Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

19 June 2010

The Real Party of NO!!! or really of HELL NO!!!!

The Economist endorsed Obama prior to the election.  The most recent issue of The Economist, of 12 - 18 June 2010, has a cover article called The risks of "Hell, no!" and an editorial called What's wrong with America's right - Too much anger and too few ideas.  America needs a better alternative to Barack Obama.  The editorial goes on to say this:  "Many of America's most prominent business leaders are privately as disappointed by the right as they are by the statist Obama."  The editorial bemoans the fact that there is a civil war going on in the Republican party and the wrong side is generally winning.  It makes it clear that the editors detest the Tea Party movement and its affect upon the Republican party.  They are cheering for the Republican moderates, those same establishment types who just want a slower, but steady movement toward socialism, rather than the abrupt revolt and transformation of Obama and his socialist hordes.

The main article complains that not a single House Republican voted for the stimulus package in January 2009.  This was apparently a bad thing, even though it is now clear that the stimulus package was in fact just the left's wish list of new government programs designed to undermine the private sector, not to stimulate it.  It is clear that the stimulus bill discouraged the private sector from hiring.  The paltry few jobs saved or added due to that bill were almost all government jobs.  Late in the article it notes that: "Massive stimulus spending has barely dented the jobless numbers and has pushed the deficit to vertiginous heights."  One wonders where they found a dent at all.

The article complains that not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted in favor of health reform.  Apparently, the assumption is that ObamaCare, despised by most Americans, should have been supported by the opposition party, irrespective of its myriad problems, including its unconstitutionality and the fact that it did not actually even spell out a plan, having delegated much of that task to 137 executive branch departments and panels.

The article bemoans the fact that Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, says the Republican opposition is not just No, but Hell No!  It complains:
Even mainstream Republican politicians now portray themselves as the thin red line defending America's constitution, liberties and moral values from an arrogant president who is determined to appease America's enemies, drown future generations in debt and turn God's own country over to a godless socialism.
Well, yes, and this is a good thing that they have finally been forced to actually oppose socialism and to actually defend the Constitution, as those who have been in federal office or in the military previously have sworn to do.

Basically, the assumption of The Economist is, just as it is with American socialists, that doing something is a matter of giving the government a new power and having it decide what values will be allowed to be pursued and what the rules for pursuing them will be.  This is another example of the Stolen Concept.  The assumption is that nothing is being done if the government is not doing it.  The fact is that when the government takes on new powers and mandates certain actions while using force to deny other actions, it denies many more actions and choices than it enables.  Government itself is the primary agent of NO!!!!! 

When an American demands, angrily or not, that the government be legitimate and fulfill its constitutionally limited role, this is not metaphysically a fundamental statement of NO!!!  Instead, it is metaphysically and basically a statement that:
  • We the People need values in order to live our own individual lives.
  • We the People are capable of rationally choosing our own values.
  • We the People, having freedom of conscience and the right to think for ourselves, have the right and the responsibility to choose our own values.
  • We the People, each and everyone of us, has an individual character and have individual values and needs, which we assert the equal right to explore, develop, exercise, and pursue for our individual happiness.
  • The individual American asserts the positive declaration that he will manage his own life.
  • The individual American will cooperate with others of his own choosing in a free market of ideas, goods, services, and relationships to pursue his values for the sake of his own happiness.
Now let's examine how this positive assertion of life-living individual effort is transformed by the socialist (Democrat, Progressive, Liberal, Fascist, or Communist).   We find them making these very negative statements with strong limits on individual choice and actions.  We find that the socialist, or even The Economists moderate, is the agent of NO!!!!, or even of Hell, NO!!!!  The equivalent statements are:
  • A society needs some values so that the basic needs of many can be achieved, though many of the needs of many of the people will be ignored as unimportant.
  • The people are mostly ignorant and evil, so an elite of college-educated and properly indoctrinated Progressive people will determine which values the government will indoctrinate the masses in and how that government will discourage any other values the ignorant and stubborn masses may choose.
  • Only society has rights and those rights are determined by the government.  Individuals are not sovereign and should not try to think for themselves, but should instead accept the indoctrinated values of the state.
  • What is all this individual stuff and nonsense?  You are a Social Security number and a member of various groups.  The group of your race, the group of your gender, and the group of your income define you fully and adequately.  The state will, based on these few parameters, decide what the course of your life will be.
  • The government will micromanage your life with rules too complex for you to understand, but much too simple to deal with your individual natures.
  • The government will severely limit the freedom of the individual to associate with others and to trade with others in a free market of ideas, goods, services, and relationships.
The real party of NO!!!! or really of HELL NO!!!! is the party that will not allow individuals the choice of their own values, which will not allow them to explore, develop, and exercise their individual natures, which will not allow them to pursue the many rich variations of their values in free associations with others, and will not allow them the hope of individual happiness.

In life, the assertion of "YES, I can and will" requires that we act to reign in the desire of governments and our representatives in the government to expand its powers and to hold it back within its constitutionally few enumerated powers.  Thus, politically, the People must be constantly saying "NO, HELL NO!!!!!" to those many who wish to expand government and rule the People more firmly and with many more constraints.  But more fundamentally, and more metaphysically, we say that NO to government in order to preserve our individual control of our choice of values and of the many actions we will need to take to pursue those values and our individual happiness.  Living human life as self-directed individuals, is a massive assertion of YES, we are capable of living our own lives and it is our own responsibility to choose our individual values and the principles upon which we will manage our own lives.  We must throw off the excessive limits of big government in order to assert the value of our individual lives in all the richness and complexity of our choices and actions in free associations with other highly individuated people.

We must never tire of asserting that we are committed to that most fundamentally and metaphysically important recognition of the critical role and the sovereignty of the individual human being in all political discussion and decision making.  Each individual has the equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and socialism cannot recognize the nature of the individual, his importance, or his equal rights.  Socialism is necessarily the Party of NO because it denies individuality, the values of the individual, individual rights to thought and actions, and the importance of individual happiness.

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