Gun control isn't about guns, it's about control. The intention of the Second Amendment is to prevent control. Last Wednesday's post about gun rights being inalienable whether or not they are written, was about what we are born with rather than what we are given. What we are given is called 'positive rights'. What we are born with are called natural rights. What laws are supposed to prevent being taken from us are called 'negative rights', and natural rights are 'negative rights'.
President Obama and others said we must "protect the children", sometimes adding "at all costs" or "at whatever cost". But others in the past have said that we cannot protect one person's rights at the expense of another.
On Saturday at one of the many pro gun-right rallies held across the nation, former Marine Damon Locke said to applause at a Florida rally he had helped
organize, "We are law-abiding citizens, business owners, military, and we are not
going to be responsible for other people's criminal actions."
What lesson does it send to children and to young adults to learn their political leaders have a desire to protect them by diminishing the right of law-abiding citizens? What lesson does it send to demonstrate that when a problem arises, the only means their leaders can think of is to destroy the Constitution?
What lesson, when they are old enough to stop to think that the utilitarian and pragmatic ideas coming out of Washington have gone from the fallacy of the greatest good for the greatest number, to using children as pawns in the fight to control the weapons without which we could not protect our First Amendment?
The right to bear arms does not say which kind of arms. Certainly we do not want live cannons and mortars in our neighbors' back yards, so we ban those things. That isn't about control, it is about immediate safety; in other words, if a cannon shot a round from suburbs of Detroit, where would the round hit, and does anyone have a right to fire a cannon anywhere except on a training field? What if it was not properly maintained and it blew up? We wouldn't let people have tiny nuclear reactors, if they existed, in their homes for their electrical needs, because when those devices have accidents, they are often irreparable.
"The Second Amendment was not written to
protect your right to shoot deer. It was written to protect your right
to shoot tyrants if they take over the government," said Judge Andrew Napolitano.
© Curtis Edward Clark 2012
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Monday, January 21, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Gun Control and the Second Amendment
President Obama's stance, indeed the stand of anyone who is against ownership of guns or of specific guns and/or of specific bullets, clips, or other portions of guns, are acting as utilitarians. This is against the concept of natural rights inherent in the Constitution.
Opponents of such restrictions are fighting it on grounds of the Second Amendment. But they are fighting on the grounds that it is that Amendment which gives us the right. It is not. That merely states the right which existed before it was written. Indeed, James Madison and others were fearful that if some of man's natural rights were put into a Bill of Rights, it would seem as if that was the limit of them, that there were no others. But more than that, many members of Congress knew that by listing some of them it would open them to scrutiny 'as written'. In other words, while all natural rights belonged to Man, the way one or another was written could be argued against and altered.
That has happened in the modern case of the Second Amendment. The right does not exist because it is written; it was written because it exists, and because some Congressional leaders believed it necessary to say they existed.
A Bill of Rights was not only unnecessary, but would even be dangerous. James Madison agreed with Alexander Hamilton, who asked, "For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do [by Congress]? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?"
The harming of another in his person or property is not a right, natural or otherwise. The restriction of a natural right is the prerogative only of a tyranny.
© Curtis Edward Clark 2012
Opponents of such restrictions are fighting it on grounds of the Second Amendment. But they are fighting on the grounds that it is that Amendment which gives us the right. It is not. That merely states the right which existed before it was written. Indeed, James Madison and others were fearful that if some of man's natural rights were put into a Bill of Rights, it would seem as if that was the limit of them, that there were no others. But more than that, many members of Congress knew that by listing some of them it would open them to scrutiny 'as written'. In other words, while all natural rights belonged to Man, the way one or another was written could be argued against and altered.
That has happened in the modern case of the Second Amendment. The right does not exist because it is written; it was written because it exists, and because some Congressional leaders believed it necessary to say they existed.
A Bill of Rights was not only unnecessary, but would even be dangerous. James Madison agreed with Alexander Hamilton, who asked, "For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do [by Congress]? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?"
The harming of another in his person or property is not a right, natural or otherwise. The restriction of a natural right is the prerogative only of a tyranny.
