What my forefathers said...

I don’t ask this of myself often enough, “What am I doing to show that I deserve to live in a country so many have sacrificed so much for?”

How about you?

Red, White, and Blue blindness

The author in 1975. Way too trusting.

The next “greatest generation” could be home schooled Americans…if enough of them take a particular flavor of “red pill,” rather than the Red, White, and Blue one that too many seem to continue to swallow wholeheartedly.

While it’s terrific that home-schoolers in Texas anyway, say, “adios” to the public/government school system, it’s also sad they get locked into another one just as harmful: “my country, right or wrong.” For all the historical materials available, we still manage to raise teens eager to run off in service of the behemoth former President (and retired 5-star WWII Army general) Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about: “The Military-Industrial Complex.” But why?

Part of the answer may be due to the large numbers of Christian home-schoolers. Fine people, for the most part, who likely believe that the military is a good and necessary thing on the whole. Who wouldn’t come to this view by studying (and then certainly teaching) the founding of the United States? They see George Washington at the lead of a military put to noble use: that of securing (and then maintaining) the freedom of the original thirteen colonies’ inhabitants. They’ve heard him give credit to the “Almighty Being who rules over the Universe” and look forward to the “propitious smiles of Heaven” (1st inaugural address; April 30,1789) which await the nation that obeys heaven’s “eternal rules of order and right.”

But home-school parents: go further; use alternative texts and see how things changed After George. Here’s a book series that’s an easy cure for Red, White, and Blue blindness. The author is Richard Maybury and he writes easy-to-digest books, with short, concise chapters in the form of letters from an uncle to his nephew. Maybury is masterful at taking big concepts and cutting them down to size.

Have no fear. After reading this set of (mostly slim-) volumes his easy to picture (and recall) examples will make teaching fiat-currency and inflation; “natural/common law” versus “manmade (government) law;” and political corruption (including America’s foreign military entanglements from WWI, II, and the still ongoing “Thousand Year War in the Middle East”) second nature.

The truth about the bombing of Pearl Harbor set me free in the spring of 2010, while teaching Maybury’s, “World War II: The Rest of the Story and How it Affects You.” From that point onwards I knew if a president (Saint Franklin) and his people could lie to the country and proceed to feed millions of American men into his own personal War Machine, what wouldn’t an American president and his/her people be capable of lying about or covering up?

Answer: Nothing.

On this Veteran’s Day you need to know only one thing about your government and its lackeys. If their lips are moving they are probably lying. There is no glory or promotion or advantage of any kind for even a low-level bureaucrat in TELLING the TRUTH. Would the Military-man (or woman) recruiter, seeking warm bodies to fill their red, white, and blue pawn-quota, be any different?

The post (and linked articles) that got me thinking on this today is here.

The Egotist Part 2: "Laws Are For Using Against The Little People"

Nice Deb has transcribed a part of Peter Schweizer's interview with Sean Hannity:

Author Peter Schweizer was on Hannity, Tuesday night to talk about his explosive new book Extortion.

He talked about the mind-blowing corruption and political extortion that is rampant in DC, these days on both sides of the aisle but noting that it comes from the top. He compared the Regime to “the squeegee man that used to be in NYC – they’d walk up to your car and say I want to clean your windshield – they’ve got a cloth in one hand and a brick in the other, and you’ve got to pay them or the brick’s coming through the windshield”….

He said that’s a huge problem at the DOJ. “Eric Holder is the basically the Squeegee guy holding the brick. There are companies that are being told that they are subject to DOJ investigation, criminal and civil, and then these companies are solicited for political donations to the Obama Campaign (in 2012) and now to political committees and there is statistical evidence in the book that literally, you cut your chance of going to jail in half if you make a contribution.”

He said, “the other thing they’re doing is after the 2010 midterm elections, when they had that stunning defeat in Congress, the Obama Department of Justice targeted the industries that financed the tea party candidates that got elected.”

Literally days after President Obama made that famous statement “we’re going to punish our political opponents,”[the Holder DOJ sent out an industry sweep letter to companies in the oil and gas sector which said you are subject to criminal investigation and you'd better share and cooperate....it was a clear intimidation tactic being used."

Remember what happened to Gallup when they released some polls that weren't pleasing to Obama, last year? All of a sudden, they were the subject of a DOJ investigation into their poll methodology..."Punish your enemies..."

