WHO WE ARE AS A PEOPLE

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College

For those interested in the refugee crisis, a very intelligent perspective by Edward J Erler at California State Univ.

Nothing has provoked the ire of America’s bipartisan political class as much as Donald Trump’s recent proposal that the U.S. should suspend the acceptance of refugees from Syria and other terrorist-supporting nations until we find a way of perfecting the screening process to ensure that we are not admitting terrorists or terror sympathizers. On its face this proposal was not unreasonable. Most of these refugees do not have adequate documentation, intelligence agencies do not have sufficient information to determine whether or not they have terrorist connections or intend to engage in terrorism, and the heads of our security agencies have warned that active terrorists will inevitably slip through security screening cracks. Nor is it as if there was no reasonable alternative. Wouldn’t it have been better, as Trump and others have suggested, to address the refugee crisis by setting up security zones in Syria or other Middle Eastern countries where refugees could find safety and where Muslim nations might feel obligated to help finance their care? In addition to making sense from a national security perspective, this would also have been a more humane solution, since it would not have uprooted the refugees from their homelands and injected them into an alien way of life.

Why are our political leaders, despite these facts, willing to expose the nation to such potential danger?—a danger that is surely greater than we now imagine. One only has to observe the results of the refugee crisis in Europe to see what is in store for the American homeland. Yet the Obama administration, following Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in Germany, is adamant that the number of Syrian refugees—and Muslim refugees generally—must increase substantially. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who recently named Merkel as her favorite world leader, has frequently indicated that acceptance of refugees is an important reaffirmation of America’s commitment to diversity. It is a reaffirmation of “who we are as Americans,” she has said, as if the American character is defined by its unlimited openness to diversity. To show the bipartisan nature of this commitment, Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has used the same phrase to explain his approval of the refugee program. In both cases, the clear implication is that America’s commitment to diversity outweighs considerations of national security. Indeed, in what can only be called a self-willed delusion, proponents of the refugee program seem to believe that their commitment to diversity makes us stronger and more secure as a nation, and that any opposition to the program is racist, xenophobic, and most particularly Islamophobic.

Consider what this means. Germans have been warned that it is their duty to accommodate themselves to newly arrived refugees and not to place politically incorrect demands upon them—that is, not to demand that the refugees adapt to German ways. Some have advised German women in particular that if they don’t wish to be harassed by male refugees, they should cover their heads and be accompanied outside of the home by a male. Will this be a part of America’s politically correct future?

Merkel, like Obama, bases her immigration policy on a globalist view of the world. Secretary of State John Kerry propounded this view in a recent commencement address, warning Americans that we must prepare ourselves for a “borderless world.” But a world without borders is a world without citizens, and a world without citizens is a world without the rights and privileges that attach exclusively to citizenship. Rights and liberties exist only in separate and independent nations; they are the exclusive preserve of the nation-state. Constitutional government only succeeds in the nation-state, where the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. By contrast, to see the globalist principle in practice, look at the European Union. The EU is not a constitutional government; it is an administrative state ruled by unelected bureaucrats. It attempts to do away with both borders and citizens, and it replaces rights and liberty with welfare and regulation as the objects of its administrative rule. Constitutional government—to say nothing of liberal democracy—will not be a part of the politically correct, borderless world into which so many of our political leaders wish to usher us.
How did we reach such an impasse? The answer is simple, but no less astounding for its simplicity. It has been frequently observed by competent thinkers that Americans have abandoned the morality engendered by what the Declaration of Independence called the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The Declaration confidently proclaimed as its first principle the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” among them “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As part of a created (and therefore intelligible) universe, rights cannot be something private or subjective; they are part of an objective order. The idea that every right has a corresponding duty or obligation was essential to the social compact understanding of the American founding. Thus whatever was destructive of the public good or public happiness, however much it might have contributed to an individual’s private pleasures or imagined pleasures, was not a part of the “pursuit of happiness” and could be proscribed by society. Liberty was understood to be rational liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was understood to be the rational pursuit of happiness—that is to say, not only a natural right but a moral obligation as well.

Over the past century and more, this morality grounded in the American founding has been successfully eroded by Progressivism. This erosion is manifested today in the morality of value-free relativism. According to this new morality, all value judgments are equal. Reason cannot prove that one value is superior to or more beneficial than another, because values are not capable of rational analysis; they are merely idiosyncratic preferences. In this value-free universe, the only value that is “objectively” of higher rank is tolerance. Equal toleration of all values—what is called today a commitment to diversity—is the only “reasonable” position. And note that it is always called a commitment to diversity. It is a commitment because it cannot be rational in any strict sense—it exists in a value-free world from which reason has been expelled. The only support it can garner under such circumstances is the simple fact that it is preferred.

With respect to the commitment to diversity, the tolerance of those who are willing to tolerate you does not earn you much credit—it doesn’t require much of a commitment or sacrifice. If, however, you are willing to tolerate those who are pledged to kill you and destroy your way of life, tolerance represents a genuine commitment. Only such a deadly commitment confirms that tolerance is the highest value in a universe of otherwise equal values. Only such a deadly commitment signals a nation’s single-minded devotion to tolerance as the highest value by its willingness to sacrifice its sovereignty as proof of its commitment.

The common-sense citizen is forgiven for thinking this train of thought insane. But what other explanation could there be for the insistence of so many of our political leaders on risking the nation’s security—in light of what we see in Europe, one might even say their willingness to commit national suicide—by admitting refugees without regard to their hostility to our way of life and their wish to destroy us as a nation?

Note that these leaders show no such enthusiasm for admitting Christian refugees from Middle Eastern violence, or even Yazidis, who have suffered horribly from the ravages of Islamic terror. These refugees, of course, represent no danger to America. Only by admitting those who do represent a danger can we display to the world “who we are as a people”—a people willing to sacrifice ourselves to vouchsafe our commitment to tolerance.
A rational concern for our liberties as well as for national security weighs in against such reckless policies. Security experts warn that we don’t have enough homeland security agents to monitor suspected terrorists who are already in our country. If we increase the number of refugees from terrorist-supporting nations, greater security can only be provided by closer cooperation between the various security agencies and closer monitoring of the private lives of all Americans. The consequent loss of liberty will be extensive and will impact all areas of American life. This, we are told, will become the “new reality” or the “new normal,” and Americans will have to develop a “new mind-set” to deal with it. Europeans are well on their way to accepting terrorism as a daily part of their lives—surely Americans, we are told, can adapt as well. But Europeans are used to sacrificing liberties to the administrative state represented by the EU.
Will Americans acquiesce so easily?