© Curtis Edward Clark 2012
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
On the 20 Year Anniversary of Ruby Ridge
Ruby Ridge energized the radical militarized part of the right wing in a way it had not been energized for years. Ruby Ridge was the event in which the U.S. government set out to determine whether a man who had bought land and moved his family there to get away from what he called a corrupt world, was "connected to" white supremacist or anti-government groups.
What libertarian--and even we Objectivists--are not opposed to the government? It seems that some of our 21st century objections come right from this wrongful use of government power that then turned to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, where it killed 76 people, after a 51-day standoff, by accidentally starting their building on fire. These two events were cited by Timothy McVeigh as one reason for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing.
But no right wing sentiment is justification for taking the lives of other innocent people, as McVeigh did. Whether it is justification for killing certain guilty officers of the government in an act of revolution is yet another question. During the American Revolution there were patriotic Americans who detested the acts of the British government, but rationally set forth their reasons to say it wasn't enough for a revolution.
Yet, short of killing specific government officers guilty of acting with disregard toward the Constitution, what other means do the American people actually have for unseating an evil government? How can America have its own 'Arab Spring'?
Sara Weaver, one of the survivors of Ruby Ridge, said she is devastated each time someone commits a violent act in the name of Ruby Ridge. "It killed me inside," she said of the Oklahoma City bombing. "I knew what it was like to lose a family member in violence. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."
Ms. Weaver, who's older brother was killed by officers in an ambush, and who's mother was killed as she opened her front door while holding one of her babies, by a bullet to the head by one of the government snipers, did not say it was wrong to kill innocent people, as McVeigh had done. Weaver only talked about losing family members in violence. One is not the same as the other. McVeigh was clearly wrong; but was the government? A wrongful death settlement left Ms. Weaver and her sister each $1million. Today the survivors would ask for more, much more.
The Whiskey Rebellion was the first instance of the government using its force against Americans opposed to its use of power. During President Washington's first term Alexander Hamilton needed to raise money to pay federal debts, and persuaded Congress to pass an excise tax on the manufacture of whiskey. The tax was resisted, as it appeared that the eastern "big business" whiskey producers were being favored. When a taxman went to one area of western Pennsylvania, more than 500 armed men resisted. This should have been a wake up call to the new government that it was doing something wrong, but it didn't work. President Washington told the States to call out their militia to quell the resistance, and then he rode at the head of those forces, 15,000 strong. What better demonstration of government force than to have the President lead the army against you?
This use of federal armed power against Americans was one of the reasons for the formation of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, which later repealed the tax. And now we have the spectacle of President Obama's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law Dec. 31, 2011. "President Obama [ ] will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. The President can put you or I into jail indefinitely, without a cause presented to us and without an attorney--if he alone says so.
There is currently a preliminary federal injunction blocking its enforcement. Truth-Out.org said, "US District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York Katherine B. Forrest agreed [that a part of the NDAA would prevent journalists from talking to the enemy]. In a 68-page opinion, she wrote [that journalist Chris] Hedges' and his co-plaintiffs fears that section 1021 could impact their First Amendment rights are 'chilling,' 'reasonable' and 'real'."
But it could be used against you, me, our neighbors, our family members as well, if the President--and the President alone has the authority--decides that an American citizen, anywhere in the world including in our own home, was:
"a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces,"These fears are 'chilling,' 'reasonable' and 'real' because neither Congress nor the president defined the terms 'substantial support,' 'associated forces' or 'directly supported', not to mention that neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban can always be easily identified, and that a 'belligerent act' could be anything, including spitting on the sidewalk in a display of your disdain.
President Obama is energizing most of the right wing, both of the sort that has religious sensibilities, and the sort that says their guns will have to be taken from their cold, dead fingers. But he's not where the trouble began; he's only the trouble we elected.
We must stand for our state's sovereignty, our unalienable rights, above all for our individualism against the behemoth that is flying drones in our skies above us, and that is listening to our every phone and internet conversation for the secret words that trigger an investigation to determine whether we are 'connected to' this, that, or the other thing, or whatever it wants to call a 'belligerent act'.
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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Goulash Collectivism in the US
It doesn't matter how large government becomes, when it's doing only what is proper to its powers according to the Constitution.
