Ltd., 1896), pp. 9, 11­13.

[B] Louis Blanc, The Organization of Labour, 1840: "The government ought to be considered as the supreme regulator of production and endowed for this duty with great power."

[C] The Gotha Program, Great Labor Congress at Gotha, 1875

[D] ibid.

[E] ibid.

[F] Herman Melville, Moby Dick,  p.565

~ Dexter

The Fire is Hot; the Blade is Sharp

The mainstream media are dead. At least for now.

As our most recent election showed, there are two camps concerning the state of left-wing propaganda in America. Those on the right are aware of the deceit and lies in the mainstream media. Those on the left cling to their hatred of Dubya and rest in the certainty of the media to vindicate them.

The left have lost power, position, credibility, and self-respect during the last ten years' political rightward movement. They yammer and blubber and entertain us with their hysteria. As is said, "we must ridicule them." But they are apparently immune to ridicule as this may be all that's left them. Were it not so complete and formulaic, we might mistake one of our current events or another as happenstance or unrelated circumstance, but every headline in the middle east and Europe proves the err of the leftist's ways and the correctness -- no, the almost prophetic certitude -- of Dubya's foreign policy decisions. His domestic policies bear exactly those dividends Dubya claimed and none of the crises about which the left warned.

The left's horses haven't finished a single race. Dubya is running a Poly-fecta. He wins, places and shows in every race.

I begin to love Dan Rather. He is the face of the leftist media failure. Were it not for him and his self-appointed high-profile, many would not care to "tilt" against his lies and distortions. As he held himself so highly above all condemnation, he became the "grand-daddy of them all" for all the fact-minded anglers out there, working to reel in a trophy. No one else in the mainstream media thought they had the "gravitas" to pull off such a large-scale deception; but Dan did. His hubris was his downfall.

The winners, besides all of us who know the truth, were the bloggers.

And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians--dead!--slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth. H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds, Ch. 8

They were the puny bacteria who brought down the monster.

When LWM [left wing media] went back 30 plus years to "explore" GWB's [George W. Bush's] ANG [Air National Guard] record, they were on a search and destroy mission. They were not looking to find the good. They were looking to find bad. When they they didn't find bad, then they speculated, conjured up, fabricated and manufactured it. LWM used fraud and deception each time they attacked GWB's ANG service. Many Americans were duped by LWM. Fortunately Bloggers saved the day and exposed CBS' fraudulent reporting, and in so doing, discredited the reporting ethics of the, so-called, "credentialed" media. [emphasis added] http://www.aim.org/special_report/2750_0_8_0_C/

The mental picture I now hold is that of David, standing over Goliath. The nation of Israel stands in disbelief on one side of the valley. The Philistines stand in disbelief on the other side of the valley. For the first time since conservatives looked at the media battlefields and despaired, the giant is down. Some in the media still taunt with vain threats and empty accusations, but everyone -- even media and their leftist sycophants -- know the end has come.

Even the New York Times has begun to publish stories about the presence of the Weapons of Mass Destruction that they, only two months ago, clamored to prove did not exist in Iraq. Now the NYT even claims to know where they are. How times change.

The conservatives are just beginning to realize it. We have won. What remains is to seize victory, since a single defeat of a single giant cannot possibly persuade the left to surrender without a real fight. But their champion is gone. They have no one else behind whom to rally. Sure, there are the Snuffleupaguses and the NPRs, but they are only so much sound and fury without the myth of leftist media power. Conservatives realize, and show real fear, that the combat will go on, hand-to-hand, for some time now. But there is no foe so large that any conservative cannot defeat him.

If we have the stomach we will prevail. If we are already battle-weary or cannot see certain victory -- for victory is certain if we will only possess it -- then we can, once more, roll over and show our bellies as a sign of compromise. I don't know which our Republican representatives will do.

I am reminded of Iraq's northern Kurds. Shortly after Desert Storm they rattled sabres and attacked Saddam, expecting the victorious armies of the coalition to come to their aid and help them win independence. That help never came. The victorious armies of the coalition -- i.e., the United States -- were too scared to do the right thing. America was afraid to make liberals mad. The Kurds were abandoned by those they expected to be their saviors. There's an old Kurdish saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, Jihad!"

They were justifiably reticent to help in this last war and they left northern Iraq pretty much to the will of Allah regarding who would win. You can't blame them.

We true conservatives are like those Kurds. We have a full-blown victory on the battlefield but we cannot occupy the hills ourselves. We must rely on our troops in congress to do that. Will they act? I am unsure but I am certain that they won't get a second chance.

Those so-called conservatives in Congress better risk victory now or they will assure their own defeat later.

~ Dexter

Tax Reform

Two-thirds of the U.S. federal budget is what is called entitlements  Despite the thorny problem that congressmen cannot find any constitutional language entitling the recipients to any federal tax monies, programs such as welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Head Start are viewed as entrenched and sacrosanct.

