Was 2009 All That Bad? Eh, Probably…

So in a few years, the decade will end (or is it next year?).  2009 has been a year plagued with a lot of strangeness.  Indeed this past decade hasn’t been all that normal by any standard, but I guess because its fresh in our minds, we’re still wondering what the Hell happened.  2009 itself was probably the worst year of the past decade, with some of that owing to Obama’s ascension into media godhood, but much of that because of other things.

From my perspective, it’s been a very crappy year.  I’m probably just saying that, but I have good reason.  Anyone whose grandfather dies the same week your wife miscarries, and then miscarries again later that year, will probably have a slanted perspective on the past year.  My wife certainly seems glad to see the year end.  On the flip side, my father-in-law is finally standing up to his ball-busting wife, although that will probably not end well.

As for the rest of the country, we saw what could only amount to a slow-moving train crash all around.  There were tons of celebrities who just got knocked off left and right, many unexpectedly, and since our culture is driven by celebrity worship, these were national tragedies.  I couldn’t have cared less, but that’s just me.  It’s not that I don’t care about people, just that I tend to not shed tears for complete strangers.  I know many of these now deceased celebrities wouldn’t have cried for me if the situation was reversed.  Selfish?  Probably.  But you can’t tell me you don’t think the same way.

On the economic front, there was no silver lining, no matter how many golden turds the Person of the Year could throw at us.  Apparently we’re in recovery, but considering that much of that recovery is related to government spending, I fully expect the first quarter of 2010 to be a serious letdown (the fourth quarter will probably see some growth given the holiday season).  But bad economic news or not, it really makes no huge difference to me because I’m more concerned with my own economic situation, which is good.  Not great, just good.

Personally, I think this country needs some economic contraction, especially if the expansion was all credit-based.  That’s not real economic growth when you spend other people’s money for profit.  I would rather see long-term, slower growth that isn’t based on loans and credit than fast growth based on loans and credit.  I’m doing my part to grow my own wealth without debt, but I doubt anyone else will follow suit.

In the political arena, there wasn’t anything all that surprising.  I mean, the Democrat leaders shifted into full dickhole mode, pushing through their radical agenda that will only oppress the rest of us as they attempt to ascend into godhood themselves.  Despite all the people protesting, all the e-mails, letters, phone calls, and everything else, Nancy Pelosi gave us all the finger and put out the exact health care bill that nobody wanted.  Tell me, how can a law that is two thousand pages maintain liberty?

Between that and all the promises that Barack Obama has broken, you’d think there would be a lynch mob in DC right now hanging our glorious leaders by their legs and mercilessly beating them (it’s been done in the past in Europe).  President Obama himself behaved exactly as any tyrant does once they obtain power: he went out partying all the time and didn’t do much of anything.  I guess that’s because for a man like him, obtaining the Presidency was really the only goal.  Nobody bothered to ask him why he wanted to be President (although if someone did, he probably spouted some load of generic horse crap that any idiot would say) and it’s beginning to show that he really didn’t have any ambitions for his office, other than just getting there.  Although, the same could be said for many other leaders in the past.

Still, though, I live in a country that remains second-to-none in comparison to the rest of the world.  Life is pretty good, even for the poor, and we have such a wonderfully high quality lifestyle, I can’t complain too much.  When you don’t have to go outside into the cold to relieve yourself, that’s always a good thing.  So while things aren’t perfect, they could be much worse.  While I will continue to strive for something better, I will be ever mindful of how great things are right now, and give thanks to the Lord for his blessings.

I hope you all do the same.  Have a good rest of the year and always strive for something more, something better than where you are right now.

The Seven Virtues #3: Temperance

The cardinal virtue of Temperance is one that is rarely practiced in modern culture these days.  It is the virtue that dictates you moderate your behavior and lifestyles.  Unfortunately, many in our society have taken to going from one extreme to the other.  There is hardly a portrayal of someone who is able to moderate their behavior.

American culture is one of excess.  We take great pride in being able to go overboard in all things.  Whether it’s alcohol, food, sex, or just stuff we are obsessed with buying, we go to great extremes for many of these things.  This virtue is designed to prevent us from going too far and keeping our extreme behaviors in check, without denying us the opportunity to enjoy them.

That’s the other extreme that violates this cardinal virtue.  The idea that we must abstain from certain things completely.  While there are some things that, as a Christian, we must abstain from because there are boundaries set up by God.  Sex is only acceptable when it is between a man and a woman who are married.  Within that boundary, they are free to engage in whatever sexual acts the two feel comfortable with.  In marriage, we have a formula for temperance when it comes to sexual relations.

But to completely abstain from things that one doesn’t need to abstain from can be just as damaging as engaging in excesses.  This world has so much for us to enjoy, and when do so with a disciplined heart, we can thoroughly enjoy all God has given us.

For Christians, Temperance also prevents us from falling into idolatry.  Idols are anything that we put before God in worship.  Temperance allows us to enjoy food, alcohol, sex, and so much else without falling into the worship of these things, which is what the Seven Deadly Sins basically are.  Indeed, this virtue is the counter to at least six of the seven deadly sins, as those sins are basically our instincts in overdrive.

For non-Christians, this virtue is still pivotal because it allows anyone who practices it to keep within certain boundaries and allows them to maintain their own lives without destroying them in the process.  Basically, it is the same with non-Christians as it is with Christians, only non-Christians don’t have as many boundaries that they need to follow since they have not chosen to follow God (I know I’m probably enraging some fellow Christians by saying this, but you need to disregard the sin of the sinner when spreading the Good News).

Temperance is not an easy virtue to practice, especially if you are prone to addictions and obsessions.  The goal of this virtue is to find a kind of balance in your life so you can enjoy things and not let those things destroy you in the process.  There is no perfect balance, however, and it takes prudence to know where the line is when engaging in a certain kind of behavior.  Every person has their own limits and no two people can enjoy the same thing to the same degree.  We are all like snowflakes, after all.

So you will need to know what your limits are.  If you have problems with overeating, then you may have to keep yourself out of the kitchen and instead find something else to do.  If you struggle with lust, then you will need to redirect your passions elsewhere so you don’t end up making an embarrassing visit to a doctor someday.  And so on and so forth, I think you get the idea.

The Seven Virtues are all linked together, although they are separate concepts.  See how Prudence aids in supporting Temperance?  Both are cardinal virtues that are vital for everyone, including non-Christians.  Temperance itself allows us to engage the world and discover its many pleasures and wonders while keeping our other virtues intact.

And don’t worry, it doesn’t take much self-discovery to know our limits nor does it require any experimentation.  It just requires a little prudence and a little bit of another virtue I will discuss in the future: Fortitude.

Integrity Matters

So there’s this video that has been circulating involving Senator Max Baucus:

After watching this video, yes, he is definitely drunk on the Senate floor.  But this is probably only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Senator Max Baucus.  He has been married and divorced twice, the second time he was caught dating his office manager.  He also no longer really lives in the state he supposedly represents.  He has become a true inside the beltway madman.

But this is just one of the leaders within the Senate.  While this one was stupid and irresponsible enough to get caught on the floor plastered, I’m sure the others have just as much vice as he does.  The problem is that they don’t seem to understand what integrity really is.