'Goulash collectivism' is the hodge-podge of the various political policies we live under, from LBJ's 'Great Society', from FDR's government employment of the unemployed, from JFK's altruistic "ask what you can do for your country"; to social security, to unending unemployment payments, to phony 'green' energy programs that destroy the oil and coal industries we still depend on, to our new insurance program of 'buy-it-or-get-taxed-for-not-doing-it' policy, to the over-all dogged and ferocious meddling by government in our lives.
That we are employing this goulash collectivism "is not just a fringe view," wrote Mark Trumbull, in The Christian Science Monitor. In a poll, "A majority said it should not be the government's role to redistribute wealth, and a majority said they prefer 'a smaller government providing less services'."
No, it is not just a fringe view, though it may be said that it isn't the left wing progressives who are going to admit it. But it is odd how those progressives can turn and twist the message of prior leaders to fit their own agenda. President Lincoln, said President Obama last year, told us "that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves." He wanted to establish that the redistribution of wealth (his words, not mine) was something we cannot do at all for ourselves--as if it was something that ought to be done in the first place.
While we should not even be trying to do such a thing for ourselves, should we doing it through government, and should a political leader turn the words of other leaders into what they were not meant to say? The things that people "cannot do, or cannot well do, for themselves, fall into two classes," Lincoln said. The first class "embraces all crimes, misdemeanors and non-performance of contracts. The other embraces all which...requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself."
In the last few years the case has been made that Lincoln was a socialist. Even the politically libertarian Congressman Ron Paul has gotten into that act. But it is clear from the quote that our current President used Lincoln's words out of context. Lincoln also said, "I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights." That is libertarianism, not socialism; it upholds the Ninth Amendment and the idea of individual sovereignty.
It's clear that the progressives could throw as many progressive-sounding quotes from Lincoln as anyone else could throw freedom-loving quotes, but it is another thing altogether to use a quote out of context.
"Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty," LBJ told us to justify his meddling. Through his "Economic Opportunity Act of 1964" he began to transfer money from those who had, to those who had not, from "each according to his ability, to each according to his need," just as Marx said ought to be done.
This is not the original purpose of any part of the Constitution, as described by any of the Founders, yet the poverty of those who receive it no worse than it was in 1776--except in comparison to those who are not impoverished. Poor is poor. Yet, the poverty guidelines for 2012 are $11,170 for an individual, while the average income for all Americans is $47,000. So 'poor' is measured as one-quarter of the average, while in the first years of our nation one-quarter of the average would have been a God-send. And yet James Madison said, "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." He saw the black-and-white of the meaning of the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson, forecasting what Marx would later say was the proper thing, was more more on the moral mark than Madison, when he wrote, "To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012
'Goulash collectivism' is the hodge-podge of the various political policies we live under, from LBJ's 'Great Society', from FDR's government employment of the unemployed, from JFK's altruistic "ask what you can do for your country"; to social security, to unending unemployment payments, to phony 'green' energy programs that destroy the oil and coal industries we still depend on, to our new insurance program of 'buy-it-or-get-taxed-for-not-doing-it' policy, to the over-all dogged and ferocious meddling by government in our lives.
That we are employing this goulash collectivism "is not just a fringe view," wrote Mark Trumbull, in The Christian Science Monitor. In a poll, "A majority said it should not be the government's role to redistribute wealth, and a majority said they prefer 'a smaller government providing less services'."
No, it is not just a fringe view, though it may be said that it isn't the left wing progressives who are going to admit it. But it is odd how those progressives can turn and twist the message of prior leaders to fit their own agenda. President Lincoln, said President Obama last year, told us "that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves." He wanted to establish that the redistribution of wealth (his words, not mine) was something we cannot do at all for ourselves--as if it was something that ought to be done in the first place.
While we should not even be trying to do such a thing for ourselves, should we doing it through government, and should a political leader turn the words of other leaders into what they were not meant to say? The things that people "cannot do, or cannot well do, for themselves, fall into two classes," Lincoln said. The first class "embraces all crimes, misdemeanors and non-performance of contracts. The other embraces all which...requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself."
In the last few years the case has been made that Lincoln was a socialist. Even the politically libertarian Congressman Ron Paul has gotten into that act. But it is clear from the quote that our current President used Lincoln's words out of context. Lincoln also said, "I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights." That is libertarianism, not socialism; it upholds the Ninth Amendment and the idea of individual sovereignty.
