The Democratic Socialists Used the Capitol Intrusion and its Associated Violence as a Reichstag Moment

The Democratic Socialists are socialists of the fascist persuasion.  Some say that cannot be because socialists are those who believe all the means of production and all property should be owned by the government.  I reject that argument.  Prior to WWII, the fascists were commonly accepted to be socialists.  They were nationalists, but there is no contradiction created by a nationalist socialism.  They did not generally believe the government should own all property or all of the means of production.  No, they were much more cunning than those Communists and the various off-shoots of Marxism.  It is very, very difficult to promote Communism in a developed society where property ownership is widespread.  It is much, much easier to promote fascism, a form of government which controls all of the means of production and all property, but leaves the pretense of ownership, along with many of its responsibilities, in the hands of the gullible or the crony allies of the government.  Fascist governments generally do form a close alliance with big businesses.  The most famous German form of fascism went by the name of the National Socialist German Workers Party.  Of course they fought a bitter street war with their primary socialist competitors, the Communists.  At the end of WWII, fascism had a generally awful reputation, so academic socialists rewrote the definition of socialism to exclude fascism.  I see no reason to accept their definition of socialism.  Total control of the means by which the People control, secure, and support their lives is socialism, whether the government takes such control by overtly owning all of the means of production and all property or not.

The Democratic Socialist Party of America has had a mix of fascist and Communist tendencies at least since the New Deal.  Many of its elite adherents had loved Mussolini in the 1920s and up until he invaded Ethiopia in 1936.  Many were Marxists and many praised the Soviet Union.  Today, most of Democratic Socialist Elite have beliefs that are a mix of fascism without the nationalist elements and woke offshoots of Marxist beliefs.  These Woke Fascists seek control of every aspect of our lives, but recognize that we Americans will not completely give up our property rights or our rights to choose aspects of how we earn a living.  They are slightly pragmatic idealists, but only slightly pragmatic.  As their stated ideal, they seek equal outcomes for everyone economically, even as they actually set up sweetheart deals with big businesses such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and others such as "green" energy companies, extreme environomentalists, abortionists, and labor union leaders who will sign on to their social programs to control the Deplorables.

The Deplorables are those who want to retain more freedom to choose their own values and to control their own lives than the Democratic Socialist Party Elite want to allow them.  Many of the Deplorables have excessive allegiance to the concept of a limited government under the Constitution as well as to the ideals of The Declaration of Independence.  They like being somewhat self-reliant and self-responsible.  This cannot be allowed.  The Swamp Creatures cannot prosper to extent of their dreams if this is tolerated.

So the Swamp Creatures launched attack after attack upon the President elected as the Deplorables rebelled against their modified fascist program of subjugation in the 2016 election.  One false accusation after another was created out of whole cloth by the Swamp Creatures centered upon the Democratic Socialist Party leaders, but also including many Never Trumpers who found that they could not exercise their usual power lust within a Republican administration under Trump.  There are plenty of fascists in the Republican Party also, though they are commonly rather less rabid in their quest for power.  These fascist allies reframed Trump's tendency to exaggerate into a strong commitment to constant lying.  They made up a claim that he was a stooge of Putin, then that he was wrong to seek to investigate the corrupt use of power by Biden and his family when Biden was Vice President, and now they claim he encouraged an insurrection to overthrown the "democratically elected" government.

The insurrection charge rests on the unauthorized mass entry of Americans into the Capitol building, property damage done there, violence against the police brought in late to deal with the intruders, and the fears of some Congress people and their staffs.  This was a riot, but it was not one incited by Trump, though it did include some who voted for him, along with some Antifa and some idiots who just love being involved in anything that gives them an excuse for violence.  Antifa is usually tolerated by the left, but it is essentially a nihilist group that has nothing to do with the followers of Trump and does not even like Biden.  They are against everything, except chaos.

The Elitist Socialists and Swamp Creators spent the last four years dreaming up ways to wrest control of the country from the Deplorables who elected their nemesis, Trump, President.  While claiming he was a liar, they repeatedly told the huge whopper that Trump was responsible for every death by Covid-19.  They claimed he was destroying the planet with his refusal to accept their anti-science catastrophic man-made global warming failed hypothesis.  They proclaimed him and all of his voters to be racists, even as Trump took great pride in the fact that so-called Blacks and Hispanics benefited far more from the booming economy under his administration prior to the onset of Covid-19 than they had under Obama/Biden and under Bush.  They claimed he was anti-LGBT, despite his long working history with LGBT people, his opposition to the Obama-backed DOMA and DADT, his appointment of Ric Grenell to be Ambassador to Germany and then his Director of National Intelligence, and his worldwide program to end discrimination against LGBTs.  In addition to their crazy attacks on him, they schemed up ways to run an unconstitutional election that would open up innumerable means to count illegitimate votes.  The result was that the unconstitutional election changes did result in untold illegitimate votes and that very likely resulted in the declaration that Biden was the winner.

An unconstitutionally elected president whose party was also undeniably commited to vote fraud is on very shaky grounds.  Much of the power of the presidency depends upon the freely given consent of the governed.  A constitutional election is the means by which legitimate consent of the People is determined.  The Deplorables did not give that consent.  They may well have been in the majority.  They most certainly do not believe that the election was a valid one and they are right.  In the USA, an unconstitutional election is not a legitimate election.

The Democratic Socialist Party Elite and Swamp Creatures know that they came to victory and total power by chicanery.  The Deplorables know this too.  The Democratic Socialist Party Elite and the Swamp Creatures are very uneasy and feel very threatened.  They used the Capitol intrusion as their Reichstag moment.  They brought in 25,000 National Guard troops in their fear of the People.  Then they grilled those troops, whom many had earlier called Storm Troopers back when leftist riots and violence were the norm in many cities they controlled, to find troops who were strong Trump supporters and remove them.  They are afraid.  Their fear is the cause of the rapidly developed effort to discriminate against the Deplorables in employment and in every social manner they can.  They have stampeded.  They forgot that they are supposed to turn the heat up slowly on the frog Deplorables so they will not jump out of the pot.  Their mad and inept dash for power may well prove to be their undoing in the next election.  They have been too overt in their power lust.

The Deplorables are in for a hard time.  They had better become more familiar with the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional safeguards for their freedoms.  They need to do a better job of defending their many and broad rights as individuals, if they want to maintain their ability to choose their own values and to manage their own lives.  Those idiot Socialist Elitists and Swamp Creatures do not care about your lives.  They think you are worthless people.  They claim you are all racists, though their own claim is clearly racist.  They claim every "white" person is privileged and a racist.  Most of you know you are not racists.  Most of you know you are worthy enough to choose your own values and to manage your own life.  Most of you know that those power-lusting Woke-Fascist Elitists are utterly wrong in claiming they can improve your lives by dictating your actions from Washington.  So do not let these Woke-Fascist fools get away with their evil power-grab.  Make the effort to maintain your individuality and the integrity and efficacy of your own mind.  There is no higher purpose in life.

Note:  I use Deplorables the way the Patriots called themselves Yankee Doodle Dandies in response to the British effort to put them down with a drinking song calling them such during the American Revolution.  Throw it at them.  Throw it forcefully.

