Wrong Regulators:
The Democrat led U.S. Congress' mandated governmental regulation lit the fuse that ignited the current worldwide financial meltdown. Regulations mandated that lenders extend loans to unqualified home buyers, regardless of credit. The cause of the meltdown was regulation, not deregulation. The cause of regulation requiring massive market infestation by promiscuous loans to unqualified borrowers was liberal socialism, not market conservatism. The cause was Frank, Reid, and Pelosi — not Bush. The cure is not more of the same. The cure is not to elect Obama, to put an exclamation point on top of Frank, Reid, and Pelosi.
SNL: See http://assets.hulu.com/shows/key_art_saturday_night_live.jpg; http://www.hulu.com/watch/38041/saturday-night-live-washington-approves-the-bailout#x-4,cNews%20and%20Politics,1.
Faux Socialism:
The policies of Bush, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Frank have been inimical to America, to Capitalism, and to Social Well Being.
Indeed, their policies have bonded and greased the rule of Big Money over faux International Socialism. That is, the Socialism they have served has not been responsive to voters or to civilizing decency, but instead has been ruled by Big International Money.
The future is already here, and it has called us to some form of International Socialism (or “Socialistic Capitalism”). Now, the question is: Should such socialism be governed under a flavor responsive to a well-educated, self-motivated, individually-independent, self-reliant, empathetic electorate? Or, should such socialism be of a flavor ruled by monopoly-moneyed, power-lusting, "Dear Leaders," skilled in bedazzling us by “feeling our pain” and pretending sincerity in their promises?
Having been called to some flavor of “socialistic-capitalism,” what flavor have we been experiencing during this last administration, under Bush-Pelosi-Reid-Frank? What is the alternative for “change?”
Have we not already been experiencing socialism under the rule of Big Money Nomenklatura? If so, more of the same is hardly “change.” Making Obama President while earmark-crazed Democrats rule Congress would not be change. Rather, real change would honor putting the socialism we already have under the governance of an educable, empathetic electorate.
Bush has not advocated for representing an educable, empathetic electorate. Rather, united with Pelosi-Reid-Frank, he has mainly served the agenda of Big Money Power Elite.
The Bush-Pelosi-Reid-Frank agenda has been, essentially, to advocate for: open borders and cheap labor (“shamnesty”); non-independence in respect of energy (failure to have earlier incentived electric or hybrid cars); and new-world-order entanglements and dependencies with other nations (Nafta, Cafta, World Court). Their preferred flavor of socialism has not entailed the honest informing, educating, leading, or serving of the electorate, but the corrupting of America in order to serve International Big Money.
If McCain/Palin want to win, they had best soon show us how and why they are exponents for change, i.e., for bringing socialistic aspects of our capitalistic system under heel of an informed American electorate. They had best show that it is Obama who is against real change, who will set the old rule by Big Money (Soros, et al) in concrete.
*****
SOCIALISM:
Pure Socialism is just a variant among discredited, seductive Ponzi schemes.
See: WHY SOCIALISM FAILED, by Mark J. Perry, Ph.D., at http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~mjperry/socialism.htm:
“The collapse of socialism can be traced to one critical defect that guarantees that it will always fail - it is a system that ignores incentives.”
There is no “free lunch.” Thus, “curing” socialism will always require that incentives, or substitutes for incentives, be added, either by injecting aspects of capitalism or by resorting to fascist force. Thus, we have (Nazi) National Fascist Socialism or we have some variation of Big Government (Socialistic) Capitalism.
As a society chooses Big Government Socialism, it will also need to choose how to govern its governors: (1) Should society defer to Private Big Money Monopolists to govern socialistic Big Government (“Big Money Faux Socialism”), or (2) may/should society undertake to govern itself, through an educable, empathetic, energetic electorate (“Democratic-Socialistic-Capitalism”)? HOW?
13 comments:
PONZI-BONSAI:
If it is not too late, we need to find ways to govern and regulate against all manner of greed-driven Ponzi schemes. Pimping out legislators to force taxpayers to hand out unearned, funny credit and funny money to greed-addicted voter-Johns in exchange for electing Ponzi-Pimping enablers is just not funny anymore.
What incentive is there for anyone to apply initiative or to work hard to earn anything, if Ponzi-Pimps are going to give handouts and topple the economy, regardless? In pyramiding free-lunch scams that incentive no actual work, pure socialism and government-forced credit are, both, evil and unsustainable Ponzi scams.
