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January 31, 2005
Treason trials?
This thread over at No Treason has been giving me a few chuckles. Apparently, this site is dedicated to showing that anarchists and libertarians are foul-mouthed tribalists incapable of using logical argument. Do you think these guys could be the Armstrong Williams of the internet? They sure as hell don't make true anarchists look good.
Posted by Patrick Yancey at 03:40 PM | Comments (5)
January 27, 2005
Time to Employ More Subtle Propaganda
Since the word has gotten out (twice!) about the Bush administration's payment of taxpayer money to columnists in exchange for promoting administration initiatives, the president has decided it's time to order (officially, for public consumption) that this shall happen no more. (Thanks to Drudge for the link.)
Oddly enough, the White House was entirely in the dark about all this, according to the president. Isn't it funny how unethical behavior by other executive branch employees somehow invariably escapes the notice of the White House, no matter who is occupying it?
Lew Rockwell has a good column on this whole subject today, echoing some things I've said in earlier blog entries and adding his usual unique insights.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:59 AM | Comments (1)
January 26, 2005
Q: What Would it Take to Stop a Gang War?
A: A better target!
P.S: I am amazed by the clear-headedness shown by these otherwise pretty deluded people (the gangbangers, that is, though the cops are, too) in recognizing the real enemy. When the inevitable whack'n'stack occurs (that is, when a paranoid cop kills an unarmed civilian because he "felt his life was in danger"), maybe the citizenry of Ceres will wake up to the undesirability of having an armed, nearly unaccountable, tax-supported political uber-class with no cumpunction about plugging Joe or Jane Q. Sixpack at the drop of a cellphone that "could have been a gun."
But I doubt it.
Posted by Patrick Yancey at 05:26 PM | Comments (1)
Remember: No Badthink in Government School. Only Goodthink.
I would have courted arrest nearly every day of the school year if things had been like this. The idiocy rolls on.
Posted by Patrick Yancey at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)
A Chickenhawk in Every Pot, a Terrorist in Every Garage
Surprise, surprise . . .
Another big terrorist threat turns out to be a false alarm, as anyone with half a brain could have figured out from the news reports.
The FBI said Tuesday that the possible terrorist plot reported against Boston by a tipster last week was a false alarm. A law enforcement official in Mexico said that a suspected smuggler made the story up to get back at people who failed to pay him. . . .
[The suspected smuggler] himself was one of the people wanted for questioning in the alleged plot. The group also included 13 Chinese immigrants and two Iraqis; authorities later determined that one of the Chinese had been in federal custody for more than two months and had no terrorist connections.
Boy, I feel safer with these people watching over me!
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:44 PM | Comments (1)
Another Conservative Sells Her Soul to the Feds
Armstrong Williams wasn't just whistling Dixie (in itself a pretty good thing) when he claimed that there were other pundits on the take from the federal government to promote the Bush agenda.
Today we learn that syndicated (and National Review Online) columnist Maggie Gallagher "had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal" to spend "$300 million . . . encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families."
One wonders how many more "conservative" pundits are receiving taxpayer dollars to encourage conservatives to support distinctly un-conservative things. Apparently it's okay, though, as long a Republican is shelling out the money to other Republicans. Imagine, on the other hand, the outcry from the official Right if Clinton had been caught doing this!
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)
Cutting the Deficit by Spending More Money
It didn't take long for my recently expressed cynicism about George W. Bush's pledge to cut the deficit in half in five years to be validated by events in Washington.
Today's Washington Post reports:
Additional war spending this year will push the federal deficit to a record $427 billion for fiscal 2005, effectively thwarting President Bush's pledge to begin stanching the flow of government red ink, according to new administration budget forecasts unveiled yesterday.
Administration officials rolled out an $80 billion emergency spending request, mainly for Iraq and Afghanistan, conceding that the extra money would probably send the federal deficit above the record $412 billion recorded in fiscal 2004, which ended Sept. 30. Bush has pledged to cut the budget deficit in half by 2009, a promise the administration says it can keep. But at least for now, the government's fiscal health is worsening.
Lest you think the president and Congress bear any responsibility for this mess, one "senior administration official" placed the blame squarely on "insurgents": "There is no question that [the insurgents], with relatively small expenditures, are proving themselves to be able to force us into much larger ones."