The administrative state has not yet extinguished America’s love of liberty, although it surely has made significant inroads over the years as Americans have become inured to being bullied by bureaucrats of all stripes. The constant monitoring of citizens in the name of detecting terrorism will, if allowed, turn the nation into a security state where liberties will be easily and casually sacrificed to the constant threat of terrorism. Sacrificing liberty will be the price Americans pay to accommodate refugees—in other words, it is the sacrifice we must make on the altar of political correctness.

Remarkably, many politicians and pundits have argued that the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion prohibits Congress and the president from banning the emigration of people to the U.S. based on religion. Thus they characterized the proposal to suspend the entry of Syrian refugees and others from terrorist-supporting nations as a violation of the Constitution. But we must surely wonder how those who are not American citizens or legal resident aliens—indeed, even those who have never been present in the country—can assert rights under the Constitution. By the terms of the Constitution, free exercise of religion is one of the privileges and immunities attached to citizenship; it can hardly be said to be possessed by all those who seek refuge in, or wish to emigrate to, the United States. As a sovereign nation, it is beyond dispute that the U.S. has plenary power to determine the conditions for immigration. Except in a borderless world, it can hardly be claimed that free exercise of religion is a right possessed by all persons inhabiting the globe or even those who are potentially asylum seekers.

One condition for claiming refugee status in the Refugee Act of 1980 is religious persecution. This necessarily means that any applicant for religious asylum would have to submit to questioning about his religious beliefs and (presumably) the sincerity of those beliefs. Also, it is not beyond reason that a sovereign nation would be allowed to inquire whether the religious beliefs of an asylum seeker are compatible with the American constitutional order. Should asylum be extended to the adherents of religions that do not recognize the free exercise rights of other religions? Should those religions whose adherents refuse to pledge or give evidence that they would support free exercise be ineligible for asylum? Religion—and inquiry into religious belief—has always been part of the asylum law, and there is nothing in the Constitution that bars such inquiry on national security grounds. Indeed, a quick glance at Article I of the Constitution reveals that Congress has plenary power to “establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.” This has always been understood—by a necessary rule of inference—to mean that Congress also has plenary power to regulate immigration. Congress has wide latitude to choose the “necessary and proper” means to accomplish this end as long as it doesn’t violate some specific prohibition of the Constitution.

To sum up, only in the perfervid imaginations of the politically correct—those who reject the idea of borders—could the Syrian refugee controversy be confused with a constitutional controversy.
Our lax policies toward illegal immigration and the virtual open-borders policy of the Obama administration represent an attempt to move toward a borderless world as well as to aggrandize the power of the administrative state. It is now widely recognized that the Immigration Act of 1965 was intentionally designed to alter the racial and ethnic mix of the population of America. It has been an overwhelming success; demographers predict that by 2040 whites of European descent will no longer be a majority, having been displaced by people of Asian, African, Latin American, and Hispanic descent. For the most part—with the notable exception of Asians—these groups have supplied a significant clientele for the administrative state as it seeks to extend its reach and magnify its power. As such, it has redounded to the benefit of the Democratic Party—the party that favors the growth and extension of administrative state power. But make no mistake: illegal immigration has always had bipartisan support. Despite the fact that illegal immigration cuts against them politically, Republicans have always favored the cheap and exploitable labor of illegal aliens.

The Democrats, of course, have gotten the best of this bargain. After three generations, Latinos vote Democratic by more than a two-thirds majority. The Republicans cannot hope to compete for the Latino vote without becoming something very close to the Democratic Party, differing only at the margins. This is something that the Republican establishment would like to do, but it finds little support among rank-and-file Republicans. If the Republicans lose the 2016 election—if a party realignment fails—the party as currently constituted will, in all likelihood, no longer be competitive in future national elections.

Perhaps more importantly, America’s open-borders policy has allowed terrorists and criminals of all stripes to enter the country at will. In addition to Islamic terror groups, MS-13—a vicious Latin American gang involved in murder for hire, drug trafficking, human smuggling, slavery, and all other manner of crime—operates openly in the U.S. Even when illegal-alien criminals are deported, they easily return to commit further crimes. Surprisingly, this issue of illegal-alien crime has become an important issue in a presidential election for the first time this year. These criminals are aided and abetted by sanctuary cities—cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities in detaining illegal-alien criminals. This policy is the most baffling policy that can be imagined, as it results in criminals being deliberately released into the public where they continue to prey on innocent citizens. It is designed to show (what else?) our tolerance.

Securing our nation’s borders with a wall and by any other means necessary is favored by a majority of Americans, but the idea is considered vulgar and unacceptable by the progressive forces of History, forces which are clearing the obstacles to a borderless world. For these forces, the march of History is inevitable and any appeal to citizens and to the nation-state is anachronistic. It is not inevitable that these forces will have their way. But because of the demographic and political changes brought on by the open-borders regime, time grows short for the American people to reassert their sovereignty—that is, to stop the self-sacrifice which the political elites of both parties have determined is necessary to satisfy the gods of political correctness—those gods who are the guardians of the diversity which defines “who we are as a people.”

THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC

The Opioid Epidemic, physician generated, yes, it is almost entirely our fault

I can say that as a physician. In my professional career I have seen the use and abuse of opiates go from almost nothing to epidemic proportions. When I started my residency in 1987 in Washington DC, it was not common for patients to be on oral opiates. We did use Intravenous morphine quite a bit, but only in limited and necessary cases.