Integrity is doing the right thing when no one else is watching.  It means you will always do what is right and moral in any situation, regardless of the consequences for doing it or because you might face the consequences of doing the wrong thing.  To be a success in the business world, you have to have a high level of integrity because no one does regular business with a scumbag.

Apparently the rules are different in government.  If you get into office, you don’t need to do the right thing when no one is watching, because that’s how you get ahead when the institution is run by scumbags.

I know, you’re thinking, he’s drunk, so what?  After all, everyone gets drunk every now and then and it makes him more human.  The problem is that he’s drunk on the job here.  And this job is more important right now than most other jobs because of the power and influence that Senators wield over the individual.  How many special interests could have coerced him into passing legislation that he wouldn’t have signed off on when he was sober?

In any case, it really illustrates the views held by Senators.  They don’t care enough about their jobs to take it seriously, especially this Healthcare Bill, and it’s all a joke to them.  Between all the whoring going on with Congressfolk “on the fence” to the thousands of pages of rules and regulations that nobody bothers to read, it makes me wonder why these assholes haven’t been strung up and beaten to death.

These people who supposedly represent us have no ounce of integrity or any sense of right and wrong.  And too many morons out there want to give them more power over our lives.

Do you really want these assholes to hold sway over your life?  Your property?

So Who Was to Blame?

Today while standing in line eagerly waiting to spend my Barnes and Noble gift cards, I saw the Time Magazine and on the cover was their “Person of the Year” who we all know is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.  Given that the Federal Reserve wields unimaginable power over the US Dollar, I am at a loss as to why the Federal Reserve Chairman isn’t awarded such a title every year.  And thus, it got me thinking about what’s happened over the past decade.
So when we looked at the financial “collapse” that occurred last year, and probably sealed McCain’s fate as a total loser, we are still left wondering who is to blame for this whole mess.  I blame the Federal Reserve Chairman and his cohorts and I do so with a clear understanding of how the markets work, how individuals interact within it, and a deep understanding of the extent of the regulations imposed on banks by the Federal government.  I do so because, whether they realize it or not, they want me to blame them.
At practically all top positions of power within this country, power We The People have created through neglect and a lack of foresight, you will find a Statist.  Not necessarily a Socialist or a Fascist, but a person who regards the interests of the State above the interests of the Individual.  It is the natural tendency of the Statist to gravitate to these positions of authority because they do not wish to be stamped on by other Statists.  They do so with whatever fashionable theory is popular at the time, but the theory behind their power grabs is not as important to them as attaining the power itself. (I know I’m on a tangent right now, but bear with me)
This is the mindset of the Statist.  They regard their power above all others.  Their power to coerce the individual to chose a path they have laid out before him or her is what they seek.  That is why they create new positions of power and new powers for themselves.  They never hesitate to waste a good crisis and they will always cling to whatever popular movement will give them the power they seek.  This is probably why libertarianism never catches on in the major political arena, when other radical theories such as environmentalism, Socialism, etc. do catch on despite their unpopularity with the masses.  It doesn’t seek to grant the Statist politician any new power over them.
Anyway, since we have what essentially amounts to power-driven men and women in these lofty positions, they will seek to exert that power over us.  Unfortunately, they will never admit to this in a negative kind of way.  If President Obama said in a live press conference that he is seeking a single payer option because he wants to determine who lives and who dies.  Despite this being the obvious outcome, and an outcome that our President is probably fully aware of, he would never say such a thing.  To do so would only enrage the dumb masses and suddenly they wouldn’t be so dumb anymore.
The Statist will use every means of deception in order to keep power over the dumb masses and keep them dumb.  If you utilize just enough power to influence your subjects without using too much, then you will secure your power for life.  The balance is not easy to achieve, but many of these people are Zen masters of exerting the right amount of power to satisfy their sick interests in running your life.
But when natural forces cause their lofty promises of golden eggs to be exposed for the pile of gold-painted shit that it really is, then suddenly it is not their fault at all.  In fact, it is often because they did not have the power to prevent it all in the first place.  They will claim that if they had more power, then they would have been able to prevent it.  Both parties do it to some degree and I could spend pages cited various examples, but that’s a book for another time, if I ever feel like writing one.
What the Federal Reserve Chairman would have us believe is that he alone has the power to bring us out of recessions and depressions and to bring prosperity to us all with his polices on interest rates.  Sadly, many people, including many otherwise ardent free-market supporters, believe this lie whole-heartedly.  I remember Dave Ramsey saying on his radio show about how lowering the interest rates and printing more money would bring us out of the recession before the banking crisis hit.  (Sucks to be wrong on this, doesn’t it Dave?)
So, if we are to believe that Ben Bernanke and all the Federal Reserve Chairmen before him are a) Statists and b) control the economy through their manipulation of the money supply, then how come they aren’t blamed for every bust, every market downturn, and every failure to deliver on prosperity?
Well, I blame the Federal Reserve Chairman for the current economic mess.  If he refuses to believe that he is responsible, yet continues to claim to be able to “adjust” and “fix” the economy, then he is an incompetent buffoon and should be driven to exile.  Or given a clown costume with a jester’s hat and made to entertain state dinners at the Whitehouse.
When the central planners screw up, it is never their fault in their minds.  So I think it’s high time that we remind them that it is.

I Guess We Can’t Get Along After All

With all the crap the Statists in Congress are doing, you’d think that like-minded individuals would band together and fight against their zeal for oppression.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look to be the case whatsoever if we are to believe the talk radio show pundits.
Now, I don’t listen to Sean Hannity.  It is not because I disagree with him, when in fact I usually do, it has more to do with the fact that his show is just not for me.  At times he seems to be redundant, which to me says that your audience is generally not all that smart.  Or they have adult ADD and need to be reminded again and again of what his show is all about.  That doesn’t mean that intelligent people don’t listen to show.  I’m sure there are plenty.  It just seems like it is insulting my intelligence.
So imagine my surprise when he’s up to his old tricks of condemning libertarians again.  Or more specifically, Ron Paul voters.  You know, those pesky 10% of Republicans who voted for Ron Paul as their Presidential bid.  It’s a shame no prominent conservative talk radio person supported him, otherwise we might have lost the Whitehouse.  Oh wait…
Anyway, the problem is that the Ron Paul voter, like me, is tired of war.  We have about three ongoing major wars that the Federal government has ceaselessly waged in the name of Statists and the destruction of our rights.  They are the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terrorism.  The last one was a new addition after the Soviets fell because the Statists needed a new enemy to impose crushing debts, taxes, and inflated currencies on the dumb masses.
The problem with Ron Paul supporters is that we cannot keep the more mentally stable among us off the air of these shows.  I have to say, however, that many of these people are purposely put on the air in order to make the host look good.  Rush Limbaugh admits to that all the time on his show and it is the truth.  This is probably why I’d never get on, unless I either kissed ass or sounded crazy to the call screener.  And I don’t have the stomach to do either.  (Incidentally, kissing ass is really all you have to do to get on Michael Savage’s show)
If I were to get on his show, or anyone else’s, I think I might ask the following questions and hope that he gives me a serious response:

• Did you know that most Federal employees make 70K or more?  That’s almost double the national average.
• Did you know that 1/3 of the Federal budget goes to defense?  That includes the military, intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security.  Do you really think that if we cut that amount in half, we couldn’t defend ourselves against terrorists and other national threats?
• Are you willing to go all out when it comes to the War on Terror?  I mean, are you willing to nuke their hometowns and turning their families to dust?  Are you willing to dip executioner’s bullets in pigs blood and then executing the prisoners at Gitmo for war crimes?  Are you willing to carpet bomb whole towns and villas and put the fear of the United States above the fear of Allah in their hearts?  If not, then why are we fighting any war?  A nation unwilling to drop a nuclear bomb on their enemy should not go to war.