Among those "much larger" expenditures: $1 billion to defeat roadside bombs. Clearly we are winning, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a defeatist, anti-American commie.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2005
"Atrocity Porn" and its Purveyors
The horrific experience of Iraqi woman Jumana Hanna -- supposedly imprisoned, raped, and tortured for years on the orders of Uday Hussein -- was cited by the Bush administration and its supporters as "reason alone" for the war. But Hanna's story -- like the rest of the administration's case -- was a tissue of fabrications.
So begins this excellent piece by William Norman Grigg on what he calls "atrocity porn," phony stories of atrocities by the Hitler du jour invented to drum up pro-war sentiment among Americans. Grigg covers current as well as historical instances of atrocity porn and shows how it is used to convince Americans to support wars against their better instincts.
Grigg concludes:
Atrocity porn plays a critical role in the process of mobilizing mass hatred on the part of the state’s designs. Like its sexual equivalent, atrocity porn (especially, and obviously, in the case of stories describing rape and other sexual abuse) appeals to prurient interests to manipulate base impulses. In this case, the appetite being exploited is what Augustine called the libido dominandi – the lust for power. Once that appetite is aroused through atrocity porn, the consummation is usually a state-sanctioned orgy of bloodshed.
The authors of atrocity porn also cynically exploit the predictable reactions it will provoke from decent people. Sometimes this can be accomplished through a selective – and obsessive – focus on outrages committed by a distant regime. And it’s certainly true that there is no shortage of genuine atrocities for the propaganda mill. This is why an obsessive focus on a specific regime – particularly one that, like Saddam’s Iraq, posed no plausible threat to the United States – should provoke immediate suspicion, rather than receiving immediate and unqualified support.
All warfare is based on deception, including the crude and ephemeral deceptions embodied in atrocity porn. But war involves subtle deceptions, as well. The subtlest and deadliest is the idea that the state is conducting a war to protect the people from foreign enemies, rather than exploiting foreign conflicts to wage war on the rights and prosperity of the people.
(Thanks to the Antiwar.com blog for the link.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2005
More "Protection" From Officer Friendly...
SCOTUS weighs in on privacy in the Land of the Free. The verdict? We're too free.
Posted by Patrick Yancey at 07:54 PM | Comments (1)
January 22, 2005
Firing Away
I am pleased to report that I finally have gotten to fire my Confederate Colt revolver down at the local range. I put ten rounds through it (if you have ever fired black powder you'll know why ten was enough), and hit the target almost every time. My Navy Colt is Confederate because it has the all-brass frame of the copies made by the South during the war (real Colts had the steel case-hardened frame). I also fired my Hungarian Walther PP and was satisfied that, all things being equal, I still can't hit a damn thing past ten feet. A friend of mine told me that a fellow has to put at least 100 rounds a week through a carry piece to remain proficient. I hope I am never forced into a gun fight. I don't feel confident.
Posted by Patrick Yancey at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2005
More Unpatriotic Conservatives?
Well, well . . .
Even some of Bush's biggest supporters were aghast at the messianic tone of yesterday's inaugural speech, as well they should be. Welcome to the club, folks. Some of us have known this guy was dangerous for a long time, but you and your pals called us "unpatriotic" for saying so.
Here's Peter Robinson writing at National Review: "But the speech was in almost no way that of a conservative. To the contrary. It amounted to a thoroughgoing exaltation of the state." (Thanks to Antiwar.com for the link.)
Then there's Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:
And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."
This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.
One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.
(Thanks to Drudge for the link.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:42 AM | Comments (2)
January 20, 2005
Proof That We're Winning the War on Terror
"As the capital prepared to celebrate President Bush's inauguration, the city appeared on Tuesday more like a place under siege. Hour by hour the city of grand buildings and marble statues seemed to disappear behind curtains of steel security fences and concrete barriers," according to the New York Times.
Among the preparations: manhole covers welded shut, street and sidewalk closings, building sweeps, subway station closings, expanded no-fly zones over D.C., thousands of cops, and anti-aircraft missiles.
Now I ask you: Do these sound like the actions of people who genuinely believe their public pronouncements of how we're winning the War on Terror and becoming safer every day?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:11 AM | Comments (1)
Making Socialism Work Better?
Writes Robert Anderson:
I can still hear Mises saying: "The history of government intervention is the correcting of the ill effects of earlier interventionism, and the results from that interventionism yield consequences precisely the opposite of what the interveners themselves intended!" It has been almost fifty years since I first heard those words, and I have long since come to appreciate the wisdom of Ludwig von Mises. The truth of his teachings is a reminder that some things don’t change!