How to Change a Society from a Largely Free Democratic Republic to a Fascist Socialist Totalitarian State

1.  Divide individuals by gender, by ethnicity, by wealth and income, by education, by age, and by sexuality; 

2.  Pit one group against another using the force of government to provide unearned rewards to some at the expense of others by putting limits on the rights of individuals to earn a living, limiting their freedom of association, and their freedom to cooperate with one another; 

3.  Thereby, creating distrust and hatred as the factions fight to control the government that insists on hurting many, making it a threat to all, thereby making it a matter of life and death for each group to control the government;

4.  Watch a country that once honored merit in the market place, but became an unlimited democracy, succumb to greed for the unearned with the development of ever more special interest groups dependent upon government largess;

5.  The government-run and funded education system becomes a tool promoting more and more government powers, seeks to suppress all private education alternatives, seeks to suppress individual rights especially freedom of speech and the freedom of the press or media, promotes the collective rights of some groups at the expense of the rights of the individuals in other groups, and promotes versions of the country's prior history that diverge ever more from the truth such that more and more power and money flow to the government and the education system;

6. In which a majority coalition of those who have less wealth and want government forced transfers of wealth to themselves and those who most lust for power turn the country into a socialist, fascist country (very poor, primitive countries usually turn communist instead);

7. Which in turn comes to be ruled by the most brutal elements of the power lusters with a total loss of individual rights.

I read William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the summer after the 9th grade and came to understand most of this.  I think I understood some of these lessons better than Shirer did.  There have been many further examples of this process since WWII.

Here is a very interesting analysis video of what we are presently facing based on a young woman's experience during the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

The Leftist Media Smear Campaign Continues Against Trump and Individualism

A civilized society minimizes the use of force, denying all groups and individuals the initiated use of force.  A legitimate government has the primary function of protecting individual rights from violence and the threat of the use of force.  There are minor additional functions to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from some natural threats to life.  The President of the United States has the job of executing the laws that are constitutionally intended to secure the equal rights of all American citizens.

The media dominated by the postmodernist and collectivist viewpoint has an agenda dedicated to painting all who oppose their collectivism and their claims that some factions deserve political dominance over other Americans as racists, as fascists, as angry nationalists with malevolent intent toward all non-Americans, and generally as ignorant boobs.  The factions that should rule are single women, blacks and Hispanics, union leaders, educators, radical anti-human environmentalists, government workers, and one-world collectivists --- all guided by so-called Progressive Elitists. White men and the women married to them, business owners and managers, and non-union, and in some respects union, workers are generally to be forced into submission by a huge government workforce of thugs with no compunction in violating their equal rights to life, liberty, property, self-ownership, the pursuit of happiness, and their equally broad rights to freedom of conscience and association.  To oppose bigger government and more government controls defines one as a racist even as one advances the principle that all American citizens have equal rights which should not be violated by government.  To oppose the designation of some racial or gender groups as worthy of favored government actions earns one the racist epithet.  To oppose collectivism and the lumping of individuals into broad groups and claiming that their rights are defined by the group that they have been deposited into in accordance with Postmodernist feelings, makes one a Deplorable.

The Postmodernist Left has long cast the opposition to this collectivism and the advocates of individualism as fascists and white nationalists.  There are Americans who are fascists, but fascists are in favor of big, collectivist government.  Fascists characteristically favor some factions over other factions, often with a racial basis.  Some American fascists want special favors for white Americans, while others want special favors for other ethnically defined groups.  Facism is actually inconsistent with the general beliefs of vast majority of Republicans who believe in smaller government and more equal rights than do Democrats.  Only a small minority of white fascists vote Republican in reaction to the Democrats policies favoring certain non-white groups upon racial lines.

The Democrats have a very long history of racial favoritism and have only recently in that history switched from favoring white Americans at the expense of other Americans to favoring black and Hispanic Americans at the expense of white Americans.  This kind of factionalism has been long opposed by Republicans, as has big government, although only in comparison with the Democrat's advocacy of constantly larger government.  The push of the Democrat Party to selectively prevent the exercise of the rights of white Americans, especially those of men, has pushed a few white nationalists, including some fascists, into supporting Republicans in some cases.  Those few cases have been used to paint all Republicans as welcoming fascists and white nationalists into their ranks. This is not the case, but the ballot box is secret.  The leftist media does not care about the truth.  For them, the truth is not about reality, it is defined as that which supports their agenda.

The Enlightment, or Modernist, philosophy holds that man can know reality through the use of his mind, that his efforts to think rationally are not guaranteed success without error, that he must test his observations and deductions in the management of his own life and in the choice of his values, and that he must have the opportunity to both profit from his correct thoughts and to learn from his mistakes.  The rights of the individual follow from this need to use his own mind to manage his own life.

Postmodernism fundamentally undermines this philosophy and claims that man cannot use his mind to know reality, that in reality man only acts upon his feelings, that his feelings are determined by an array of group identities, and that a huge government apparatus is required to determine which factions will prevail at the expense of which other factions because in a society governed only by feelings and group identities conflict is the expected constant.  Harmony is impossible.  Only the warfare of one faction against another for raw power is realistic.  Man cannot govern his actions by reasoned principles.  Consequently, the government must use force constantly to control the outcomes among factions.  This philosophy is the basis for a belief in socialism and in collectivism at the most fundamental level.  It produced both the Communist and Fascist versions of socialism, including the fascist variant National Socialist Workers Party Nazism. Postmodernists control most American universities and trained most American journalists and bureaucrats.  The mainstream media is thoroughly indoctrinated in this Postmodernist belief which fundamentally embraces violence first in the streets and then exercised by an all-powerful government under their control.

One can only understand the leftist media treatment of the violence in Charlottesville, VA in this context.  The leftist, collectivist media is determined to make it appear that Trump has been reluctant to condemn fascists and white nationalists, despite the fact that he did so in very clear and strong terms.  Listen to his complete press conference for yourself.  Trump also condemned violence by all factions and he was right that there were opposing groups at Charlottesville that were eager for violence and that did become violent.  It is hardly surprising that leftist forces were eager for battle in the streets.  They have a long history of this with street riots against the war in Vietnam, Republican and Democrat National Conventions, Capitalism, globalization, and the inauguration of Trump. Street riots and the use of violence are a long accepted and utilized tactic of the left and of major factions in the Democrat Party.  Why not?  Their constant advocacy of collectivism and ever more controlling government is itself dependent upon a willingness to use force to suppress the rights of individuals. As for the Nazis, they were violent in the streets from the beginning of their history as the main socialist alternative to the also violent Communists in Germany between the World Wars.

My identity is not defined by the fact that I am a so-called white American male.  My identity is defined by the use of my mind for 70 years to understand reality.  When I was a small child I realized that it was critically important to use my mind and to be as rational as possible.  The observations I have made of life, the evaluations I have made of those observations, the integration of my evaluations into a self-consistent viewpoint and philosophy, the totality of the decisions I have made and of the values I have chosen play a much, much greater role in determining my identity than does the fact that I am a white American male.  The fact that I am a white American male and was raised in a middle class military family is significant, but it most definitely is not at all adequate to understanding who I am.  There are many, many ways in which I chose how to develop my identity.

There is no way that the Postmodernists can tolerate the existence of such an individual as myself.  Apparently in the last Presidential election, many Americans had at least a significant realization that the Postmodernist media and the Democrat presidential candidate would not tolerate their deplorable natures either.  Many of us Deplorables think the natures we have developed for ourselves in our lifetimes are actually pretty decent and suit us quite well, thank you very much.  We do not intend to see our individual identities crushed by Postmodernists.

