(Click title above.)
(House of Ponzi)
***************************Profile suggestive of typical liberal, displaying distortion in values for nihilism, violence, sex, drugs, lawlessness, nonchalance --- yet somehow believing in salvation by government. "Yes we can!"
Needless governmental involvement and regulation always distorts and hatches dangerous new pyramid invitations. See http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/09/30/bailout_politics.
Means of regulating civilizations consist in (1) private institutions and markets and (2) government. In capacity for reducing power and wealth to the centralized, monopolistic control of a distorting few, with few qualms against invading freedom and dignity in order to ensure satisfaction of such wants as it inculcates, no institution is greater or more dangerous than Government.
In a healthy society that prizes individualism, Government should be applied only to the extent needed in order to reset private markets or to perform functions not suitable for private markets.
When private markets operate roughly, society may adjudge it worthwhile to apply government carefully, to soften some edges. Always, an enlightened society must bear in mind an unavoidable propensity of government to distort and create its own rough edges. Thus, governing requires skill, interwoven with careful foresight and cautious intuition. Investing social aspirations in Government always distorts. When Government avails handouts to everyone, Government distorts everything.
Government should be applied carefully, and only to address real needs of civilization, not every wrong, not every selfish interest. In policies for encouraging higher education and home ownership, Government distorts markets when it provides student loans and makes interest on home mortgages deductible. Such “poison-pill” policies always translate into addictive and self defeating results, leading to widely fluxing, artificially high costs, both for college and for home ownership. Ill effects from such distortions simply compound, until they cannot be cured short of painful discipline or amputation.
Better, perhaps, would be for Government to finance opportunities for community and military service, in exchange for which Government could offer incentives to such persons as were responsible enough to follow through on such opportunities, rather than just wait for handouts. Government should not be in business of financing home loans, except to first time buyers who have completed community service.
Enlightened policies could: Help reduce population; encourage family planning; discriminate by financing the most motivated students; price undisciplined students out of the college market. Undisciplined students should better find themselves in the workplace, rather than in seeking to become Marxist professors or fellow travelers.
However, some civilizing needs may not presently be met merely through an invisible hand of market competition. Possible examples: Trust busting; providing defense (borders, terrorism); negotiating treaties (trade that is free, yet fair to Americans); managing immigration and education policies, to nurture and stimulate nationally competitive development of brains and virtue; providing transportation and information resources (roads, canals, ports, satellite communications, energy and utility transmission, water and environmental management); nurturing health and charity (epidemics); overcoming widespread dependency on drugs and alcohol; reducing overpopulation; and promoting big science (protection against extinction level events; expansion and propagation of civilizing consciousness throughout galaxy).
To meet such needs, Government must not become merely the mother of addictions, to be pimped out by competing gangs of Democrats and Republicans.
Against pimps, addicts, and rivals, both to our left and right --- to defend ourselves and our families, progeny, country, and civilization --- we need a few more Red Ass Moderates (Rams).
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Libertarians (sheep-dogs), Democrats (sheep), Republicans (wolves) , and Red Ass Moderates (rams and black sheep) follow different political roads for being. Regardless of which road is least traveled, in respect of enlightened empathy, which road is most worthy?
Libertarians (Marginals):
This is the new label that social libertines have adopted for themselves --- at least, those who espouse no particular respect for traditional values or strong national defense, instead preferring such isolationist policies as best promote their own interests in economic laissez faire. They go ga-ga about Ayn Rand, as if she had a real philosophy beyond "justifying" naked self interest.
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Democrats (Masticators):
This label is a connivance, having been coopted by Marxists and Socialists. FDR, Truman, and JFK would find little in common with modern so-called "Democrats." These people tend either to have educations that overwhelm their intellects, to have led sheltered lives, or to have simply learned how to thrive after their own self interests by masquerading in sheep's clothing or by torturing logic and philosophy to serve immature notions about fairness and equality, pre-shrunk and wrapped with pretty bows by Herbert Marcuse.