Now, almost 30 years later, I can say first hand that about half the patients that I admit to my ICU in any given day are on some kind of opiate medication prescribed by a physician, but also on gabapentin, neurontin, psychiatric medications, and more.  Sometimes I cannot believe the amount of prescriptions these patients are on, and it is not unusual to see a patient on at least 10 medications, and I have counted many cases of patients being on more than 20!!!! I always wonder how a patient can keep up with that kind of regimen, not to mention the poisonous effects of all this chemicals taken together.

One of the first things I do with the opiates is to try to taper them, not only because they interfere with patients respiratory and digestive function, but also because I believe that 90% of these patients do not need it.

The patients often complain, and some times they insult me, and they become very angry in some cases, especially the young patients that do not have much wrong with them except their polysubstance abuse and addictions. But I also have had patients that thank me for taking the effort, and make them realize that they can live without this medications, and usually with better quality.

Why are physicians doing this? why are they prescribing so many opiates? are patients having more pain than what they were having years ago?

There is probably no single answer, but I have found that people have now a very low tolerance for any kind of pain, and we have been led to believe that we should not suffer any kind of pain, anytime, anywhere. And it is true that one of our missions as physicians is to alleviate pain and suffering as much as we can, I do not believe that it should be done at the expense of harming patients in other ways. It is impossible to live our lives entirely pain-free, pain is a part of life as much as disease is.

I had one clue to the problem about a year ago when I had to be hospitalized for about 5 days with a kidney stone that would not go away and caused me great pain. I was initially given opiates for a couple of days, I was only given a few pills, because I found that IV toradol (a non-narcotic analgesic) gave me better control of the pain. But the effects of the few percocets or oxycodones I took were so severe in terms of constipation that I ended up with all sorts of laxatives to try to alleviate it (and I do not want to go into the details of what finally worked......). So while I was going thru this ordeal, I noticed that the nurse on every shift was writing something on the board in my room. There was a scale that measured my level of pain, and she taught me that they were evaluated on how well and how quickly I became pain free and stayed that way. So one of the measures of quality is pain control, which is good, but I think it is being carried on to extremes. So there are probably some bureaucrats in the health care system that are pushing this notion of pain free lives to stupid levels.

Physicians are probably writing all these prescriptions under pressure by patients, or maybe induced by pharma, but even if that were the case, it is ultimately the physicians responsibility to prescribe appropiately, nobody else’s. And maybe physicians do not realize the harm they are causing, otherwise it borders on the criminal if they are aware and still do it.

Finally, as a reflection of the gravity, but also ridiculousness of the situation, you have probably seen an ad on TV, I think it run on the superbowl, but it is also running regularly, that promotes the use of other medications to treat the chronic constipation caused by opiates. Really???? Instead of addressing the problem we are going to add one more drug to treat the side effects of another drug? and then what? we are going to add one more to treat the side effects of the drug we use to treat the constipation caused by the use of opiates?

C’mon physicians, let’s wake up and face the reality of a problem we are mostly responsible for.....we owe to our patients and to society.

THE EGALITARIAN PROYECT

"The egalitarian project rests on the premise that the actual possession of wealth and the moral right to it are inversely related. This dogmatic indifference to the processes whereby wealth is created and acquired, and the habits and dispositions that have proven conducive to individual prosperity, as opposed to the habits and dispositions that reliably result in poverty, means that advocates of “social justice” like Piketty are devoted to perpetrating a profound injustice." (Don Watkins)

THE MORALITY OF ALTRUISM

THE MORALITY OF ALTRUISM VS CAPITALISM (Ayn Rand)

The word altruism is regarded by most people as a noble concept, because it is mistaken for charity, benevolence, kindness, respect for the rights of others, or the voluntary actions that individuals choose to pursue to help his fellow men. But this is not the true meaning of altruism.

Altruism has been man's ruling moral code for most of mankind's history. It has had many forms or variations but it's essence has remained the same: altruism holds that men have no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only moral justification of its existence, and that self sacrifice is its highest moral value, duty and valor. It regards man as a sacrificial animal. It is the underlying moral code of collectivism.

On the other hand, the moral code which is implicit in capitalism, has never been made explicit. The basic premise of that code is that men, every man, is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others, that men must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others, nor sacrificing others to himself, and that men must deal with one another thru voluntary cooperation, as traders, be it in cultural, philosophical, spiritual, social, or economic goods, for mutual benefit, and devoid of all violence or coercion.

This in essence is the moral premise on which the United Stated was based, the principle of men's right to his own life, his own liberty, and the pursuit of his own happiness. The concept of individual rights.  This concept is so new in human history that many intellectuals have not fully grasped it, as they remained committed to the mystic morality of altruism, and it is the most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States.

Capitalism does not tell men to suffer, not to pursue enjoyment and achievement here, on earth. It does not tell men to serve and sacrifice, but to produce and profit. It does not preach passivity and resignation but independence and self reliance, and above all, capitalism does not permit anyone to expect or demand, to give or to take, the unearned.

The altruist-collectivist morality was the underlying concept of every political system since the dawn of civilization, until the arrival of capitalism. The rulers of society exerted their power under the principle of:  "The good is that which is good for society (or the tribe, the race, the nation), and the ruler's edicts are its voice on earth....". This was the underlying principle of every statist society: the Divine right of Kings, the theocracy of Egypt with the Pharoah as an embodied god, the unlimited mayority rule or democracy of Athens, the welfare state run by Roman Emperors, The Inquisicion of the Middle Ages, the absolute monarchy of France, the welfare state of Bismark, the gas chambers of the National-Socialism of Nazi Germany, the slaughterhouse of comunist Soviet Union.

The advent of capitalism is what allowed hundreds of millions of peasants and people subjugated by  the ruling elites, to escape poverty, prosper and live free, and produced the most egalitarian societies know to humanity since the beginning of the human race 

BENGHAZI

Is it necessary or appropiate to investigate Benghazi at this point?

if you are a democrat the answer is no, if you are a republican the answer is yes. However there are a few questions that as far as I know remain unanswered and that would be important to  know. First of all, even though Hillary Clinton famously said "what difference does it make?", it's obvious it does not make any difference to the 4 dead americans at this point, even though it would make a difference to their families to know all the facts in the matter. It would also  make a huge difference to other americans that may be in harms way in the future if we had the answer to these questions.