Social Security and I were both born in the United States in 1935, I being the junior by three months. Indeed, I began life at the beginning of a new era....the age of the "nanny state." How our ancestors survived in their old age prior to Social Security still remains a mystery for most Americans today....assuming they ever think about it at all. Some politicians even today have been known to declare that their own parents would probably have starved but for Social Security. Incredible!
He then goes on to explain all of the potential problems with Bush's "partial privatization" scheme to "save" Social Security when, of course, the right thing to do is end the program. It's well worth reading in full.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2005
Gimme a Little Privacy, Will Ya?
If you're among the millions of Americans who took airline flights in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FBI probably knows about it - and possibly where you stayed, whom you traveled with, what credit card you used and even whether you ordered a kosher meal.
The bureau is keeping 257.5 million records on people who flew on commercial airlines from June through September 2001 in its permanent investigative database, according to information obtained by a privacy group and made available to The Associated Press.
Knowing all that, get this whopper:
Citing privacy concerns, the FBI didn't reveal which airlines turned over the information, which airline employees turned it over and which FBI special agents got it. (Emphasis mine.)
Ah, so there are no "privacy concerns" about the FBI's keeping 257.5 million records on airline passengers, but the FBI couldn't possibly tell us which airlines or employees supplied the information or which FBI agents got it. Apparently the government's privacy, and that of its flunkies in the airline industry, is of paramount importance, but the privacy of ordinary citizens isn't worth squat.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
Thanks for Nothing
The worship of false gods is a hard spirit to break.
Honest man? Honest men don’t plagiarize their masters and doctoral thesis, writing words they claim are their own. This is theft, pure and simple.
Social change through non-violence? Some one has been reading too many government approved history books. I was alive and alert during King’s walk on earth and everywhere he stepped race riots were sure to follow. Since he’s been dead, how many race riots have occurred? These were only the most obvious acts of violence perpetrated by King. Though many of his sentiments sounded reasonable, his plan (to be executed by his disciples) was to make these ideas mandatory by law, enforced by state coercion. In the process, we have lost freedom of association but gained the chains of race quotas, egalitarianism, and ethnic cleansing of Southern culture.
To top if off, we now have our money stolen from us to pay lazy bureaucrats to take off work and march in goofy parades in his honor! To the sheep, this legitimizes his life’s works of theft and moral bankruptcy. So the sheep cry out for more!
King’s “legacy” can best be summed up by the wonderful works of his number one disciple, Jesse Jackson. This ubiquitous con man and shake down artist has carried on King’s directive to destroy black culture. His idea is to justify the theft of treasure and property with the plea of, “we need it mo, we just po, dum niggas.” Watch the ghettos grow and the shackles tighten.
King was nothing but a punk, street gangster. They were a dime a dozen back then and, thanks in great part to his useless existence, even more plentiful now.
The only thing to “celebrate” on MLK Day is that he’s dead.
Thanks? Thanks for nothing!
Posted by Roger Young at 11:12 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 17, 2005
The Vitriol Against King
Paleo-Libertarian vitriol against Martin Luther King, Jr. always rings more reactionary than reasoned to me. Certainly, his economics were wrong, but that puts him in the company of just about every other resident of the planet. I'd take up Diogenes' search for the honest man before I took on trying to hunt up a consistent market anarchist. Next, drunkeness and promiscuity are trumpeted as evidence of a deficient character. Sure, they're high time preference, but since completely voluntary, they are no one's business beyond the people involved. I'll grant that theft of intellectual property is possible grounds for some sort of civil action by the injured parties though libertarians debate the concept of intellectual property amongst themselves. But it's hardly a crime worthy of the frothing at the mouth of some detractors.
On the other hand, his agitation for social change through non-violence is a monumentally positive mark for his legacy. And it was a life-risking endeavor, one he knowingly took up, where he could have opted for a safer and more lucrative course. Just imagine if more of the movers and shakers who actually wield the tools of coercion in this world spent more time drunk and laid and less time murdering and plundering.
Finally, any freedom-lover should be happy for as much inefficiency in the government as possible. In the lesser of two evils calculus, I'm much happier to be paying the overwhelming majority of government employees to be doing nothing than to be doing something. And every school child should be grateful for one less day of compulsory attendance. Worthy of worship, no. But worthy of thanks - Dr. King gets mine.