The main Pimps who fostered the present financial debacle are among the Democrats, enabled by Rino-International-NWO-Socialist, Bush. By confusing voters, they aim to enthrone Obama, as our “pain feeler in chief.” After all, “The One” cares.
Except for Big Money that is running Obama, there is little to profit — either for honest competitors or for everyday workers.
Sadly, a dumbed-down, pimping electorate and MSM has been conditioned to promote a lie: that Socialism is not itself an unsustainable Ponzi scheme. Sadly, we may have missed the signs in time. If so, a period of character building awaits.
Simply put, we have been scammed to over-bet our independence on unsustainable, communitarian globalism. Already, we may have oversold ourselves and our posterity to debt-enslaving Pimps and Oligopolists. Electing Obama seems to be prelude to sealing the sale.
QUESTION: In terms of buying up debt-slaves, how much do those positioning themselves to monopolize media stand to gain by fanning flames of panic?
IRRATIONAL DETUMESCENCE:
See NYT, A Day (Gasp) Like Any Other, By JOE NOCERA, Published: October 6, 2008:
“What I am worried about with all these bailouts,” said the great Wall Street historian Ron Chernow, “is whether they are going to eventually tax the resources of the federal government. The numbers are already getting very, very large. What is especially scary and unsettling is that even actions of this magnitude have not seemed to restore confidence. Each time, you thought that would be the one to stop the contagion. It hasn’t happened.”
....
“It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said one hedge fund manager. Firms fearing redemptions sell off stocks, which hurts their performance. Which undermines their investors’ confidence. Which means there are likely to be even more redemptions. Around and around it goes.
See NYT, Global Fears of a Recession Grow Stronger, By MARK LANDLER, Published: October 6, 2008:
“The globalization of the crisis means we need a globalization of responses,” said C. Fred Bergsten, the director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “But most of the responses will be national. For all the institutions we have, we don’t have the right institutions to do this.”
****
COMMENT: Institutions? What we have here is a breakdown of moral will, on a breath-taking, Ponzi-pyramided, greed-addicted scale.
TRUSTING GOVERNMENT TO IDIOTS:
Government support (by Democrats) for cheap credit caused inflationary distortion in costs for housing and education. Combined with government failure (by Republicans) to counteract widening gulfs in income, the consequence has been a lethal combination of punches against the middle class. Now, with financial meltdown, the added insult to the middle class is lack of savings.
See NYT, A Fool’s Paradise, By BOB HERBERT, Published: October 6, 2008:
The burden of debt for a typical middle-income family, earning about $45,000 a year, grew by a third in just the few years from 2001 to 2004, according to the Center for American Progress. The reason for this unsustainable added weight was the rising cost of such items as housing, higher education, health care and transportation at a time when wages grew only slightly or not at all.
In other words, work was not enough.
....
Example: The after-tax income of the top 1 percent of Americans rose 228 percent from the late 1970s through 2005. The story for working families over that same stretch was one of constant struggle to just stay even. As the Pew Charitable Trusts reported last year: “The earnings of men in their 30s have remained surprisingly flat over the past four decades.”
Disaster was held at bay by the entrance of wives and mothers into the workplace, and by the embrace of colossal amounts of debt for everything from home mortgages, cars, clothing and vacations to food, college tuition and medical expenses.
GOOD QUESTIONS FOR DEBATE:
See NYT, The Dismal Questions, By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, R. GLENN HUBBARD and MYRON S. SCHOLES, Published: October 6, 2008:
How, if at all, would your administration foster innovation in the following areas: the provision of health care for our citizens; an immigration policy that attracts and retains the best; educational policies that increase the value of our human capital, our most important resource; helping people accumulate enough retirement savings; international trade and manufacturing; the evolution of information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and neuroscience; the allocation of water, food and energy and the development of alternative energy sources; and, to some, the most important, the environment?
Comments from http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/42323/216087.html:
COMMENT BY CA:
I always wondered why ordinary folks supported Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Lenin, Castro, Chavez etc.
Now I know.
People make decisions based on emotion, not on any analytical thinking. Any, and I mean ANY, individual that can tap into the emotional desires and feelings of individuals will have their unthinking support. Some people are masters at tapping into the non-thinking, purely emotional part of people's psyche, (see the list above).