I’d probably get booted off for being a crackpot or lectured to for being cruel or sadistic.  But who says that war isn’t cruel and sadistic.  If you enemy openly decapitates someone and posts it on the Internet, all the while shouting Allah Akbar to drown out the victim’s screams, then you need to be crueler, not kinder.  War is Hell, after all.
But that’s neither here nor there.  Most of the time, Ron Paul voters catch crap from the likes of Sean Hannity because of our war stances.  But our domestic agenda is the same and no conservative is willing to work with us.  Ten percent is a significant number, not to be scoffed at.  If you really want to bring about some kind of conservative revolution, then you need us more than we need you.
You see, time is on our side.  If you continue to support Statists like Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and other Republicans who do not adhere to the party’s platform, you will lose support and people will turn to us.  That is because Ron Paul represents the kind of person who should be in Congress.  Someone who is willing to vote against legislation because it is unconstitutional, even if it means going against his own party.
So when you’re all done bashing the Democrats in Congress, how about supporting Peter Schiff, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, and anyone else who happens to be running in a primary who works for liberty and freedom?

Some Thoughts on Christmas

Like all little boys, I loved Christmas.  Then I became a teenager and learned the truth about Santa Claus (well, it was a little before that).  Somehow the fun was taken out of it.  Christmas lost its mysticism for me then.

Not that my parents didn’t make the effort to teach the real meaning of Christmas in the process.  My mother made a custom advent calendar with Bible verses to read each day.  For a few years, my parents kept up this tradition.  It did have the effect of ingraining the whole Christmas story in me.

Now most Christmas services at church are boring to me.  I know the story.  I get the message.  I feel as though I’ve been de-sensitized to Christmas.  I don’t know, maybe I’m just not much of a Christmas person.

I get that God sent his Son, His Word, to Earth in order to redeem man.  He didn’t conquer the Earth and remove Satan from his rule, he merely started a rebellion.  He left us with a charge to spread the good news that we are all redeemed before God.  No longer would there be a need for complex rituals that involve the blood and guts of animals.  Instead, our hearts, our very desires, would be judged, something that only God can truly do.

Christmas is a time when we remember how it all started.  It started with the birth of the perfect child from a virgin girl.  The child was an example of what man could be without sin for He was without sin Himself.  The fact that He survived is a miracle in and of itself.  After all, the dragon did try to slay the child, just as it was retold in Revelations (see the woman and the dragon).

They named the child “Jesus” which was Greek.  In Hebrew, it was “Joshua” and it means “Savior”.  It was appropriate to name the Son of God such a name.  He came and showed every one just how far removed from the Law as written by Moses we really were (see the Sermon on the Mount) and he showed us the way to redemption.

As the saying goes, it was a very strange way to save the world.  God has not granted me the wisdom to truly understand the sheer magnitude of what happened.  I doubt He has granted anyone with enough wisdom to truly fathom what Jesus did, other than what is obvious to most of us.  He came to us as a child, which raises so many practical questions, and lived a life without sin.

He came a child, at great risk, and somehow started something that changed the course of humanity.  Do you honestly believe that things would be as they are today if Jesus was not who he said he was?  If he wasn’t who he said he was, he would not have died, unless he was a madman.  But then his followers claimed he was raised from the dead and many of them died for such claims.  There had to have been at least one sane person in that group to deny it.

And so it goes on to this day.  On Christmas we remember His sacrifice, not just in death, but in His birth.  We remember that it was the start of something that radically altered the course of humanity.

I guess it is not so boring after all.  It is confusing, frightening, and awesome.  But I guess when looked at through the entirety of humanity (well, as much as you can anyway), it definitely not boring.

Come Lord Jesus.

And Merry Christmas to you all.

Crazy Ideas I Think Up At My Job

Normally I discuss politics and political ideas here.  But today I want to talk about something completely different.  I doubt any regular readers will enjoy or understand it all that much, however, because it has to do with my current profession.

I am a software developer by trade.  I write computer code and design software applications for the people who pay me.  I love what I do, provided it is challenging and allows me to engage my problem-solving skills.  I guess it’s one of the few problems that I can solve in my life…

Anyway, when I’m at work, I sometimes hit upon really good ideas.  Usually these involve framework items, that is, code that can be used across multiple programs.  This Friday, I hit upon something that may be incredibly useful for people: an encoding-specific string class for the Microsoft .NET Framework.

A string in computer programming is simply a string of characters.  The .NET Framework provides a really good class definition for string objects.  However, when you are dealing with text types in programming, you have more than one encoding.  A text encoding is simply a character set that defines what number corresponds to what character.  The .NET Framework, by default, uses the Unicode encoding.  This encoding class contains over 65000 characters and thus covers most written languages, but not all (I think some forms of Chinese and other East Asian languages are left out).

But what if a programmer needs to use a different encoding that is not supported by Unicode?  There are other types out there, as well as language specific types that have smaller character sets and thus take up less space (Unicode takes two bytes per character, specific language types usually take one byte unless the character set is much larger than 256).

So I came up with the idea for a string type that uses generics.  (Don’t worry, if you don’t understand any of this, I’m glad you’ve read this far).  Basically, the class definition would look like this:

public sealed class String<TEncoding> where TEncoding : Encoding

{

private byte[] _text;

private TEncoding _encoding;

//class implementation

}

While there is going to be a lot more, the two fields would be all you need.  I’ve set up the constructors to either accept a specific Encoding object or infer it from the actual TEncoding type.  I plan on adding as much functionality as appropriate to this class so that it mimics the System.String class in the .NET Framework.  I probably will ignore the culture-specific stuff and only make comparisons based on ordinal comparisons because it is impossible to really do otherwise.

I’ve worked out the constructors and some of the properties.  I next decided to do the System.Object overrides, so I made the ToString() method return the System.String converted using the _encoding object.  The GetHashCode() method was a little tricky, but I finally decided to use ToString().GetHashCode() because I wanted to allow value-based comparisons between System.String and this class.  I may change that in the future, though, and add in my own hash function, probably based on what is done with anonymous types.  It all depends on how I develop the comparisons.  Since System.String has only one encoding type, I may just do my own since you will be able to convert it to System.String anyway.

Next I plan on working on operators and Static members.  Concat and implicit/explicit conversions will be thrown in so people don’t have use the constructor every time they declare a new type.  The last thing will most likely be the various member methods that transform the string and return a new string object as a result, like Substring and all that.