Posted by Robert Jackson at 05:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Just a Reminder
Today is the day that state worshippers give homage to the black version of their messiah, Martin Luther King Jr. It might be a good time to re-read Marcus Epstein’s article that dispels the myths surrounding this plagiarizing, whore- mongering, drunken, phony.
Posted by Roger Young at 12:11 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 14, 2005
But Then They Never Studied Law
Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.
Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries."
Remember when conservatives reminded us often of the Law of Unintended Consequences? Whenever a government program or law was proposed, they would remind us that, as good as the intentions of the lawmakers might be, they could not foresee all the unintended consequences of their new program or law, and therefore they ought not implement it.
Well, how about applying that same logic to government actions overseas? That is, in fact, exactly what many of us on the libertarian/anarchist side tried to do; but would conservatives listen? No way! Any and all opposition to Bush's war was from left-wing, commie-lib kooks who "hate America." No one with any sense could possibly oppose a "conservative" Republican's war!
Well, here we have grave unintended (at least we hope they were unintended) consequences demonstrated for all to see. Will this dampen the Right's enthusiasm for future foreign intervention? Surely it will . . . and I will be the starting quarterback in the Super Bowl.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)
They'd Rather Not Talk About Bush's Lies
Conservative talk shows have spent days now raking CBS and Dan Rather over the coals for the fake memos that supposedly proved George W. Bush went AWOL from the National Guard. The criticism is well deserved but probably overblown. It's definitely overblown when compared to the free pass--and, indeed, adulation--that those same pundits have given the Bush administration with regard to its lies about Iraq, as Harry Browne points out in this column. He even provides a handy scorecard for comparison of the two scandals.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
Natural Disasters vs. Political Disasters
Joseph Sobran contrasts nature's tsunamis with government's tsunamis--and the contrast is not flattering to government, or to most people, who approve of their government's tsunamis. Here's a choice quote, but you really need to read the whole thing:
In its helplessness, the mind gropes for comparisons. Other natural disasters have claimed more lives. Less flatteringly to the human race, so have our wars, even in recent memory. It’s horrifying to reflect that we deliberately prepare to inflict on each other worse calamities than the one we are now deploring. And we do it in the name of “defense” and “freedom.”
Maybe that’s the only moral to be drawn from this awesome display of nature’s amoral power: that modern man — specifically, the modern state — has learned to surpass nature in destruction. So far the tsunami’s death toll hasn’t even reached that of the first atomic bomb in 1945.
Today we all live under a threat of death at the hands of other men who are as nearly beyond our control as nature is. Is it any comfort to say that we are protected from our rulers by “democracy”? Ultimately, and often as a practical matter, we are their slaves. We must obey them. We are at their mercy. Nuclear weapons are only one of many forms of their power over us, one it may be inconvenient for them to use against us. But it’s there, the final instrument and symbol of their authority.
(Thanks to LewRockwell.com for the link.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2005
Lock 'Em Up and Throw Away the Key
The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.
In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.
Not much news there other than the fact that they've quietly given up looking for those WMDs. (Sean Hannity still hasn't given up. "We know he had them, and we know he used them," he said today in response to this news.) However, the most interesting part of this story may be the following:
The work on documents is not connected to weapons of mass destruction, officials said, and a small group of Iraqi scientists still in U.S. military custody are not being held in connection with weapons investigations, either.
Three people involved with the ISG said the weapons teams made several pleas to the Pentagon to release the scientists, who have been interviewed extensively. . . .
None of the scientists has been involved in weapons programs since the 1991 Gulf War, the ISG determined more than a year ago, and all have cooperated with investigators despite nearly two years of jail time without charges. U.S. officials previously said they were being held because their denials of ongoing weapons programs were presumed to be lies; now, they say the scientists are being held in connection with the possible war crimes trials of Iraqis.
In other words, we're gonna keep these scientists locked up just as long as we darn well please, and there ain't nothin' you or they can do about it. In other countries such policies are known as "fascist" or "communist." In America (and its colonies like Iraq) they're called "liberation."
Posted by Mike Tennant at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)
Stand Aside When the Emperor's Pal Wants to Shop
Former Iraq pooh-bah L. Paul Bremer is used to dangerous situations, but how threatening can it be to shop in Bethesda? Consider Washington journalist Lisa Newman's encounter with Bremer's Secret Service detail last week in the parking lot outside Whole Foods on River Road. Newman tells us that agents berated her after she loaded groceries and her 2-year-old daughter into her car, which was parked next to Bremer's two-SUV motorcade.