It's clear that the progressives could throw as many progressive-sounding quotes from Lincoln as anyone else could throw freedom-loving quotes, but it is another thing altogether to use a quote out of context.
And what is really out of context is a debate over the size of government versus its proper purposes, as were described by Lincoln. If a government is doing only what is proper to it according to the Constitution, it doesn't matter how large it becomes. If the Federal and State governments were doing only what is proper and Constitutional, governments would be larger than they are now if we had the same number of citizens as mainland China.Yet, the very things that progressives advocate are social programs which Originalist readings show the Founders were entirely against. Until the "Affordable Health Care for America Act" was passed, the biggest social overhaul of government services and of social justice programs was the Great Society, the various acts passed by the progressive President Lyndon Johnson. His anti-poverty program was the most far-reaching piece of socialism in US history.
"Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty," LBJ told us to justify his meddling. Through his "Economic Opportunity Act of 1964" he began to transfer money from those who had, to those who had not, from "each according to his ability, to each according to his need," just as Marx said ought to be done.
This is not the original purpose of any part of the Constitution, as described by any of the Founders, yet the poverty of those who receive it no worse than it was in 1776--except in comparison to those who are not impoverished. Poor is poor. Yet, the poverty guidelines for 2012 are $11,170 for an individual, while the average income for all Americans is $47,000. So 'poor' is measured as one-quarter of the average, while in the first years of our nation one-quarter of the average would have been a God-send. And yet James Madison said, "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." He saw the black-and-white of the meaning of the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson, forecasting what Marx would later say was the proper thing, was more more on the moral mark than Madison, when he wrote, "To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Obama's Economic Collective
President
Obama's recent remarks about how people didn't do things on their own is not
the first time he has slammed individualism, and raised the specter of a
collectivist-thinking mind. "If you’ve got a business," he said,
"you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen," he said, in
his now famous remarks on interdependency.
In
December of 2011, at a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, Obama said that a free
market "speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of
too much government." But he followed that by saying, "It doesn’t
work. It has never worked."
He
went on with other remarks:
- "We simply cannot return to this brand of 'you’re on your own' economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country."
- 'It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and in its future."
- " I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own."
- "Factories where people thought they would retire suddenly picked up and went overseas, where workers were cheaper."
These
remarks are the message of 'social justice' that the President has worked for
his entire political life. But if you're not "on your own", where are
you? Are you in a work environment made impossible for management by government
regulations?
How does an economy "invest in its people"? I
worked in a profit-sharing company where the idea was that we were greater
together. But the slackers always lowered my shares and sometimes left me with
nothing. If I had owned my own shop and my own welder I would have made more
money, so how was standing in that factory part of being something
"greater"?
And
the only reason for a factory to go where wages are cheaper, is because
something is preventing them from paying lower wages here, thereby keeping the
jobs here. You can't have that fact both ways. It's either-or.
The
President wants an America in which everyone plays by the same rules, as he
said in his 2012 State of the Union Address, which was--over and over
again--about 'economic fairness'. Yet, he injects tax-payer's money into
companies he likes, in order to
change the competition in the supply-and-demand market.
Like all good progressives Mr. Obama wants to see the playing field change. So is must be asked, what does he think is happening when an upstart company makes big inroads into someone else's industry? The only true 'economic justice' to be had is when the distribution of capital moves from what the buyers wanted to what they want now. That is not something that can be forced by government. E-85 was mandated by the Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988, 24 years ago. Yet in most parts of the nation, you have to go online to look for stations that sell it.
What if government could force a market to rise from little—or from nothing? "We are all painfully aware of the Soviet style mandate that requires 10% of petroleum to be comprised of ethanol. This unconstitutional mandate has killed jobs, driven up the cost of fuel and food, lowered gas mileage, and damaged car engines," said RS RedState.
Like all good progressives Mr. Obama wants to see the playing field change. So is must be asked, what does he think is happening when an upstart company makes big inroads into someone else's industry? The only true 'economic justice' to be had is when the distribution of capital moves from what the buyers wanted to what they want now. That is not something that can be forced by government. E-85 was mandated by the Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988, 24 years ago. Yet in most parts of the nation, you have to go online to look for stations that sell it.