It really is a shame that Microsoft didn’t implement generics with their first release of the .NET Framework.  I think much of the Framework would have been missing and much of the design would have been very different than it is today.  I’m sure the string type they implemented would have some similarity to what I’m doing.  In the end, the reserve word in C# (string) could have just simply mapped to String<UnicodeEncoding> and much of the same implementation would have been used.

Of course, that also leaves the possibility of implementing some kind of struct for Char where you pass in the encoding type.  I may design something like that in the future, but for now I’ll just do the String.  If I figure out something for Char, I may implement the above class a little differently then.

The Police Are Not On Your Side

A general rule I follow with government workers is that they are naturally Statists.  This means that they are big government, spend and tax liberals.  While they are not necessarily pro-welfare, they more than likely loyal to the government rather than the people they are suppose to serve.  If your interests ever conflict with the interests of the state, they will not be on your side.
It’s a simple rule to understand if you live in the DC area.  Most Federal workers supported Obama over McCain because Obama was more of a Statist than McCain.  That includes the military bureaucrats who work in the Pentagon.  Of course, I am speaking in generalities, and there are always exceptions when it comes to analyzing people, so please understand that individuals do count in my book.
Being a libertarian, though, I recognize that the greatest threat to liberty is the government, seeing as how they are the only legitimate and necessary force in a civilized society.  On the front lines of that force is the police, there to uphold the law as written by fools we like to refer to as politicians.
More and more I reading stories where the police overreact and people end up hurt or even killed.  Tazers are used on people when it is not necessary whatsoever.  I’ve read stories where people are killed because they were tazered by police when these people were not threatening them at all.
But tazer use is just one example.  The police are the arm of the government, ensuring that the laws that have been passed or mandated by a moronic judge are upheld.  They do so without original thought nor any sense of individuality.  They are told to do this, but I doubt that if they resisted they would lose their jobs.  Government workers are hardly ever fired in the real world unless they royally screw up.  I’m sure that wasn’t always the case, but these days it’s real easy to keep your job if you work for the Federal government.
For every government act of tyranny, you will find a police officer there to hand you a warrant, a subpoena, or a summons.  When you practice civil disobedience, you will find a police officer there to make sure that things don’t get violent, but also to intimidate you.  The excuse is that they are upholding the law and protecting law-abiding citizens, but honestly, do you really think that most law-abiding citizens need that level of protection from other individuals?  Sure there are the old women, but even old women can be deadly with the right kind of pepper spray or small six shooter.
When the Ten Commandments were removed from the courthouses across America because of a small group of whiny atheists, who was it who ultimately removed it?  It wasn’t the judges or the atheists who move it, it was the police.  Those individual police officers may not have personally agreed with the decision and felt that the whole situation was ridiculous.  But still they moved it because they were loyal to government and not to common sense.
Corruption in the police force often goes unpunished as well because even “good” cops tend to back up the bad ones.  Their entire culture tends to be an “us” vs. “them” mentality when faced with dealing with you or I.  They view civilians as the enemy, like they are in some kind of warzone, and they will not hesitate to protect their own.  In the police world, it’s about protecting your own.  Even if there are clearly bad cops, all the police tend to protect them because if they do not, they may end up not being protected themselves on the streets.  That kind of mentality does no good to an organization that is suppose to protect us.  If loyalty is regarded higher than integrity, then the organization is corrupt to the core.
I say all this because many of my fellow conservatives, who mean well, cannot understand that there are dark days ahead.  Well, I’m sure many of them do, but they have no idea what these will entail.  I can’t say that I entirely understand what will happen, but I know that it won’t be easy.  We may end up having to do more than simply vote for the better candidate every year.  We may actually have to take a stand against the rising tide of Statist tyranny that so many oligarchs and sheeple seem content on shoving down our throats.
When that day comes, and it probably will come as a result of the current actions of Congress and the Whitehouse, who do you think will be there to stop us?  It won’t be men in suits with phony smiles waving at us.  It won’t be stuffy bureaucrats who would rather be filing paperwork.  It will the police, there to uphold the various tyrannies thrust upon us.  It won’t matter to them that everything they are upholding is unconstitutional, just that the rule of law needs to be upheld.  They will not realize that the rule of law is a farce these days and that they are following illegal orders from the oligarchs ruling from on high.
And they will succeed in oppressing us and beating us back because no conservative truly understands that they are not on our side.

The Science Inquisitors

I’m not much for science.  I don’t have the patience for following the scientific method.  It’s probably because my science teachers drained the fun out of science by making me analyze everything that was cool about science.  Or I was just a terrible scientists.  It’s probably some combination of both these factors I’m sure.

Apparently, though, many top scientists are not really practicing science either.  With the recent scandal involving global warming, it should be readily apparent that while science is a sound discipline to discover how things work, scientists do not necessarily practice what they preach.  While there are plenty of scientists out there who are in it for the discovery and willing to admit their assumptions are wrong, human behavior dictates that scientists are just as likely to lie as the rest of us mortals.

Scientists who are willing to lie about their findings usually are caught when other scientists are unable to replicate their results.  The supposed '”gay” gene is one example where a gay scientist claimed to found it but no one else was able to replicate the results.  Cold fusion is another example.  The point of the scientific method is to safeguard against human error and to verify the results of the study or experiment.

But what happens when the institutions that have been established decide to adhere to a certain set of beliefs.  Apparently, there are certain things you are no longer allowed to question if you are a scientists by trade.  Among these things are evolution, the Big Bang theory, the HIV/AIDS connection, and man-made global warming.

As a non-scientist, I am probably not qualified to discuss any of these things.  I actually don’t have any background in any of those particular fields, so I won’t be making an attempt to prove or disprove any of the theories I’ve just listed.  I am wise enough to admit when I am out of my league.

It looks like, though, that there are scientists who are in these particular fields who are questioning things like that and they are being silenced by their superiors.  While I don’t know all the details, these men and women are seeking out possible alternatives to things like evolution, Big Bang, etc. not because they necessarily want to disprove those things, but because many alternatives are worth looking into.

In a rational world, inquisitive minds would check all reasonable alternatives thoroughly in order validate what they believe to be true.  Much of scientific discovery, from what I understand, is trying to prove the opposite of your hypothesis.  Or maybe that was just a way to make a logical argument in philosophy.  I could be wrong on that account.  It still doesn’t diminish the point that a scientist must be allowed to pursue his or her hypothesis to the end and not be denied the opportunity to do so.

But the oligarchy that the scientific community has become is one that is more akin to secular naturalism, rather then true scientific investigation.  They are run inquisitors who will not entertain the possibility that the reality they believe could be slightly different.  Maybe evolution isn’t true after all (I personally don’t care either way because we’re here now due to God’s actions).  If the possibility exists that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, then maybe an effective cure can be found.  If global warming isn’t happening (which I don’t think it is), then why would we be wasting all this money, time, and energy by creating more expensive, yet supposedly environmentally safe, products for people to us?  Green is my favorite color (can’t you tell), but if going green is a shame, why should I do it?

Science is about certainty.  You have to certain, otherwise the results could be disastrous.  The problem is that science has become subject to the whims of political elites due to the government grants program, rather than being run on the private market.  If science were solely a private endeavor, the profit motive would do better to ensure accurate results.  After all, if a business doesn’t produce or produces a fraud, then the scientists are out of a job because they company fails to make money.