Schweizer's Squeegee guy analogy is close to perfect. The sole countermeasure to the brick-wielding Squeegee guy is a driver with a gun in his hand, loaded, cocked, and aimed straight at the miscreant's face. That's enough to cause any but the craziest such extemporaneous extortionist to back away with an insincere apology. However, when the Squeegee guy is the federal Department of Justice, no gun is large enough to be adequately threatening.

And of course, Obama, Holder, and their partners in political extortion know that full well.

---

The egotist regards himself as above those around him. The supreme egotist -- the megalomaniacal narcissist type of which Barack Hussein Obama is today's best example -- regards himself as above all else in the universe. Two sorts of creatures believe, emotionally if not intellectually, that their deaths would bring the universe to an end. The solipsist is one sort; the megalomaniacal narcissist is the other.

Thus it's no great stretch to conclude that the megalomaniacal narcissist regards himself as above the laws. More precisely, he views the laws, whatever they might be, in the same light as all else that exists: tools to be used for his purposes, if possible; encumbrances to be swept aside, if not.

The Obama / Holder DOJ is in perfect accord with that view. From its first days in power it's acted as if the laws were merely mechanisms to be used solely against those it disapproves. The New Black Panther atrocity, the Fast and Furious scandal, the refusal to investigate or prosecute vote fraud, the obscene posturing over the Trayvon Martin affair, the attempt to enforce portions of the Voting Rights Act nullified by the Supreme Court, and other scandals put it beyond reasonable dispute.

This is the sort of governmental misconduct for which the Second Amendment was written. Nothing else could possibly correct it. The Department of Justice surely won't be investigating or prosecuting itself. Neither will Obama take a personal hand in the matter, as long as Holder and his DOJ subordinates continue their faithful service to the Obamunist agenda. Holder's a good Hessian; he knows which side of the bread is buttered.

What, then, must we do?

---

Schweizer's revelations are the most consequential disclosures ever presented to the American public. They document the ultimate manifestation of corruption among the powerful. There is no way to dismiss them, nor to trivialize them, without simultaneously dismissing the foundation of Americans' respect for the law: the premise that the law is above all persons, and applies to all equally.

However, you may rest assured that the Obamunists are already plotting to take Schweizer down. If they cannot somehow discredit his investigation as deceitful, invalid, or compromised by bias, they'll go after him personally. He will be defamed. His character will be impugned in the most shocking ways imaginable. Cleverly contrived evidence of his dissolution and corruption -- PhotoShopped pictures showing him "in bed with a dead girl or a live boy" -- will shortly be presented to the electorate.

It's conceivable that Schweizer will experience crimes of violence and invasion. His home might be invaded. He could be assaulted on the street. More subtly, he might be approached by extortionists wielding "evidence" of his duplicity. He'd better watch his back. The same goes for his loved ones.

Remember what Obama's henchmen and handmaidens in the media did to Sarah Palin in 2008? Schweizer should expect treatment still rougher. I hope and pray he's braced for it.

---

Nice Deb adds a swift but piercing evaluation to Schweizer's revelations:

My God, Hannity's right, we're living in a Banana Republic.

With a megalomaniacal narcissist at the top, decreeing who may buy, sell, or consume the bananas, when and where and at what prices, entirely at his pleasure. There follows an inevitable question, both Deb's and mine:

When are people going to wise up??

When, indeed?

The Slime Is Receding...

...by which I don't mean that the Obamunist Regime is growing less corrupt, but rather that its crimes and villainies are being ever less carefully concealed:

In a remarkable admission that is likely to rock the Internal Revenue Service again, testimony released Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp reveals that an agent involved in reviewing tax exempt applications from conservative groups told a committee investigator that the agency is still targeting Tea Party groups, three months after the IRS scandal erupted..

In closed door testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee, the unidentified IRS agent said requests for special tax status from Tea Party groups is being forced into a special "secondary screening" because the agency has yet to come up with new guidance on how to judge the tax status of the groups.

In a transcript from the committee provided to Secrets, a Ways & Means investigator asked: "If you saw -- I am asking this currently, if today if a Tea Party case, a group -- a case from a Tea Party group came in to your desk, you reviewed the file and there was no evidence of political activity, would you potentially approve that case? Is that something you would do?"

The agent said, "At this point I would send it to secondary screening, political advocacy."

The committee staffer then said, "So you would treat a Tea Party group as a political advocacy case even if there was no evidence of political activity on the application. Is that right?" The agent admitted, "Based on my current manager's direction, uh-huh."...

