Of Course Government Can Put a Gun to Your Head and Force You to Buy Stuff!

Liberal Arguments for the individual mandate are the greatest argument against it.

Big Government statists in the press are firing back at the charge that the Obamacare individual mandate is unconstitutional.  They take aim specifically at the charge that making everyone buy insurance is an abuse of the commerce clause.  Here's a typical line of attack:

Of course this distinction proves essentially meaningless once you realize that not buying health insurance now means paying out of pocket later. Combined with the fact that states generally require hospitals to treat the uninsured in the case of emergency, to say that the uninsured are making a "free choice" is highly misleading. It's government regulation that makes these choices possible in the first place. (Prospect)

See how this works? Government causes a problem by “requiring hospitals to treat the uninsured,” creating an opening for further regulation, leading us finally to the individual mandate.

To correctly restate the author’s last sentence...

It’s government regulation that makes these problems possible in the first place.

Back in the old days, people without money or insurance were treated, but they signed a contract with the hospital and paid the bill off in monthly installments.

As Thomas Sowell points out, the cries of “Do something!” have started more government-sponsored calamities…

The verbal gymnastics that statists employ to support the federal government forcing you to purchase insurance is amazing:

Widespread problems with access to health care and skyrocketing costs are certainly big enough to plausibly require a federal solution. . (Prospect)

No, the health care “problem” does not “require” a federal solution. That is an unfounded assertion.

Generally, the problem being addressed plausibly requires a federal solution, and the proposed regulation -- even if it does not itself regulate interstate commerce -- is part of a larger regulatory scheme. (Prospect)

This is absurd pedantry. The author is saying that the individual mandate, standing on its own, would be unconstitutional. But because it is “part of a larger regulatory scheme,” it’s OK. The dangling tendentia is reminiscent of Homer Simpson’s thinking:

Homer: "No! Homer Simpson never lies twice on the same form. He never has and he never will."
Marge: "You lied dozens of times on our mortgage application."
Homer: "Yes, but they were all part of a single ball of lies."

Mr. Lemieux’s argument hinges on whether a specific government action is part of a larger “regulatory scheme.” He helpfully cites cases where such an action that was not part of a larger scheme was struck down by the supreme court as not authorized under the commerce clause, thereby drawing his ominous distinction between constitutional and unconstitutional.

“The fact that the mandate is an essential part of a federal regulatory scheme just underscores why the federal government has not exceeded its authority under existing law.”

The Road to Statism

Obamacare’s progressive defenders concede that stand-alone laws that claw freedom from the individual are unconstitutional. However, this is a false concession. They proclaim that government does have such a right if done under the umbrella of a larger regulatory scheme.

The logical result? Create a tentacular, hydra-headed bureaucratic monster, call it a regulatory scheme, and now the federal government can do whatever it wants.

I recommend you go read the entire article. It is a frightening peek into the mind of a progressive statist.

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_individual_mandate_not_a_slippery_slope#

Who has done more damage to America? Washington DC or Wall Street?

I know, it's a tough question...

Bernie Madoff's son committed sideways a few weeks back, spurring John Robbins ask the question, Who's Done More Damage, Bernard Madoff or Alan Greenspan? 

I think mine is the more relevant question.

The anger at Madoff is misplaced. He's a piker compared to the federal government. After all, the multi-trillion dollar progressive ponzi schemes cooked up in DC dwarf Madoff’s mere 50 billion dollar one. And people voluntarily turned money over to Bernie.

The progressive ponzi scheme was crafted with confiscated money and the flim flam was kept afloat by Federal Reserve currency manipulation, stealing from workers and savers by a constant devaluation of the dollars we earn. This drove savers into the arms of Wall Street because we needed to invest in securities just to stay ahead of inflation.

Bernie Madoff just proves the old adage:  "If anybody besides the federal government tried that, they'd go to jail!"  Bernie's mistake was stealing without a government license. 

