Now 21 Obama Czars

Fox News had a rundown on the Obama Czars early this morning. They showed pictures of 21 Czars with their function. Did you know that in addition to the Compensation Czar, Car Czar, Climate Czar, and Cyber Czar, there is a Great Lakes Czar?

I suppose that we can now blame any bad weather on the Climate Czar and since he works for the Great Despot, we can also blame it on Obama. Today's thunderstorm, which knocked out power for 45,000 residents and crushed a home and two cars under falling trees was brought to you by the tyrants in charge of the climate! OK, I am sure the socialists will claim this is an unfair criticism, but after all, it is their megalomania that causes them to appoint 21 Czars.

And why do they appoint Czars? Mostly because the position and the powers of these Czars are not constrained by 233 years of American laws and agency rulings, and certainly are not constrained by our greatly ignored Constitution. The very term Czar should make any American's blood run cold. When the socialists can make these Czars fly, then there is nothing in their path capable of stopping them from developing a totalitarian government to manage our society from top to bottom and cradle to grave. In this scheme, the socialist elites are the adults and everyone else is a child. In this scheme, the children are being screwed (the bottoms) by the gloating dominant tops. Yes, it is as obscene as that.

On Some Criticisms of Sonia Sotomayor

There are two statements made by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayer which have come under a great deal of criticism in conservative circles. These are:

"Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases....I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

"All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is - Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't 'make law,' I know. [laughter] Okay, I know. I know. I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it. I'm, you know. [laughter] Having said that, the Court of Appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating."

As I mentioned in my previous post, I believe Judge Sotomayer is a badly flawed judge, but we should make her evaluation on a rational basis and these quotes as given above are not a sound basis for such an evaluation.

In the first quote, she is said by many conservatives to have taken a racist stance. Well, no, this is not the case. I think some of her case judgments and other statements reveal her as racist, but this statement does not. The reason is that anyone of any race who is wise is, of course, going to make better judgments and decisions than the average person of any race. Wise people are not all that common and many people of any race in positions of authority are not wise. So, a wise Latina woman is going to make better decisions more often than not than a white male. Similarly, a wise white male is going to make better judgments and decisions more often than not than a Latina woman. These statements will both be true provided that the person not specified as wise is not one of the few wise members of the given race. There are specifically very wise judges who are white males (Judge Andrew Napolitano), white females, black males (Justice Clarence Thomas), black females, Latin males, and Latina women, Asian males, Asian females, Native American males and females. Whoever is chosen for the Supreme Court position ought to be one of those few judges who is wise. I do not care what race or nationality they are, only that they are wise.

Now, a wise judge would have a very good understanding that all laws should be consistent with our Constitution and that the purpose of the Constitution is to protect, preserve, and defend the sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. In addition, a wise judge would know that the rule of law and the impartiality of law with respect to wealth, race, religion, and national origin is very important. The wise judge would understand that the law must be consistent and intelligible and that it must be as simple as it is reasonably possible to make it. Overly complex laws are effectively unknowable and are therefore an abomination. For instance, any law that Congress cannot even interpret is clearly not a law at all and should be thrown back in their faces as a disgrace. Much of the tax code, EPA regulations, and anti-trust law all fall into the realm of unintelligible law which should be unenforceable in the courts. Judge Sotomayor is certainly not such a wise judge based upon her decision record.

Let us now examine the statement that the Court of Appeals is where policy is made. Looking at her record, there is reason to be concerned here with respect to Judge Sotomayor's understanding of the law. But, one really does have to look beyond this statement to come to that conclusion. This statement could be understood in a context that the lower courts may disagree with one another on the law and the Court of Appeals, which produces the final appeal decision on 99% of court cases, has to set the policy of what the law actually means with its decisions. This does not necessarily mean that they are making up law, as some conservatives have implied. Unfortunately, an examination of Sotomayor's actual decisions does lead one to conclude that she makes up law as it suits her, but this quoted statement does not make that clear. One has to dig deeper.