Added a committee aide, "In plain English, the IRS is still targeting Tea Party cases."...

Camp, the Michigan Republican, told Secrets, "It is outrageous that IRS management continues to target Tea Party cases without any justification. The harassment, abuse and delays these Americans have faced over the last few years has been unwarranted, unprovoked and, at times, possibly illegal. The fact that the IRS still continues to treat the Tea Party differently and subject them to additional targeting is outrageous and it must stop immediately."

"Immediately." What a lovely word! But what does it mean? No, not to you and me; to an administration that has decided that it's above all the laws and need fear no repercussions from whatever it might decide to do?

Conservatives' and libertarians' Outrage Meters have been pinned for quite some time now. All the same, this latest demonstration of arrogance breaks new ground. And to think it's only a couple of weeks ago that the Regime decided to label this a "phony scandal!"

There are only two conceivable responses to our lawless ruling junta and its endless parade of extra-legal stunts:

1. Armed revolution;
2. Resignation to tyranny.

The first hasn't yet happened. What about the second?

---

Consider along with the above this trenchant bit of analysis from firebrand Claire Wolfe:

It’s dawning on a lot more people that a government run by secret spymasters is illegitimate even by the most conventional, mainstream standards. Among freedomistas, even those like the folks at DownsizeDC — who are usually pretty polite, mainstream, and hopeful of working within the system — are talking last straws.

Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA were a shock, though not a surprise. Now this week they’re followed by news of DEA operations that are top secret — but obviously, no doubt about it, are the result of collusion between the DEA and the NSA (“We’re only spying on you so we can keep you safe from brown-skinned furriners with scary religions, really!”). And these operations are resulting in arrest, asset forfeiture, and sometimes decades in prison for Americans.

And in another non-surprise, old-news revelation, Glenn Greenwald is now reporting that members of Congress — you know, those experts who were so diligently overseeing all those secret spy programs, bravely protecting our interests and Our Glorious Constituion — can’t even get information on the NSA or its bosom pal the FISA court no matter how much they rant or beg.

So yes. You’d have to be naive in the extreme to believe that a huge, secret level of government that answers to no one is a legitimate democratic-or-republican government. This country is now governed by an UberGoverment — Secrecy uber Alles.

Leaving aside the snark about "brown-skinned furriners with scary religions," the above is spot on. (My concerns are about the "scary religion," not the "furriners" nor the color of their skins. Your mileage may vary.) Moreover, the path is simple enough for a microcephalic idiot to follow:

• The administration is doing outrageously illegal things in secret.
• Congress discovers the outrages and screams "Stop it!"
• The administration smirks and says "Make me."
• Nothing changes.

Not only has the Executive Branch of the federal government escaped all legal and Constitutional restraint, our attempt to rein it in via normal processes is being dismissed and ignored -- and we have been put on notice that no further attempt to redress the abuses will be undertaken.

There is no longer a Constitutional fence around the actions of the federal government. There is no longer "a system of checks and balances." There is no longer an "opposition party." And there is no longer the slenderest reason to hope that the normal mechanisms of American politics -- elections; legislative operations; judicial review -- will, or can, alter the course the Regime is following.

We are being ruled by unabashed criminals, their intent and their deeds naked to the sunlight.

---

I'm about to give up. For all the sound and fury vented by similarly minded Web pundits, it doesn't appear to me that anyone plans to do more than rant and rave. As I can't do much on my own hook beyond adding to the noise level, I've been thinking ever more favorably about "going underground:" just trying to finish out my life, which doesn't have much longer to run, in the peace of anonymity.

The State has grown very strong.
It has cast off all pretense of legitimacy.
It's already sifting out enemies to its agenda.
Some of those enemies have already felt its lash.
And no one within its corridors is genuinely opposed to it.

I know I'm not the first to reach those conclusions. It's just that my innate optimism about this country has taken what appears to be a mortal blow, and I've slipped through the "denial," "anger," and "bargaining" stages into "depression." No doubt there are others who feel the same. Perhaps we could form a support group.

Were it otherwise, the revelations of so much executive-branch misconduct would be a heartening development. We could anticipate corrective action, perhaps a true restoration of Constitutional government. But too much has already been revealed. Too much has gone uncorrected: no alterations to ongoing operations and no miscreants punished. The threshold of resignation is only a step away. But resignation doesn't necessarily mean complete passivity. Grand but hopeless gestures are still available; that's the part that frightens me worst.