Trump may not be as smooth and consistent as we would like, but he has been courageous in opposing the media in its Postmodernist, collectivist agenda.  Compared to most politicians, he has risen for the most part as an advocate of equal rights for all Americans and for some considerable relief from oppressive government dictates.  He is trying to fight back against the Left's use of racial identity politics to rob us all of our individual identities.  It would appear that as a problem-solver in the construction industry, Trump came to hold reason in much higher regard than do his collectivist, Postmodern opponents in academia, the media, and the bureaucracy.

Tom Minchin - Hope is Dead - Long Live Optimism

Tom Minchin in yesterday's TIA Daily discussed how we ought to go forward in the face of the coup scored by America's fascist socialists on ObamaCare.  Here are a couple of quotes from his post:

You need a way to maintain your morale—to counter the effects of dispiriting circumstances. In short you need a solid basis to expect a better future. 

What can provide it when the news headlines fill you with revulsion? 

The virtue of optimism.

The virtue of what? Optimism. But this is a very particular type of optimism. It is not wishful thinking, and it is not mere hopefulness or even assuredness based on favorable circumstances—an assuredness that vanishes with the first real adversity. It is confidence in one's own potency, and it has to be maintained and fought for like any virtue.....

Holding optimism as a virtue begins with understanding what it is and is not. Optimism in its most basic sense is "confidence in the future." And that kind of confidence is only possible to a rational man. As Ayn Rand wrote in "Epitaph for a Culture," the Apollo space program was the supreme demonstration, for it "has shown us the precondition of self-confidence, optimism, and progress, like skywriting left in the wake of those rockets: rationality." That bears repeating: the pre-condition of optimism is not faith, good fortune or wishful thinking. It is rationality. 

Of course, I can choose to be rational, but will other Americans make the same choice?  I can be certain that I will not waver in my own rationality and be confident that if it is up to me, America will not commit to this fascist socialist doom that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and their many followers are trying to force upon us.  But, can I count on my fellow Americans to rally to the cause of the rights of the individual and to name their importance to us all as the central American value?  The Tea Party Movement, the many commentators who have realized that this is the central issue, and the 38 states either passing laws to prevent the federal government from forcing their citizens to purchase a government-dictated health insurance product or launching constitutional court challenges, have given me a sound basis for thinking enough Americans are up to the task, or coming up to the task, to turn back the bloodthirsty horde of cutthroats who are presumptuous enough to claim they control our lives, our fortunes, our bodies, and our health or death.  This will not happen, not in America!

The Agenda is Primary, Not the Science or the Facts

I have repeatedly pointed out that the government mandates and subsidies for ethanol production from corn and other plant sources were based on claims that net energy would be produced and air pollution would be reduced.  These were false claims and this is now well-known.  Nonetheless, Congress has not enacted new legislation to repeal the bad mistake and eliminate the mandates for ethanol use in gasoline mixtures and the subsidies for its production.  This has not happened even though this situation has driven up food prices, in addition to fuel prices, as another bad consequence.  The reason no needed reform has occurred is because the ethanol laws were actually passed to purchase the votes and to gain campaign money from many farmers and from ethanol producers.  It was a way for politicians to increase their control over parts of the private sector.

The total scientific collapse of the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis, has not caused Obama and the progressives (fascist socialists) to back off on promoting alternative energy sources with mandates and subsidies at all.  Obama called for a big push to increase government controls on energy in his State of the Union address.  The EPA still seems bent upon putting draconian controls on CO2 emissions and the use of fossil fuels under the Clean Air Act as well.  The progressive machine moves forward, despite the knowledge that man's CO2 emissions have no more than a trivial effect upon climate.  Why?

The very reason that NOAA dropped out hundreds of temperature reporting stations from the surface temperature records, which reported cooler temperatures than other retained stations did, to make it falsely appear that the earlier warming cycle of the late 1970s and 1980s was continuing, makes it very clear that an agenda was long dominant over any issues of science.  The agenda of the catastrophic man-made global warming scheme was a great desire to gain massive new control over the energy sector of our economy and over all users of energy.  Basically, all American businesses are highly dependent upon energy, which is why sudden price hikes in oil have set off 10 of the 11 recessions since WWII, including the present one.  Those Americans who do not own a company dependent upon energy costs, work for one or still have a residence they must heat and cool.  The power grab by the progressives to take over the control of energy is huge.  That goal remains, whether the science of catastrophic man-made global warming has become laughable or not.

So, the fascist socialist left is not giving up.  They are attempting to make another transition in their claim on power over the American people.  They used to base it entirely on fairness and economic equality, but the fall of the USSR made the claims of central economic planning look pitiful.  Their hollowness was too easily seen in the rapid movement of Eastern Europeans away from communism and socialism.  They had lived in socialism's depressing and deadening grasp.  They fled with elation to Capitalism.  Even the Chinese Communist government realized they had to drop much of their central economic planning.  The fascist socialists in the West adopted environmentalism and global warming as the agenda that would allow them to increase their power over the People.  Now that rationale has fallen apart on the global warming side and the environmental harm exaggerations on many other fronts are more and more being questioned also.  Where can they turn?

The new approach is rather desperate.  The claim is we will run out of fossil fuels, they are dirty, and alternative energy can produce more jobs.  Someday, we will run out of fossil fuels, but they are plentiful and cheap still.  This gives us plenty of time to develop alternative energy and there is no reason for pell-mell crash programs.  The free market will develop the new energy as it is needed.  Let companies drill in the American waters and in national forests and allow them to develop oil shale, as it makes sense.  Let them also use wind generation, solar, and geothermal power as they can find and develop markets for them.  There is no need for huge, wasteful government programs.  The evolution of technology will be much more efficient at its private sector pace.  As for cleanliness, we have already made huge strides in cleaning up our fossil fuel use.  A rationally paced program to continue such work will be wiser again than any crash program.  The real problems with pollution are in the poorer countries of the world and the solution is to bring the highly efficient Capitalist system to them, so they can afford to clean up their countries, as we have cleaned up the U.S.  Will alternative energy produce new jobs?  Yes, but we want it to produce net new jobs.  A government policy of killing coal miners, oil drillers, railroad, and energy-using industry jobs in massive numbers to create a pittance of new alternative energy jobs, is a fool's errand.

But, of course, I am treating the claims of the progressive fascist socialists as though they are motivated by a respect for reason.  They are not.  They are motivated by a desire to control the lives of others.  They want to tell every American what his values should be and then give him a strict set of rules to manage his life.  We are all to be the slaves of the college-educated elite of progressive fascist socialists who want to control us.  They are to be our rulers, our tyrants supreme.  Are we going to allow this?  I do not think so.  I think we are about to start throwing these rascals out of government in droves!  But, it is clear that they will never stop seeking to rule us and if we are to be free, we must never stop fighting this ravenous beast of fascist socialism.

Obama Administration Finally Reports October Unemployment

Not since the aftermath of Jimmy Carter's rampant inflation, which followed Nixon's price controls fiasco, have we seen such unemployment as that engineered by Obama and the Democrat Congress.  Yes, there was a major increase in unemployment under Bush and the Democrat Congress with considerable help from the Federal Reserve, but we would be recovering from that were it not for the remarkable ability of Obama and an energized socialist Democrat leadership in the House and Senate with their large majorities to create a horrible business climate.