Because much of the science that gets reported comes from people who are funded by the government, the pursue a political agenda.  And more often than not, this agenda is the Statists agenda.  They are among the elites who wish to cull down humanity and makes us obedient sheep, thereby raising themselves to godhood.

Or not.  Either way, they are blocking real science and that is hypocrisy at its finest.

Random Fun With The Ignorant

My brother sent out an e-mail about taking the 10th Amendment option with the new health care plan in my home state of Virginia.  Basically he was asking us to support a state bill that would exclude Virginia from Obamacare, if passed.

He sent it to a bunch of people and one person responded with a very long response in support of government health care.  Unfortunately, I don’t want to bore you all with the whole thing, but I’d like to respond to some the highlights:

Regulation is not a bad thing.  There’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed – don’t get me wrong.  But this isn’t that line.  American lives should not be part of that line.  It’s funny, the second that congress starts tinkering with Credit Card companies and the amount of interest they’re allowed to charge customers – I don’t think I’ve ever heard from anyone: “Oh my!  Isn’t it awful that Congress is mandating limits on how much interest credit card companies can charge us?!!?!  30% Interest rates aren’t high enough.  I think credit card companies should be able to charge whatever they want – whenever they want – and be able to change their rules and “policies” along the way too!!”  … … …No-No.  I’ve never heard anything like that from anybody.  Which makes pretty good sense I think.  …The banking industry, though flawed, has been regulated for as long as anyone can remember.  Why shouldn’t health care be regulated to ensure coverage?  Look at the FDIC (Federal Deposit INSURANCE Corporation ).  If your bank closes – you’re insured for the $$$ in your account up to certain limits.  It seems that Americans are all aboard the Regulation-Express  to lower their credit card interest rates and make sure that their money is at their bank for withdraw when they actually go to withdraw it.  That’s regulation.  But, when we talk about other people’s lives… and health care along with Insurance, regulation is off limits?

If you had any sense at all, you’d know that it is because of agencies like the FDIC that allow the banks to overcharge customers and practice fraction reserve banking.  If you had any grain of common sense, you’d also know that you don’t have to have a credit card.  I don’t and I am proud of this simple fact.  Oh, and the FDIC is flat broke, so good luck putting your hope in that agency.

Rescue, fire, police, transportation departments that make and maintain our roads, the postal service, education … are all regulated and controlled by the government, We the People.

Typical Statist tactic by comparing services that we all enjoy at the local level with a national health plan.  The sad fact is that the free market has been doing a pretty good job so far as poll after poll finds 70+% of Americans satisfied with their health care plan.  Did this guy ever think that the services mentioned could also be provided in the free market as well and that there are free market options that are denied to Americans by law?

Quickly look at Medicare; it’s über successful.  Underfunded – but significantly triumphant.  The American Medical Association (AMA) and even AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), both historically raging opponents of health care reform, are in support of a public option.  That should mean something.  It should mean a lot!

Health care reform would create desperately needed competition and finally allow the insurance companies to relinquish control of their monopolization strongholds that has plagued our nation for far too long. 

No, Medicare is a failure and going bankrupt.  That’s because the generation that needs it aborted millions of potential workers and placed millions more on welfare programs.  There are trillions of unpaid liabilities in Medicare funds for future generations that will go unpaid.  Oh and did I mention that Medicare nursing homes suck balls?

Here are three questions for you… Where and what is the republican plan for health care reform?  Every poll in existence shows American support for some version of reform and now more than not – support a public option.  Second: For all of the Americans who have recently lost their jobs, should they be denied Unemployment Benefits to keep their families fed, clothed, and sheltered?  Ugh-Oh!  That’s a “government run” plan!!  Finally, currently there is an age trigger at 65.  When you turn 65 years old - why is it then OK to have government provided health care, but not before??    We ensure health protection for retired seniors but younger people who keep the country going are on our own?  That’s a ‘sound’ plan we have intact, I tell ya…  You know what’s really strange, seniors have been the #1 advocate against a Public Option or “Government-Run Health Care.”  Someone should really enlighten others as to who runs Medicare.

1. Why do the Republicans need to offer a plan when the American people like their current plan?  The only reason Americans want some kind of reform is because they know that either the free market can do it better and want better access to it or they are simply worried about their neighbor’s health care.
2. Nobody in government is calling for rolling back of Unemployment benefits right now.  Besides, if you have 3-6 months of personal expenses saved up, you don’t need to go on unemployment when you are laid off for being a lazy worker.
3. Actually I doubt that when any of us turn 65 we will be able to go on Medicare anyway, so it’s really a moot point.

Look, we have Social Security.  It’s past time for a Health Security.  American lives are being protected by all of the aforementioned government run programs.  Why not at least the “option” of health-insurance security???

Social Security is going broke as well.  My last Social Security statement even said it on the front page of the document.  With even the government agency admitting that they are going broke, how can you even entertain the thought of comparing it to “Health Security”.  Americans have tons of options in health care because there are over one thousand health insurance companies to pick from.  The only reason there aren’t more options is because the government, at both the state and Federal level, are forcing insurance companies to provide services that should be left up to the consumer.

I don’t have much hope for this guy.  It’s pretty clear to me that he’s an intellectual moron and probably couldn’t explain the basics of economic theory.

He’s obviously too stupid to not know the difference between “Reply” and “Reply to All” in his e-mail.

The Paradox of the Left

When the Founding Fathers devised the United States Constitution, they took very special concern with regards to human nature.  They knew that when given the opportunity, most people would do the wrong thing rather than the right whenever there are no apparent consequences to their actions.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking, after all.

Bearing this in mind, the United States Constitution was designed with the idea that men in power would use whatever they could to expand their power and secure their rule.  Knowing that such a thing would lead to tyranny, they limited the powers of our leaders so that they could not gain too many footholds.

In the end, however, it didn’t matter too much.  This is because the United States Constitution still hinged on one simple thing: that those in power would actually adhere to it’s principles.  This is what we call the personal responsibility of the politician.  Without it, all government systems collapse and/or descend into tyranny, no matter how well-established they are.  When you don’t follow the standards that were established for you by law, then what does any law matter?

Personal responsibility was destroyed in this culture by the Leftists movements of the 1960s.  While the Left has always been reckless and loose with their morality throughout their history, predating even Marx, they finally got the cultural traction in mainstream America around that time.  Regardless of how it happened, these people sought to bring us Heaven on Earth and they would do it by changing not only our political system, but by changing the cultural and moral systems that have done us well for so long.

So they demolished personal responsibility.  Nothing was anyone’s fault anymore and this idea, while not new, became part of mainstream culture.  But the problem with that is that Utopia cannot come to pass if everyone is an asshole (Sorry for the language, but what else do you call someone who lacks all semblance of personal responsibility?).

This is because when people are told that nothing is their fault by some perceived moral authority, they tend to get incredibly lazy.  A workers paradise still needs diligent workers to keep things going, after all.  Without that, well things tend to degenerate into a state of perpetual poverty and crime.