Does any Gentle Reader have anything to say that might cheer me up? I'm too old to be climbing clock towers with a sniper rifle, a thermos, and a bag of Oreos.

Patterns

[This piece first appeared at the late, lamented Palace Of Reason in February, 2002. In light of the foofaurauw in progress today over the multiple scandals we've learned about these past few weeks, it seems unusually apposite. Besides, I need time off from the "Debunkings" series. -- FWP]

Wise men see outlines, and therefore draw them.
Mad men see outlines, and therefore draw them.

-- William Blake --

To a certain kind of mind, any sort of pattern is enough to infer a conspiracy. In its most extreme expression, this is the disease of paranoid schizophrenia, most recently depicted in all its poignant horror by the magnificent movie A Beautiful Mind.

This is not to say that conspiracies never exist behind the patterns in events. But to conclude that conscious intention lies beneath every pattern of human behavior that conduces to bad results is a logical error, a failure to distinguish correlation from causation, pattern from design.

Many patterns exist in human life. The great majority of them arise because of the commonalities in our natures: our shared needs and drives. We don't work at our jobs because some grand plot concocted among powerful men has shackled us to them. We don't seek love and commitment because chips in our brains direct us to do so. We don't have children and (attempt to) raise them to be decent and responsible adults because some shadowy agency wants it that way.

On these things, there is general agreement that any designs involved were drawn by God. But let the patterns be slightly less grandiose, and out of the margins of society will spring men with megaphones to tell us that only evil designs can explain them. Among the great ironies of our public discourse is the way such claims have been used to impede the search for the real causes of events. Sometimes those impediments have been the whole point of the conspiracy charges.

Ralph Nader, Michael Moore, and others on the anti-capitalist Left have constantly screeched that the many patterns that run through the automobile industry clearly indicate an anti-competitive, anti-consumer cartel. While the potentates of Detroit have demonstrably maneuvered for market protection from foreign automakers -- and now and then from one another -- the patterns that run through their auto designs reflect consumer preferences, including a preference for the blessings of standardization, rather than a cartel's decision that it will all be one way. Product differentiation is one of the three generic tools a business has for gaining ground on its competitors; no conceivable logic would lead to the forswearing of that tool.

The Dishonorable Hillary Clinton, currently the junior Senator from my home state of New York, once posited "a vast right-wing conspiracy" to smear her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal was cresting toward its peak. Mrs. Clinton had not previously spoken in conspiratorial terms, but she was either too eager to deflect the scandal or too unwilling to believe that her capric spouse had dropped his pants in public yet again, and so resorted to the conspiracy explanation.

And now we have Enron.

Be not mistaken: Enron was a shell game for quite a while. Its "creative accounting" methods ranged from dubious to outrightly fraudulent. Its public relations were largely mendacious. When the shell began to crumble, it deceived its own lower-level employees and petitioned powerful government agencies for protection and advantages. Now that the game is over, its top men will do their best to exculpate themselves at others' expense.

That having been said, there is at present no convincing evidence that anyone in either the Bush or the Clinton Administrations offered Enron political assistance with its difficulties.

The Left's pundits point to the fact that Enron is a Texas-based company in the energy-futures field, and that the Bush Administration is populated from the top down with Texans who have backgrounds in the energy business. Aha! A pattern! Surely there is something to be investigated here. Surely, with enough subpoenas and Congressional committee hearings, we'll find evil deeds and the malefactors who did them.

Not surely. Possibly, though as time passes, the likelihood of finding a political conspiracy behind the Enron mess dwindles toward zero.

Given the current popularity of President Bush and his Administration, it's unsurprising that his political foes would search the rubble from Enron's collapse for dirt to fling at him. Aha! A pattern! Men with political ambition and contrasting agendas look for weapons with which to sway public opinion against one another! Surely, with enough subpoenas and Congressional committee hearings... but wait a moment. We're expecting the targets of our suspicions to investigate themselves, and report candidly on their discoveries.

Another great irony, here: the second suspicion of conspiracy is far better founded than the first. It's even got a name. We call it a political party.

I have little trouble believing anything vile about anyone who seeks or wields the powers of the State. The worst do get on top, as Friedrich Hayek told us in The Road To Serfdom, and the right direction to look first when things begin to go badly wrong is toward the corridors of power. That doesn't mean we'll find anything. Because the suspicion of office-holders is so natural, and so frequently correct, we must be especially careful about it. As little as I like the State and its works, some decent people are involved with it. They might disagree with me on policy or principles, but they deserve the presumption of innocence, as do we all.