Before anyone gets orange juice in the morning, congress already promises two-thirds of a three-trillion dollar budget (that's a three with twelve zeros behind it – $3,000,000,000,000) to unconstitutional spending.  Protecting you from doing the math in your head, that's $2,000,000,000,000 going to special-interest groups, protected classes, rewarded behavior, and a long list of capital-redistribution projects that seem to get incumbent senators and representatives reelected.

Before anyone gets orange juice in the morning, congress already promises two-thirds of a three-trillion dollar budget to unconstitutional spending.

In the midst of this criminal theft by a tyrannical government, some folks are suggesting reform.  Since it is easier to suggest tax-reform than spending-reform, reforming the tax code has been the current topic.  Unfortunately, the big issue is the spending.

Few understand that when tax revenues are less than expenditures, the federal government just borrows the added money.  Reducing taxes does not reign spending.  Only spending cuts will cut spending.  (Can this be so hard?)  Still, tax reform can create an environment for real reform throughout the republic.  So tax-reform is on the table.  What should be done?

Firstly, repeal the current income tax.  Despite the probability that the sixteenth amendment was never passed, Americans have paid taxes to an ever-increasing federal appetite since World War I.  In addition, the feds have extended their reach through inheritance taxes, marriage penalties, transportation taxes, levies, fees and all manner of hidden revenue.

Secondly, let each state design its own federal taxation system.  Allow the federal government and each state government to negotiate the percentage of the federal budget burden each state will bear.  Only after knowing their expected contribution, each state may choose the form and details of taxation for their own citizens. 

One state may choose to replicate the current federal income tax system.  Another may choose to levy a flat tax.  Still another may choose to levy a consumption tax.  The ninth constitutional amendment grants all powers to the states that are not specifically enumerated to the federal government.  Therefore, it is the state's prerogative as to the form and substance of a tax system.

The systems that work best and harm individuals least will be attractions for states who want increased population and businesses. People will vote with their feet and businesses and families will migrate to the states with the greatest opportunity for liberty.

This really provides two benefits.  It empowers states, as the founders wanted.  It provides multi-state comparisons.  Differing systems will provide different burdens and different outcomes as a side-by-side experiment.  The systems that work best and harm individuals least will be attractions for states who want increased population and businesses.  People will vote with their feet and businesses and families will migrate to the states with the greatest opportunity for liberty.

More importantly, the only federal taxpayers should be the fifty states.  All other "payers" are citizens of a certain state.  They pay to the state.  The state, after deducting the cost of unfunded federal mandates and the amount of money it takes to run a state, can pass revenues to the federal government.  And what if they don't?

States will finally have the attention of the federal government -- the way the framers intended.  Were an individual to withhold his $10,000 annual payment to the federal nanny, he would be quietly punished and vanish from view.  Were a state to withhold its $100,000,000 payment, the federal government would move heaven and earth before another day passed, in order to remedy any "slight" the state felt hindered the transmission of those revenues.

This will never happen.  It emasculates the federal government's power over the individual.  It turns each state into an uber-taxpayer.  There is a saying:  if you owe the bank $100 the bank owns you;  if you owe the bank $1,000,000, you own the bank.  Each state would, therefore, own approximately one-fiftieth of the federal government. 

But we can dream, can't we?  Nobody thought there'd be elections in Islam, either.

However, the benefits of this approach are fundamental and propagate to futures beyond ours.

It should be mentioned that taxes would be composed solely of the non-discretionary and non-entitlement portion of the federal taxes.  Those remaining categories include armies, border security and the other limited actions enumerated in the Constitution.

That means the taxes coming from the states equal only one third of the current federal budget.  The rest of the budget costs – the welfare and Medicaid and meals-on-wheels redistribution scams should be taken out of the federal budget.

Who spends my money wisest: me or the federal government?

Since they are not constitutional, those programs should not be funded by the federal government.  But let's not kill them.  There are compassionate origins of these programs and Americans are a very compassionate people.  The feds should turn these programs into charities. 

That's right.  That's what they are.  There exists no God-given right to your neighbor's bread when you will not work in the fields.  There exists no God-given right to education, or health care, or a guaranteed retirement at age 65.  After some small review, God-given rights include personal property, self-protection, worship, life, and liberty.  The rest seem like a Ponzie scheme.

But if a compassionate America wants to donate money, to the charity of Welfare -- which is exactly what it is, then they should be allowed.  Welfare, as a charity, can be managed nationally or locally.  The same goes for Medicaid and Head Start and the myriad of current redistribution schemes the federal government has used to buy votes from a group or class.

Put the welfare, or Head Start, or the West Virginia Byrd Museum of Roadside Art up against other charities -- like churches and synagogues -- and we'll be able to see exactly where the culture values welfare as, say, opposed to paying crack-addicted mothers who want to have out-of-wedlock babies.

And it makes every taxpayer ask the question, "who spends my money wisest: me or the federal government?"

We all know the answer to that.