What if government could force a market to rise from little—or from nothing? "We are all painfully aware of the Soviet style mandate that requires 10% of petroleum to be comprised of ethanol. This unconstitutional mandate has killed jobs, driven up the cost of fuel and food, lowered gas mileage, and damaged car engines," said RS RedState.
Power
Industry News wrote that "The Environmental Protection Agency has slapped
a $6.8 million penalty on oil refiners for not blending cellulosic ethanol into
gasoline, jet fuel and other products. [C]ellulosic ethanol does not exist.
It remains a fantasy fuel. EPA might as well mandate that Exxon hire
leprechauns. So far this year, just as in 2011, the supply of cellulosic bio
fuel in gallons totals zero." [Emphasis added]
Is
it fair for a President--or anyone who controls the tax purse--to determine
what should be forced on the unconsuming public? Do you not think that $6.8M
penalty doesn't mean jobs are lost? What about a safe pipeline not allowed from
Canada, and wells not drilled in the Gulf, and ore mines not mined in Alaska?
Why are those concepts of 'economic justice' the very sort this President
destroys?
If the rules of the market do not "speak" to rugged individualism, why destroy individualism? Why not destroy the rules that prevent individualism in the market? Why not create rules that allow competition?
If the rules of the market do not "speak" to rugged individualism, why destroy individualism? Why not destroy the rules that prevent individualism in the market? Why not create rules that allow competition?
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Obama's Practice of Taqiyya-style Lying
Islamicdictionary.com defines 'taqiyya' as "Dissimulation - to conceal, partially conceal or
disguise one's true feelings, beliefs or information when there is
threat of death or serious harm and when there is a threat of great
evil."
"In practical terms," says Islam Watch, "it is manifested as dissimulation, lying, deceiving, vexing and confounding with the intention of deflecting attention, foiling or pre-emptive blocking. It is currently employed in fending off and neutralising any criticism of Islam or Muslims"
From a description provided by a website about deception, lying is something practiced by many people in all cultures. "A sociopath is typically defined as someone who lies incessantly to get their way and does so with little concern for others. A sociopath is often goal-oriented (i.e., lying is focused - it is done to get one's way)."
The myth raised in 2007 that Obama was schooled in a radical madrassa does not change the fact that he did, in fact, go to an Islamic school. "[In] January 1968," said WorldNetWeekly, "Obama was registered as a Muslim at Jakarta’s Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro...After attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was enrolled – also as a Muslim, according to documents – in the Besuki Primary School, a public school in Jakarta..." And according to Obama's own autobiography, "the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Quranic studies."
This is not an effort to dismiss Islam. It is to make a connection, that Obama was in contact with other Muslims who must regularly practice 'taqiyya' as part of their culture, and he would have at least learned what it was, and as a boy might naturally have tried it.
But why would the American President need or want to resort to this form of false-hood? He would do it for the purpose of fending off and neutralizing any criticism of what he--and we--know to be the most progressive policies ever advocated.
So let's name one, specifically that pledge he made over and over again, that if the health care bill passed you would be able to keep your health care and your doctors. Given the ideas contained within the bill, many right wing and independent critics said it could not happen, that many people would lose their plans or their doctors or both.
In January of 2010--2010, mind you, the President said, "I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge." [emphasis added] Aside from the fact that nothing was snuck past us, but rather Speaker Pelosi said we had to pass it "to see what is in it," there were people who wrote things that made the President's pledge false, and the White House had to know it. The website Scared Monkeys asked, why the President was not more upset about it. "Wouldn’t one think the reaction would be outrage and that he would get to the bottom of this reprehensible action perpetrated on We the People?"
No, he would not be more upset, because making the pledge in the first place was a dissimulation tactic intended to make those who sat on the fence feel a little softer about having their health care messed with. If you were one of those who had no health care, you wouldn't necessarily care if others could keep their plans and doctors, so long as you got a plan and a doctor.
What Mr. Obama sees as truly reprehensible is an axiom of progressive politics--that 'positive rights' (as opposed to negative rights) are natural human rights--has been allowed to go unfulfilled in the area of health care. Don't forget that Hillary Clinton also describes herself as progressive, and that President Bill Clinton's 1997 health care plan was dubbed 'Hillary care' because it was she who did all the behind-the-scenes work to put it together.