But the modern version of partisanry remembers this only half the time. Democrats conveniently forget it when Republicans can be made targets, and the reverse is true as well. The pitch of the accusations becomes ever more shrill, ever more strident, and the Man In The Street becomes ever more likely to stop his ears and disinvolve himself from the political process. This trend, along with the blending of the two major parties into a single, principle-free mass committed solely to getting power and thwarting competition, has been in progress for more than a century, during which time citizen participation in elections has fallen from 90% to a bare 50% of eligible voters.

Aha! A pattern!

Free World vs. Free Ride

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a problem. The problem is, Truth has been dis-proven  Now I know that a number of folks here will call BS on me and say that I must be talking about Religion, so it is not a valid argument.

I'm afraid I would answer in the negative. This is not about God. This is about Reality. The problem is-- people have ceased to believe in principles. Not that they don't have them-- they certainly don't believe they have them. The problem is, they don't believe that they are real. That is, they feel they understand the fundamental truth that principals are no different from empty rhetoric and the elaborate sophistry they claim to believe in. So you can make the most logical and well balanced-- even persuasive argument that can be made-- and it will have no effect, because your audience will simply ask, with a sneer-- “So what is truth? 

And, what's in it for me?"

You see, the Enemy simply offers the average person what they want, then asks for what they want in return. All they have to do is say, “Ok, we'll give you a free ride. Now, you give us a vote, and we will make those fools who want you to work-- pay for their insolence. We'll keep you safe from guilt, from necessity, from pain. All you have to do is vote for us, and you don't even have to think for your self-- and you can feel virtuous doing it-- because we know what is best for you, and for all.”

The sad part is, because the people don't ultimately believe anything that anyone tells them, the Left doesn't even have to keep their promises.  It is just the promise of the free ride that does all the work.

They already know already that what they use as persuasion is ultimately empty rhetoric. You can see it in the Abortion argument. No matter what side you happen to fall on personally, you can learn quite a bit from it. That is, “So what if we are taking a human life? What are you going to do about it? It's legal and most people agree with us. We are in charge. So there.” It doesn't even have to be a majority anymore. Just enough to count.

THAT is the current core argument for the “pro choice” crowd, who are no longer the pro-choice crowd. Because, now they even admit that what they want you to do is have an abortion-- not have a choice.

Say what you like about my take on this particular argument-- I still say that this winning argument will crop up in other parts of our so-called national dialogue between the Left and the rest of us.

 I'm sorry, we aren't a coalition, and I'm not going to pretend. The only thing that unites us is the knowledge that what is going on here is wrong and that something needs to be done about it. That what the Founding Fathers did was right-- and what is happening here is a flagrant violation of those hallowed principles and ideas. Beyond that we'd fight like hyenas in j-random bar or cafe. But.  At the end of the night, we'd shake hands and go our separate ways. Why? We both believe in America, and our ideas about America are pretty similar, if not identical.

Even so, we can't offer the other side what they want. They don't want freedom, they want free beer. The closest thing we have is free software-- and even that takes work (knowledge and mental effort), so they don't want that either. They don't really understand what we mean by freedom-- and they mostly don't care. Because it's not about getting free stuff, and they don't understand what we get out of what we believe.

That is why universally they have to call us bigots and class oppressors-- because that is the only conceivable benefit they can imagine to our system as we describe it. It must be about power over, because personal power is so much a given that they don't even see it when it is taken away. As long as you don't touch the U-Verse, the endless promise of food, stuff and license-- those laws don't mean squat. After all, someone has to be around to enforce them. If you go to the welfare ghettos, no one really is until someone dies-- and sometimes, not even then.

Who's going to enforce inconvenient laws against those who keep you in office? All the better to extract fines and inconvenience from those whom it is beneficial to harass. We live in a unique period in history where the class that is most protected is the class that is the least important in the grand scheme of things. It is the enemies of Control who are important, and where the attention is spent. As long as they keep sprinkling cash, entertainment and contraception on the throbbing consuming masses they can be left well enough alone. They won't bite the dog that feeds, clothes and protects them from effort.

The Left will not cease to have support until it becomes onerous or inconvenient to support them. Until the point is driven home that their rights are not just vaporous changeable ideas, but things that are profitable to believe in. You know, things that mean something. They have to learn that something means something first, and that's a long row to hoe.