~ Dexter

A Tale of Two Economies

Iraq		North Korea
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness Positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.		The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

There exist currently two nations occupying the opposite poles of a geopolitical petrie dish.  One cannot now be separated from the influence of the United States of America.  The other cannot be separated from the ideology and the results -- taken to extremes -- of the communist philosophy.  Twenty months ago there were few differences between the two.  Both lived under tyrannical despots.  Civilians in both nations were starving and terrified to speak dissent.  But something happened.

The most powerful nation in the world sent the most powerful military in the world to sweep away thirty years' of despotism and tyranny in Iraq.  Once assembled, the spearhead of the military operations took less than a month before organized and uniformed conflict ceased.  The U.S. forces had won.

Since that time the unorganized terrorists remaining in Iraq, and those Islamic militants answering the call to jihad, have made life and civil management difficult.  But not impossible.  The world witnessed eight million Iraqis voting on January 30.  Eight million Iraqis defied the terrorists and mullahs and went to polling places under the threat of murder.  The U.S. and Iraqi troops guarded polling places but it was still the personal bravery of eight million Iraqis who voted and then dipped their forefinger into blue ink, creating an indisputable mark of resistance to tyranny and the will to have democracy.

Another nation stands as a threat to its own citizens, its neighbors, and specifically to the United States.  This nation has a history of military confrontation.  Shortly after World War II, this nation decided to send 70,000 troops to attack its southern neighbor.  At the end of the "conflict," more than 33,000 Americans, 16,000 U.N. troops, and possibly two million more were dead.  The result of the conflict was a stalemate that left an eventual 22 million people under the communist rule of a descendancy dictatorship.  The current ruler is the son of the ruler who lost the war in 1953.  The next ruler is expected to be the son of the current dictator.

Why is this important?

There can be no better side-by-side comparison of political philosophies.  There can be no better side-by-side comparison of national influence on peoples and cultures.  The only conclusion that can reasonably be made is that America is a national savior.  American has brought the following to Iraq:

1)  Liberty.  This is defined as self-determination as a nationalistic community.
2)  Freedom.  This is defined as personal self-determination with regard to a society, a government, or the market.
3)  Security.  American lives and prayers surround this nation and provide a barrier to malevolent nations, such as Iran or Syria, while the Iraqis rebuild their nation.

Communism has brought the following to North Korea:

1)  Isolation.  They are isolated from markets.  They are isolated from neighbors.  They are isolated from information.
2)  Starvation.  They cannot feed their people.  The reports of the inhumanity that brings are frightening.
3)  Tyranny.  Kim Jung Il (the fellow in charge during the Korean war) handed dictatorial power to Kim Jung Il (his son).  The Ils have lived in lavish lifestyles and decadence for decades while their people die from disease, starvation, and political pogroms.

The free market of liberty is the biggest difference between the bright future for Iraqis and the black hole present-day in North Korea.  This is why the two countries provide one of the most valuable comparisons of success and failure.  Democracy is necessary for liberty.  A free market is necessary for democracy.  One nation has a free market.  The other nation has starvation and looming war.

Beyond the philosophical or macro-economic, Americans must learn from these countries.

Who do you trust? 

Socialists (in the guise of Democrat candidates) have tried to soft-sell socialism and the benevolence of communism for over sixty years.  The Amiable Dunce, Ronald Reagan, proved the superiority of republican democracy, liberty, and God-given rights over socialism and communism.  The Soviet Union fell under his leadership.

Socialists (specifically Hillary Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, and their friends like Barbara Boxer) have been telling us of the folly of Iraq and the virtues of China and other Sino-communist paradises like North Korea.  The more recent Amiable Dunce, George W. Bush, has been preaching the necessity of republican democracy for peace and stability in Iraq, Iran, the rest of the Middle East, and even in North Korea.  Republican democracy's seeds in Iraq sprout their first fruit in Iraq and in all their neighbors.  Libya, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority agree to work with the United States (not the U.N.) toward peace and dismantling of WMD programs.  The House of Saud and other tyrannical Islamic principalities in Qatar and Sudan are contemplating democratic reforms.

The evidence is conclusive: no one should ever trust the socialists like Hillary or Teddy ever again.  Their track record is almost perfect -- failure.

Republican democracy, free markets, and personal liberty at the root of both, will bring peace to the middle east (if anything can).  And in five years George W. Bush and his cabinet have changed the world for the better more than all the socialists, communists, and their fellow-travelers combined in the past sixty years.

The two quotes at the top cannot go unattributed.  Now that everyone knows the truth the sources provide the perfect backdrop to their past and futures.

Iraq's quote is from Thomas Paine.  As one of the founders of the American Revolution, Mr. Paine knew the role of government in a free society.  His quote comes from his essay on "The Rights of Man."

North Korea's quote?  It comes from the father of death and tyranny around the world, Karl Marx.  No single man can claim ownership of the communist manifesto and the source of the death of more than 200 million people (by some estimates) in just the past century.  No single criminal has killed more people than the governments of the people who fell to communism.

Now, who do you trust?

 

~ Dexter