The argument against Judge Sotomayor's appointment is trivialized if we stop with these quotes and base all of our objections to her upon them. We must examine her decisions and look to other quotes for a true understanding of her philosophy of law. We will not be happy with what we find, since she has no business serving on the Appeals Court, let alone on the Supreme Court.

Do You Beat Your Neighbor?

In America today we have a great many citizens who either believe the government should enforce Christian Bible morality or that the leaders of the Nanny State should see to it that the helpless masses are taken care of. These people are now being joined by some who say that American law must be determined by Sharia Law, which is the only true law, the law of Allah. All of these people believe that they are good and kind-hearted people who care greatly about their fellow man, while those who believe in Constitutionally limited government, individual rights, and laissez faire capitalism are monsters who do not give a fig for their fellow man.

I have had this charge leveled against me since I was a teenager. The equation is simple: If you think you know how your neighbor should live his life and you think you can make his life choices better than he can, then you try to gain a democratic majority and impose your way to live his life upon him. If you try to do this, whether you succeed or not, you are a very virtuous person who cares about his neighbor, his fellow man. Those who resist you are bad guys. The resisters are bad whether they think that they want simply to manage their own lives or because they think that most other people are better qualified to manage their own lives than the resister is or than the government life management service is.

Of course there are some people who wish that others would manage their lives for them. There are not very many, but there are many elitists who think that there are many people who need to have them provide life-management services to the needy and unable. As I have often observed, it is a funny thing to consult with those whom the elite think are the dependent ones. Most of them think that they themselves are not dependent, but that there are others who are. Talk to the others who are and you find the story repeating itself in most cases. Strangely, most people would rather run their own lives, but they think that there are many more people who want help via a one-size fits all government mechanism than there actually are. But believing this and wanting to care about their fellow man, they push for laws to provide government programs to compel people to contribute their time and income to the needy recipients of the law.

The needy have a very special status. They are to be treated well and provided for. This is the means by which those who favor the laws to help them become virtuous. Meanwhile, the fact that the law requires that individuals give up their rights to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness does not make the law proponent feel like a bad person. The fact that the law requires that if any particular individual does not provide the tax money to be used or does not provide the service free or at below market cost, then government force will be used to see that he does, does not make the law proponent feel bad. Government employees will be dispatched to seize the resisters property or to garnish his wages. If the recalcitrant individual is so foolish as to try to defend his individual rights, well, shoot him! He obviously did not care about the community enough. He was obviously suffering from a severe mental illness, social Darwinism or is an anti-social sociopath.

Would anyone even think to look into this individual's life to see how charitably he treated people that he knew and cared for? Very unlikely. Almost everyone would simply say he broke the law and he had to be compelled to submit or to be put away. So, our good people who care so much for their fellow man are now fully prepared to kill their fellow man and their neighbor in the interest of The Law, despite the fact that the law was not Constitutional and was not necessary to accomplish the mission it supposedly had. After all, the mission could have been accomplished very well by private charity. Any private charity with the enthusiastic support of a majority of the voters should be able to care for a great many needy people.

So why must the people who wish to help the needy use the force of law to do so? Why do they not put their money and time into what they themselves say they believe in? Doesn't one have to conclude that they do not really believe in helping the needy enough to put much effort into it? Don't we have to deduce that they are eager to gain their virtue on the cheap? But, it is a virtue that threatens any individual who believes that he has an individual right to choose his charitable acts himself with death. How do these people who claim they are virtuous for caring about their fellow man square this with hiring government law enforcers and sending them off to kill the individualists among them. Why do they want to beat their neighbor? Why are they so violent? Yet they pretend to be good and to care. Is this not transparently false? Are these not clearly evil-doers?

If you want to help the needy, by all means go and do it. Just have the common civility not to force everyone else to commit their lives to your charity. They may not have any charity they wish to commit to. If so, that is their right. On the other hand, they may be very committed to charitable acts which are simply different from those which you have a commitment to. If you really have a commitment to helping others, then put your money and your time where your mouth is. Don't shove a gun down someone else's throat to make them give their money and their lives to your value. They have the right to choose their own values. It is by choosing our own values that we develop and manage our own lives. Without that freedom, there is a clear violation of a man's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of his happiness.