In 2010, Medicare said healthcare costs would nearly double to $4.5 trillion by 2019, accounting for 19.3 percent--almost a fifth--of our GDP. But by June, 2011, health care spending reached an all-time high of 18.2 percent. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this percentage will double again over the next 25 years to 31% of GDP.
If you were a 'goal-oriented' President trying to endow government-sponsored 'rights' upon a nation, wouldn't you use a lot of deflecting, foiling or pre-emptive-blocking-taqiyya in your speeches?
And why wouldn't anyone try to demonstrate before nearly 4 years had passed, that you constantly used the art of dissimulation?
© Curtis Edward Clark 2011
"In practical terms," says Islam Watch, "it is manifested as dissimulation, lying, deceiving, vexing and confounding with the intention of deflecting attention, foiling or pre-emptive blocking. It is currently employed in fending off and neutralising any criticism of Islam or Muslims"
From a description provided by a website about deception, lying is something practiced by many people in all cultures. "A sociopath is typically defined as someone who lies incessantly to get their way and does so with little concern for others. A sociopath is often goal-oriented (i.e., lying is focused - it is done to get one's way)."
The myth raised in 2007 that Obama was schooled in a radical madrassa does not change the fact that he did, in fact, go to an Islamic school. "[In] January 1968," said WorldNetWeekly, "Obama was registered as a Muslim at Jakarta’s Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro...After attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was enrolled – also as a Muslim, according to documents – in the Besuki Primary School, a public school in Jakarta..." And according to Obama's own autobiography, "the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Quranic studies."
This is not an effort to dismiss Islam. It is to make a connection, that Obama was in contact with other Muslims who must regularly practice 'taqiyya' as part of their culture, and he would have at least learned what it was, and as a boy might naturally have tried it.
But why would the American President need or want to resort to this form of false-hood? He would do it for the purpose of fending off and neutralizing any criticism of what he--and we--know to be the most progressive policies ever advocated.
Do not for one minute deny, if you are on the left, if you are a liberal or progressive, or a democrat, that Obama's are not the most progressive ideas in American history to be implemented. You are doing him a disservice if you deny it. Give him credit for doing what you have always wanted in American politics.But Mr. Obama knows of what he speaks, and because he knows, he must use the tactics of dissimulation that he must have heard over and over again living in Indonesia. His two Islamic fathers may have used the tactic in his presence.
So let's name one, specifically that pledge he made over and over again, that if the health care bill passed you would be able to keep your health care and your doctors. Given the ideas contained within the bill, many right wing and independent critics said it could not happen, that many people would lose their plans or their doctors or both.
In January of 2010--2010, mind you, the President said, "I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge." [emphasis added] Aside from the fact that nothing was snuck past us, but rather Speaker Pelosi said we had to pass it "to see what is in it," there were people who wrote things that made the President's pledge false, and the White House had to know it. The website Scared Monkeys asked, why the President was not more upset about it. "Wouldn’t one think the reaction would be outrage and that he would get to the bottom of this reprehensible action perpetrated on We the People?"
No, he would not be more upset, because making the pledge in the first place was a dissimulation tactic intended to make those who sat on the fence feel a little softer about having their health care messed with. If you were one of those who had no health care, you wouldn't necessarily care if others could keep their plans and doctors, so long as you got a plan and a doctor.
What Mr. Obama sees as truly reprehensible is an axiom of progressive politics--that 'positive rights' (as opposed to negative rights) are natural human rights--has been allowed to go unfulfilled in the area of health care. Don't forget that Hillary Clinton also describes herself as progressive, and that President Bill Clinton's 1997 health care plan was dubbed 'Hillary care' because it was she who did all the behind-the-scenes work to put it together.
In 2010, Medicare said healthcare costs would nearly double to $4.5 trillion by 2019, accounting for 19.3 percent--almost a fifth--of our GDP. But by June, 2011, health care spending reached an all-time high of 18.2 percent. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this percentage will double again over the next 25 years to 31% of GDP.
If you were a 'goal-oriented' President trying to endow government-sponsored 'rights' upon a nation, wouldn't you use a lot of deflecting, foiling or pre-emptive-blocking-taqiyya in your speeches?