Obama and henchmen would have us believe that our biggest problems are health care and man-made global warming.  And maybe that we have too few workers paying union dues and far too many workers in the private sector rather than the public sector.  Meanwhile, the private sector still employs most Americans, but it is employing fewer and fewer of them.  The official, but understated, unemployment rate at the end of October was an astounding 10.2%!  No wonder any hint of such a large increase was suppressed by the administration prior to the election on Tuesday.  This is the U.S.'s highest unemployment rate since April 1983, 26 years ago.  We have had job losses for 22 straight months.

Obama is conducting a string orchestra in a mad fiddling contest with the devil, the likes of which we have never heard or seen.  Nancy Pelosi is first fiddle and Harry Reid is second fiddle of the Congressional section, which is filled out with the fascist socialists of the Congress.  On the other side of the string orchestra are the Marxist and Maoist Commissars and Czars of his administration section.  They are all fiddling madly to celebrate and encourage the burning of the American private sector and that fable of a Constitution decreeing limited powers for government and that silly notion that individuals have sovereign rights.  They are laughing gleefully as they play the devil's tune.

Since December 2007, the U.S. has lost 7.3 million jobs, but we will all be delighted to know that Obama says he saved 640,000 jobs with the stimulus bill earlier this year.  Let's see, then $787 billion of stimulus created 640,000 jobs at $1.23 million per job.  It is good for people to have a work ethic and to want to work, but it sure is rich to charge taxpayers $1.23 million per job!  Or am I being unfair here?  After all, only about a quarter of the Stimulus Bill appropriations have been spent.  But, then why should we give the government any credit at all for taxpayer money spent just in time to buy as many votes as possible just before the 2010 elections?  Even in terms of the money spent, these would be very expensive jobs, at about $307,500 apiece.  The private sector would usually produce at least 6 or 7 new jobs with so much capital to invest and spend.  But Obama and the Marxists know so little about business and economics that they do not have enough sense not to shout about their "great job creation accomplishment."

So, we now have 15.7 million would-be workers unemployed.  Many of them have been unemployed for more than six months, a record 35.6% of them.  Before the recession, 63% of adults worked, but now only 58.5% work.  The Democrats have championed the little guy, those without a high school diploma, into 15.5% unemployment.  Unemployment for those with the high school diploma is a mere 11.2%.  15.7% of blacks are unemployed and 13.1% of Hispanics are also.  This is very effective support for these Democrat-favored minorities by the Democrats.  Somehow, being anti-business and anti-wealthy people, is not creating the jobs their supposed constituents need.  One should be arguing that being anti-business and anti-wealthy people is the equivalent of being anti-black and anti-Hispanic.  The private sector lost about 558,000 jobs, but the public sector lost no jobs.  The public sector and its employees is now being supported by many fewer people with private sector jobs and we should add the public sector to the enemies of blacks and Hispanics.

Those who have given up on finding jobs and those working part-time who wish to work or work more are now 17.5% of the available workforce.  The total hours worked fell another 0.2% in October and the average workweek is now a mere 33 hours. But, average hourly wages are up 2.4% in the last year, perhaps because job losses have been higher among the more poorly paid, who are usually the least productive workers and the first to be let go in hard times.  These workers are also the more likely to be intimidated or persuaded to join a labor union, which would further hurt a company's productivity.  Thus, it makes still more sense to let such workers go when unions are being favored by government.

There was some good news.  Productivity went up per employed worker at a 9.5% annual rate.  Unemployment decreased from 4.9% to 4.7% for those with college degrees.  Managers and professionals were being hired, so their unemployment rate fell from 5.2% to 4.7%.  The technology, education, and health care sectors were hiring.  Temporary workers were also hired.  But the situation was woeful still for construction, manufacturing, and service and retail.

Apparently, increasing taxes, deficits, government spending, regulations that serve no purpose, restricting international trade, taking over industries, dictating executive compensation, crippling oil and gas exploration and development, threatening the coal industry with extinction, and restricting fossil fuel energy use is not the way to produce jobs.  In fact, it is a very good way to kill jobs.  This is the Marxist, Maoist, fascist way.  The European socialist countries have had 10% unemployment rates very frequently.  Obama has imported these unemployment rates to the U.S.  The strange thing is, the Europeans have been turning away from some of their failed policies, even as Obama turns us toward them.  He is talking about increasing corporate tax rates and those on wealthier individuals, even as most European countries have been reducing those rates in recent years.  We and the Japanese now have the highest corporate tax rates in the advanced world.  It is hurting both of us badly.  But, lowering corporate tax rates just does not fit the Marxist rhetoric or the populist demagogue's style.

Pelosi Misleads and Misinforms Again

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is misleading and misinforming us once again. She recently complained that she has been met by angry mobs of people displaying swastika signs. She was clearly trying to create the impression that the protesters were Nazis.

The economist John Lott has a blog here, which makes interesting reading. On this issue, he requested a picture from Nancy Pelosi's office showing the crowd waving swastikas. The picture they sent him showed one swastika and it was superimposed with a red circle with a diagonal crossing line. Clearly, the protester was protesting fascism, not promoting it. The picture Nancy Pelosi's office sent John Lott is shown on his blog.

Nothing makes a socialist angrier than to be identified with fascism and Nazism. Yet, this is the most common form that socialism takes in America today. To be sure, there are still many who favor communism and there are still more who mix the two forms of socialism liberally.

So, Nancy Pelosi just cannot help but to embellish the truth until it takes on the form of a lie. Her accusations against the CIA were not enough to even teach her the least bit of restraint. But, what can you expect of a committed socialist? All of socialism is built upon a foundation of lies. They have no choice but to lie. It is their nature to use lies and ever bigger lies to achieve power over their fellow man.

Edward Hudgins: Uncharitable Attack on Charity

Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society wrote an interesting article on a group called the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy (NCRP) which is the kind of organization Ellsworth Toohey would have encouraged. While in general Ayn Rand's novels are dramatizations of the conflicts between an individualistic, rational, life-centered morality and philosophy and collectivist, irrational, and anti-life moralities, the real world really does have evil-doers who are perfectly capable of replicating a stark dramatization of evil and irrationality from an Ayn Rand novel.

This charitable watchdog group is headed up by a former ACORN organizer. This group issued a report saying

Philanthropy at its Best must serve the public good by contributing to strong, participatory democracy that engages all communities.

It adds that a well-managed charity must:

Provide at least 50 percent of its grant dollars to benefit low-income communities, communities of color and other marginal groups…
Provide at least 25 percent of its dollars for advocacy, organizing and civic engagement to promote equality, opportunity and justice in our society.

Ed Hudgins points out that this is nonsense, which it most certainly is. Charity at its best serves the purposes of the voluntary contributor and does so in a manner which does not use force to impede others in living their lives. Period. There is nothing wrong with giving to a charity that supports the Classical Music station of WBJC in Baltimore even though few people living in the often rich poverty of today in America choose to listen to it. In fact, doing so may help to preserve a rich heritage in intelligent music and be a very decent thing to do. Or, one might choose to give money to The Atlas Society, which directs its programs and education efforts at everyone about equally. There is no reason why they should target their message to groups defined by race or income. And, of course, as Ed points out, a charity dedicated to finding a cure for epilepsy should probably give as much of its money as possible to medical researchers without regard to the 50% and 25% rules produced by NCRP.