We have cases like this all over the country.  The most prominent case is the welfare system’s impact on the inner city black community.  With the removal of personal responsibility in the black community, black fathers tend to see little need to stay with the children they’ve fathered.  Abortions are alarmingly high among black women, poverty is widespread.  I remember walking through the projects in old town Alexandria as I went from the Braddock Road Metro stop to work and seeing clotheslines being used in the dead of winter.  This is something unheard of in just about everywhere else, with few exceptions.  Given the option, most people tend to use a dryer.  I doubt the people living in those homes had a choice.

This is not isolated to the black communities in the inner city.  These are just the most prominent examples that are so pervasive in our entertainment culture.  There are pockets in rural areas like this and in the suburbs as well.  You usually can tell if an area is a bad part of town.  And race has absolutely nothing to do with it.  White trash is white trash, after all.

So when the Leftist implemented their agenda, they simultaneously took away the means for which they could maintain their policies,  I doubt this was intentional because most Leftists understand that in order to get money within the government, there needs to be some form of production.

But this is their paradox: while their policies would work, they are always doomed to failure because they take away the will of the people to continue doing the things that make them productive.  Just be thankful that we have yet to experience Soviet-style governing where people were forced to work in an oligarchy more oppressive than what Lenin had promised the people (the truth also tends to be thrown out the window with Leftists as well).

The Seven Virtues #2: Hope

Hope is one of the seven virtues and is not a cardinal virtue, but a theological one.  As such, non-believers have no hope to worry about (just kidding).  No, the hope I refer to is the hope in the promise God have given us.

Remember how I said that life is nothing but a struggle.  I said that a man struggles against the world and that woman struggles against man.  Generally, this is the case among all of us, whether we believe in God or not.  Hope is there to help us understand that there is more after this life and that the struggles now are nothing compared to the joy we will have.

With hope, we are continually looking forward to the eternal world and not engaging in wishful thinking.  For everyone has a desire for Heaven within them, otherwise we wouldn’t have secular Utopians trying to ram their twisted worldviews down our throats.

Anyway, this desire is found in so many things in our own lives.  We find in the fulfillment of our jobs and finding something we enjoy doing.  We find in love for others.  We find it in entertainment.  But ultimately, all these things give some level of disappointment.

No matter how much you love your job, there is always that day where it is like any job you might hate.  No matter how much you love your spouse, there are always days where you’d rather not be around him or her, unless it is necessary.  And no matter how entertaining something is, at the end of the day it isn’t the reality of your life.

And so, despite that tinge of longing, we often find ourselves disappointed in Earthly things.  Now, I am not calling for you to abandon such things, just because they are perfect.  Indeed, you’ll still have the desire to engage in such things and those lesser desires will be filled.

But the greater desire will remain.  This desire for heaven is innate in all of us and drives us to do extraordinary and sometimes horrible things.  As Christians, we have to recognize that this desire was placed in our hearts by God.  Call it His strategic invasion into the spiritual world.  Our world, after all, is ruled by Satan, by sin and disobedience to him.

Yet He has planted on our hearts a desire for Him, a desire that cannot be satisfied by any Earthly thing.  Instead such things arouse this desire and make it burn even more.

And so we must hope for the satisfaction of that desire.  This is the hope that I speak when I refer to this virtue.  It is what Paul writes about when he mentions hope.  It is not silly, trite, or delusional, but Godly.

Western Christians are not taught this virtue because we have so much wealth and tend to lack nothing of substance.  Poverty is non-existent in the United States, only people with misplaced priorities in their spending and working habits.  As such, we live a life of leisure and comfort, not having to worry about chopping wood so that we can heat our bedrooms, wondering where our next meal will come from, or wishing that our roof wasn’t made of hay.

While there is certainly a great benefit to all this and I wouldn’t trade any of it unless God told me to, it does diminish this heavenly virtue because we become complacent in our lives.  While we still have the desire for Heaven in us, we lack the training to properly deal with it.

This is probably the biggest problem with secular schooling for us.  It has caused us to focus on the earthly things rather than heavenly things.  To understand that this existence is temporary and that greater things are to come.

And Now For Something a Little Different

Big government to the left of me

Big government to the right

God above me

His peace finds me rest

The world brings me war

Poverty, drugs, terrorism

Against the world I stand

Against the world I push

And find solace in His humbling power

To left I see the call for creating heaven on Earth

Without morality

Without any real purpose

To the right I see the call for bringing heavenly morality

Without God

Without point

Yet I see no Messiah in either

No hope in either

Tyranny reigns and is the order of the day

To the left, justification comes from man

To the right, justification comes from God

But God and man both know better

As I look up I see a new dwelling

No effort of man could create it

No law, no policy, no justice

For without Him there is no law or justice

To the left they have forgotten Him

To the right they have the spirit of Constantine

But not the spirit of Him

Not Quite as saintly Paul was right

He has brought me peace

Now I’m at war with the world

“Capitalism” Did Not Fail

No sooner had the banks failed and extorted money from the taxpayers of the future then all the typical Statists come running out to the nearest microphone to declare that “capitalism” had failed (I put “capitalism” in quotes because it is a derogatory term developed by Karl Marx to refer to the free market).  You had the funny talking, gay Congressman spouting all that nonsense about how the free market had failed the consumer and that the banks were going under as a result.

However, nothing could be further from the truth and if you had half a brain and enough information on the subject, you’d know why.  I wouldn’t bother trying to explain it to these wicked men and women in Congress, though, because they actually do know all this, but simply don’t care.  They are not interested in your well-being, but their own and they will seek any means necessary to secure their money and property because in a truly free market, such people are nothing but failures.

First of all, you have to understand that for an economic system to be a truly free market system, you have to have absolutely little or no government intervention in the economic sector.  Beyond anything that protects the property of one individual from another, like copyrights, patents, and trademarks, the government cannot dictate how a private business operates, otherwise it is not a free market system.  Certainly there are certain areas where government is necessary, but these areas are clearly spelled out in the United States Constitution.

With the government out of the way, this opens the free market’s largest factor in protecting the consumer: competition.  This does not mean that the person who sells the cheapest product wins.  Normally, the cost is a huge factor, but we all know that we also expect a certain level of quality as well.  When people misbehave in a free market, where an unsafe product is produced, the free market quickly takes care of it because reputation and integrity are everything.  A businessperson cannot survive when their integrity is called into question.  In this day of the Internet and fast information, it is all the more reason why a free market system is so much better.

I could probably write a whole book on this topic, if I wanted to and had the drive to do so, but that is the basics behind a free-market or “capitalist” economic policy.  This is the economic policy that so many sleazy politicians called into question last year and this year when discussing the bank failures.  In reality they were only seeking to save their own rotten careers when they did so.

The banking industry is, in actuality, not a free-market industry.  The Federal government heavily regulates it and has done so since at least 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created.  They are also supported by the taxpayers of the present and future through agencies like the FDIC.  The FDIC specifically insures the deposits people make into banks so that if they fail, people won’t lose their money.  Banks rely on people depositing money to them so that they can loan that money out to debtors and gain profits on the interest.  That is basically how the operate.  Besides insuring the consumer from lose of money, the FDIC also helps the banks gain customers.  If you were looking for a bank, would you chose the one that didn’t have FDIC insurance?