And why wouldn't anyone try to demonstrate before nearly 4 years had passed, that you constantly used the art of dissimulation?
© Curtis Edward Clark 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Obama Economics is Artificially Hobbesian
We are not flawed by nature, as Hobbes believed; yet we are not the way nature intended, either. 'Natural law', on which even the UN Charter is partly based, doesn't allow for such things as jihad, no matter what Hobbes may have thought about man being in a constant state of war.
It was Locke whose ideas were on the money, and from which were derived the Bill of Rights, in which the Ninth Amendment states that we still retain those natural rights which are not enumerated in the other Amendments. http://teapartyoriginalism.blogspot.com/…
If you believe in Hobbes, you can accept the idea, if not the form, of jihad. If you believe in Jefferson's version of natural law, jihad is an abomination. When we literally had our gun sights on Osama bin Laden and our men were told to stand down and not take him out, that was an abomination; by the same logic that was used, we would not have killed Hitler in 1939, when he invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland.
The 'command economics' of the Obama Administration and some similar actions in previous administrations are an abomination against the Ninth Amendment. They put Americans in a state of war against other Americans--as all command economics have done. The most famous of them, of course, are Social Security and Medicare; but the Tea Party, nor other conservatives, are calling for their abolition. They merely want to make them smaller, or in the case of S.S., to privatize it. That doesn't remove it from the field of command economics.
No, we are are not acting in the way nature intended, so we are not the way nature intended us to be. We are fulfilling in many ways the wrongful description of being a species always at war with itself, because we are not listening to John Locke who told us "...that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions."
"...command economies are unable to efficiently allocate goods because of the knowledge problem - the central planner's inability to discern how much of a good should be produced. Shortages and surpluses are a common consequence of command economies." Investopedia
Yet, our government under President Obama is now telling us how much coal, versus how much oil, versus how much nuclear, versus how much "green" electricity we are to produce. It has (as of this writing) approved only one permit for oil drilling in the Gulf since the BP spill. Obama hates coal and says there is no such thing as 'clean' burning of it; nuclear reactors are off the table; and yet this Administration has given hundreds of millions to certain cities to build "recharching" stations for the coming of the electric car--which the government is "commanding" be built.
This administration is even mandating the demise of the incandescent light bulb so that America doesn't have to produce any new electricity--even when they are pebble bed modular reactors, very safe and extremely cheap.
The idea is to maintain the current levels of electric usage, even while consumers know of much less expensive ways to run an economy:
1>produce more electricity, thereby putting more people to work and lowering the cost of power;
2>quit telling us how to use our capital, which only creates an artificial but untrue proof of Hobbe's war among men. Or perhaps it isn't true that men such as Obama, Harding, FDR, and Hillary Clinton (Clinton-care) are not true Hobbesians. Maybe they think Hobbes was correct and simply "work" his system as if no systems with built-in justice existed:
"Locke's state of nature, however, does contain right and wrong, and so natural rights. Thus, 'to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men.'". Joseph J. Ellis
Governments ought not be 'secured' in order to institute intellectual and economic wars among men, but to prevent them with open markets of ideas and goods. If we continue on the Obama Road to ruin, our great-grandchildren will be burning candles and wondering why the word "I" has been banned.
© Curtis Edward Clark 2011
Visit the Atheist-AA Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/atheist-aa
It was Locke whose ideas were on the money, and from which were derived the Bill of Rights, in which the Ninth Amendment states that we still retain those natural rights which are not enumerated in the other Amendments. http://teapartyoriginalism.blogspot.com/…
If you believe in Hobbes, you can accept the idea, if not the form, of jihad. If you believe in Jefferson's version of natural law, jihad is an abomination. When we literally had our gun sights on Osama bin Laden and our men were told to stand down and not take him out, that was an abomination; by the same logic that was used, we would not have killed Hitler in 1939, when he invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland.
The 'command economics' of the Obama Administration and some similar actions in previous administrations are an abomination against the Ninth Amendment. They put Americans in a state of war against other Americans--as all command economics have done. The most famous of them, of course, are Social Security and Medicare; but the Tea Party, nor other conservatives, are calling for their abolition. They merely want to make them smaller, or in the case of S.S., to privatize it. That doesn't remove it from the field of command economics.