Obama is an expert at this as well. A charismatic personality combined with great oratorical skills and the ability to toss out innocuous, meaningless aphorisms that tap into people's emotional desires will ALWAYS sway the masses. The educational level of the listener is not a factor.
This does not say much for the American electorate. It's quite clear that even a cursory analysis of Obama's positions reveal that they are untenable, if not outright lies.
Obama is a leftist, and the left has always been experts at propaganda, lies and deceit to win over the people. More pragmatic folks, e.g., McCain and most Republicans are not only disdainful of using propaganda (even if it's the truth they espouse), they are simply incapable of conveying to the people - on an emotional level - why folks should vote for them or how their policies will benefit the citizens of this country.
Ronald Reagan had the ability to tap into the emotional side of the electorate, Bush does not, Clinton did, JFK did, Nixon did not. Obama's ability to tap the emotions of americans is similar to that of Reagan, but Obama's policies, and the effect thereof, will be identical to that of the other hate-america-firster president, and total incompetent, Jimmy Carter. (Carter still is wondering why the Russians invaded Afganistan, despite their 70 year history of mass exterminations, repression, brutality and a non-aggression pact with Hitler).
Obama is your typical hate-American-firster who believes all the problems in the world are the fault of the USA. Thugs like Putin and Chavez plus any other leader intent on expanding his sphere of influence, can smell "usefull idiots" like Obama a mile away. Moreover, home-grown Nazi's like Ayers and Wright, already realize that manipulating a insecure, under-achiever like Obama is child's play.
While Obama will be prostrating himself in front of the den of thieves at the UN, and "opening up meaningful dialogues" with "aggrieved" countries and having a few with Kim Jong, the Hitlers and Stalins of the world will be busy actually accomplishing their devious goals.
Among other things, Obama will accelerate the bankruptcy of this country, make us far more reliant on foreign energy sources while driving up its cost to americans, while imploring us to "tighten our seat belts."
This country is finished, done, dead if Obama is president. That is his goal, and as president - along with Pelosi, Reid, and of course, Barney Frank, he will sink this country. Hitler destroyed Germany, Lenin/Stalin finished off Russia, Chavez is already sinking Venezuela, and Castro destroyed Cuba 50 years ago.
How over 50% of American voters do not see this is incomprehensible.
****
COMMENT BY DLANOR:
Response to CA” “I always wondered why ordinary folks supported Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Lenin, Castro, Chavez etc.”
Well, Boomers have now led us to make a virtue out of not being able to handle the truth. After all, the virtual world of pretend and drugs is far more welcoming, especially once society is induced to finance it, as a “right,” on the backs of our posterity. Of course, Pirates always stand ready to humor Boomers’ ignorance, even amplifying it through our media and academia. But, just long enough the snare the prize, usually proportionate to the ignorance. Rum rum rum.
http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/42323/216087.html:
COMMENT:
Alternative brands of “Obama-fervor” may be:
(1) Obama believes misery so loves company that international socialism is the best way to restore humanity to good feelings about one another’s misery;
(2) Obama believes humanity, like cattle, is most suited to being deceived, herded, and milked by a class of rulers;
(3) Obama, in naive good will, really believes international socialism will be substantively good for humanity.
Regardless of brand of fervor, Obama’s religious-like ideal is some flavor of international socialism (not altogether unlike the Islamic way of life).
In Obama’s true-believing mind, the world’s foremost evil for impeding his ideal is the U.S.A.
Apart from efforts and alliances to radically re-organize and redirect America towards international socialism, has Obama ever manifested loyalty to mainstream American ideals?
Obama’s worldview is steeped in international socialism, which saps many minds, notwithstanding that such socialism is founded on a rat trap lie, i.e.: that most people, for no personal gain, can be induced to willingly sacrifice time and effort to support even those who claim to be entitled to such support, even as such parasites multiply in unwillingness to contribute.
Like many single-goaled true-believers, Obama, in pushing his ideology, feels justified in exploiting every means to reach towards his ends. His practiced ability to smile, disarmingly, even as he propagates his lying ideology, makes him explosively dangerous. In respect of his ideology, in Obama’s mind, he is “good.”
In practice, he is ushering us all towards a gathering evil. And most of us seem to lack the attention span to even notice.