No More All-White Presidential Tickets

Identity Politics elevates gender, color and culture above competence.  It is an insult to all Americans, especially minorities


Politico ran a perfunctory post-election puff piece on the new stars of the GOP.  Susana Martinez, Marco Rubio, John Kasich (who's really an old star reborn).  Pretty standard stuff, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Politico saying anything positive about conservatives.  I'm also glad to see the GOP getting props for fielding some awesome minority candidates.  Then I saw a quote I just could not believe...

  This is what caught my eye:

“The bottom line is that after 2008, you can never go back to an all-white ticket,” said Susan MacManus, political science professor at the University of South Florida. (Politico)

This is so wrong on so many levels.  

First, it is white guilt paying obeisance to liberal political correctness.  No more all-white tickets because pointy-headed liberal social engineers say so?  What if they are two awesomely qualified white lesbians who are extremely liberal?  I bet they'd make an exception...  It amazes me that the most unthinking propaganda parrots can be found roosting in the ivory towers of academe.

Have you heard the one about the Muslim, the one-legged lesbian, and the Black Hispanic walking into the DNC Headquarters...

This is bald-faced tokenism, a rank condescension to "people of color."  To think that the only way you can get a group of people to vote for you is to run "one of them," is a horrid thought.  Break down our demographics into its hundreds of sub-groups, and you quickly see the absurdity of this.
  

Treating people as a collective interest group instead of as individuals is revolting.  All Blacks and all Hispanics are not liberal, and *gasp!*  they all don't think the same!  Worst of all is how liberals lump disparate groups together under the "minority" or "people of color" banner.  Their latest adventure in racial and cultural profiling has them treating Blacks and Hispanics as though they were cooking products sitting on a shelf at the supermarket in the "Ethnic Foods" aisle.

"After the Obama debacle, you can never go back to a black candidate." 

That is my conclusion, based upon the professor's logic.  Let's see how that flies...

This is what's wrong with liberalism, it has strayed so far from Dr, King's sincere message regarding content of character over color of skin. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Progressive Icon

Exploring the Roots of Progressism

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it.  -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes was an interesting man. Highly educated, intelligent and pithy.  He was the son of abolitionists, a thrice-wounded Civil War veteran, and he was put on the Supreme Court by President Theodore Roosevelt, who later regretted his decision.





Holmes also did much to break down the constitutional bulwark constructed to guard our liberties, and the progressive hordes stormed through the breach.

Law Professor Michael Arians sums up Holmes's judicial philosophy:

Holmes’ jurisprudence is the wellspring for much of current American views about jurisprudence. Holmes 1) tuned everyone to a social view of law—"The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience;" 2) was perceived to advocate judicial restraint when (conservative) judicial activism was denounced by progressives; 3) advanced the idea of law as prediction, thus leading to the is/ought of legal realism; 4) urged a view of law from the perspective of a bad man, which led to a form of authoritarian control; and 5) argued for a thoroughgoing positivism (and opposition to moral language in law).  (Ariens - Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Holmes was in the vanguard of abandoning a strict rule of law and replacing it with "empathetic" interpretations.  His judicial restraint abetted progressives in building the state-friendly legal framework that tramples our rights to this day.

Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.  -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 Progressivism is Statism

Progressivism is neither "liberal" nor "conservative."  The Wilson progressives were pro-war, anti-alcohol, and violated the rights of anarchists, smut peddlers, war protesters, and communists.

the Progressive movement was a comprehensive drive for statism and big government across the board – in every area of American life, from the economy to foreign policy to the treatment of dissent, and even to sex and the consumption of alcohol. The movement was a coalition of certain big business groups and new circles of technocratic intellectuals, devoted to a planned and cartelized economy in which they would share the rule.  (Murray Rothbard - Wilson's Raiders)

Militarism, globalism, domestic spying, and the ever burgeoning cohort of alphabet soup agencies are all products of progressivism.

When you deprecate natural rights as Holmes did, you are left with whatever the state decides you deserve.

Murray Rothbard - Wilson's Raiders
Michael Ariens - Holmes
Brainy Quotes - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Fight The Power!

The Power is now with the Progressive Statists.  "The Oppressed" have become the oppressors...