1) Why were the requests for increase security that Ambassador Stevens made several months and weeks before the attack, denied. There could be a good reason why, but we just don't know. If there was a good reason at the time, looking in retrospect, then it would be very helpful to review those reasons to see if they need to be revised so nothing like this happens again, and policies can be put in place to prevent an outcome like this. I heard that they blamed republican lawmakers saying that they made budget cuts, and so on, but if you are the executive in charge, it is your responsability to alocate the funds you have to where it is needed most. And I think that nobody could argue that the federal government is short of money at this point, when they are borrowing at low rates all the money they want.

2) Why was there still a US consulate in Benghazi when all the other foreign missions had already left months before. Maybe there was a good reason, but we don't know. Again, those reasons or policies should be reviewed to ensure no americans are exposed in the future, or to minimize risks. That's why it would be important to know.

3) Why was there no military response or mission to help these americans, when there were military resourses available within 1 or 2 hours from Benghazi. One could argue that there could not be deployed in time, and that could be true. But at the time, how could they tell how long would the attack last?. In fact the attack lasted many hours, from 12 to 20 hours from what I could gather from the news. So at hour 2 or 3, how did they know? what if it lasted 48 hours and more people got killed? Perhaps nothing could have been done and those people would have died anyway, but we just don't know. If a military response could have been tried, who gave the order to hold, or who should have given the order to proceed? Were those people negligent and bear responsability in witholding help? Wouldn't it be important to know?

4) Were was Obama during all this time? there was an ongoing attack on a US facility, there were officials in the situation room in the White House, but nobody knows where was Obama during that time or what were his instructions. Wouldn't it be important to know what the head of the military was doing during an attack? He could have being doing something more important at that time, but we just don't know, and what could be more important than follow and being in charge of a response to help US personnel under attack? Is he or Hillary Clinton, or the secretary of defense, or the military chiefs not accountable when there are dead people and US facilites attacked?

5) The issue of the video or not the video is a minor one to me, it is clear that for 2 weeks after the attack, and I remember those days well, and watched the news frequently, the administration kept blaming the video for the attack, and did not admit until weeks later that it was an organized terrorist attack. Even in his UN speech on september 25th, 2 weeks after the attack, Obama kept talking about the video. It is clear that admitting the truth would compromise the narrative that he had done a good job fighting terrorism, and admitting it was a terrorist attack right before the elections would have been a setback politically, but isn't it wrong to twist the truth to make it fit your political interests, especially when there are dead people? Could the president of the US not know that same night that it was a terrorist attack? the Lybian president went on TV the following day and confirmed it, so could Obama not know? and if he did not know, why? wouldn't it be important to know how the facts of an event of this importance were ignored by the president? so that action could be taken to correct it in the future? Even though Candy Crowley very handidly had the transcript of Obama's White House speech the day after the attack during the presidential debate, I listened to that speech, and he only refered  to "terrorism" and "acts of terrorism" generically, but never refered to Benghazi as a terrorist attack.

They now say this is old news, but it is less than 20 months since the attack, and as far as I know, there are no answers to these questions, and I think it is very relevant to know what happened, even now, many months after the attack: to prepare better for a similar situation that may arise in the future and to hold people accountable if there was any wrongdoing.

Free Food, food stamps, by Paula Priesse

August 11th – This highlight from ”Fox News Reporting: The Great Food Stamp Binge” 29-year-old Jason Greenslate of La Jolla CA gets up late each day before heading to the beach to hit the waves. A rock musician at night, Greenslate suffers for his “art.” One listen of Jason’s music and you realize his audience suffers as well. So who’s to deny this gnarly surfer dude his lobster on the barbie? Certainly not the government, as Jason often puts lobster (and his beloved sushi) on his EBT card. Greenslate: “It’s free food, it’s awesome.” Not long ago you could only get food stamps for 3 months every 3 years, unless you worked 20 hours/week or were in workfare or a job training program. But in 2009 O nixed these restrictions in his stimulus bill, so Jason now gets “free food” all year long. A big reason why Greenslate says he doesn’t want no “motherf***ing job.” Jason did though thank taxpayers for supporting his lifestyle. But is his story unique? Probably not, in the 1970s 1 in 50 Americans were on food stamps. Today it’s 1 in 6. In surfer lingo that’s “radical.” It sure is. P

comment: when we talk about "free", do you really believe it's free? whatever it is, does it grow in nature? or does it need to be produced or harvested, or assembled? if it does, then it's not free, you are just taking from the producer and giving it to the recipient for "free". The producer might have elected to give it away, in the form of charity. But if you take it by force, i.e taxation, it's still enslaving some people for the benefit of others, and the only one that can do that is the government...or criminals (in this case they take ir for their own benefit). Whether the producer has 1 million or 1 penny is irrelevant.....

The colectivists motivation

The progressives (or collectivists) are not motivated by love for the poor, they are motivated by hatred of the successful. If they were truly concerned about the poor, they would be honest and study and analize facts, and they would discover that the best way to help the poor and reduce inequality, is to create jobs. And the best way to create jobs is to favour the accumulation of capital first, and stimulate investment afterwards.

Once jobs are created, the only way to raise real salaries for workers permanently is to increase the productivity of labor by increasing the amount of invested capital per capita, and improving the methods of production.

The only means to elevate real salaries and to improve living standards for the masses is to accelerate the growth of capital so that it grows faster than the population.

The only thing the government can do to improve the welfare of it citizens is to establish and preserve the institutional order so that there is no obstacle to the formation of new capital nor for its utilization to improve the methods of production.

This is a summary of concepts by Ayn Rand, and Ludwig Von Misses, truly great minds.

A view of the election and the direction of the country

This is a provocative article by a Jewish Rabbi from Teaneck, N.J. it is far and away the most succinct and thoughtful explanation of how our nation is changing. The article appeared in The Israel National News, and is directed to Jewish readership. 70% of American Jews vote as Democrats. The Rabbi has some interesting comments in that regard.

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky
Rabbi Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey.

The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo – for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people voted.

 But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.

Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes to win.

That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues – the traditional American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to moral greatness – no longer inspire or animate a majority of the electorate.