So the only way we are going to make real headway is to come up with the answer that proves false the assertion:

Who wants a free world when you can have a free ride?

I'm afraid they won't recognize the limited nature of reality until it is too late.

This is why freedom is not enough. Or perhaps, I should say, we have to prove that freedom is real. That liberty is a real thing. That sacrifice is not just an empty word. We have to go back to Aquinas-- or perhaps before Aquinas. We can't assume A=A-- that alone is a tough sell these days. After all-- who cares, and why does it matter?

For me, it was all about finding a reason to continue breathing. I discovered that the Leftist paradigm ultimately leads to a futile and meaningless existence in a frustrating perpetual childhood. There is nothing to risk, so rewards don't mean anything. Because you can't believe anything anybody says, there can't be any truth, so even looking is pointless.

But I couldn't stop looking, because deep in my core I knew there just had to be a truth. I wouldn't be breathing otherwise, and there would be no reason not to stop-- save the momentary inconvenience of people who cared for me, loved me and raised me. But my heart screamed that there had to be a bigger reason than that. Don't get me wrong-- despite evidence to the contrary-- I did love them. I had even convinced myself that my being absent would be to their benefit-- and I still loved them. 

But the heart wants what it wants.  We often take on burdens like children for reasons that don't really make sense. That love thing gets in the way of making the sensible choice of living for one's self, and making filling one's gullet and partying until you drop much easier. The problem is-- those sensible things don't satisfy. At the end of the day, you still want more.

NO, I'm still not talking about religion. It is very hard not to, at this point, because that's how I got here. But it's still not where I'm going. But there could be a clue here as to where we might go next to be fishers of the self-motivated.  Because those deeper desires override even laziness, myopia and ignorance-- even the willful kind.

Human beings need reasons. We need concrete things. We have to believe the evidence of our senses, or we become neurotic, reactive and depressed. I believe that the closest the modern child gets to a real risk and reward environment in this day and age-- is the video game. (And, failing that, gang culture. But I digress.) And that is why they are so massively popular-- above and beyond the immersive experience, or the sensation of being in an imaginary world. Because you don't have to use the imagination to get there-- but then, you don't have the freedom to imagine what you want.

Truthfully, I'd rather have a book than a video game. Not only am I old fashioned that way, but I want to control the experience. No one will ever beat the megapixels of my mental images-- no mater how fast our technology grows, nor how reactive to my desires it becomes. It is exactly as real as I want it to be, no more and no less. The fun part is that I don't know where it is going, but I know what the main character looks like. It is even better than a movie, because, while you know only what the author wants you to, you control the camera, and you can blur out the parts you don't want to linger on.

But I am unusual. I don't mind making an effort to get what I want-- even if I am lazy. But knowing that, I can be constructively lazy, and make it work for me. That is what puts me on the nerd/geek continuum.  But there is a reason why the geek/nerd is popular right now-- even among non-geeks. It does relate, to a lesser degree, to human nature.

We all know that the mother of invention is not perspiration or inspiration-- but laziness. It is the latter two that get us off of our couches and into our workshops, so we can spend more time later in our easy chairs. But how will we ever inspire a generation who's biggest accomplishment is collecting a welfare check? Most of these people have never learned to defer gratification for anything more than a twinkie.

Now, I recognize that perhaps even converting a few won't really help us. We also can't really convert those who are at the top, feeding the system either. Because they feed it not only to feel good about themselves, but also to have power over others. They don't believe the rhetoric either. They probably don't believe that truth exists either-- but they will get what they want anyway. Clearly, as they see it, the only way is cheating.

The saddest part of all, is that they don't believe that anyone has the power of creating their own stuff, that the only way to get it is to take it from someone else. That is the grim part behind Obama's “You didn't build that”. Unfortunately, the folks he was actually talking to, believed him and thought he was speaking a profound truth. They don't believe you can build anything. There are whole cultures that revolve around this philosophy, and they tend to get gnarled up in self-perpetuating violence pretty quickly. That is the dark side of most hunter gatherer cultures.

Indeed, I believe that the whole thing is just a ruse-- a fog of talking points to distract us while they take everything away. As long as we are still talking, and we are not doing, they are free to take whatever they want away from us while we do it. We also make ourselves easy targets, and then they know who is too dangerous to live. They can't kill too many of us too soon-- because we feed the system. But some people get impatient-- and making omelets always involves breaking some eggs, right?