Molly Worthen at New Republic is exhibit A for what’s wrong with progressivism. Progressives just hate "outmoded" concepts like democracy and will of the people.  It's all so noisy and messy.

Here's how she describes the "problem:"

"the problem of democracy’s ignorant priesthood of believers, and the destructive feedback loop between culture warrior politicians and the self-appointed citizens defending inviolable but ill-considered first principles."

There are several things wrong with this ignorant, liberty-hating statement

1) Ill-considered first principles?  Like a good little deconstructionist, Worthen takes a jackhammer directly to the foundation of American liberty, hoping to cause a complete collapse of the structure. Progressives, like their ideological father and racist in chief Woody Wilson, hate our founding fathers, their founding principles and especially Lockean natural law.  They loath the constitution, and want to render it useless as a restraint on government power.

2) “Ignorant priesthood of believers” and “self-appointed citizens” is a direct slap and you and me. And the second phrase in particular is just ridiculous: We are citizens by birth or naturalization, not self-appointment. It rankles progressives that we the great unwashed don’t know how to shut up and obey our superiors. Their attitude is what brought to power the Mussolinis and Chavez’s of the world.

3) The feedback loop she calls “destructive” could just as easily describe the mechanics of progressive liberal thought.  It has leached into society, academe, and government,corroding personal initiative and traditional societal norms.  So it’s OK when they do it, but not when caveman conservative who believe in first principles do it.  What lazy and arrogant thinking...

Tea Parties and Town Hall Meetings?  Just Ignorant Rabble!

"democracies in general, and perhaps the United States in particular, are not very good at managing public conversations about complex issues."

"They demonstrated that the populist strain in American politics, newly revived, means that cluelessness in defense of delusions of liberty is no vice." 

"the most striking feature of the town hall meetings: the gross ignorance and anti-elitism of voters whose influence, while failing to halt the healthcare bill, did radically reshape it."

We may be ignorant ( I doubt it) but citizens understand that every decision made for us by a klatch of elitists is one more piece of freedom gone. Maybe we don't "understand the benefits," because the arrogant overlords who crafted the healthcare monstrosity are unable to explain it. Hell, they didn't even read it! How ignorant is that, defending something you haven't even read? No wonder we have no faith in the District of Criminals.

It’s not left versus right. It’s one-size-fits-all statism versus personal freedom

The real danger—and the real cunning—of “incivility” such as Palin’s is that it exempts her from dealing with complicated issues head-on. Her healthcare rhetoric shut down serious debate of the issue before it could begin, and implanted in her followers’ minds an immutable image of a threat that does not exist

But a threat does exist; it’s the threat of a zealous progressivism on the march, trampling all in its path as the parade of fools marches towards the utopian promised land. We precieve it, many can’t explain it, but we don’t like it.

Horrors!  Christian Conservatives are Indoctrinating Their Children!

"In recent decades, conservative evangelicals in particular have begun to stress the presuppositions undergirding their “biblical worldview,” and to encourage a defensive, intellectually self-conscious stance in their children. In this age of culture war and values voting, the Georgia study may suggest that families of all persuasions are doing the same."

Hell Yes!!! That’s exactly what I’m doing! I’ll be damned if I’m going to send pliant mush brains out into the world to be fodder for the progressive statist machine.

I have taught my kids to show respect to others, but to also question authority and to logically evaluate information presented to them.   It may be finally paying off.  My kids, in a backwards way, paid me a compliment the other day when they were talking about how it was sometimes difficult to discuss current issues with their grandparents.

“It’s just generational,” my teens concluded. “They come from a time when you were just supposed to shut up and listen to whatever your elders told you, no discussion.”

“You’re still supposed to do that,” I reflexively replied.

“Not us Dad. You raised free thinkers!”

There may be hope after all...

Frogs in a Pot

We have more laws than we had 100 years ago, but we're less safe, less happy, and less free

Democrat and Republican Progressive rodents have nibbled away at our freedoms for over 100 years now.  John Stossel writes:

It's become easier to get into trouble. We've become a nation of a million rules. Not the kind of bottom-up rules that people generate through voluntary associations. Those are fine. I mean imposed, top-down rules formed in the brains of meddling bureaucrats who think they know better than we how to manage our lives.