LYING SOCIALISTS:
Snippets from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2101417/posts:
It is not acceptable to run for office as a mixed-market liberal while hiding a socialist or communist agenda, though. Is that what Barack Obama is doing? The fact is, we don’t know - because he will not tell us. He has denied or minimized these affiliations with hard-left figures, denied his membership in these Marxist political parties, and denied holding these beliefs. He has refused to discuss his college years, refused to discuss his membership and participation in hard-left groups and his activism on hard-left issues. We are told to ignore the past and to simply trust him on his intentions for the future. I would have a hard time mustering that trust for any political figure; to extend that trust to a figure with a track record of belonging to socialist political groups and lying about that membership would be a dangerous folly.
Will the mainstream media cover what once were allegations but which now appear to be proven facts? It will be difficult for them to justify not covering them, after the extensive coverage of the connections between Todd Palin and the Alaska Independence Party. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and MSNBC, among others, are MSM outlets which devoted considerable ink and pixels to covering the Palin-AIP connection. If the media do not cover this story, conservatives can easily be forgiven for seeing that as another truckload of evidence that many figures in the media are not covering the election, they are working as adjunct staffers for the Obama campaign. If the husband of a vice-presidential candidate’s membership in a political party is news, then it is manifestly and undeniably obvious that the membership of a presidential candidate in a political party is news. Some elements of the MSM have recognized that they must cover these issues; CNN has broken from the herd and begun to report the truth about Obama’s long-time and substantial association with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers.
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FAIRYLAND ENTITLEMENTS:
Re: Obama says we have a “right” to health care
Snippets from http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTg0M2RjYjRlMGU0MTRjNWUxZTkwODQ1NWE3OTc2Yjg=:
During the presidential debate Tuesday night, Barack Obama was asked if he thought health care was a “right.”
He said he thought it was a right. Well, if you accept that premise, I think you can ask some logical follow-up questions: Food is more important than health care. You die pretty quickly without food. Do we have a “right” to food in America? What about shelter? Do we have a “right” to housing? And if we do have a right to housing, what standard of housing do we have a right to? And if it is a right, due to all Americans, wouldn’t that mean that no one should have to accept any housing, or health care, which is inferior to anyone else’s… since it’s a right?
Do we have a right to be safe? Do we have a right to be comfortable? Do we have a right to wide-screen televisions? Where does this end?
....
Well, back in the day, we would simply say that a right has legal authority — it’s in the Constitution and therefore it’s a not just a right, it’s a birthright. So why shouldn’t we amend the Constitution to include the rights to health care, food, housing, education — all the rest? What’s the difference between the rights we have and the “rights” Obama wants to give us?
Simply this: Constitutional rights protect us from things: intimidation, illegal search and seizure, self-incrimination, and so on. The revolutionary idea of our Founding Fathers was that people had a God-given right to live as they saw fit. Our constitutional rights protect us from the power of government.
But these new so-called “rights” are about the government — who the Founders saw as the enemy — giving us things: food, health care, education... And when we have a right to be given stuff that previously we had to work for, then there is no reason — none — to go and work for them. The goody bag has no bottom, except bankruptcy and ruin.
Does that ring a little familiar these days? Because isn’t the danger here that if you’re offered something for nothing… you’ll take it?
Only it’s not something for nothing. “Free” health-care costs us something precious, and no less precious for being invisible. Because there’s a word for someone who has their food, housing and care provided for them… for people who owe their existence to someone else.
And that word is “slaves.”
Snippets from http://www.ibdeditorials.com:
Michelle's Boot Camps For Radicals
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Thursday, September 04, 2008
….
Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993. Obama plans to use the nonprofit group, which he features on his campaign Web site, as the model for a national service corps. He calls his Orwellian program, "Universal Voluntary Public Service."
Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of "social change."
The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn't seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year "community leadership" positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They'll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats.
In exchange, they'll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.
But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about "social change" through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation — the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul "The Red" Alinsky.
"Our alumni are more than twice as likely as 18-34 year olds to . . . engage in protest activities," Public Allies boasts in a document found with its tax filings. It has already deployed an army of 2,200 community organizers like Obama to agitate for "justice" and "equality" in his hometown of Chicago and other U.S. cities, including Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Washington. "I get to practice being an activist," and get paid for it, gushed Cincinnati recruit Amy Vincent.