"I was just trying to get into my car," Newman says, fuming. But a female agent, guarding one of the black Suburbans, warned her to wait. "I told her my child was in there alone," Newman recounts. "She puts her hand up as if to block me. I don't really know what's going on, and then I see a man rush over and realize it's Paul Bremer. He ducks into the vehicle and smiles at me."
It turns out that Bremer, former head of the American occupation in Iraq, had stopped at the plaza Friday afternoon on the very urgent business of buying a birthday card.
Finally in her Honda Accord, Newman backed out and briefly blocked the motorcade. That's when another agent got worked up as well, she says: "He's screaming at me, 'Move it! You better move it!' I was amazed and furious at the same time. . . . I thought, 'If this is how they treat people in Baghdad, no wonder they hate Americans!' "
Bremer's former spokesman, Dan Senor (who's still his close associate), told us: " Bin Laden has a bounty on Ambassador Bremer's head. That's partly why he has Secret Service protection. Like all Secret Service agents, they have a difficult job, and as for how they carry out the responsibilities, we would defer to them."
Tom Mazur, the Secret Service's spokesman, said yesterday, "Unfortunately sometimes inconveniences take place, but I would hope our agents acted in a professional manner."
Posted by Mike Tennant at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2005
On Second Thought . . .
The U.S. government is no more subtle than its Iraqi puppet. After all, 'twas just this week that we learned that the Bush administration paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 of taxpayers' money to tell his conservative listeners, viewers, and readers what a great thing the unconstitutional, big-government No Child Left Behind Act is.
Williams says he's not the only one who's been rewarded handsomely, either, although at this point he refuses to name names of other fully-owned administration mouthpieces. Anyone care to hazard a guess? There's one well-known commentator, for example, who is probably too wealthy to be bought with cash but could likely be purchased for a promise not to prosecute him for certain drug offenses. What's really sad about this is that the administration has such reliable shills on the official Right that they really don't need to bother paying them to stay "on message." Then again, it's not the administration's money that's being handed out, so what do they care?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)
You Can't Buy Better Press
According to the Financial Times:
The electoral group headed by Iyad Allawi, interim Iraqi prime minister, yesterday handed cash to journalists to try to ensure coverage of its press conferences, in a throwback to Ba'athist-era patronage ahead of parliamentary elections on January 30.
After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a "gift" of a $100 bill in an envelope.
Many of the journalists accepted the cash, equal to about half the starting monthly salary for a reporter at an Iraqi newspaper, and one jokingly recalled how the former regime of Saddam Hussein had also lavished perks on favoured reporters.
It seems the new boss is pretty much the same as the old boss in most respects. Then again, our government really liked the old boss as long as he toed the line, so why shouldn't they install someone quite similar? For that matter, isn't this how our government treats its friends in the press, only more subtly, by offering them access and other non-cash perks?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 04:17 PM | Comments (1)
When Mom Hands You Lemons
When you were a kid and wanted to sell lemonade from your front porch, what did you do? Well, you asked Mom, and she helped you get some supplies together, set 'em up on the front porch, and hang out your shingle. Right?
Today, if you want to sell lemonade (in this case, to raise money for tsunami victims), you ask Mom, and she . . . calls the city government to find out how to get you a license to sell your product.
Then the city says food vending isn't allowed, so you can't get a license.
There is much outrage over this incident, most of it unfairly directed at the city, which said nobody was going to stop the kid from selling lemonade if Mom had just helped her set up shop instead of calling for a license. (Yes, licensing is a bad idea to begin with, but let's be clear in who is at fault here.) What has this mother just taught her child? Simple: The government is the source of everything, and don't you dare try to show any ingenuity and creativity without getting Big Brother's permission first.
Let's hope this incident turns little Carolyn Lipsick into a committed anarchist when she later reflects on the evil of needing--and, worse, desiring--government's imprimatur on her every move. It wouldn't do her mom any harm to rethink her groveling before the State, either.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:50 AM | Comments (2)
January 08, 2005
Words of wisdom from the wasteland.
I sent a friend of mine, a public school teacher in Florida, an article by Walter Williams. This was his reply.