Its always in the name of safety, security, equality, etc.  Meanwhile, Congress exempts itself from the laws it piles on us mere mortals while democratic voters cheer the trampling of our constitution.

It hit me a few months ago when the Supreme Court struck down Chicago dictator Daily’s unconstitutional gun ban.  Daily declared he would just rewrite the law.  I wrote a blog post featuring Ted Nugent declaring “Don’t.  Tread.  On.  Me.  Period!”

What Gives Them the Right?
What gives an elected official the right to tell a free man he can’t own a gun to protect himself and his family?  Seriously.  We should be asking our elected officials that at every turn.  

But no, we are all suspect, with hundreds of thousands of incomprehensible laws hanging over our heads, and it’s all for the betterment of society.  Progress!  That is their talking point.  “We don’t let you run with scissors, Little Kurt, because you may hurt yourself of someone else.”  

“Someone might get hurt.  We have policemen to handle the bad guys.”

Yeah right.  You can’t sue the police department when your house is robbed or, God forbid, a loved one is murdered.  So the state denies us a fundamental right but fails to step in and fill the void.  That is just one of the myriad logical inconsistencies of progressivism.  

Progressivism Kills
People in liberal victim societies like New York and Chicago are lambs to the slaughter because their governments have disarmed them while failing to do the same to the predators.

Too many have no retirement savings because the Social Security siren song has dashed them upon the rocks of fiscal insolvency, while government-sponsored inflation ate away their savings.

Education performance decreases as federal government intervention increases

“Stimulus” money bailed out irresponsible state governments, keeping the economy-killing bloat alive and allowing them to dodge the hard decisions needed to restore fiscal sanity.

This is progress?

Why Progressivism?

You can’t argue against it if you don’t understand it...

Michael Barone, America’ preeminent political scholar, explores the roots of progressivism, that un-American and statist doctrine spawned at the dawn of the 20th century.

Progressivism’s Premise

The Progressives explicitly repudiated the Founders’ vision of limited government. They argued that government needed to redistribute property, to take money from one group of citizens to help others, and to regulate economic activity in ways previously considered unconstitutional.

More importantly, says Barone, “They feared revolution.”  Even “good” countries experienced such upheavals back in the late 1800’s.  People of the early 1900’s looked up to central-planning strong men as the wave of the future, if not out of fear of central-planning communists.  You see, fascism, communism and progressivism were not opposing ideologies, they were competing for the support of the same group of people!

The teeming hordes of city dwellers who manned America’s factories became a particular concern of progressives:

Most city residents rented rather than owned their homes; they cashed their paychecks for cash rather than have bank accounts; they depended on charity if they became disabled or widowed.

It was the America of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie—a very hard America (as I used the term in my 2004 book, Hard America, Soft America), an America with plenty of competition and accountability, but which could be very unforgiving of mistakes and misfortunes. Millions made their way upwards, but most never accumulated significant wealth.

Progressivism was sprung from a sense of condescending paternal benevolence, urged along by a will to order.

The Progressives and their progeny, the New Dealers—whether acting out of benevolence, hunger for power, or fear—were paternalistic; but they were also precautionary.

Give the masses work relief, Social Security, deposit insurance, a floor on wages and prices, they thought, and the masses will not revolt or be attracted to the totalitarian faiths advancing in the Old World—the Communism that many intellectuals championed, the fascism that Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote was “the wave of the future.”

The irony here, is that the US government, insulating itself from socialist totalitarian ideologies, itself became more totalitarian and more socialist.

The Progressives argued that economic freedoms were unimportant because ordinary people, lacking property, didn’t really have much economic freedom anyway.

As such, property rights must be subordinated to human rights. It was better to guarantee people education, healthcare, food, housing—the domestic programs that Franklin Roosevelt advanced as victory in World War II neared in 1944 and 1945

It’s always for the good of society, security, equality, social justice...  As The State increases, the individual decreases. 