Public Allies promotes "diversity and inclusion," a program paper says. More than 70% of its recruits are "people of color." When they're not protesting, they're staffing AIDS clinics, handing out condoms, bailing criminals out of jail and helping illegal aliens and the homeless obtain food stamps and other welfare.
Public Allies brags that more than 80% of graduates have continued working in nonprofit or government jobs. It's training the "next generation of nonprofit leaders" — future "social entrepreneurs."
The Obamas discourage work in the private sector. "Don't go into corporate America," Michelle has exhorted youth. "Work for the community. Be social workers." Shun the "money culture," Barack added. "Individual salvation depends on collective salvation."
"If you commit to serving your community," he pledged in his Denver acceptance speech, "we will make sure you can afford a college education." So, go through government to go to college, and then go back into government.
….
Not all the recruits appreciate the PC indoctrination. "It was too touchy-feely," said Nelly Nieblas, 29, of the 2005 Los Angeles class. "It's a lot of talk about race, a lot of talk about sexism, a lot of talk about homophobia, talk about -isms and phobias."
One of those -isms is "heterosexism," which a Public Allies training seminar in Chicago describes as a negative byproduct of "capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and male-dominated privilege."
The government now funds about half of Public Allies' expenses through Clinton's AmeriCorps. Obama wants to fully fund it and expand it into a national program that some see costing $500 billion. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the military, he said.
The gall of it: The Obamas want to create a boot camp for radicals who hate the military — and stick American taxpayers with the bill.
SOCIALISM:
Snippets from http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/why_obamas_socialism_matters_1.html:
American Thinker
By Bookworm
October 13, 2008
Why Obama's socialism matters
Soft socialism is better, but it certainly isn't the American ideal. Britain springs to mind as the perfect example of soft socialism. Britain's socialist medicine is a disaster, with practically daily stories about people being denied treatment or receiving minimal treatment. Invariably, the denials arise because the State's needs trump the individual's: Either the treatment is generally deemed too costly (and there are no market forces at work) or the patients are deemed unworthy of care, especially if they're old.
....
The British socialist bureaucracy also controls people's lives at a level currently incomprehensible to Americans, who can't appreciate a state that is constantly looking out for its own good. In Britain, government protects thieves right's against property owner's, has it's public utilities urge children to report their parents for "green" crimes; tries to criminalize people taking pictures of their own children in public places; destroys perfectly good food that does not meet obsessive compulsive bureaucratic standards; and increasingly stifles free speech. (Impressively, all of the preceding examples are from just the last six months in England.)
Both history and current events demonstrate that the socialist reality is always bad for the individual, and this is true whether one is looking at the painfully brutal socialism of the Nazis or the Soviets or the Chinese, with its wholesale slaughters, or at the soft socialism of England, in which people's lives are ever more tightly circumscribed, and the state incrementally destroys individual freedom. And that is why Obama's socialism matters.
Regardless of Obama’s presumed good intentions, socialism always brings a society to a bad ending. I don’t want to believe that Americans who live in a free society that allows people to think what they will, do what they want, and succeed if they can, will willingly hand themselves over to the socialist ideology. They must therefore be reminded, again and again and again, that socialism isn’t just another political party; it’s the death knell to freedom. So remember, while McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America.
*****
See also http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/obamas_three_strikes_1.html:
Sarah Palin's relentless hammering brought the Ayers story back to the surface. She must now tie the three strands together: Ayers, ACORN, the New Party, and pound at it until it can no longer be ignored. (Of course, this will be an extremely upsetting experience for Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, but that can't be helped.)
COMMENT by Westhighlander:
The quandary is who is the "Real Barack"?
The Choices are hidden behind 3 doors:
#1) He is the ultimate "Potemkin Village Candidate" -- there being nothing of real substance to Barack because he trully believes only in acheiveing power at whatever cost to whomever -- there are many exhibits that support this verdict including the "throwing under the bus" of numerous Barack close associates, friends and even family members as the need arises
#2) He is the ultimate "Being- There Candidate" -- the Chauncey Gardiner who is really Chance the Gardner who is assumed to be what the adoring public wants -- but underneath is once again nothing -- he is in this case a "Useful Idiot" used by Ayers and Wright and all the rest as a convenient vessel to host and display their works -- the possibility that "Dreams" is an Ayer's ghostwrite is Exhibit A) for #2)
#3) He is the ultimate "Manchurian Candidate" -- believing all the radical pseudo-Communist or Alinsky-stuff "Hook Line and Sinker" -- but craftily covering it all up (by denying access to all the relevant documents) until he can Caesar Chavez the ol’US of A as our first Communist Dictator
None of the above would be a much better choice for the future of the US -- but I fear we really have the Obama from door #1), #2) or #3) to look forward to for the next 4 years.