The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff.

Every businessman knows this; that is why the “loss leader” or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who – courtesy of Obama – receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.

The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in which “47% of the people” start off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money – “free stuff” – from the government. Almost half of the population has no skin in the game – they don’t care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese. They just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.

It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.

That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is ignorant and uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters – the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism. That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich.

During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson called back: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!” Truer words were never spoken.

Obama could get away with saying that “Romney wants the rich to play by a different set of rules” – without ever defining what those different rules were; with saying that the “rich should pay their fair share” – without ever defining what a “fair share” is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to “fend for themselves” – without even acknowledging that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending.

Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws. He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions – in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone.

Obama also knows that the electorate has changed – that whites will soon be a minority in America (they’re already a minority in California) and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America. Obama is part of that different America, knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.

Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his “negative ads” were simple facts, never personal abuse – facts about high unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil’s bargain of making unsustainable promises.

It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan – people of substance, depth and ideas – to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare – never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups. If an Obama could not be defeated – with his record and his vision of America, in which free stuff seduces voters – it is hard to envision any change in the future. The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy – those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe – is paved.

For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel. They voted to secure Obama’s future at America’s expense and at Israel’s expense – in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin. A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon – and then state that the world must learn to live with this new reality.

But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations.The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come. The “Occupy” riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead – years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.

If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back.

DAILY NEWS, 1949

As relevant then as it is today. I would say it is more worrisome now, with almost 50% of americans on one form or another of government dependency. How free is one to choose if the choice is between somebody that tells you that they will keep taking money from the rich (or whoever has it) to give it to you, vs another one that tells you they rather grow the economy to get you a job?
As Margaret Thatcher so eloquently said it: "Socialism ends when you run out of other's people money"

About Obama, by Mychal Massie

At a time when many Americans can barely afford Burger King and a movie, Obama boasts of spending a billion dollars on his re-election campaign. Questioned at a recent appearance about the spiraling fuel costs, Obama said, "Get used to it" – and with an insouciant grin and chortle, he told another person at the event, who complained about the effect high fuel prices were having on his family, to "get a more fuel-efficient car." The Obamas behave as if they were sharecroppers living in a trailer and hit the Powerball, but instead of getting new tires for their trailer and a new pickup truck, they moved to Washington . And instead of making possum pie, with goats and chickens in the front yard, they're spending and living large at taxpayer expense – opulent vacations, gala balls, resplendent dinners and exclusive command performances at the White House, grand date nights, golf, basketball, more golf, exclusive resorts and still more golf. Expensive, ill-fitting and ill-chosen wigs and fashions hardly befit the first lady of the United States . The Obamas have behaved in every way but presidential – which is why it's so offensive when we hear Obama say, in order "to restore fiscal responsibility, we all need to share in the sacrifice – but we don't have to sacrifice the America we believe in." The American people have been sacrificing; it is he and his family who are behaving as if they've never had two nickels to rub together – and now, having hit the mother lode, they're going to spend away their feelings of inadequacy at the taxpayers' expense. Obama continues to exhibit behavior that, at best, can be described as mobocratic and, at worst, reveals a deeply damaged individual. In a February 2010 column, I asked, "Is Obama unraveling? "I wrote that it was beginning to appear the growing mistrust of him and contempt for his policies was beginning to have a destabilizing effect on him. At that time, I wrote that not having things go one's way can be a bitter pill, but reasonable people don't behave as he was behaving. He had insulted Republicans at their luncheon, where he had been an invited guest. I had speculated that was, in part, what had led him to falsely accuse Supreme Court justices before Congress, the nation and the world, during the 2010 State of the Union address. It appeared, at that time, as if he were "fraying around the emotional edges." That behavior has not abated – it has become more pronounced. While addressing the nation, after being forced to explain the validity of his unilateral aggression with Libya , America witnessed a petulant individual scowling and scolding the public for daring to insist he explain his actions. But during an afternoon speech to address the budget/debt, he took his scornful, unstable despotic behavior to depths that should give the nation cause for concern. Displaying a dark psychopathy more representative of an episode of "The Tudors" television series, he invited Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to sit in the front row during his speech and then proceeded to berate both Ryan and Ryan's budget-cutting plan. Even liberal Democrats were put off by the act. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough questioned the sanity of Obama's actions. Today, criticism is coming from all sides. A senior Democrat lawmaker said, "I have been very disappointed in [Obama], to the point where I'm embarrassed that I endorsed him. It's so bad that some of us are thinking, is there some way we can replace him? How do you get rid of this guy?" ("Democrats' Disgust with Obama," The Daily Beast, April 15, 2011) Steve McCann wrote: Obama's speech "was chock full of lies, deceit and crass fear-mongering. It must be said that [he] is the most dishonest, deceitful and mendacious person in a position of power I have ever witnessed" ("The Mendacity of Barack Obama,"AmericanThinker.com , April 15, 2011). McCann continued: "[His] performance was the culmination of four years of outright lies and narcissism that have been largely ignored by the media, including some in the conservative press and political class who are loath to call [him] what he is in the bluntest of terms: a liar and a fraud. That he relies on his skin color to intimidate, either outright or by insinuation [against] those who oppose his radical agenda only add to his audacity. It is apparent that he has gotten away with his character flaws his entire life, aided and abetted by sycophants around him. ..." With these being among the kinder rebukes being directed at Obama, and with people becoming less intimidated by his willingness to use race as a bludgeon, with falling poll numbers in every meaningful category and an increasingly aggressive tea-party opposition – how much longer before he cracks completely? The coming months of political life are not going to be pleasant for Obama. Possessed by a self-perceived palatine mindset, that in his mind places him above criticism, how long before he cracks in public? Can America risk a man with a documented track record of lying and misrepresenting truth as a basic way of life, who is becoming increasingly more contumelious? Hope you forward this to everyone in your address book as we are going to need every vote we can get to remove Obama. The liberals are just unable to absorb what he is doing to our country and will continue to vote for him. Just imagine what he will do to America if he gets another term !