Ed also quotes Xavier Becerra (CA Democrat) as saying

“Taxpayers have rewarded [foundations] for being there for America.” But, he added: “At the same time, those of us at Congress have an obligation as the representatives of the people to make sure that their money—taxpayer money—is being well invested.”

Ah....so Congress has the right to redirect the money that individuals give to charities to see to it that Congress believes the money is being well-used. In fact, he twists the individual into being a taxpayer, uses that to say the money given to charity is taxpayer money, and then claims the usual power to spend taxpayer money that he would have for government revenue from taxes. One would think anyone would see through this extremely faulty argument, but surprisingly many do not.

Ed also noted that there was a move afoot in the Obama despotism to tax the charity gifts of the so-called wealthy, before many howls forced them to back down. Clearly they wanted to remove capable and wealthy people from the boards of charitable organizations and keep them from having a role in directing the purpose of those organizations. This would also make charities more dependent upon government grants, which would let the government re-direct their purposes.

It is clear that the so-called Progressives want total government control over charity in America and want it used for their agenda only. Of course, if you recognize that the Progressives have an agenda of mixed fascist and communist goals, control of all charity is readily recognized as being essential for the purposes of their total control of the American people. Individual choices even in charitable giving will not be allowed. This is the Totalitarian Dream, that Obama oulined in his acceptance speech before the Democrat Convention in Denver, CO.

Why did banks take TARP money?

Many healthy banks have reported that they were forced to take TARP money even though they did not need it. Today, Judge Andrew Napolitano, said on FOX News that the chief executive of a $250 billion asset bank told him that his bank was threatened with 5 consecutive years of tax audits by the IRS if the bank did not take the TARP money (bank bailout money) that it did not want to take. The Secretary of the Treasury, who did not pay his own taxes, is apparently very comfortable in using the power of the IRS to make others miserable to further the cause of fascist socialism. If the government would use this fascist tactic, it would undoubtedly be likely to use other tactics equally reprehensible to force banks to take TARP money they did not need and did not want. The banks are heavily regulated, which undoubtedly gives the Federal government a huge degree of power over them.

This may explain why the very free market oriented BB&T Bank, whose Chairman John Allison requires high-level bank executives to read Atlas Shrugged and donates money to colleges which introduce Ayn Rand's works into the curriculum, disappointed many of us by taking TARP money. Earlier reports that bankers were forced into a room in Washington and told that they would not be allowed to leave until they accepted the TARP money were apparently not exaggerations. As we now know, those banks who were force-fed TARP money are now under either the direct control of the Federal government or being threatened with it if their policies do not comply with the Federal government wishes. The latter state is little different from the former. If you must do something because someone is holding a gun to your head, then you clearly have no real control and you are nothing but a slave.

Many bankers do not wish to be slaves. Many banks are offering to pay back the government the money given them with interest. The government is refusing to allow the larger banks to do this, though they have taken some payoffs from the smaller banks given money. Why are they refusing to allow banks to pay off their loans? Why did they force them to take the money in the first place? The answer is clear. This money loan was a pretext to gain control of the banks and the Federal government does not want to relinquish that control. Fascism is both tempting and addictive to the kind of politicians who seek to control our government. Government is then used as the tool to gain control not just of banks and auto companies, but of each and every one of us individuals. Of course, they offer various social program bribes to individuals under the same principle as the TARP loans as a means to gain control of us individually.

Governments in the United States have long been trekking down the road to fascist socialism, but the pace of the forced march has picked up markedly since Obama has been united with the Democrat-controlled Congress. We individual Americans have been like frogs placed in a very deep pot on the stove and the heat has been turned up gradually until recently. This has kept us sluggish and pacified. We are now being put to the boil. When the boiling is done, we are all to be one intermixed, indifferentiable mush. The socialist ideal of equality in total poverty will have been accomplished. Unless we strive most mightily to jump out of this deep pot of water immediately.

Hudgins - Obama's Grab-Bag Socialism

I am not pulling my punches in my evaluation of Obama and the Democrat Congress. I believe that they are taking the United States down an insanely destructive path. I would like to point out a very good article taking a similar stance by Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society. It is called "Obama's Grab-Bag Socialism."

I have heard and seen several references lately in which generally freedom-loving commentators are claiming that fascism is not socialism because socialism takes over the ownership of the means of production and other property. I think this is wrong. Socialism takes over control, sometimes ownership, of the means of production and of property. The Marxist forms of socialism, such as communism, take ownership, while fascism leaves nominal ownership in the hands of individuals or groups, but applies incentives, pressures, and force as desired to make those individuals or groups do the government's bidding. Both Marxism and fascism offer the people status as dependents by bribing them with health care and other state-provided or mandated benefits. It is the last coupled with the control of property and business that makes both fascism and Marxism socialism.

Mussolini and Hitler were of the socialist mindset. After being drummed out of the Italian Socialist Party for favoring Italy's participation in WWI, Mussolini started the Fascist Party with much of his viewpoint already set by his long allegience to the Socialist Party. Hitler gave his party the name National Socialist Party and even admired Joe Stalin, despite fighting the communists for power in Germany.

The United States has long been a mixed economy. The freedom of the individual to offer his services in employment, to hire others, to produce, to trade, to transport, and to control his property has long been interfered with by our governments. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson began controlling private property and business in heavy-handed ways long ago. The aspect of socialism in which the government heavily began bribing the people into dependency began with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was tinged with fascism and Woodrow Wilson was very substantially fascist. Woodrow even had the fasces applied to the dime in 1916 and was an admirer of Mussolini.

Many claimed failures in the economy have come about due to government intervention.
The recession under Hoover, which Roosevelt turned into the Great Depression is one such example. Politicians and governments of the modern era love socialism as a means to control and power. For most, it is irresistible. So, the Federal, state, and local governments of the United States have all heavily applied socialism, sometimes in the form of government ownership of property (public schools, roads, parks, national forests, mass transit) and sometimes by the control of property and businesses through mandates, subsidies, tax deductions, tax credits, safety and pollution regulations, zoning, licensing, tariffs, banking regulations, accounting requirements, and much more. These controls can be gauged by the very high rate of expansion of the Federal Register and other government publications of regulations and contracts.

The public ownership of property is very considerable (consider the western states with huge portions, often the majority of the land, owned by the federal government, see my entry of 8 November 2008). But, the principle means used by government in the United States to control the lives of the people has clearly become the fascist model, with a number of features adopted more to the American character, primarily as misleading deceptions. It is entirely reasonable to call this socialism American Fascism. The core of Obama's goal is to turn the United States into a subordinate cog in an international fascist socialist regime. Of course, he avoids using the honest terms fascism and socialism like the plague, which is exactly what they are.

The Coming Fascist Human Cost-Benefit Analysis

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must consider whether carbon dioxide was a pollutant and if it was, then it must regulate its generation under the 1990 Clean Air Act. No one in Congress in 1990 would have conceived of CO2 as a pollutant. Now the EPA has ruled that CO2 is a pollutant and is proposing new rules under the Clean Air Act for reducing CO2 emissions, which means for reducing the use of energy. Now, bureaucrats in the EPA will rule our energy use without input from Congress. To be more exact, Congress can have input with new legislation, but if that should not happen, then the EPA will go it alone without any real Congressional authorization. This makes Obama King, since he controls the EPA bureaucrats.