Ironically, thanks to contraception and abortion effort, there aren't enough of us to feed the system right now. But as long as no one believes in truth, no one has to see or acknowledge that fact. So the next ten years should be real interesting. Perhaps opportunities will arise for reality to re-establish itself in the minds of man. I just hope we can wait that long.  So I guess, until then, we must demonstrate and try to teach truth as humanity has discovered it.  

Introduction

First, I must say that I am surprised and pleased to be offered an opportunity to post here. I won’t do Fran the disservice of excessive hyperbole and say I sympathize with St. Peter. It more closely resembles the shock that an itinerant preacher may receive when the local pastor applauds his speech, then wordlessly gives him keys to the rectory.

I will try to confine my concerns to a more political nature, and, I guess, as an introduction, discuss myself as a political animal.  Had you asked me ten years ago, I would have told you I wasn’t one. But my deeds belied my words, and also my doxology. I talked like a relativist and acted-- more like an observant pragmatist motivated toward Higher Things.

 Because politics is ultimately about what you do, and why. What I said was more akin to the propaganda in the air all around me. I think it started out as protective coloration-- and in a rash, despairing instant I threw away what I knew to be true in favor of what I wanted to be true.

I was given further 'freedom' in this direction by the gentle assistance of a certain behavioral psychologist, who’s duties included interrogating enemy combatants during Desert Storm.  He taught me that I could not trust my perceptions, therefore I could not trust my conclusions, no matter how ineffably logical they were. I will admit I was a bright and stubborn young teen in his care-- but I had little training in defending myself against those who truly wanted to destroy my essence in  favor of curing religion.  After all, I thought he only wanted to help me.

And people wonder why I so loved the heavy, verbose  Russian authors in those days. Indeed-- I was hardly aware of the reason myself.  My most beloved favorite was two-fold: Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky and The First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I still liked the idea that the world had an inexorable order in it whether we acknowledged it or not. I still liked that people believed in Justice-- and had a clear conception of it, and not watered down, half-mumbled niceties that made you feel good inside.   I especially loved Dostoevsky’s ability to lay  Nietzsche bare as a howling narcissist shaking an ordinary, mortal fist at the unfairness of it all.  And to think he was polite and sympathetic to do so in the guise of the arrogant but ultimately likable Raskolnikov.

Nope, this is not a literary commentary either. But I did not have much exposure to politics as a child. One of my earliest exposures to thus  was when my father bought a VCR to record a black economics professor give a talk on 60 Minutes.  These days, that doesn’t seem like much. But in those days, a VCR cost upwards of  $2,000. And that was in early eighties money, meaning far more than a week’s pay.  Some of you might recognize the timing, as the time that Thomas Sowell talked to the world about the errors inherent in price controls for housing in New York City.

So my dad tinkered for hours getting that VCR set up, fine tuning the thing by hand and what have you. Fortunately,  he did that the day before. I wasn’t sure what an economist would say that would be so important-- so ignorant was I of the power of money in those days.  But dad refused to explain, and invited me to watch, instead.

It turns out, that even if I did not remember the principles he discussed, Sowell conveyed a character that riveted itself in my mind, and indeed haunted me all my life.  And I’m not talking about characters in a novel, but character as in the shape of one. I mean as in those fine virtues that no one talks about anymore (save some few cranks in odd corners on the internet).

You see, he wasn’t without controversy in those days. They weren’t content with dismissing Sowell with a few well turned racial slurs.  Indeed, he faced down at least three different journalists on that show who tried to unseat him, tried a wide array of argument, insult and false flattery to assault that calm and sure knowledge that indeed those price controls did aggregate the poverty and homelessness problems in NYC. They tried everything, but his logic was unassailable. I vividly remember that after the last male journalist was red-faced, sweating, and practically reduced to tears by Sowell’s calm and gracious demeanor,  there was a blip in the service, and static.  The static was hypnotic as I absorbed the results. You did not see such vicious fireworks in the average interview in those days.

Soon, after a little tag letting you know your television still worked,  a new face appeared in the interview room.  She was blond, preppy, thoughtful, and actually started asking him intelligent questions. She left off trying to refute him, and gave at least a half-hearted attempt to understand him.  I was blown away by the results. Sowell not only carefully unfolded his fine garment of an argument, but Walters shone as a reporter by being a credible witness. It had gone from one of the worst to one of the best interviews I have personally ever seen.  That was probably the interview that made Barbara Walter’s career.