Because of agencies like the FDIC, bankers are able to loan out more money than usual and make riskier and riskier loans.  After all, if their assets are secured by the future taxpayers of America, then they can take larger risks in order to secure larger profits.  There is a downside, however, but most banking institutions don’t seem to mind overall.  Because the government backs the bankers, the government has a keen interest in regulating the banks.  Most of the time they don’t do much other than write rules that prevent smaller banks from gaining traction in order to insulate larger banks from competition, but every once and a while a law is proposed or passed that hurts them.

Recently, Congress introduced a law that places stricter regulations on credit cards, the crack-cocaine of loans, and are looking to require people to show proof of income when applying.  This hurts many over-priced retail stores who make money this way.

While I doubt this law will pass, unless the Democrats are going for scorched Earth when it comes to their political careers, I doubt this solution would have been necessary if the banking industry was truly a free market industry.

The reason behind this is simple: if they weren’t backed and protected by the government, do you honestly believe that some acne-faced teenager (of which I was once one) would be allowed to issue credit cards to complete and total strangers who have little to know identification or proof of income?

In a truly free-market environment, I doubt a bank would take such a high level of risk in that regard.  Expand that to what happened with home mortgages and other forms of debt and you’ll get a picture of what really failed here.  It was the unholy union between private companies and government politicians ensuring that the “private” companies were insulated from risk so they could squeeze more money out of the economy.

The failure was not “capitalism” but Statism.

The Leadership of King Ahab

I’ve been reading the Bible in one year, again, and this time doing it chronologically.  I’ve just finished the reign of King Ahab, possibly the worst king of Israel (there was one who was worse in Judah, I think).  King Ahab represents everything you shouldn’t do when you are a leader of millions of people and hold complete control over their lives.  He is also an excellent reason for libertarianism because no matter how foolproof the system may be, there will always someone like Ahab to mess it all up.

So just what did Ahab do that made him such a terrible king?  There is a laundry list, but I want to focus on a few incidents in his life.

The first thing was how he reacted when he wasn’t able to buy a vineyard from one of his fellow subjects.  He wanted the vineyard because he wanted his own special garden built there or something.  Really it didn’t matter because he was rejected as the owner wanted to keep the vineyard that was essentially his inheritance.  His property, his choice, after all.

But King Ahab was not happy about the decision.  So instead of accepting the man’s decision and moving on, he went up into his bed chamber and sulked like a baby for a very long time.  His wife, Jezebel, took notice of this and asked him what was wrong.  When Ahab explained the situation, she promptly had the man killed and Ahab proceeded to take the vineyard.

This story illustrates the kind of man Ahab was.  He was nothing more than child in a man’s body, easily influenced by his deceitful wife who sleep with many other men besides her husband.  Talk about a big wimp.  For a man who is suppose to have the skills to rule over millions of people, he sure did not seem to have much sway over his own wife.  And he was perfectly willing to allow her to oppress his subjects provided he got something in return.

In another incident, Ahab was meeting with Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, and consulting various prophets concerning going to war.  Jehoshaphat asked if there were any prophets of the Lord among them that he could consult, because he was a righteous man.  King Ahab’s response was that there was one, but he always said bad things about him so he didn’t like him.

Jehoshaphat responded simply that a king should not say such things.  I wholeheartedly agree.  When you find yourself in a position of power and authority, you will be faced with many critics and people who will say things you won’t like.  That doesn’t mean that they are wrong and you are right.  So not only is Ahab a whiny man-child, he is also arrogant and only wants to hear certain things.

Well, this prophet did say something bad, that Ahab would die in the subsequent battle, despite the Israelite victory (I think they won that battle, although they probably didn’t, it was difficult for me to tell exactly what happened over all).  So Ahab has King Jehoshaphat ride into battle like a king while he hides among the army as a regular soldier.  The opposing army was ordered to target only the king of Israel and so they attacked Jehoshaphat.  During the fight, these soldiers figured out that Jehoshaphat wasn’t Ahab, and so they let him flee.  Meanwhile, Ahab gets struck by an arrow and dies by sunset on that day.  Ancient Greek playwrights couldn’t have written a better ending for this scumbag.

So what was the problem with King Ahab?  Well, he was childish, lacked wisdom, believed himself to be always right, and never, ever could take criticism from anyone who spoke the truth.

And I believe that Barack Obama perfectly echoes King Ahab’s personality in many ways.  His wife is controlling and domineering and she likes to show off her fancy dresses.  She even convinced Obama to let her mother live in the Whitehouse.  He himself can’t take criticism, not even jokes about his big ears, as evidenced by his attacks on Faux News (as they shall be forever dubbed by shutting out Ron Paul last year).  He is arrogant, believing that he has the will of the people behind him, and he comes off as a child in his dealings.

President Barack Obama is a modern day Ahab, weak-willed and easily swayed by others who are stronger willed than he is.

The Seven Virtues #1: Prudence

I remember when I was in the sixth grade and we were all outside for a fire drill.  Some kids were running through a puddle, splashing water all over themselves because everyone else was doing it and it was apparently the cool thing to do.  Then one of my teacher walked and yelled at them saying, “Common sense tells you to not do that.”  The look of disgust at the idiocy of my fellow students was priceless.
Unfortunately, these days I find that just about of those we place in authority lack one of the cardinal virtues: prudence.  Prudence is common sense and one who has prudence has the ability to utilize their wisdom and discipline to their fullest extent.  As King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 19:25, “Flog a mocker and the simple will learn prudence; rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge.”
These days our culture has rejected harsh discipline for some strange and incomprehensible reason.  Harsh discipline and strict punishments for those who commit crimes have go the wayside and as a result we get repeat offenders more often than rehabilitated, productive members of society.  This latest episode with Clemens who killed four police officers should be a chilling reminder of why we should dismantle all parole boards and make criminals serve their full sentences.
But I think it runs much deeper than simply imposing harsh discipline.  People need to develop the virtue of prudence otherwise they will see their intelligence and their wisdom go to waste.  I asked people what the opposite of an idiot savant was and no one really could give a proper term for it.  Somehow, intellectual moron just doesn’t seem to fit with me.  But we have to agree that there are plenty of people out there who have an IQ many people would sell their souls for and lack all semblance of prudence.  Don’t worry, they usually work in colleges where they do the least amount of harm.
Prudence is one the seven virtues that are opposite the seven vices (or deadly sins).  It is not a Biblical virtue, any more than the seven deadly sins are Biblical, but it is pivotal to believers and non-believers alike.  Without out, we become subject to the control of others who have it.  In essence, we lose our individuality, our sense of self, without it.
A lack of prudence is probably the primary reason for all the insane laws that governments at levels pass in order to protect us from ourselves.  How many laws are passed involving fire safety, when this should be common knowledge to everyone?  How many laws are passed for  driving on the roads, when most car crashes can be avoided by simply driving sensibly?
The fact of the matter is, most people lack prudence in big ways and when they do, they end up voting for Statists.  This is because the Statists promise them things that most people would normally not even trust with their own parents.  And so a lack of common sense is the primary reason for the expansion of government in our modern era.  Most people recognize that everyone else lacks sense except for themselves and so they assume that the government will fill in the void for them.
I am not saying that I am perfectly prudent all the time.  But I do have a good sense of things more often than not.  It really isn’t hard once you start applying your own thought processes to everyday situations and not letting your emotions rule your mind.  No, I am not a robot and I do feel emotions.  But I don’t let them consume me and my own thinking, anymore than I let my own logic rule over me.  While both are never in perfect equilibrium, both have a healthy balance in my life, for the most part.
This is what we should strive to do.  We should all strive for common sense.  The best way to attain it to start reading up on it.  If you are a Christian, then I would recommend reading the book of Proverbs in the Bible (incidentally, I find that most Christians only read the New Testament to their own detriment).  If you are a non-believer, then you’ll have to look elsewhere and unfortunately, I have nothing I can recommend.  It’s not that I haven’t read non-Christian books before, it’s simply that I haven’t been interested in reading anything on the subject.
But you must obtain prudence because from it, all other virtues flow forth.  Because our society is full of greedy, selfish individuals (not really much different from the rest of the world), it takes strong prudence to deal with them.  If we are to save our society from tyranny, then our only course of action is to encourage and grow prudence in others.