It appears that some of the less socialist Democrats in the Senate are balking at some of Obama's proposed budget calls for expenditures and for a cap-and-trade form of carbon tax. He may remove some of the restrictions he had planned to have authorized by Congress from the budget. This is little cause for relief, since he will be able to do very nearly as much mischief through EPA mandates and rulings thanks to the Supreme Court's foolish ruling in 2007.

Obama is planning to proceed with huge further spending in the budget on alternative energy, which supplements the large spending on alternative energy already in the stimulus bill. This is a very curious business, since alternative energy:

• addresses the fictional problem of man-made global warming due to CO2 emissions
• is itself fictional as a route to energy independence
• is, and likely will long remain, much more expensive energy than that from fossil fuel and nuclear power plants
• is not environmentally friendly enough to suit many environmentalists
• cannot be implemented due to the hugely obstructionist work of some environmentalists to use the courts and local permitting authorities to stop all work on new plants, facilities, and electric power lines

On the obstructionist tactics at the local level, see this article in The Wall Street Journal by Ian Talley called "Green Push Faces Resistance From Locals." Among many other examples, this article provides confirmation of my assessment in my prior blog entry of "Wind Power Delays and Limits" of 24 March 2009 that no large photovoltaic solar facilties will be really allowed to cover large acreage in the Southwest, or anywhere else. The relevant quote from The Wall Street Journal articles is

Earlier this month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) wrote to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pledging to fight against building a solar project on 600,000 acres of federal land between the Mojave desert preserve and the Joshua Tree National Park. The area lies in a California-designated renewable zone where companies have applied to establish hundreds of solar projects.

So, why does Obama (and a large following of other Democrats) want to follow through with huge spending plans on alternative energy research, development, and building projects? Surely he has enough contacts with rabid environmentalists to understand that they are not going to allow alternative energy projects to actually be built on the necessary scale to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power. His reasoning is this:

• He is not doing it out of concern for the environment - that is just the excuse for defalcating the private sector of its taxes and its obedience.
• He loves the power of waving huge sums of money in front of those who are willing to try to develop alternative power solutions or who are simply happy to take the money fraudulantly.
• He knows that by cutting off fossil fuel and nuclear power use, he can control the entire economy and push it into a state of socialist dependency.
• He knows the constant fights for local building permits and in the courts will provide huge incomes for many lawyers, who are the Democrats' largest campaign fund raisers.
• He knows that the required environmental inpact statements will provide work for huge numbers of environmental "experts" and many lawyers, again funding key Democrat backers.
• The power to make decisions on which "environmental" concerns are important enough to stop hugely funded capital investments gives government authorities huge power over large sums of non-tax money, forcing energy companies to make huge campaign contributions.

In sum, Obama is pursuing the alternative energy and anti-fossil fuel/nuclear power thrust in order to gain nearly unlimited power in the fulfillment of his dream of creating a socialist United States of America. He will cut down the wealthy and make them grovel at his feet in a greatly reduced status.

Ultimately, the Fascist Socialist State will decide if each human being is worthy of life. Is this human being worth his cost as a polluter, including his use of fossil fuels, the methane he produces by farting, and the CO2 he breathes out. Is this human being worth his medical costs? Is he worth the space his housing takes up? In Nazi Germany, the mentally incompetent, the old, the Jews, the Gypsies, many of the Slavs, and many of the German opposition were not worthy of life and were executed by the powers who made similar decisions. It was no mistake when Obama tried to appoint Chas Freeman as the Chairman of the National Security Council who said that China's leaders had failed to use the force they should have early to control the protests in Tiananmen Square. No, this choice was very revealing of Obama's plans for Americans.

As an outspoken individualist champion, I will be one of the early ones to be executed in this future Fascist State. But, they will come for many others, perhaps you, especially since you are the kind who has read some of my writings. We must stop them now. This is not a matter of protecting some comforts, it is really about protecting life itself, especially thinking life.

Russian Chaos

Russia continues to fall into hard times as oil prices have plummeted. Even more serious for its future is the fact that its government is now a fascist kleptocracy with deep roots in communism. Its stock market has crashed worse than almost any other nation's stock market. The business climate is very harsh, with the government finding reasons to take over almost any business which has become big under private management. It has become clear that not only is Russia a risky place to invest money, but that success guarantees that one will become a target of a very corrupt government. Success means that one's enterprise will become a carcass in very short order.

Russia is a sort of Illinois-style government given time to become fully evolved! Obama is spreading this Illinois disease to the federal government, by furthering fascism, communism, and Rezko-style political favoritism. If Americans do not rebel against this trend, we will soon have our own Putin.

The Weathermen Take Over

Over and over, Barack Obama has chosen to ally himself with socialists who hate the principles upon which the United States of America was founded. He and Sen. Biden are pure enemies of individual sovereignty and the idea that each person has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Obama got his first big break when William Ayers, a founder of the 1960s terrorist and socialist organization The Weather Underground, selected him as the grant dispensing director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge with a $49.2 million budget over five years, whose purpose was substantially to introduce teaching curricula which would radicalize students in support of socialism. This was Obama's only management experience. William Ayers, who teaches education courses at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the College of Education, continues to radicalize students to the cause of socialism to this day. In 2001, he stated that he only regretted not doing more to stop the war in Vietnam as a Weatherman. In 2006, he reiterated his belief in the Marxist and socialist principles of The Weathermen. He was never convicted of participation in bombings due to a technicality, but his wife Bernadine Dohrn was found guilty of a felony due to her Weathermen work. Obama wrote a supporting blurb for a book written by Ayers and Ayers helped him gather campaign contributions for his first political race.

Obama has consistently allied himself with people who hate America, which I equate with hating the principles upon which America stands. The Rev. Wright is another clear example of such a long-standing ally anti-American ally as William Ayers. Still another is Rashid Khalidi, a former spokesman for the PLO, who now is a professor at Columbia University who uses his endowed professorship to denounce Israel and the Jews constantly. Previously, he was at the University of Chicago and a friend of William Ayers and Barack Obama.

A very chilling tape of an undercover police officer who participated in the Weatherman activities is available on You Tube here. This is chilling stuff. There is something seriously disturbed in those who were a part of the Weathermen. This is not the kind of disturbance that mellows out with age, it simply evolves into more subtle and dangerous techniques for mastery over others.

The strong-arm tactics used in the Democratic caucuses in which Obama had out-of-staters bused in for caucus votes, had people vote in the Texas caucus who had not voted in the Texas primary as required, intimidated elderly people and women, removed voting papers from sites just after large numbers of Obama supporters were brought in in large groups so others could not vote, told people they could leave since their votes were already counted, when they were not, and stuffed ballot boxes with ballots whose numbers greatly exceeded the number of people present, all serve to underline just how committed Obama is to the traditional Black Shirt tactics of socialists, whether Marxist or Fascist. There is a reason why he easily won caucas votes in states in which he was way behind Hillary Clinton in the polls. He is ruthless, though suave. He is a leader among socialist wolves, though he covers himself with a sheep hide. Beware.

Russian Expansionist Efforts

For centuries, Russia has sought to control most of Asia and Eastern Europe. Russia has also sought control of the Black Sea and access to the Indian Ocean. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in many parts of the USSR becoming independent countries. These newly independent states are Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Russia has been trying to regain control of many of these states.