Because it wasn’t his argument that impressed my young mind. It was the fact that he had tolerated the insult, the rudeness, the hypocrisy, the fury, the panic, and the hatred-- and only returned a loving concern coupled with a determination to deliver truth.  And when offered the opportunity, he took it without remonstrance or complaint. You could believe what he said because he held firm with gracious calm.  That opened the gates in my heart to actually hear the argument-- but it took a fair number of repetitions of this to truly see what was true and what wasn't.  It is too easy to fall into the trap of safely thinking what you'd like to see to put up with the hardship of living up to your principals-- until you realize that your life has an expiration date.

It is always that firm and solid ground that I longed for even in the depths of the best and worst indulgences that the culture has to offer.   Whatever I said, I longed for peace, not only of heart, but of the knowledge that North would stay North, and South would not leave it’s moorings.  But to see the glory of God in front of me, I had to wander the desert for "40 years", whining and complaining about how the Almighty was leading me around in circles. For I did not hold anything that was true enough to follow with a whole heart.

“So, fine,” you say, “now we know why you are a conservative, and why you are a Catholic. Tell us why you believe in Freedom!”

It’s simple. Because with Freedom you can choose to be conservative or not, you can choose to Love, or not.  Without Natural Law, you can’t define Freedom. Without rock-solid definitions and a definable (and defensible) Truth, the word freedom is just a word- a symbol- or a sweet nothing. Those decisions only have meaning if you are truly free.  There is a third side of this triangular foundation-- that's Love, and without it, life is just more toil and hardship-- a useless sacrifice to vanity.  The trouble is, you can't nail down Love without God.

Ultimately, I think that's why Heinlein got Love wrong. He had a fine definition that sounded suspiciously like the religious one, but it went dangerously off the rails because there was no absolute reference to hold it in place. So the principles lead me to Freedom, but it was the delivery-- the demonstration of Love, that led me to truth.  The Love part just proof that the veritably true, and based on something you can use in your own life.  Something worth more valuable than even life itself-- so it shows that even fairy tales held Truth and taught Truth, just as all things that are true.

The point of these stories  and the repetitive axiomatic thinking is to show how one late-comer to Liberty was won. I will grant you that it was not the arguments that did it, but a perception of Truth as evidenced by a particular set of behaviors. No, it is not as simple as just being nice. It was having a set of ideas with the grace of supporters willing to endure great hardship-- and the preponderance of evidence in the face of ever-shifting circumstances.  Everywhere I looked-- from the Constitution, to various commentators, to the Bible, seemed to support this idea of Freedom and hold a consistent definition of Liberty-- even if the knuckleheads in power, or men with MSW degrees did not seem to agree.


I decided eventually that Love was possibly worth making mistakes and relying on my perceptions anyway. I mean-- it was either that or a Thorazine drip. And the people in my life deserved to be loved as they had loved me. And trying to gain knowledge of the world by a fuzzy feel-good consensus Just. Doesn't. Work. Even that annoying relative you can't stand deserves better.

It is easy to be disillusioned by a Democrat. For me, that happened in the Clinton Administration-- and probably before.  (To be fair, it also points to the date I was disillusioned by the Republicans, too.)
The problem is to be Romanced by Truth, when the Truth is hard, and doesn't seem to give dividends until you have already reaped it's benefits.  Which is, for me why the definition of Love is so important, and cannot (I'm sorry) be separated from politics as such.

Because most of the Left and the Great Undecided desperately want principles. They just don't know what they are, how to get them, or why they should bother. And yelling at them won't always help. I have certainly had a wake up call from a friend or a relative who informs me of my bad behavior-- but generally you have to know that you did wrong in the first place for it to have a salutary effect.  They have to know why that it is right and proper to have a right and a wrong in the first place.

Love should be more than sex or being nice, Truth should be more than (even verified) data, and Freedom should be more than license.  Because they are, whether we like it or not.  Life is better, if more difficult, when you know that. For one thing, living has value, even being a person with a small imprint has meaning.

That is why (in more ways than one) I am here today.

FYI: I should be clear that when I use Truth with the capital "T" I am not referring specifically to the Gospel. It certainly includes that, but I mean also that Freedom was a gift granted to us, and from there all that follows out of Natural Law.  From Natural Law, the Constitution is easily seen as an outline to a superior form of government, and from there everything else flows like water.