Statists brillant deceit and strategy

Leftists have the objective, among others, of imposing and spreading their belief and ideology to the rest of society, and the whole world, because the existence of a society that does not practice their philosophy and is succesfull, will always carry the possibility and risk of people realizing that there exists a better system of social organization, that collectivism is no panacea, even though this has been shown conclusively after the reign of communism in half the world for almost a century. People have rejected it and the ones that suffered from it are in no mood to go back. One of the techniques that leftists have employed consists of confusing the terminology. For example, in the US, the left is “the liberal”, while in the rest of the world it is the opposite, the liberal is the one that supports Liberalism, as described by Ludwig Von Mises and others, which supports freedom, free-markets and capitalism. The leftists have also appropriated the term “progressive”, because it implies progress, and one would think that nobody would be against progress. But think again, “progressives” are against progress!, they would rather protect a spotted owl rather than a hungy kid or unemployed father, they would rather protect a swamp rather than build a house for shelter, they would rather forbid cutting a tree rather than allow a responsible logger earn his living and feed his family. In reality progressives want to convince us that igualitarism is a noble objective, and that an elite of “illuminated” individuals with all the power can achieve it, if only we surrender all our rights, all our possessions and our freedom. An important characteristic of the statist is that his political beliefs are accepted as a cult, as a religion; as every religion, one accepts its principles without questions, the faith is not open to discussion or arguments, it is what is is; we must accept it as the Truth. And that is ok for religion, but not fot a discussion of the best system of social, political and economic organization for society. To the capitalist (or conservative) , the truth is based on fact, on reality, it must be discovered, or investigated; the conservative asks questions and seeks answers. This difference of approach and attitudes make a discussion between a statist and a capitalist, of ideas and of solutions, so difficult, if not impossible. And it is why the statist, even when confronted with the failures of its policies, cannot accept it, and its arguments are almost always directed towards distorting and twisting reality, towards attacking the person sitting in front of them (the messenger) or point their fingers toward “the guilty” of such outcomes. And one of the most perverse and tragic situations has been, in my view, the assignment of guilt to capitalism of the failures of government intervention in the economy, and in society in general. I must recognize that statists and burocrats have skillfully managed this narrative, and the way they have taken advantage of this technique has been masterfull: to blame the system you want to defeat for the failures of the system you want to impose is just brilliant. This has created and fueled a deep hatred of capitalism and the acceptance that government intervention is not only effective but also desired to solve society’s problems, which would have been imposible otherwise. As one great patriot warned us: “Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction. We did not pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United Stated when men whee free.

THE CONCEPT OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS (Ayn Rand)

If one wishes to advocate a free society, that is, capitalism, one must realize that its indispensable foundation is the principle of individual rights. If one wants to uphold individual rights, one must realize that capitalism is the only system that upholds and protect them. “Rights” are a moral concept, the concept that preserves and protects individual morality on a social context, the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to the moral law. Every political system is based on some code of ethics, and the dominant ethics of mankind’s history were variants of the altruist-collectivist doctrine which subordinated the individual to some higher authority, either mystical or social. Consequently, most political systems were variants of the same statist tyranny. Under all such systems, morality was a code applicable to the individual, but not to society. Society was placed outside the moral laws, its embodiment or source or exclusive interpreter, and the inculcation of self-sacrificial devotion to social duty was regarded as the main purpose of man’s earthly existence. Since there is no such entity as “society”, since society is only a number of individual men, this meant, in practice that the rulers of society were exempt from the moral law. They held power on the implicit principle of: “The good is that which is good for society (or the tribe, the race, the nation), and the ruler’s edicts are its voice on earth…” All these political systems (The Divine Right of Kings, the theocracy of Egypt, the welfare state of the Emperors of Rome, the Inquisition, the welfare state of Bismark, the Nazy Germany, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” of the Soviet Union, and so on) were expressions of the altruist-collectivist ethics, and their common characteristic is that society stood above the moral law. The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States was the subordination of society to moral law. All previous systems have regarded man as a sacrificial means to the end of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peacefull, orderly, voluntary co-existence of individuals. It held that a man’s life is his by right, that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of government is the protection of individual rights. A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right, all the others are its consequences or colloraries: a man’s right to his own life. The right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action, which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being (which is what defines men) for the support, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life (such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pusuit of happiness). The right to life is the source of all rights, and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave. To violate man’s rights means to compel him to act against his own judgement, or to expropriate his values. There is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force. There are two potential violators of man’s rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United State was to draw a distinction between these two, by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first. The Declaration of Independence laid down the principle that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted amon men.” These provided the only valid justification of a government and defined its only proper purpose: to protect man’s rights by protecting him from physical violence. Thus the government role was changed from the role of ruler to the role of servant. The government was set to protect man from criminals, and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed against private citizens, but against the government, as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power. The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day. In the United States, it lead to a pattern of a civilized society that for the brief span of some one hundred and fifty years, it came close to achieving. A civilized society is one in which physical force is banned from human relationships, in which the government, acting as a policeman, may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiated its use. This was the essential meaning and intent of America’s political philosophy, implicit in the principle of individual rights. It was the concept of individual rights that had given birth to a free society. And it was with the destruction of individual rights that the destruction of freedom had to begin. (But this will be the subject of another post……) In contrast, the concept of man as a free, independent individual, was profoundly alien to the culture of Europe. It was a tribal culture down to its roots. The American philosophy of the Rights of Man was never grasped fully by European intellectuals. Europe’s predominant idea of emancipation consisted of changing the concept of man as a slave of the absolute state embodied by the king, to the concept of man as a slave of the absolute state embodied by “the people”, switching from slavery to the tribal chief to slavery to the tribe. A non-tribal view of existence could not penetrate the mentalities that regarded the privilege of ruling material producers by physical force as a badge of nobility.