One of the mechanisms for claiming a cause for taking many of them over again was one used by Adolf Hitler prior to and at the start of World War II. Germans had long been spread all over Eastern Europe. Many professionals and many successful businessmen in the cities and major towns of Eastern Europe were of the German nationality. Hitler would claim that the government of one country or another in Eastern Europe was abusing these Germans and then use that as an excuse to threaten to invade the country if he was not given what he wanted. He used this to put pressure on Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland, a large portion of the western part of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had to give it up when its allies, Great Britain and France, made a deal with Hitler in an infamous conference in Munich. Hitler used the fact that many Germans were in the city of Danzig in Poland to put pressure on Poland. When Poland would not give up Danzig, Hitler, working with Stalin, invaded Poland and WWII started as France and Britain finally declared war on Germany.

When the USSR controlled the former Soviet states which are now independent, it moved many of their people to remote areas such as Siberia and installed many Russians in high positions in desirable areas in those formerly independent countries. Now, there are Russians still in many of the former Soviet states, though they were not native to those areas. One of the Russian tactics to put pressure on these countries now is to claim abuse of the Russians in those countries. This has occurred in each of the Baltic States and to Ukraine, for instance. Russia and Belarus are now in a loose cooperative association, which Putin heads.

The independent state of Georgia, has become an ally of the United States and has contributed troops to the fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The country has a population of 4.6 million and is separated from Russia by the Caucasus Mountains. There are many small ethnic groups in the Caucasian Mountains and some are dissatisfied with the government of Georgia and some are dissatisfied with the Russians. The Russians have given those within the border of Georgia who are dissatisfied Russian passports. There are two regions with many dissatisfied and rebelling people, one with a population of about 50,000 and another with a population of about 200,000. South Ossetia is the smaller region and the Russians have been supporting their efforts to breakaway from Georgia. Here is an article on the issues there and here is one describing the Russian invasion of Georgia.

The Russians have sent in 150 tanks in this invasion of an ally of the United States which has been seeking entry into NATO. The Russians are very opposed to Georgia being an ally of the United States and a member of NATO. As always, the socialist leadership of Russia is eager to learn whatever they can from such fascist socialists as Hitler, who was also eager to learn from Lenin and Stalin. The communists and the fascists have always demonstrated that they have much in common, even when their rivalries for socialist power led them into conflict.

It is wise to remember that American socialists have a long tradition which evolved from an admiration of such socialist leaders as Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and many others. As many of these men were very paternalistic and ruthless leaders, so are many of our American socialists, though they put a smiley face on their socialist agenda most of the time. Nonetheless, they all believe that power grows out of the mouth of a gun and are eager to use those guns to force others to their will. This is the nature of socialism, whether the version holds power over property while leaving nominal ownership in private hands most of the time as in fascism or whether property is owned by the state as in communism. Note that Russia today is a mixture of communism and fascism. The United States is still primarily capitalist, but with a very large measure of fascism, and a smaller measure of communism. The widespread use of income redistribution and heavy hand of regulation is fascism at work, while the U.S. postal system, the U.S. park system, and the public school systems are all instances of communism.

Politics -- The Big Picture

Basically, politics concerns itself primarily about when to use the government monopoly on the use of force to make people take one action or another or to refrain from taking one action or another. George Washington put the matter clearly: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

So, why do we even need such a dangerous servant as is government? Our Declaration of Independence says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." Essentially, the Declaration of Independence says that government deserves only to exist for the purpose of securing (both protecting and fostering) the right of the individual to his life, his liberty, and to pursue what he deems to be those goals which will give him happiness. When government errs from these Principles, it is to be altered or abolished. This is very strong and clear language.

The government designed to accomplish the principle of securing the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was described in The Constitution of The United States of America. That document describes a government of strictly limited powers so that it could not evolve as most governments do to add more and more powers until it looms threateningly over the interests of the people and fails to protect their lives, their liberty, and their pursuit of happiness. The Framers of the Constitution largely objected to adding a Bill of Rights, because they feared they could not list all of the particular rights of the people and any omission might be viewed as giving the government the power to abridge the right of the people which was omitted. They argued that there was no need to assert that the individual had freedom of speech, because it was clear that the government had not been explicitly given the power to limit the freedom of speech. Therefore, it could not do so. These objectors to a Bill of Rights proved right in this argument, but they also proved wrong in thinking that the people would continue to understand why it was a critically important principle that the government powers be very rigorously held to those explicitly listed in The Constitution. Amendment IX of the Bill of Rights was included for the purpose of upholding the principle that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This is never cited in defense of our liberties, however.

So, we started with a government of strictly limited powers which was formed to secure the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the individual. This was a government to be confined in its actions and its use of force to this principle. This was a government of strict principle and to be judged, as a man is, on how well it lived up to its principles. All men were to judge it on this basis. All men were empowered to alter it or abolish it if it failed to live up to this principle.

What disaster befell our great experiment in limited government? How did it come to fail to live up to its principle that its sole purpose was to secure the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the individual? Almost immediately, unprincipled men sought to use the government to deliver special favors to them, provided by the government use of force. Pork barrel projects were put before the very first session of Congress and some were approved. Government tried, as government always does, to expand its powers. There was great temptation to ignore The Constitution from the beginning. Indeed, there were soon those who argued that the "Elastic Clause", now about the only aspect of the Constitution taught in our government-run public schools, gave the government the power to do anything that it claimed was in the Public Welfare. If this were the case, the Founders of our country and the Framers of the Constitution argued, then why had they worked so hard to enumerate the powers of the government? Many, many of them denied that the interpretation now given by voracious government was ever intended by the Framers. Indeed, it is transparently clear from the structure and the purpose clearly designed in The Constitution, that there is no such thing as an "Elastic Clause". But, when Congress today justifies any bill they pass, it is almost always said simply that it is deemed to be for the Public Welfare.

The fatal error in the language of The Constitution occurs in Article. 1., Section. 8. "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;" and the section continues with the enumerated list of powers. Now, if one chooses to take this clause out-of-context, then it is plausible that this is an elastic clause. But an in-context reading causes one to understand that the Framers held that the general Welfare was served and only served by a government of very strictly delimited powers. It was intended that the enumerated powers would be further constrained by a requirement that they be exercised in a manner consistent with the public welfare. This phrase was never intended to open the floodgates and to allow government to do whatever it wished to do. One has no need for a constitution at all, if one once decides to interpret this clause as giving the power to use force against the people with nothing more than the claim that it is for their own good, in the aggregate. It is clear that when only the general Welfare limits the power of government, then it is free to become a fascist government, which governments always claim that they act for the people, even as they ignore the right of any given individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

When government is on longer limited by principles widely held and proclaimed by most every individual, then it is no longer restrained in its use of force. Such government is especially not reason. It is free to be dangerous and it requires a constant watchful vigilance. It grows ever bigger and more intrusive as law after law is proposed by pragmatic men lacking principles. Many of these laws are turned down, but since there are always special interests seeking their special interest, the pressure is always applied for the passage of laws injurious to the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the individuals who cannot afford the time from their lives to be ever vigilant of the serpent now in their workplace, on the roads, in the fields, in their yards and homes, and sometimes in their bedrooms and bathrooms. The more the scale of government grows, the less able the voter is to maintain even a semblance of vigilance. He cannot keep track of the many laws proposed or even those that are approved. In recognition of the hopelessness of his situation, he simply stops caring about politics. It is too demanding and too depressing.