Andrew Sullivan’s Magic Rainbow World

I generally don’t read up on Andrew Sullivan.  I’ve tried, but I find his writing to be distasteful.  However, because he has many more readers than me, I guess he’s a much better writer.  So I’ve decided to use his name to garner more readers in the hopes that I too can be a great writer.

When I started reading about his bizarre theories about Sarah Palin, I really wasn’t all that shocked.  From someone who has whined in the past about Republicans rejecting gay marriage, it really shouldn’t be for you too.

This is because Sarah Palin represents the all-American family.  No, they aren’t perfect and they do have their problems.  But at the same time, to accuse her of not having Trig, her mentally disabled fifth child, and instead claiming that Trig was the product of one of her daughters own flings is below distasteful.

First of all, if you know anything about Down Syndrome, you’d know that it is more likely to occur when older women give birth.  Second, such rumors imply that Trig is some kind of abomination to mankind as a result of the unholy conception they claim occurred.  That is seriously disrespectful to all mothers who have children with Down Syndrome.  Such parents should be held in high esteem having the courage to raise a child with such a problem.  After all, it is not an easy thing.

But the primary reason he seems to resort to such horrendous tactics is because, I think, he is gay and has that stigma that many in the “gay community” have when it comes to families.  Such people are openly hostile to the traditional family unit.  I don’t pretend to know why Sullivan himself harbors these feelings, but usually it is the result of some family dysfunction or abuse in their past.  Tammy Bruce confirmed this in her own book.

Now, understand that I am not accusing all gays of harboring these feelings.  But there are many who do and they tend to group together and encourage such things in their groups.

I remember reading an article of his where he was praising Bush for something and then made some off-hand comment about how opposing gay marriage makes some of his followers feel left out.  If this is reflective of his attitude toward his lifestyle, then I would argue it is not a stretch to say that he hates Palin because of her wholesome family image and resorts to low brow, despicable attacks on her.

Sadly, I believe that Andrew Sullivan suffers from the same affliction that radical left-wing gays do and that is their inherent desire to be validated by their god, which is of course government.  And like I’ve said in the past, this is a form of circular morality because our government is selected by people like them.  So in essence, they desire moral absolution from themselves.

Sorry, but I am not here to give out moral absolution.  Neither do I care what you do behind close doors, so long as I can get some sleep.  And I’m not really a big fan of Sarah Palin either.

But when you resort to such disgusting criticism instead of intellectual ones, it is clear that you lack character and that your intelligence is like that of the Unman.  That means you only use it as a weapon like a sword or club and not as a normal human being would.

In any event, I’m sure you’re a good writer.  But frankly, I don’t have the stomach for such attacks on character like that.

I am willing to entertain crackpot theories, don’t get me wrong, but at the same time, it is usually obvious when a theory has some merit and when it is merely fabricated in order to attack someone.

And the attacks on Palin have been nothing but that.  If you really want people to not like her, Mr. Sullivan, stop resorting to such filth.

Zoning Laws: Central Planning At Its Finest

As with just about everything else that sociopaths come up with, zoning laws are designed for a purpose besides what the dumb masses are told.  Zoning laws are basically enforced locally in the United States and they are used to ensure that houses go there and warehouses go here and stores go here and, well, you get the idea.

They were solidified as valid and constitutional by the Supreme Court (naturally) in 1926 by the case Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Reality Co. after they had already been ruled as unconstitutional by the Inferior Courts.  So there is some contention on the constitutionality of the idea of zoning laws to begin with.

I find zoning laws to be unconstitutional and that they are used to expand the powers of local governments indefinitely and often times for the sake of some supposed greater good.

Zoning laws are used as a means of central planning for local governments.  This means that they get to approve and say what goes where and what you get to do with your property.  As a basic rule, I believe that property rights should allow you as an individual to do what you want with your property so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others.  For example, I can drive my car the way I want, but if I pose a danger to others because I’m drunk, then I am violating the property rights (and lives) of my fellow motorists.  If, however, I can drive safely, I should be allowed to do whatever I want with my car.

Granted, it is definitely a little more complicated than that, however, the general idea is that the individual should have say so over the property he or she owns.  And there is nothing bigger to own than land.

What zoning laws effectively do is infringe upon the property rights of the individual by dictating what can and can’t be done on a particular piece of land.  As such, there are many rules and regulations involving where you can sell your goods or services, where you live, and where you buy things.  These are fundamental freedoms that are denied to individuals unless they are able to bribe local politicians in order to do what they want.  And of course it doesn’t always work like that.

Zoning laws are what cause many of the current inconveniences we have today, such as traffic jams and rush hour traffic.  Because localities pick and choose areas for residential and commercial use, everyone who works tends to travel to their destination.  This means that everyone goes in the same direction everyday at the same time and thus, we have traffic.  Now, I’m not going to say that traffic jams would completely disappear if zoning laws were made to be unconstitutional, but I think they would alleviate them somewhat.

Another thing that zoning laws are used for is for localities to maximized their tax revenue when they plan out new areas for development.  If a certain type of housing development or commercial district will yield more tax revenue, then they will approve that one over one that doesn’t.  There are so many churches and other charitable buildings that have never come to pass all because local officials wanted their due.

Ultimately, local officials tend to re-zone areas at their whim.  This leaves the citizenry subject to the potential tyranny of an unscrupulous individual on some kind of power trip.  This means if a local official doesn’t like a particular area, he can simply re-zone it and sell it off to developers.

Now, I know that zoning laws have prevented some things that people would find distasteful.  After all, most people would not want to see a red light district in the places they live and shop.  Also, many rundown areas have been rebuilt after having been re-zoned.

But those are usually the exceptions and not the normal flow of things.  Zoning laws are an affront to liberty and property rights, as well as economic freedom, and they always carry the potential to be abused.

And when you have the potential for abuse, it is always taken advantage of.  This is because politicians usually consist of people who cannot make it in the real world and so they find some kind of righteous justification for their tyrannical meddling.

And do you really want someone like that wielding that much power over you?