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Republicans (Marauders):
These people are now led by folks who have strayed far from Lincoln. Their leadership views the answer to every challenge as "more tax cuts." They have little loyalty to country, but are actually raised to believe they "deserve" to rule the globe, based on little education or experience other than practiced willingness to pursue every possible short-term advantage under systems of capitalism, rife with loopholed regulations. They have managed to retain control by pretending to share values with social conservatives and moderates. This will change.
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RED ASS MODERATES (Moderating Independents):
This label applies to clear-sighted RAMs (folks with eyes wide open), able to see shenanigans of Libertarians, Democrats, and Republicans for what they are. "Big Horned RAMs" are red-eyed "black-sheep," independent of any human shepard, not fearing lone wolves. As RAMs become more synchronously attuned of themselves as a flock, through antennae of the Internet, they will play an ever more deciding role in the direction of world politics. As they should.
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Appropriate avatar for Libertarian-libertines (masquerading as principled philosophers, liberal on mores and defense, conservative on economics) is the “sheep-dog.”
Libertine MARGINALS --- see http://www.flickr.com/photos/humandescent/318542820
Appropriate avatar for Democrats and Republicans (both masquerading as bipartisan patriots) is the Ass and the Elephant, harnessed together (notwithstanding biblical injunction).
Democrat MASTICATORS and Republican MARAUDERS --- see http://www.flickr.com/photos/savolskertson/35389705.
Appropriate avatar for Red Ass Moderates (or Red Ass Marines, or Black Sheep Squadron), is an iconic Ram.
Independent MODERATES --- see http://www.flickr.com/photos/26927505@N02/2519840532.
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Appropriate avatar for Libertarian-libertines (masquerading as principled philosophers, liberal on mores and defense, conservative on economics) is the “sheep-dog.”
Libertine MARGINALS --- see http://www.flickr.com/photos/humandescent/318542820
Appropriate avatar for Democrats and Republicans (both masquerading as bipartisan patriots) is the Ass and the Elephant, harnessed together (notwithstanding biblical injunction).
Democrat MASTICATORS and Republican MARAUDERS --- see http://www.flickr.com/photos/savolskertson/35389705.
Appropriate avatar for Red Ass Moderates (or Red Ass Marines, or Black Sheep Squadron), is an iconic Ram.
Independent MODERATES --- see http://www.flickr.com/photos/26927505@N02/2519840532.
7 comments:
Quotes snipped from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/opinion/23krugman.html?em&ex=1214452800&en=b9018ebc8ffd278f&ei=5087%0A :
“O.K., I know how some people will respond: anyone who questions the ideal of homeownership must want the population “confined to Soviet-style concrete-block high-rises” (as a Bloomberg columnist recently put it). Um, no. All I’m suggesting is that we drop the obsession with ownership, and try to level the playing field that, at the moment, is hugely tilted against renting.
And while we’re at it, let’s try to open our minds to the possibility that those who choose to rent rather than buy can still share in the American dream — and still have a stake in the nation’s future.”
Wimp, Wacko, and Hard Leftists:
Quote snippits from http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/the_obama_left.html :
To many conservatives, the weird left -- AKA the wacko left or the loony left, is the left, the perfect representation of left-wing thinking and behavior. The wacko left can be defined as leftism as personality disorder, the contemporary expression of Orwell's "nudists, fruit-juice drinkers, and sandal wearers". They tend to be obsessive single-issue types, overwhelmed with paranoia and consumed with conspiracy theories.
9/11 Truthers are the purest current example of the weird left, as are "AIDS is a CIA plot" types, principally among blacks. These are the people most often found romping on DU and Kos. Although we might be tempted to view them as a pure liability, that in fact is not the case. While their equivalent on the right -- Birchers, McCarthyites and so on -- are usually isolated or ejected, weird lefties actually serve quite a useful purpose, acting as a conduit for ideas -- gay marriage, animal rights, Karl Rove as evil mastermind -- too grotesque to be planted in any other way. Examples of the loony left include such figures as Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan.