There is more to how this came to be and much of what I am about to describe can be learned in greater detail from Liberal Fascism (Doubleday, 2007) by Jonah Goldberg. Beginning with the French Revolution, much influenced by the socialist and nationalist Rousseau, fascist socialism reared it ugly head in human affairs. That revolution was widely admired even in the United States, though less and less as the horrific bloodlust continued, until even the French turned to Napoleon to save themselves from it. He was not much of a savior as it turned out, but he was to be preferred to Robespierre. Both were examples of the fascist admiration for strong, enlightened leaders who would show the ignorant masses the way by giving voice to the "general will." This admiration for such leaders is actually very widespread through the Progressives (Teddy Roosevelt & Woodrow Wilson), the Liberals (Franklin Delano Roosevelt & Harry Truman), the Communists (Lenin, Stalin, Krushchev, Mao, Pol Pot), and the Fascists (Mussolini, General Franco, Hitler [Nazi really]), socialists all.

Bismarck, of Prussia, was much admired in the latter 1800s in the US. Many young men went to Prussia for a college education and learned of his socialist government and public schools. They returned to the United States and often worked hard to copy his social programs and his public schools. In general, socialists of almost all variations worked hard to force compulsory public schools upon communities and states. They viewed this as the ideal way to mold citizens who would be amenable to socialism and to separate them from their parents who were too conservative for the Progressives. Some people favored public schools as a way to counter the influence of the Catholics and almost everyone thought them a good means to provide Americans with common characteristics. Among those characteristics was a weakening of moral principles and a substitution of pragmatism. William James and John Dewey worked hard for public schools and John Dewey is worshiped in most teacher's education colleges to this day.

William James taught that living in accordance with principles was stultifying. It was proper to be a pragmatist and whatever actually worked was the thing to do. Or, even whatever one believed worked was the thing to do. The will to believe was elevated over reality and pragmatism over principles. Dewey followed in his footsteps and especially pushed this vision forward in public education.

William James wrote the popular essay "The Moral Equivalent of War", which we hear repeated as a socialist phrase all the time, as in the War on Drugs, the War Against Obesity, the War Against Poverty, and the War Against Cancer. James, however, was advocating militarism as a pragmatic expedient to organize societies with a single, desirable purpose. His Will to Believe was meshed with Friedrich Nietzsche's Will to Power by Sorel, who much influenced Mussolini. Sorel transformed socialist revolutionary politics into a religion in which myth was used to capture the emotions of the ignorant masses to get them to join in the socialist revolution. Mussolini, following William James and Sorel, was called the "Prophet of the Pragmatic Era in Politics", the title of a 1926 article in Political Science Quarterly. James was very interested in the development of pragmatic theory in Italy which led to Mussolini's development of fascism. He also taught Herbert Croly at Harvard University, who went on to become the editor of the New Republic, which was to promote and develop the ideas of Teddy Roosevelt when he was the leader of the Progressive Party.

The New Republic was a cornerstone publication of the Progressives and then the Liberals in the United States. Croly was a pragmatist who believed in a socialist aristocracy and national spiritual rebirth, the use of national myths to motivate the people, contempt for parliamentary democracy, hatred of individualism, the need to treat society like an army and to make politics a religion, military expansion, and great revolutionaries. Like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, he argued that national life should be like a school with severe coercive measures. Like Roosevelt, he welcomed wars, many of them, as a means of progress; meaning an easy way to gain the implementation of socialist programs.

Croly made John Dewey the resident philosopher of the New Republic. Dewey publicized pragmatism and pushed for interventionist wars. Dewey also pushed for kindergartens (note the German for child in kinder) in order to remove children from their parents as early as possible to shape them into compliant social organs, a part of the people without being individuals. Child welfare agencies sprung up to further lessen the influence of parents. Dewey and President Wilson agreed that the purpose of education was to make children as unlike their fathers as possible. Dewey pushed for governmental experimentation on the people, as did Wilson and FDR.

President Wilson was quite the Progressive Leader, a real piece of work. Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck was one of Wilson's early heroes. Though he believed that giving blacks the right to vote was a terrible mistake, he also admired Abraham Lincoln because he centralized the government, implemented a draft, suspended habeas corpus, and sort of let loose the radical Republicans after the war. Wilson was fascinated with power, just as modern Liberals are. Power was God's instrument on earth, so it was to be admired. Wilson wrote Congressional Government when a student at the heavily Prussian-influenced Johns Hopkins University. He wanted the US to change to a parliamentary democracy so the legislature would have fewer checks to its power. He changed his mind when he was impressed by Teddy Roosevelt's being able to develop the power of the Presidency with his oratory. He became one of a long line of Progressives/Liberals who firmly believed in the Imperial Presidency. George Washington had to be spining in his grave. Wilson believed that society was one organic whole without room for those who would not behave. The government's purpose was to control your private thoughts, your home, and everything else about the organic whole of society. The Constitution either had to adapt to the organic redeemer state or be cast aside. He demanded that artificial barriers in our antiquated system of checks and balances be dropped and mocked the Founding Fathers. He said that "living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of Life .... it must develop." In his essay Leaders of Men, Wilson said the true leader uses the masses like tools, whose passions must govern their actions, not their minds, so he must be a great demagogue. "Men are as clay in the hands of the consummate leader." Only very concrete concepts can impress their dull minds. When President, Wilson, as Roosevelt had before him, greatly expanded the role of government and of the Presidency, far beyond the bounds of the Constitution.

FDR continued this progression, but the later story will be developed later.

By this time in history, America is already well down the road to a "pragmatic" abrogation of the Constitution as the defining document of government and its powers. We no longer had a government of principle and principle was waning everywhere. Shortsighted pragmatism ruled the affairs of Americans in politics and government.

Our politicians sometimes led the ignorant masses to new socialist programs and sometimes they simply took advantage of the propaganda widely taught in the public government schools with their conflict of interest with respect to the expansion of government power. As education became weaker and weaker and individuals of strength became more rare, the masses were more easily duped and controlled by the leaders. Fancy, pleasant sounding names were put on bills passed in the legislature, which only the lobbyists had read and which accomplished nothing like what the name of the bill suggested. The people were so overwhelmed with a mass of bills and new laws that it became hopeless for them to keep up with what was going on. In time, it was also hopeless for the full-time politicians to keep up with what they were passing. The Congress and the President gave up one of the most important tasks they had in checks and balances by refusing to even consider if a bill was Constitutional. They left that task entirely to the Supreme Court. In the early days of the Republic, the usual reason a President vetoed a bill was because he thought it unconstitutional. But how else could he uphold his pledge to "faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

When the people had principles from the Constitution to judge whether a proposed law was within the bounds of government power, it was possible to relatively easily glean out those laws that did not match the very limited powers of government. As the general welfare became the only criterion used to determine the range of laws and powers, the socialist concept of the organic whole displaced the interests of the individual. Pragmatism made politics a game that people played for power and privilege. Public schools were designed to promote big government, to dumb down the population, and make its graduates part of the organic whole, while lacking individuality. This is how the people of the United States came to be ignorant, overwhelmed with new and old laws, pandered to by politicians, bilked by special interests, and generally clay in the hands of its pragmatic, unprincipled, demagogic leaders.

There is only one way out: A return to the clear principles of our Constitution which was designed to protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the individual by carefully limiting the power of government to a few enumerated powers. Everything else can be managed within the free enterprise, free market system of voluntary action by many, many specialized and individualized Americans. Then we will have to review all of our laws and straighten them out.