Obama's budget (or lack thereof)

I would add to the picture the names of the people or groups collecting those bills, like the unions, Solyndra, GM and Chrysler, the muslim brotherhood, all his cronies, etc etc

2016 THE MOVIE

Heve not seen it yet but will soon, see the link to youtube trailer

With Rep. Allen West in Lexington 8/5/12

Commencement address by Neal Boortz to Texas graduates

Neal Boortz is a Texan, a lawyer, a Texas Aggie (Texas A&M) graduate, and now a nationally syndicated talk show host from Atlanta . His commencement address to the graduates of a recent Texas A&M class is far different from what either the students or the faculty expected. Whether you agree or disagree, his views are certainly thought provoking. “I am honored by the invitation to address you on this august occasion. It’s about time. Be warned, however, that I am not here to impress you; you’ll have enough smoke blown up your bloomers today. And you can bet your tassels I’m not here to impress the faculty and administration. You may not like much of what I have to say, and that’s fine. You will remember it though. Especially after about 10 years out there in the real world. This, it goes without saying, does not apply to those of you who will seek your careers and your fortunes as government employees. This gowned gaggle behind me is your faculty. You’ve heard the old saying that those who can – do. Those who can’t – teach. That sounds deliciously insensitive. But there is often raw truth in insensitivity, just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Say good-bye to your faculty because now you are getting ready to go out there and do. These folks behind me are going to stay right here and teach. By the way, just because you are leaving this place with a diploma doesn’t mean the learning is over. When an FAA flight examiner handed me my private pilot’s license many years ago, he said, “Here, this is your ticket to learn.” The same can be said for your diploma. Believe me, the learning has just begun. Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you’re a compassionate and caring person, aren’t you now? Well, isn’t that just so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in. Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast… Including your own assessment of just how much you really know. So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then, compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear “I feel.” From the Right you will hear “I think.” From the Liberals you will hear references to groups — The Blacks, the Poor, the Rich, the Disadvantaged, the Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights. That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives think — and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual. Liberals feel that their favored groups have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives, I among them I might add, think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses. In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. Your group identity is going away. Your recognition and appreciation of your individual identity starts now. If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a conservative, rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you haven’t developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced during the past four years. Something is going to happen soon that is going to really open your eyes. You’re going to actually get a full time job! You’re also going to get a lifelong work partner. This partner isn’t going to help you do your job. This partner is just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn’t want to share in your effort, but in your earnings. Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent; an agent representing a strange and diverse group of people; an agent for every teenager with an illegitimate child; an agent for a research scientist who wanted to make some cash answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their teeth. An agent for some poor demented hippie who considers herself to be a meaningful and talented artist, but who just can’t manage to sell any of her artwork on the open market. Your new partner is an agent for every person with limited, if any, job skills, but who wanted a job at City Hall. An agent for tin-horn dictators in fancy military uniforms grasping for American foreign aid. An agent for multi-million dollar companies who want someone else to pay for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who wants to use the unimaginable power of this agent’s for their personal enrichment and benefit. That agent is our wonderful, caring, compassionate, oppressive government. Believe me, you will be awed by the unimaginable power this agent has. Power that you do not have. A power that no individual has, or will have. This agent has the legal power to use force, deadly force to accomplish its goals. You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you, introduce itself rather gruffly, hand you a few forms to fill out, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal one ton gorilla. It will sleep anywhere it wants to. Now, let me tell you, this agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40% of everything you earn. And no, I’m sorry, there just isn’t any way you can fire this agent of plunder, and you can’t decrease its share of your income. That power rests with him, not you. So, here I am saying negative things to you about government. Well, be clear on this: It is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government for government is inherently evil. Yes, a necessary evil, but dangerous nonetheless, somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that in the proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal. Now let’s address a few things that have been crammed into your minds at this university. There are some ideas you need to expunge as soon as possible. These ideas may work well in academic environment, but they fail miserably out there in the real world. First is that favorite buzz word of the media and academia: Diversity! You have been taught that the real value of any group of people – be it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever – is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is based not on an individuals abilities or character, but on a person’s identity and status as a member of a group. Yes, it’s that liberal group identity thing again. Within the great diversity movement group identification – be it racial, gender based, or some other minority status – means more than the individuals integrity, character or other qualifications. Brace yourself. You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievement and excellence actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the last four years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. >From this day on every single time you hear the word “diversity” you can rest assured that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige of individuality you possess. We also need to address this thing you seem to have about “rights.” We have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called “rights” in the last few decades, usually emanating from college campuses. You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care. The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right – the right to a Beemer for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that child you plan on downloading in a year or so. Forget it. Forget those rights! I’ll tell you what your rights are. You have a right to live free, and to the results of 60% -75% of your labor. I’ll also tell you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another. You may, for instance, think that you have a right to health care. After all, President Obama said so, didn’t he? But you cannot receive health-care unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his time – his life – to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that’s his choice. You have no “right” to his time or property. You have no right to his or any other person’s life or to any portion thereof. You may also think you have some “right” to a job; a job with a living wage, whatever that is. Do you mean to tell me that you have a right to force your services on another person, and then the right to demand that this person compensate you with their money? Sorry, forget it. I am sure you would scream if some urban outdoors men (that would be “homeless person” for those of you who don’t want to give these less fortunate people a romantic and adventurous title) came to you and demanded his job and your money. The people who have been telling you about all the rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs – the right to be imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn’t cost anyone else either property or time. It’s their right, and they exercise it brilliantly. By the way, did you catch my use of the phrase “less fortunate” a bit ago when I was talking about the urban outdoors men? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it, and you’ll understand why. To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is “less fortunate” is to imply that a successful person – one with a job, a home and a future – is in that position because he or she was “fortunate.” The dictionary says that fortunate means “having derived good from an unexpected place.” There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street. If the Liberal Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of “fortune” or “luck,” then it is easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. After all, we are just evening out the odds a little bit. This “success equals luck” idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. Former Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt refers to high-achievers as “people who have won life’s lottery.” He wants you to believe they are making the big bucks because they are lucky. It’s not luck, my friends. It’s choice. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled, “The Greatest Secret in the World.” The lesson? Very simple: “Use wisely your power of choice.” That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He’s there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other – victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, “Look! He did this to me!” than it is to look into a mirror and say, “You S. O. B.! You did this to me!” The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms. Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school. Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle. Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge payments for that new car. Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block – some large, some small. But each one is a part of the structure of your life. If you make the right choices, or if you make more right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely terrible may happen to you. Something unthinkable. You, my friend, could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy, the successful, the rich. The rich basically serve two purposes in this country. First, they provide the investments, the investment capital, and the brains for the formation of new businesses. Businesses that hire people. Businesses that send millions of paychecks home each week to the un-rich. Second, the rich are a wonderful object of ridicule, distrust, and hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than the envy most Americans feel for the evil rich. Envy is a powerful emotion. Even more powerful than the emotional minefield that surrounded Bill Clinton when he reviewed his last batch of White House interns. Politicians use envy to get votes and power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will be punished: “The rich will pay their fair share of taxes if I have anything to do with it.” The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this country pays almost 50% of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more “fair.” You have heard, no doubt, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, our government’s own numbers show that many of the poor actually get richer, and that quite a few of the rich actually get poorer. But for the rich who do actually get richer, and the poor who remain poor .. there’s an explanation — a reason. The rich, you see, keep doing the things that make them rich; while the poor keep doing the things that make them poor. Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor. So, you need to know that under our government’s definition of “poor” you can have a $5 million net worth, a $300,000 home and a new $90,000 Mercedes, all completely paid for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and a million in your checking account, and you can still be officially defined by our government as “living in poverty.” Now there’s something you haven’t seen on the evening news. How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is “living in poverty,” the government measures one thing — just one thing. Income. It doesn’t matter one bit how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or how big they are, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas, or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great American novel, the government says you are living in poverty.” This isn’t exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it? Do you need more convincing? Try this. The government’s own statistics show that people who are said to be “living in poverty” spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim. Something is a bit fishy here. Just remember all this the next time Charles Gibson tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics. Why has the government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of “poor” is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder. I’m about to be stoned by the faculty here. They’ve already changed their minds about that honorary degree I was going to get. That’s OK, though. I still have my PhD. in Insensitivity from the Neal Boortz Institute for Insensitivity Training. I learned that, in short, sensitivity sucks. It’s a trap. Think about it – the truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity and you’ll be unable to deal with life, or the truth, so get over it. Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I have a few random thoughts. * You need to register to vote, unless you are on welfare. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again. * When you do vote, your votes for the House and the Senate are more important than your vote for President. The House controls the purse strings, so concentrate your awareness there. * Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the President of the country. If someone can’t deal honestly with you, send them packing. * Don’t bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it — to take their money by force for your own needs — then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you. * Don’t look in other people’s pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you earn is yours. Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone. * Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don’t see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark. * Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection. * Finally (and aren’t you glad to hear that word), as Og Mandino wrote, 1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being. 2. Use wisely your power of choice. 3. Go the extra mile, drive home in the dark. Oh, and put off buying a television set as long as you can. Now, if you have any idea at all what’s good for you, you will get out of here and never come back. Class dismissed”