The hard left is the core left, the armature without which the other factions would fall apart. They are directly descended from the communist groups (the CPUSA, Trotsyites, and so forth) of the ‘30s and ‘40s, through New Left organizations such as the SDS and the Weathermen. The hard left consists of intelligentsia and activists, people who spend their lives reading Alinsky http://www.fraw.org.uk/library/002/anarchism/alinsky_radical.html and Gramsci http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/intro.htm and trying their damndest to put those dicta into practice. They are usually found in universities and surrounding communities, though they are also present in left-wing think tanks and lobbying outfits.
Most of us will go through life without ever knowingly encountering one of them. Through their intellectual control over the much larger wimp left (who would be utterly lost without their direction), they possess influence all out of proportion to their numbers. The prototype of the American hard leftist is Tom Hayden.
See also:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/obamas_lack_of_ordinary_modest.html:
“There are limits to human intelligence. Jimmy Carter famously tried to micromanage everything down to the tennis court schedule at the White House. Carter was also possessed of that more-than-human sense that he, of all people, knew all the answers. So did Bill Clinton. Both of them were historic failures in the most basic duty of the presidency, the duty to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
“For Obama it may be partly his childhood mentoring by Frank Marshall Davis, a hard-core Stalinist, plus his Harvard elitism, and his Clintonesque cynicism in using slippery words.”
Commenter: Obama may not know America, but he sure has a lot of Americans pegged. He gives renewed hope to all the Marxist fascists who believe the only thing wrong with their ideology is that it's never been applied quite right.
Commenter: His appeal relies on his followers being smart enough to grasp his symbolism yet ignorant enough to disengage their critical thinking faculties.
“Grand New Party”? ---
From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/opinion/27brooks.html?th&emc=th :
“Ross Douthat and my former assistant, Reihan Salam, are two of the most promising. This pair has just come out with a book called “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.””
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“Liberals have a way to address these inequalities — the creation of a Denmark-style welfare state. Conservatives have offered almost nothing. The G.O.P. has lost contact with its own working-class base. This is the intellectual vacuum that “Grand New Party” seeks to fill.
The heart of the book is the last third, where Douthat and Salam lay out a series of policy ideas to help working-class families cope with economic, health care, neighborhood and family insecurity.
“What all these ideas, from the sober to the speculative, have in common is a vision of working-class independence — from bosses, from bureaucracy, from entrenched interests of all kinds,” Douthat and Salam write. This is not compassionate conservatism (which flattered the mind of the compassionate donor), it’s hard-work conservatism, which uses government to increase the odds that self-discipline and effort will pay off.
I’m not sure how quickly the G.O.P. can swing behind this working-class focus and this vision of government-enhanced social mobility. But the McCain campaign really needs to. So far, McCain’s platform is like an omnibus spending bill — lots of decent ideas thrown together with no larger social vision.”
From http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/07/22/bankrupt_exploiters?page=full&comments=true#comments :
“Blaming the lenders is the party line of Congressional Democrats as well. What we need is more government regulation of lenders, they say, to protect the innocent borrowers from "predatory" lending practices.
Before going further down that road, it may be useful to look back at what got us into this mess in the first place.
It was not that many years ago when there was moral outrage ringing throughout the media because lenders were reluctant to lend in certain neighborhoods and because banks did not approve mortgage loan applications from blacks as often as they approved mortgage loan applications from whites.
All this was an opening salvo in a campaign to get Congress to pass laws forcing lenders to lend to people they would not otherwise lend to and in places where they would not otherwise put their money.”
COMMENT:
Next will come blaming loans made to students whom the government should have known would likely fail to matriculate or find employment related to their courses of study. Get out the pitchforks!
SEE: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/burning_down_the_house.html.
GIANT CIRCLE: Each event that can be purposefully or meaningfully sensed or experienced seems eventually to connect in some sequential, synchronous, pattern with every other event, sometimes seeming connected in a giant circle, sometimes in short cuts, or in conversions, or even in spooky action at a distance. But, may there be some noumena underlying all phenomena, for which space, time, matter, and energy are no impediment to its Will?