No, we are are not acting in the way nature intended, so we are not the way nature intended us to be. We are fulfilling in many ways the wrongful description of being a species always at war with itself, because we are not listening to John Locke who told us "...that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions."
"...command economies are unable to efficiently allocate goods because of the knowledge problem - the central planner's inability to discern how much of a good should be produced. Shortages and surpluses are a common consequence of command economies." Investopedia
Yet, our government under President Obama is now telling us how much coal, versus how much oil, versus how much nuclear, versus how much "green" electricity we are to produce. It has (as of this writing) approved only one permit for oil drilling in the Gulf since the BP spill. Obama hates coal and says there is no such thing as 'clean' burning of it; nuclear reactors are off the table; and yet this Administration has given hundreds of millions to certain cities to build "recharching" stations for the coming of the electric car--which the government is "commanding" be built.
This administration is even mandating the demise of the incandescent light bulb so that America doesn't have to produce any new electricity--even when they are pebble bed modular reactors, very safe and extremely cheap.
The idea is to maintain the current levels of electric usage, even while consumers know of much less expensive ways to run an economy:
1>produce more electricity, thereby putting more people to work and lowering the cost of power;
2>quit telling us how to use our capital, which only creates an artificial but untrue proof of Hobbe's war among men. Or perhaps it isn't true that men such as Obama, Harding, FDR, and Hillary Clinton (Clinton-care) are not true Hobbesians. Maybe they think Hobbes was correct and simply "work" his system as if no systems with built-in justice existed:
"Locke's state of nature, however, does contain right and wrong, and so natural rights. Thus, 'to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men.'". Joseph J. Ellis
Governments ought not be 'secured' in order to institute intellectual and economic wars among men, but to prevent them with open markets of ideas and goods. If we continue on the Obama Road to ruin, our great-grandchildren will be burning candles and wondering why the word "I" has been banned.
© Curtis Edward Clark 2011
Visit the Atheist-AA Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/atheist-aa
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Originalism vs. Cultural Relativity
Cultural relativism is the view that all beliefs, customs, and ethics are relative to the individual within his own social context. In other words, “right” and “wrong” are culture-specific; what is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and, since no universal standard of morality exists, no one has the right to judge another society’s customs. http://www.gotquestions.org/cultural-rel…
This has led to the Progressive idea of the Constitution as a "living document" that can be "interpreted" to include the current morally relativist positions of our political leaders and/or those who's political action committees support the campaigns of our leaders.
As a denial of "universal" human rights as protected specifically by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and by the Constitutional provision that Amendments must be enacted to change what is concretized in the Constitution, it is a denial that men have "unalienable" rights. Those unalienable rights are defined in natural law, and they vary somewhat between philosophers, but essentially they are a refutation of relativism.
President Obama's ideal of six years of national service to the United States government in return for school loans, which were made forbidden by lending institutions specifically so that this six year committment could be instituted, is one such case of relativism.
The first known case of relativism was the statement by Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not".
But if you believe that governments are constituted by the consent of the people, rather than coming from the blunt force of powerful people or from one faction or tribe being bigger and more terrifying than another, than you must believe relativism is wrong.
Consent of the governed is terminology of "popular sovereignty" as defined by Locke and Rousseau, whereby each individual gives up a bit of his freedom to a common government. Jefferson deduced that before any individual could give up such freedom to the "common sovereignty" that he himself must have "individual sovereignty". One cannot give up what one does not have to give.
"Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights—and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members." http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/indivi…
That statement is the direct denial of cultural relativism. So is the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights.
Cultural relativism taken to an extreme means a tribe still has the right to throw virgins into volcanoes, or to eat other men who happen to be in the way when the tribe is hunting for food, or to rape virgins in order to prevent getting HIV/AIDS when screwing other women who already have it. (This is a true scenario in some parts of Africa.)
"Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.
"An individualist is a man who says: “I will not run anyone’s life—nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone—nor sacrifice anyone to myself.” http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/indivi…
Do not make the mistake of believing that I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense, as a statement of moral relativism by a person, tribe, city, or nation, is superior to objective standards of ethics.
© 2010 FAMN LLC (MI)
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