From a California School teacher

"As you listen to the news about the student protests over illegal immigration, there are some things that you should be aware of: I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at a large southern California high school which is designated a Title 1 school, meaning that its students average lower socioeconomic and income levels. Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High, Bell Gardens , Huntington Park , etc.. where these students are protesting, are also Title 1 schools. Title 1 schools are on the free breakfast and free lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk and roll -- but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make a Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten. (OUR TAX DOLLARS ATWORK) I estimate that well over 50% of these students are obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more DO have cell phones. The school also provides day care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls (some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids. (OUR TAX DOLLARS ATWORK) I was ordered to spend $700,000 on my department or risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need for anything; my budget was already substantial. I ended up buying new computers for the computer learning center, half of which, one month later, have been carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel humbled and grateful to have a free education in America . (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK) I have had to intervene several times for young and substitute teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in the country less than 3 months who raised so much hell with the female teachers, calling them "Putas" (whores) and throwing things, that the teachers were in tears. Free medical, free education, free food, day care, etc, etc, etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled not only to be in this country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements? To those who want to point out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because they LIKE their gardener and housekeeper and they like to pay less for tomatoes: spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the TRUE costs. Higher insurance, medical facilities closing, higher medical costs, more crime, lower standards of education in our schools, overcrowding, new diseases etc., etc, etc. For me, I'll pay more for tomatoes. Americans, We need to wake up. The guest worker program will be a disaster because we won't have the guts to enforce it. Does anyone in their right mind really think they will voluntarily leave and return? It does, however, have everything to do with culture: A third-world culture that does not value education, that accepts children getting pregnant and dropping out of school by 15 and that refuses to assimilate, and an American culture that has become so weak and worried about “political correctness " that we don't have the will to do anything about it. CHEAP LABOR? Isn't that what the whole immigration issue is about? Business doesn't want to pay a decent wage. Consumers don't want expensive produce. Government will tell you Americans don't want the jobs. But the bottom line is cheap labor. The phrase "cheap labor" is a myth, a farce, and a lie. There is no such thing as "cheap labor." Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for $5.00 or 6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200 free. He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent. He qualifies for food stamps.. He qualifies for free (no deductible), noco-pay) health care. His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school. He requires bilingual teachers and books. He qualifies for relief from high energy bills. If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI. Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense. He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance. Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material. He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits. Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour left after paying their bills AND his. The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up. Cheap labor? YEAH RIGHT! Wake up people! THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS WE SHOULD BE ADDRESSING TO THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES FOR EITHER PARTY. 'AND WHEN THEY LIE TO US AND DON'T DO AS THEY SAY, WE SHOULD REPLACE THEM AT ONCE!'

Free Stuff

I saw this posted in a web-site, now I do not remeber which one, but I thought it reflected the feelings of many people. And I also agree with the basic idea. "The folks who are getting the free stuff don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff. And, the folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop. And the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting! Now... the people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff are being mean, prejudiced, and racist. So... the people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff and giving them the free stuff in the first place. We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff. Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them. The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 236years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff. We have one chance to change that in 2012. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it. ELECTION 2012 IS COMING A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves! I'm 100%for PASSINGTHIS ON !!! For all our sake PLEASE Take a Stand!!! Obama: Gone! Borders: Closed! Language: English only, Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights! Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare! NO freebies to: Non-Citizens!