“SQUARING THE CIRCLE”: Each of us integrates and represents (1) purposes that are sometimes amenable of analysis from a particular, individual, or capitalistic perspective, and (2) purposes that are sometimes amenable of analysis from a holistic, communitarian, socialistic perspective.
Yet, in trying to blend an analysis to encompass both the particular and the holistic, the individual and the communitarian, or the capitalistic as well as the socialistic, we tend to lose accurate or reliable measure or analysis.
PROBLEM: Pushed to its limits, capitalism runs up against problems and inequities, as also does socialism. So, may some form of “socialistic-capitalism” help us muddle through some such problems and inequities?
CATEGORIZATION: Were one to categorize in general terms all of humanity’s concerns, one may formulate a list amenable, for some uses, of being likened to a giant circle.
At 12:00 Midnight on such circle may be listed PURPOSE,
At 1:15 A.M. --- BEINGNESS,
At 2:30 A.M. --- ENVIRONMENT,
At 3:30 A.M. --- POPULATION,
At 4:30 A.M. --- FOOD,
At 5:00 A.M. --- CLOTHING,
At 6:00 A.M. --- MEDICINE AND HEALTH,
At 7:00 A.M. --- MENTAL HEALTH,
At 8:00 A.M. --- SECURITY
At 8:30 A.M. --- WEALTH AND ACCUMULATION
At 9:00 A.M. --- INDIVIDUAL CHALLENGES AND PURSUITS
At 9:30 A.M. --- FRIENDS AND RECOGNITON
At 10:30 A.M. ---SOCIAL ASSIMILATION,
At 12:00 Noon---SCHOOL,
At 1:30 P.M. --- REFORM SCHOOL,
At 3:00 P.M. --- FAMILY,
At 4:30 P.M. --- CULTURE,
At 6:00 P.M. --- TECHNOLOGY,
At 7:30 P.M. --- SCIENCE,
At 8:00 P.M. --- SPIRITUALITY AND PHILOSOPHY
At 9:00 P.M. --- ENTERTAINMENT,
At 10:00 P.M. --- FULFILLMENT,
At 11:00 P.M. --- SLEEP AND REST AND DEATH,
At 11:30 P.M. --- AWAKENING AND BIRTH,
And so on, around and around the circle, or zigging, zagging, or popping in and out here and there in, through, across, and around the circle.
Obviously, depending upon one’s focus or purpose, one may connect such concerns in a different order around the clock or circle.
Alternatively, one may look behind, subsume, or collapse all such terms under simpler, more encompassing concepts. That is, one may conceptualize as if our circle of relations were attributable to a spiraling, fluxing, synchronizing, sequential interrelating among Will (spiritual inclination) and Law (mathematical and/or natural).
PERSPECTIVE --- INDIVIDUAL VS. HOLISTIC: Regardless, among the listed concerns, which may be appropriate for being addressed in communitarian fashion, and which in individualistic fashion?
BOTTOM LINE:
HERE ARE OUR PRESENT PROBLEMS:
1) When socialism is an appropriate strategy for addressing such concerns, how can individual incentive be preserved?
2) When capitalism is an appropriate strategy, how can insurance against individual calamity be spread?
REGARDING FREE ENTERPRISE:
Comment by Dlanor, at http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/11/john_locke_lost.html:
Whatever market the government touches, it DISTORTS, leading to market bubbles, leading to more government touching up, leading to ever more market bubbles --- round and round the revolving door.
To become adept at the legislating game is to become a skilled conniver. And so, the incestuous romance between incumbents and the money of lobbyists keeps birthing big government and more rotting regulations, in respect of which, when the rot stinks enough, the call goes out for yet more of what sanity should tell the electorate, were it the least bit informed, does not work.
Near the top of this charade, our strings are yanked about by personages who care little whether we may delude ourselves that we are either capitalists or socialists, as opposed to ignorant or consenting puppets.
We need a line item veto, term limits, and better ways to progressively tax all purchases of legislative influence and to render illegal all purchases of legislative influence by foreigners.
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