WORK-A-PHOBIA: Socialism tends to be a lie, promised most to those derelicts among the multitudes who suffer debilitation from work-a-phobia, to trick them into voting into power such thugs as will not easily ever be voted out. Of course, once thugs are in power, there becomes little to incentive anyone to resist siren calls of work-a-phobia.
STAGE MANAGING FOR THE SOCIALIST CAUSE — see http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/obama_appoints_castros_lawyer.html.
Comment by Dlanor, at http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/11/hey_kids_lets_create_an_intern.html:
Infancy entails a process of learning how to make meaningful one’s own niche of environmental parameters within a system that avails polar extremes: (1) particularly specified parental controls vs. (2) an apparent infinity of worldly possibilities.
Achieving creative and responsible adulthood entails having learned how to inhabit one’s own niche, independently, while not conceiting to invade the independent boundaries established by others.
Eternal adolescence (liberal “failure to launch”) entails having failed to learn how to guide oneself, absent either very specific controls (big government parentage) or no-bounds freedom (anything-goes morality).
For adults, detailed control is euphemism for despotism, while no-bounds freedom (freedom without law) is an oxymoron, which never has and never will exist.
In other words, the world of “creative liberalism” exists only for the world of illusion, where one imagines that despots behind big government really have only our best interests at heart.
Newsflash for lib-kids: When you turn on the lights and dispel the illusion, you will learn that Big Government socialism (as well as Big World Government) reduces to despotism.
Grow up. Please.
Comment at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/worshipping_the_weather.html:
RE: Munchausen by proxy
Is that not an addiction for making out as if someone (often a child) is sick or something is bad, so you can be recognized for your suffering and hailed for when you make them or it better? Something like that.
Perhaps the economy and the environment are "the child" made sick by Bush, for which Obama will inherit both the sympathy while they are bad and the kudos when they turn around. It doesn't hurt that folks like Soros may have worked a little magic medicine (poisoning and bursting bubbles?) behind the economic scenes. And Al Gore can later bring in "new science" to show how Obama's policies have been miraculously beneficial to the environment. Media will swoon.
Variations on this theme can be skillfully used by practitioners in numerous fields --- nursing, religion, business, and politics.
If you don't have anything to stand for higher than yourself, then why not employ strategies like Munchausen by proxy? Especially when you own media. To me, this is a big part of why Ayn Rand's (and Libertarians') philosophy, although worth considering, is also quite unfilling.
******
To Non-Believing Atheists:
So long as Something fortifies you, so that you can appreciate lasting moral value in civilization and in persons other than your immediate kin, you are, in my book, "religious."
Sorry, but in my book, it is mind-slaves, sociopaths, psychopaths, and the purely selfish who are so non-empathetic of God's creations as to be most nearly without religion. Such folks may be slightly religious, but only in respect of a very constricted, psychologically perverse, dark notion of "God." (That is not to say that they cannot be hugely twisted in respect of what little personal insight they retain. Unless the Bill of Rights is a suicide pact, practicing terrorism must go beyond the pale for "practicing religion.")
In my book, even a faithful dog, never having been instructed in any formal religion, may yet, by his acts of empathy, ritual trustworthiness, and faith in his companions, be "religious" --- at least, as much so as a terrorist.
The problem to grapple with is this:
We need to appreciate what the founding fathers meant when they wrote the "free exercise" clause. Obviously, they did not mean that every close knit clan of indoctrinated conspirators aiming to overthrow or undermine the government under some sort of religious or bubble-bursting jihad (regardless of how new or how institutionalized) would be protected as engaging in the "free exercise" of religion. (Otherwise, would citizens who engage in "So-Called Secret Religious Rites," such as for contriving international conspiracies to distort markets and burst economic bubbles, be Constitutionally protected?)
******
Marie Claude,
I store musings, to try to keep track of where my thinking is. I try to be open to constructive insight, but have a thick enough skin to take most any criticism.
(Does your dog still bite?)
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