It is helpful to recall that Benjamin Franklin quote progressives were so fond of spouting in the days after 9/11:

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." -- Benjamin Franklin

The Progressive Age

We are Living in The Progressive Age

Rachel Maddow, who I think is the smartest person on MSNBC, read a litany of liberal actions undertaken by President Ronald Reagan.  The purpose was to throw all Obama criticism back in the faces of us racist conservatives.  It was unbalanced and simplistic, just the way Obama devotees like their propaganda. 

If you want some actual thinking Reagan criticism, look no further than libertarian economist Murray Rothbard.  He hits the same point Maddow does, damning all modern-day liberalism in the process.

Progressivism is Here

Progressivism was ushered in by Teddy Roosevelt and nurtured by Professor Woodrow Wilson.  It was finally rammed home by FDR, who never let a crisis go to waste.  The constitution is trampled, our personal freedoms diminished, and government continues to grow. 

That is the political environment President Reagan found himself in.  That is the only defense I can muster.  Ours is a progressive structure, built over the decades, and even a good strong man like Ronald Reagan weilding a sledgehammer couldn't knock the damned thing down, although he did pull us out of Carter's malaise.  President Clinton was smart enough to continue Reaganomics, and we had the greatest economic boom in our country's history. 

It's not "Liberty versus Tyranny"
Rather, it's "which version of tyranny do you prefer?  Republican or Democrat?"

Better stated, it is statist progressivism versus classical liberalism.  This is why "progressive" fits the current crowd on the left so much better than "liberal."  For they are very illiberal and they castigate all who refuse to pay obeisance to their man-made dogma.  As the state increases, individualism decreases.  We cede more and more control of our lives to the state and the to the busybody control freaks who infest it.

A Socialist by any other name...
F.A. Hayek rightly calls all of it Socialism.  For that is what it is:  Chinese and Russian Communism, Italian and German Fascism, and the US Progressive movement embodied in FDR's new deal and Johnson's great society all have theoretical non-party socialism at their core.

Hayek uses the term to include even states that do not physically take over the means of production, but merely redistribute the fruits of those enterprises through the coercive power of government.  Why should the bureaucratic overlords get their hands dirty when all they have to do is shake down the producers at the end of each workday? 

The end result is the same:  The state ignoring its founding principles and confiscating personal property and "spreadin' it around."  That is how progressivism leads to totalitarianism.   

The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek, Edited by Bruce Caldwell

Dennis Prager Breaks Down Lefist Tactics

Dennis Prager is a wise man and a gifted teacher. He explains why the left continues to scream that the tea party is rich, white, hateful and racist. This is a brilliant analysis of how propaganda works, and it is a scary descent in to the dark, tangled mind of the left:

Opponents of ... the tea parties regularly note that tea partiers are overwhelmingly white. This is intended to disqualify the tea parties from serious moral consideration.

But there are two other facts that are far more troubling:

The first is the observation itself. The fact that the Left believes that the preponderance of whites among tea partiers invalidates the tea party movement tells us much more about the Left than it does about the tea partiers.

It confirms that the Left really does see the world through the prism of race, gender and class rather than through the moral prism of right and wrong.

 One would hope that all people would assess ideas by their moral rightness or wrongness, not by the race, gender or class of those who hold them. But in the world of the Left, people are taught not to assess ideas but to identify the race, class and gender of those who espouse those ideas. 

 Name Calling to Avoid a Debate

This helps explain the widespread use of ad hominem attacks by the Left: Rather than argue against their opponents' ideas, the Left usually dismisses those making the argument disagreed with as "racist," "intolerant," "bigoted," "sexist," "homophobic" and/or "xenophobic."

You're against race-based affirmative action? No need to argue the issue because you're a racist. You're a tea partier against ever-expanding government? No need to argue the issue because you're a racist.

It's not about ideas with progressives--it's about shouting us down because we are a danger to their money-gobbling, freedom-stealing schemes.

Go read the whole article here:  Dennis Prager