"Excerpt from the article :
'In 1993, a Department of Education survey found that, among college graduates, 50 percent of whites and more than 80 percent of blacks couldn't state in writing the argument made in a newspaper column or use a bus schedule to get on the right bus, 56 percent could not calculate the right tip, 57 percent could not figure out how much change they should get back after putting down $3 to pay for a 60-cent bowl of soup and a $1.95 sandwich, and over 90 percent could not use a calculator to find the cost of carpeting a room. But not to worry. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni's 1999 survey of seniors at the nation's top 55 liberal arts colleges and universities found that 98 percent could identify rap artist Snoop Doggy Dogg and Beavis and Butt-Head, but only 34 percent knew George Washington was the general at the battle of Yorktown.'
Ignorance is Strength, in the words of Orwell... The persons in Williams' article can not utilize simple reading skills and cannot calculate simple mathematics. This is good for a power structure to maintain control because these people do have the observational tools to pay any attention to what the government and power elite are doing. They cannot read the news paper and discern anything from it especially if it had any governemnt criticism in it. They do not possess the skill to fill out their own tax forms and see what the tax system is like and what the money goes for and who pays the most. These are all skills that, in the hands of the wrong persons, are dangerous to the slavers. It is no wonder that early slave owners did not want the slaves to learn to read and write. They still don't! 98% knew Snoop Dog and B & B and that makes sense. Snoop Dog and others are just persons who are being marketed to the public and the fact that 98% of them knew him is a testament to the power of the various mediums for marketing. It shows that when the right information that we want people to have comes along they learn it with amazing efficiency. The know what we want them to know and know it well. On the other hand, they ignore, are bored by, or are simply too dull to be influenced by that which power structure would prefer them not to know.
Paradoxically, these people do possess technical skills that can be used in the job market to earn a comfortable living. Their knowledge and proficiency is kept tightly tunnelled in the realm of what they must know to do their jobs in the scheme of the economy. Confined within this realm people can be remarkably intelligent and skilled but step outside of their occupational world and they are as dull as pavement and as disinterested as a zombie.
The machine works beautifully. Each part runs within the machine flawlessly as long as it is correctly installed and placed where it belongs. Outside of the correct place in the apparatus the part is as worthless and irrelevant as scrap on a pile."
Thanks to K. McW.
Posted by Patrick Yancey at 10:11 PM | Comments (3)
January 03, 2005
How Capitalism Saved America
I just finished reading Thomas DiLorenzo's newest book, How Capitalism Saved America. It's largely a defense of capitalism in light of several key events or periods in U.S. history: the founding of America, the Great Depression, and the so-called "robber barons" of the late 1800s, to name a few.
The book is brief, well-written, and contains plenty of quotes and facts to back up the claims. What struck me the most is the extent to which socialists and other historical revisionists have managed to corrupt events such as the origins and prolonging of the Great Depression. Many things I "learned" in grade school are very quickly demonstrated as false by DiLorenzo.
This is a great book to counter the lies preached to us in the name of government power and socialist agenda. My only complaint is the book is almost too much of a puff piece for capitalism. The facts speak for themselves; the book might gain a bit more acceptance were DiLorenzo to tone down on the attacks on the "anticapitalists."
No, wait, I take that back. Good socialists and believers in democracy never let facts get in the way of public policy. At the end of the book, DiLorenzo says that "the more Americans come to understand the truth about capitalism, the more reason they will have to be optimistic about the future of their country."
Not gonna happen. Our universities, the media, and the socialist public school system will do everything they can to prevent the truth from being heard. This blog entry and book no doubt will only preach to the choir. Still, I highly recommend it. Send it to a socialist friend when you're done reading it.
Posted by Jeff Langr at 08:04 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Blessed are the War Makers
After a recent 2,000 mile road trip, one observation stands out: the obscene abundance of ribbon stickers on cars. The most popular seems to be the yellow ribbon which is meant to remind us not to forget Those Overseas Who Kill for Jesus. Is it just coincidence these ribbons are of the same color, that to many, signify treason and cowardice?
Many drivers accompany the yellow stickers with the red, white and blue variety wishing “God Bless America,” though which God would have the stomach to do this is unclear.
My mail box greets my safe arrival home with this literary gem, whereby the author claims that these poor souls mired in the desert “give the gift of liberty and that we can’t repay.”
It’s only a matter of time before the above mentioned ribbons are mandatory. It’s only a matter of time before we’ll be required to bow at the boots of our war gods, thanking them for the “gift of liberty.”
Posted by Roger Young at 01:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack