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.

Is the State Sovereign?

States or governments are never sovereign -- they are at best legitimate. The individual is sovereign and rights reside only in the individual. The legitimacy of government is derived from its protection of the many and broad sovereign rights of the individuals within its territory of operation. It is this individual rights protection service that justifies the existence of government. To say that a government or state is sovereign is the equivalent of saying that all rights reside in the government and the state hands out such privileges as it sees fit to individuals. Those privileges can be revoked at the whim of the sovereign state. The sovereign state demands that the people serve it, while the sovereign individual demands that the state serve each and every individual. There is a world of difference.

Joe Biden has explicitly embraced the sovereign state that grants such privileges as it chooses to individuals and denies the sovereignty of individuals and their pre-state assertion of rights which governments are formed to protect. This viewpoint highly dominates those of the Democratic Party and is also held by quite a few Republicans. It is the basis for the belief that it is a proper function of the government to do harm to some as long as it can claim it is doing good for more people than are harmed or that it is doing good for the "least among us." This viewpoint removes sovereignty from the individual and effectively removes all of his rights, while opening the floodgates on an endless list of government powers. The only real limit on government power is that it is only legitimate to the degree that it protects the exercise of each and every individual's rights.

Government is a great servant but horrid master by Jeffrey Foss

Today bigger, supremely powerful global governments are justified by environmental claims

Jeffrey Foss

Through the ages, the suffering, destruction and murder perpetrated by governments like those of Caligula, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and their ilk reduces the evil of common criminals like Al Capone, Daniel Ortega, Bernie Madoff and El Chapo to the scale of breaking wind at Sunday dinner.

There is a historical lesson here for any of us who would entrust our sustenance, security and happiness to government. History teaches us that when governments go bad, they can really stink – enough to make us ashamed of our very species. But the more we entrust to government, the bigger it gets; and the bigger it gets, the more likely it is to become our ill-odored, malignant master, instead of our servant or helper.  

Governing is all about power, of course. Otherwise the governed would not obey, and anarchy would ensue, assuming it wasn’t there already. Thus the first power of government must be the appropriation of violence (such as imprisonment, torture and execution) unto itself for its sole use. All other forms of violence are outlawed.

If you or I kill someone, that is murder, which is illegal. But when government kills someone, it is execution or warfare, which is perfectly – and ever so conveniently – legal. If we take money from someone by force or stealth, that’s theft, But when government does likewise, it’s taxation, fees or fines. If I break into your house, I do not pass Go, I do not collect $200, I go straight to jail. If government breaks into my house, they get the police (or even a SWAT team) to do it.

All governments are born in sin: the appropriation of overwhelming power. Power doesn’t immediately or necessarily entail evil, of course. Power can be used for good. But misuse of power is as seductive as Delilah sitting at the side of the bed.

So government must be controlled, like the powerful beast it is, by putting a ring though its nose. The genius of democracy is that it ties that ring by millions of strings to the hands of ordinary people like you and me, by our votes. By pulling together we can control the beast – unless we let it get too dang big, or we get divided into one faction that wants small, controllable government and another that wants free stuff and payment for not working, courtesy of legalized government theft and violence against others.

So our first rule must be to vote for less government, not more. Note well that, by a cruel irony of fate, the so-called Democratic Party, which advertises itself as the champion of the powerless, is for ever-bigger government. Note also that the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln that freed the slaves, is for less.

    

To be clear as blue skies, I am not arguing against government. Far from it. Government is necessary. Good government is a wonderful servant: it lubricates our cooperation while putting a lid on our violence as we procure food, clothing, shelter, safety and (if we engage in the proper pursuits) happiness.

If you take a look at what’s around you, you made or created little or nothing. Others made it for you, just as you make things for them, in a system of cooperation involving money, banks, sales, purchases, property, mutual benefit and so on. This system gives us virtually everything we have.

History and observation teach that democratic governments linked to economic freedom have excelled in helping us produce the plenty we now enjoy. Our form of democratic, republican government, relative to every other form that has ever existed, is best at serving the people.

But government can also be a horrible master. The reason people outside the developed democracies do not enjoy the health, wealth and happiness we have is that their governments suffer from the disease universally endemic to government: serving itself to achieve its own goals.

It is no accident that the government atrocities of Stalin, Mao and their ilk were inflicted on their own citizens. These leftist governments gained and sustained power by claiming they cared deeply about the people and pretending the vice of envy is really a virtue. They thereby instigated hatred of the rich by the poor, hatred of the successful by the unsuccessful, hatred of the happy by the discontented. Weakened by internal conflict, the people were readily conned into domestic and foreign wars both hot and cold, and into bizarre economic experiments. Over 100,000,000 were starved, murdered or worked to death.

By yet another cruel irony of fate, the poor were the main victims. Stalin, for instance, reorganized millions of previously successful farmers into communes, and then starved them to death when they were bold enough to protest that farming itself was being destroyed. Those citizens he permitted to live did so in despicable poverty and fear, while Stalin himself spent his days in the palaces of the Czars, the very people he reviled, strutting about like a toy soldier, grinning like the cat that ate the canary.

Today we are told even vastly bigger government is needed – at a global level – to protect planet and civilization from the ravages of fossil fuels, runaway climate change and big evil corporations.

We already see this eco-imperialism imposed on billions of people, who are told they develop as they wish, use fossil fuels or improve their health and living standards more than a trifling bit. As the globalist ruling elites gain ever more power, they are demanding that citizens of already developed countries reduce their living standards, stop driving cars and flying airplanes, and eat insects and organic vegetables instead of meat or conventional foods. Of course, like Stalin, the ruling classes would exempt themselves from the diktats and penalties they impose on the masses.

Let there be no doubt: history teaches there are two keys to the levels of health, wealth and happiness that we humans have so far achieved. The first is democracy: putting government under our control. The second is freedom to make our own economic choices, to work for whom we choose, to own property, and to start businesses if we like, without being smothered by endless regulations, paperwork and taxes.

But keeping government under control isn’t easy. Government power stealthily increases, even in democracies. As Figure 1 shows, the growth of US government has been relentless, creeping and sneaky since the halcyon days when the Original Colonies first cut off the chains of monarchy. 

The graph shows that government’s share of all the money made in the country has steadily increased from about 3% in 1790 to over 40% today. Who can doubt that government had less power in 1790 than it does now? Or that the people rebelled over far less odious usurpations than they face today?

Those who lean left preach that there are good reasons for us to envy and revile the rich – indeed, anyone in the arbitrarily designated 1% of top earners. But by a stroke of unparalleled self-deception they refuse to see that this same logic applies with its ultimate force to big-spending, big-taxing, big-borrowing, big-leftist government itself.

So if you are tempted by some politician’s promise to play Robin Hood for you, you are being fooled. Politicians may pretend to be Robin, but under their disguise of forest green you will always find the evil Sherriff of Nottingham and his taxman. And what honor is there in getting someone to steal for you?

It is wrong for any of us to envy, revile or hate the rich simply because they are rich. We should instead rejoice in the success of law-abiding people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Stewart Butterfield (my former student, Canadian entrepreneur and midwife of Flickr and Slack). They are beacons of hope. 

Those decent people among us who legally acquire a few millions or billions of dollars to pose against the many trillions of dollars taken from us by government are like those 1776 colonists, who rose up against King George III, wrote a Declaration of Independence and Constitution that set down their inspirations, aspirations, and belief in God, unalienable natural rights, and small government with limited powers, intentions and instruments of taxation and suppression.

They show us that we too can get ahead, be free and prosper with limited government that understands its proper role.

Dr. Jeffrey Foss is a philosopher of science, Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, Canada, and author of Beyond Environmentalism: A Philosophy of Nature.

FIGURE 1. Growth of U.S. government, 1790 to 2016.

Comment by Charles:  I have posted this article at the request of Paul Driessen.  Jeffrey Foss understands the threat of big government very well.

Political Discord and Anger Rule When Government is Too Big

With great frequency, we are told that the extent of the political discord in America today is too great and we must tone it down.  This is impossible because we have allowed government too much power. A government with the power of our federal government, and for that matter with the extensive powers of our state and local governments, just has too many ways to do harm to most of us and to rob and punish us for the benefit of those groups who control the power of those governments.  It is the excessive power and its inevitable use to harm most of us, and to allow profit to others at our expense, that calls forth great passions about politics.

Once government exceeds the limits of its legitimate function in protecting the rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, self-ownership, and the pursuit of happiness with broad freedoms of conscience and association, government will necessarily do harm to some even if it tries to do the greatest good for the greatest number.  That is not the proper function of government.  People should act for their own good in the private sector, taking full advantage of their protected individual rights to do so.  It is not for legitimate government to do harm to anyone.  Indeed, the wonderful thing about the private sector is that it in no way requires that harm be done to anyone.

Yes, some people will not fare as well as others in the private sector.  But, at least they have the opportunity to choose their own values in the private sector and to pursue those self-chosen values. When governments have grown beyond their individual rights protection functions, they chose the values that government will pursue and they drag us individuals along whether we would choose those values or not.  The government chooses values and imposes values on all of us by force.  This use of force to pursue its ends is the essence of government.  It is fundamentally why government must have very limited purposes and powers to pursue those purposes.  The Framers of the Constitution recognized this and the people who ratified the Constitution did too.

We have perverted that Constitution for highly limited and principled government with claims that it allows government to do anything in a law that includes taxes because it has the power to tax. Hogwash.  It has the power to tax only to support the very limited powers enumerated in the Constitution.  We have perverted the Constitution by claiming government has the power to regulate anything and everything that involves or could in any way affect interstate trade.  We have perverted the Constitution by ignoring the broad 9th Amendment that recognizes that individuals have rights not enumerated in the Constitution.  We have allowed the 10th Amendment to be weakened.  We have reduced the ability of the states to exert influence in Washington, DC by removing their power to appoint Senators to the Senate to represent the interests of the states.  We have reduced the representation of the People in the House of Representatives by allowing massive and ridiculous gerrymandering of Congressional Districts.

We have established government-dominated and controlled educational institutions with a serious conflict-of-interest problem.  These government-controlled institutions have seen to it that young Americans are unfamiliar with their individual rights and with the very limited role of legitimate governments.  They further the discord and distrust in order to further increase the powers of government.  The legislative law-creation function has also been substantially passed to regulatory agencies with little oversight by the People's representatives in Congress.  As a result about 80,000 pages of new regulations are produced each year.  No one knows how many federal laws and regulations there are.  In short, we have removed most of the limits on government power.

Consequently, it has become a matter of life and death whether one's personal interests are under attack by government.  Or, one might be in a particular band of robbers who stand to make out like bandits if only that band can control the levers of power.  The individual who stands up and defends his individual rights stands literally to be murdered as the governments exert their power.  Few people choose to suffer immolation at the hands of a brutal government eager to enforce its laws and regulations by using whatever force it may take.  But, though one may not present oneself for such immolation at the hands of overwhelming force, this does not mean that one is not suffering passionately one's subserviance.

Powerful governments with wily special interest groups working constantly to gain control over some function or other of said governments, understandably causes many citizens, who either do not have the time or who lack the mental power to understand what they are doing, to become very suspicious. Many begin to imagine that forces are arrayed against them that may not in fact be attempting to harm them.  The fact that many factions are taking advantage of the People in general, will cause many of the People to imagine the worst of motives for many who may only be trying to protect themselves from harmful government force.  Both rational and irrational fears will become common. This is a necessary result of governments that pursue the idea of doing the greatest good for the greatest number, which is made even worse by the fact that such governments only succeed in generating a general warfare among special interest groups for power at the cost of our general Welfare.

When the Framers of the Constitution and the People who ratified it, established a new government under that Constitution, they wisely opened it with:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The document that followed described a highly limited government and the main opposition to the adoption of the Constitution was by those who believed that that government was too powerful, not too weak.  It was a highly limited government that the People looked to to provide for Justice, domestic Tranquility, the promotion of the general Welfare, and the Blessings of Liberty.

We have failed their vision.  We have abandoned the principles of legitimate and good government which they perceived.  We are paying for that with governments that create injustices, stir up passions that lead to violence and discord, that harm many in the interests of factions too politically savvy, and deprive us of many of our Liberties.

It is no wonder that we have little domestic Tranquility under these conditions.  Who controls the levers of government has become a matter of life and death.  The only way to escape this sad state of affairs is to return to a highly principled and limited ideal of government.  Government should first do no harm to anyone.  It should promote our general Welfare and domestic Tranquility by simply protecting our individual rights and leaving us free to manage our own lives.

Space and Good Fences Make Good Neighbors -- Good Neighbors Make Limited Government

Once again the overcrowded cities have voted for the more authoritarian Presidential candidate, while the people of "flyover country" and the "Racist South," from the viewpoint of presumptuous Progressive Elitists, have chosen a less authoritarian candidate.  This again proves that space and good fences make good neighbors, while overcrowded conditions lead to bossy people who want ever so badly to push their values on other people and to micromanage their lives.  Somehow, these "educated" Progressive Elitists always manage to presume that they can manage the lives of people they do not know better than said people can do this themselves.  They pretend politically that they respect these people whose lives need to be micromanaged by them, but in their private discussions among one another, they actually despise the people they believe to be incapable of choosing their own values properly and managing their own lives.

In the 2016 election, it is clear that not only did a majority of Americans in Flyover Country and in the South reject the rule of the Progressive Elitists, but so too did a majority in the Rust Belt.  The Obama years of manufacturing industry suppression and of fossil fuel energy suppression took a big toll on the Rust Belt and led to an upheaval with catastrophic and surprising results for the Democrat Socialist Party.  The low percentage of Americans with jobs worth having and the long stagnant wages had finally become too much for many Americans.  The ever-increasing expense and inconveniences of ObamaCare played a significant role also in the rebellion.  Seeing more businesses go out of business than were created for many years under Obama had its consequences.  The loss of jobs due to the vendetta against coal and the threat of a loss of jobs due to the Democrat desire to suppress fracking not only hurt the immediate industries, but hurt those who transported or used the coal, oil, gas, and the products made from them.  It would hurt those in the plastics industry, for instance.  Meanwhile, many a business and resident either had energy bills higher than necessary already or was facing sharp future increases.  Many were sick of the constant stream of Democrat lies and misrepresentations.  Many white Americans, especially men, were sick of being discriminated against in hiring and in contracting work.  A rebellious upheaval was long overdue.

Donald Trump was the beneficiary of all this and the fact that Hillary Clinton was a very unappealing opponent.  Not that Trump himself was an appealing Presidential candidate.  He leaves much to be desired as well.  But as I have noted, he does have some good policy positions, which if he carries through with them with a Republican House and Senate, might make him a much less undesirable President than Hillary would have been.  Trump will now be put to the test.

The actions he badly needs to take are these:

• Repeal ObamaCare as pledged.
• Reduce Corporate and Personal Income taxes, as pledged, so American businesses can compete better in the global markets from American plants and facilities and so multinational companies can afford to return $2 trillion of earnings abroad to the states to make a huge investment in America.
• Protect the Right to Work Laws so Americans are not forced to join labor unions they do not want to join.  Also deny unions card check and rapid representation elections.
• Nominate a judge for the open Supreme Court position who has a proper understanding of the broad and many individual rights every one of us has.
• End the federal government role in promoting the false catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.  Fire the many employees of the EPA, NASA, NOAA, and the National Science Foundation who have insidiously supported this false science and wasted huge sums of taxpayer money on it, while forcing up energy costs in the entire nation in its name.
• Follow through on his pledge to have a government employee hiring freeze.
• Hire good managers for the Veterans Administration and its hospitals, while allowing many more options for veterans to use private sector medical care.
• Stop the practice of government favoring some groups based on their ethnicity or sex. Everyone has equal individual rights and it is the function of legitimate government to protect everyone's equal rights.
• The purpose of a smaller Department of Education should be to end the government monopoly on K-12 education by advancing the widespread use of vouchers to allow all students school choice.  Trump is on-board to start this process, but should expand its scope.
• Reopen federal lands and offshore areas for the development of fossil fuel mines and drilling.
• Sell off much of the federal land so it can become more productive, provide more jobs, and generate more local and state tax revenue.
• Reduce the number of regulations and their expense, as he has pledged to do.
• Simplify the tax code as pledged.
• End the death tax as pledged.
• End the IRS practice of discriminating against non-profit organizations who support individual rights and limited or constitutional government.
• Limit federal grants to colleges to work with defense potential.  This will largely end taxpayer funding to faculty devoted to expanding the role and size of government.
• End requirements that government pay union level wages.
• End the Obama executive action that raised the salary level at which overtime pay had to be paid.
• Reduce the federal minimum wage so that more Americans of low productivity or in low cost of living areas may be employed.  This will be very helpful in allowing the under-educated to get their first jobs and in promoting businesses in both poor city neighborhoods and low cost of living areas of the country.
• Repeal Dodd-Frank, which was a deception to make Americans think the government had no responsibility for the Great Recession.  It made it difficult for smaller banks to operate, thereby adding to the number of banks too big to fail.
• End the government monopoly on student loans for college.
• Reduce government spending on infra-structure, which seems to be the opposite of what he wants to do.
• Produce a new immigration law which makes it easier to immigrate to the U.S., while insisting that immigrants enter and stay in the U.S. legally.
• Promote senior military officers based on their ability, not based on the political party with which they are registered to vote.  Do not discriminate on the basis of sex or ethnicity.
• Review Obama's Executive Orders and change those which are unconstitutional or wrongheaded.  Some right-headed orders may need enabling laws by Congress.  The Executive Orders of earlier Presidents may also need review.  Mind you, Executive Orders can be a proper exercise of presidential management of the Executive Branch of the government, but they should not affect people outside of the Executive Branch.
• Shut down government-run service organizations.  Their work belongs in the private sector.
• Shut down many of the government agencies which number so many that the government cannot say how many exist and which have the authority to issue regulations for which purposes.  These agencies are often performing no valid function of government, are poorly managed, have overlapping authorities, or are obsolete.

If Trump tackles the job that needs doing, he will need all the energy he has over the next four years. I hope he does take on these tasks and works effectively with Congress to get it largely done.  He will also need to communicate well with the American People about what he is doing and why.  It is critically important that the U.S. economy return to at least its longtime average growth rate of 3%.  It should not be hard to enjoy long-term real growth of 4% actually if the government would only get out of the way.  The compound growth of a healthy economy over 40 years will raise the American standard of living vastly more than will any growth restrictive government regulations, laws, or taxes. Americans badly need the hope, change, and opportunities of a reduced government sector and a rich and robust private sector.

Donald Trump Again Proves He is Not Trustworthy

Donald Trump has stated that it is right for a businessman to do anything to make money that is not illegal.  Such an attitude is the basis for many claims that big government is justified to control unethical big businesses.  He has tried to steal the property of others by using eminent domain for his benefit.  He has long made most of his campaign contributions to Democrats to buy a position as one of their favored special interests.

Within two days of Senator Ted Cruz suspending his campaign for the Republican nomination for the presidential race in 2016, Trump has now

• Stated that he will not follow through on his tax-cut plan.
• Said that he would not oppose an increase in the minimum wage.
• Will seek campaign contributions.
• Appointed a former Goldman Sachs partner, George Soros hireling, and major Hillary Clinton donor to head up his campaign fund. 

Many more betrayals will be forthcoming from this most unethical man.  This is a man who holds the viewpoint that most people are incapable, readily hoodwinked, and like him are ethically challenged.  This is the viewpoint of the convinced Progressive Elitist.  But, Donald Trump is an actor and he has fooled many supporters, proving many people are indeed easily hoodwinked.  The Progressive Elitist and special interest control of the federal government will continue for another four years.

When Americans persist in not understanding the principles of legitimate and limited government, they will be ruled badly and arrogantly by special interests.

The Educational Attainment of Americans Before 1850

It is widely assumed that few Americans prior to 1850 and the development of government-run school systems were capable of reading and that knowledge was sparsely distributed.  This is a myth which there is much evidence to refute.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Andrew Berstein which was published in The Objective Standard, Vol. 5, No. 4 (2010) under the title The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools.

Prior to the mid-19th century, government schools did not exist in America. All schools were private, and education was widespread and outstanding. For example, in the Middle Atlantic colonies during the pre-Revolutionary period, professional educators established numerous schools to satisfy the demand for education.15 Philadelphia, for instance, boasted schools for every subject and interest. Between 1740 and 1776, 125 private schoolmasters advertised their services in Philadelphia newspapers—this in a city whose population was miniscule relative to today. Professional educators provided mentoring services in English, contemporary foreign languages, science, and a wide variety of other topics.16 Children who grew to be such brilliant scientists, writers, and statesmen as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington received their education at home or in private schools.

(As to higher education, by the late-18th century six private colleges operated in the colonies: Yale, the College of New Jersey [Princeton], the College of Philadelphia [Penn], Dartmouth, Queen’s [Rutgers], and Rhode Island College [Brown].)17

Predictably, the educational results of such a free educational market were superb. The literacy levels of Revolutionary America were remarkably high. For example, Thomas Paine’s book, Common Sense,written in plain style but enunciating sophisticated political principles, sold 120,000 copies during the colonial period to a free population of 2.4 million (akin to selling 10 million copies today).18 The essays of The Federalist, written by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay in support of a Constitution for the nascent republic, were largely newspaper editorials written for and read by the common man.

Sales of American books and educational materials in the early- and mid-19th century likewise indicate a high national literacy rate. Between 1818 and 1823, while the U.S. population was under 20 million, Walter Scott’s novels sold 5 million copies (the equivalent of selling 60 million [actually more than 77.5 million] copies today). Early in the 19th century, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper likewise sold millions of copies.19 The McGuffey’s Readers, first published in 1836, routinely used such terms as “heath” and “benighted” in third-grade texts. They asked such questions as “What is this species of composition called?” and gave such assignments as “Relate the facts of this dialogue.” The fourth-grade reader included selections from Hawthorne, and the fifth-grade text, readings from Shakespeare. “These were not the textbooks of the elite but of the masses,” explains Thomas Sowell. “[F]rom 1836 to 1920, McGuffey’s Readers were so widely used that they sold more than 122 million copies.”20

Given the high quality of education in early America, it is no surprise that two renowned French visitors observed and reported on the phenomenon. In an 1800 book Vice President Thomas Jefferson commissioned, titled National Education in the United States of America, Pierre Du Pont de Nemours reported that Americans received an education far superior to that of other peoples. “Most young Americans,” he wrote, “can read, write, and cipher. Not more than four in a thousand are unable to write legibly.”21 Several decades later, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that Americans were the most educated people of history.22

The bracketed text in red is my correction.  Footnote 17 explains that Harvard College, King's College in New York City (now Columbia University), and William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, which are all private colleges now, were founded by governments.  Harvard was founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and King's and William and Mary Colleges were founded under Royal Charters in the colonial period.  It is clear that the 1800 book Vice President Thomas Jefferson commissioned, titled National Education in the United States of America, Pierre Du Pont de Nemours stating that "not more than four in a thousand are unable to write legibly" did not include slaves.

The idea that a private education system would leave many Americans less educated than the government-run education system of today is belied by this history and by the fact that the approximately 11% of schools today that are private out-perform the government schools readily.  Home-schooled children also greatly out-perform government-schooled children.

The government-run schools have little reason to teach children good reasoning skills, the knowledge they need to earn a living, and the habit of independent, critical thinking.  Without these attainments, it is a very uphill battle for individuals to achieve wisdom and the necessary skills to make their own value choices well.  Government-run schools have a tendency to propagate myths that support Big Government and diminish the exercise of individual rights.  Government-controlled education endangers children, future adults, and our constitutionally limited republican government of a few enumerated powers.  Government-educated students generally have no idea what purposes and achievements define a legitimate government, no sound understanding of individual rights, no thoughts about the intelligibility of laws and regulations, and no commitment to the Rule of Law.  Because the People are divided about ideas of morality, the government schools downplay moral principles.  They have little knowledge of history and the many lessons of how governments have deprived their citizens of their rights.  They have no understanding of basic economics and are taught to believe in policies that deny the basic Law of Supply and Demand and the importance of production itself.  They massively promote group identifications and victim-hood and victimizer status for these groups in a highly divisive manner.  They systematically undermine the much greater diversity and wealth of individual choices provided by the private sector in favor of the rigid, group oriented controls of the government sector.

The government-run education system wallows in a profound conflict-of-interest and because it is coercive and tax-funded, it has no reason to improve.  In fact, the schools are more commonly provided with more money the more they fail, providing them with no incentive to provide a decent education.  Government-run and controlled schools very commonly put the welfare of their under-performing employees well ahead of that of their under-performing students.

The state of education in America today is tragic and is much of the reason that the state of government in America today is increasingly harmful to the freedom, security, and general well-being of Americans.

Rationally Choosing a President

As an American with the right to vote for President, how does one rationally exercise that right?

The first task the rational individual has is to determine what the legitimate purpose of government is and how government acts to achieve that purpose.  It is easier to understand how government acts to achieve its purposes, than it is to understand what its legitimate purposes are.  Government achieves its purposes by using force.  If challenged by any of the people it governs, it is willing to use overwhelming and fatal force.  It is the nature of government that it achieves its ends through the use of force.  Without a clear understanding of that and which of many purposes it may have that are legitimate, it is not possible to make a rational choice of that government's chief executive officer.

Many people believe that government exists to enforce a morality upon a society.  Thus that portion of the left which is long educated in the government-controlled education system commonly believes that some groups deserve to be treated by everyone nicely.  These groups are usually people they see as systematically discriminated against or as rather helpless.  If those of the favored groups are not treated nicely by someone, the government should use force to see that those who are not nice will act nice.  On the other hand, that portion of the right which believes in religious fundamentalism largely believes that everyone should be forced to live in accordance with what they think Christianity requires of moral people.  There is some overlap in these two groups' ideas of morality, but there are also important differences.  What they have in common is a belief that it is right to have government enforce their idea of moral behavior upon those whose ideas of moral behavior differ from theirs or upon people who sin by not living up to the morality they themselves may recognize.

Neither group believes in a broad concept of freedom of conscience.  Because both groups are broadly willing to use force to achieve their goal of moral uniformity in individual's relationships with one another, neither believes in a broad concept of freedom of association either.  The socialist elitist group of the left and the Christian fundamentalist group of the right are the most polarized groups willing to use force to make every individual comply with their moral beliefs, but this is actually a trait of most Americans.

It does not dawn on most Americans that it is from a broad individual right to freedom of conscience and freedom of association that all of the individual rights that most think they should have arise.  Why should an individual have freedom of speech?  Because freedom of speech enables people to develop, with feedback from others, and trade the knowledge they need to survive and flourish on Earth in the midst of powerful natural forces and other people.  Freedom of speech is often opposed by those who wish to suppress the knowledge and understanding that may result.  A crucial portion of that knowledge and understanding is about a moral code suitable to sustaining life as a thinking and living being.  Freedom of speech is critical as a support for developing learning, identifying values to pursue, earning a living by production, and trading values with other individuals.

Today's socialist elitists are often weak on freedom of speech because they argue it can be hurtful to some among those groups they favor or think are incapable of managing their own lives.  Not infrequently, they even believe that scientific pursuit of knowledge should be suppressed if it might cause people to disagree with part of their belief system.  This is most apparent if those who disagree are pursuing profits in trade or disagree with their ideas about evolution or man's relationship with the environment.  The fundamentalist right sometimes forces the teaching of Intelligent Design or forces counseling prior to a woman having an abortion.  Freedom of speech means we have the right to say what we think, but also that we have the right not to be forced to listen to those we disagree with.  Real freedom of speech also rests in freedom of association.  We have the right to speak to those who want to listen to us.  Freedom of the press is just the right to put our thoughts on paper or electronic media and distribute them to those who want to read what we have written.  Consequently, freedom of press also has a foundation in our broad freedoms of conscience and association.

Of course, freedom of religion is just a subset of our broad freedom of conscience.  Indeed, the two were often conflated when the early state constitutions were formulated and in the debates about the federal Constitution.  Freedom of religion is clearly both about a set of beliefs and the freedom to gather with others of similar belief, as is our broader freedom of conscience.  Freedom of conscience, really the freedom to think and to act upon what we think, is inseparable from freedom of association in our interaction with others in a society.  Thus, when a socialist elitist has the government use force to make a Christian fundamentalist baker bake a cake for a gay wedding or to make one pay for a woman's abortion, that socialist elitist is violating the Christian fundamentalist's freedom of conscience and his freedom of association.  It is not of primary moral importance that the socialist leftist may be right that discriminating against gay people and their marriages is wrong or that a woman has a right to have an abortion.  If these are fact as I think they are, this is still not justification for using force to violate the individual rights of the Christian fundamentalist.  Neither would it be right for the Christian fundamentalist to deny the government contract for domestic partnerships to gay people or to force those who do not share their religious beliefs to attend and financially support their church.

Our Declaration of Independence correctly identified the legitimate and very limited function of government.  Its legitimate functions are limited to the protection of the individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It accomplishes this purpose by not allowing individuals to initiate the use of force upon others and by not itself using any more force than is needed to prevent individuals or aliens from initiating the use of force against its citizens.  Legitimate government is not in the business of doing harm to some in the name of a greater good claimed for others.  Legitimate government lives under a rule that it must first do no harm to anyone who has not initiated the use of force.  Legitimate government minimizes the use of force in a society, including its own use of force.  This is why the Constitution gave the federal government very limited and enumerated powers.  Those powers have been expanded by present-day interpretations far beyond the context of this very limited role of simply protecting individual rights.

Legitimate government rests on the foundation of a People who are mostly competent to comprehend their lives and environment, choose their own values, and pursue those values in a robust and choice-rich private sector.  It is in the private sector that individuals can best exercise their quest for knowledge and understanding, learn about the many values they might pursue, and exercise their choice of values by acquiring them, often in cooperation with others who wish to enter into trades of values with them.  No such enabling environment is possible in a society following a large government model.  The nature of laws and regulations that go beyond prohibiting the initiated use of force is to reduce choices of values and reduce their free trade.  Such a society suffers a reduction of knowledge, the reduction of the happiness of many, and a subsequent reduction in the production of goods and services.

The socialist elitist thinks it is crass to argue that their web of laws and regulations lead to a reduction in the growth of an economy.  They believe it is fine to impose these limits on human activity in pursuit of their moral ideals because trade and business are immoral, or at least not endeavors suitable to the most enlightened minds.  Never mind the fact that a free society with limited government whose private sector production of goods and services may easily grow at a 4% rate will provide 1.83 times as many goods and services in a generation (about 31 years in America) as one growing at a 2% rate characteristic of their partially enacted agenda under Obama.  They never consider how many of those with lesser abilities or drive will find it much easier to live and to enjoy a much more interesting life in a society with 83% more goods and services in a generation.  They never ask if the medical achievements, the development of new life-enhancing products, the advancement of knowledge generally and its teaching, the increased wealth available for charities, and the shortened work hours in such a more developed private sector might not easily be much preferable to the society with more public housing, free food, long term unemployment benefits, higher taxes, less investment, more corn subsidies, more Import-Export Bank subsidies, more renewable energy subsidies, more college loans, incalculably less pollution, and higher minimum wages now at the expense of this growth.

A moral society starts with a government that does not itself act immorally by using any more force than it must to keep individuals from using force unnecessarily.  A harmonious society starts with this minimization of the use of force.  It allows individuals to choose their own values, manage and own their own lives, and to trade freely with others for each trader's mutual advantage.  Such a society prospers in happiness and security.

Being happy is less about having a good or service than it is about being free to choose what you want and being able to act for the purpose of achieving your values.  The competent individual is capable of doing this.  The individual who is free to do this is more likely to feel competent.  This esteem that follows from the act of using one's own mind to understand reality, to identify and choose one's own values, and to act to achieve those values is essential to happiness.  Self-chosen values are the food of dreams and the freedom to act to achieve them is the basis for hope.  Good government does not kill our individual dreams and does not subvert our hopes.  It does not squash any individual's dreams and hopes in favor of a chosen group.  It provides equal freedoms for all to choose their values and to pursue them.

The man to vote for to become President is the man who best understands this and will try his best to reform government to make it legitimate.

Most Okies are Better Off than Most New Yorkers

When discussing the impact of the current New York state minimum wage of $9.00/hour and the law requiring that the minimum wage for fast food workers will rise in stages to $15/hour, I discovered how surprisingly bad off compared to the national household median income most New York residents were.  Because I have family in Oklahoma and it is considered to be backward, poor, and only worth flying over by New York Progressive Elitists, I have decided to do a comparable comparison of Oklahoma to New York.  After all, Oklahoma is the home of many poor Native Americans and a land of people who should have fled the dust bowl in the 1930s in abject poverty, right?  This should be an easy contest for New York.

So once again I will find the cost of living in Oklahoma cities and towns and use that to adjust the median household income of each city or town.  This recognizes that income goes much further when the cost of living is low than when it is very high, as tends to happen in areas with a big government mentality.  Or at least this happens until the costs cause so many business failures that housing values collapse as people flee the area for jobs in areas with more limited government.

Now the total population of the state of Oklahoma is about 0.2 times that of New York state.  So, the size of the cities and towns in this list will be smaller.  I chose all of the bigger cities and towns and a few to represent low population areas of the state.  The results in the table below for Oklahoma should be compared to those for New York in my previous post.

City or Town	Cost of Living % Compared to National Average	Median Household Income (National = $53,046)	Effective Median Household Income	% National Effective Median Household Income
Broken Arrow	93	$64,411	$69,259	131
Edmond	109	$71,216	$65,336	123
Woodward	82	$51,811	$63,184	119
Bartlesville	80	$48,036	$60,045	113
Guymon	81	$47,775	$58,981	111
Norman	88	$48,248	$54,827	103
Clinton	79	$43,216	$54,704	103
Ponca City	78	$40,434	$51,838	98
Oklahoma City	80	$45,704	$51,353	97
Altus	80	$40,429	$50,536	95
Ardmore	77	$38,383	$49,848	94
Enid	84	$41,515	$49,422	93
Lawton	89	$43,953	$49,385	93
McAlester	81	$39,291	$48,507	91
Tulsa	85	$40,781	$47,978	90
Durant	80	$36,863	$46,079	87
Cushing	78	$35,553	$45,581	86
Muskogee	79	$32,621	$41,292	78
Vinita	78	$32,109	$41,165	78
Okmulgee	79	$32,022	$40,534	76
Sallisaw	82	$29,524	$36,005	68
Stillwater	91	$31,243	$34,333	65
Hugo	76	$21,639	$28,472	54

Whereas, the residents of New York City had effective median household incomes of only 80% of the national average and those of Buffalo had such incomes of only 78% of the national average, most of the residents of Oklahoma have higher incomes.  Most of the population in Oklahoma enjoys median effective household incomes which are 90% or more of the national average.  For most Oklahomans, the cost of living is below 90% of the national average.

Only three towns were found with effective median household incomes below 76% of the national average.  One of these, Hugo, has a population of only 5,325 and is in the table only to represent the low population southeast area of the state.  Its effective median household income is better than that of larger Ithaca, NY, population 30,016 and home of Cornell University.  Another, Sallisaw, has only 8,779 residents, of whom most are Native Americans.  Stillwater, home of Oklahoma State University, has a population of 45,584.  None of the other towns are worse off than Buffalo.

The biggest city in the state, Oklahoma City, has an effective median household income of 97% of the national median.  The other colossus in the state is Tulsa with an effective median household income of 90% of the national median.  The third largest city, Norman, home of the University of Oklahoma, has an effective median household income of 103% the national value.  Broken Arrow, number 4 in size, is at 131%, #5 Lawton is 93%, and #6 Edmond is at 123% of the national median household income.  There is no contest between Oklahoma and New York.

The Progressive Elitists of New York are famous for telling the rest of the country how to manage the finances of the country and about how concerned they are about income inequality.  They assure us that the big government model is best for reducing income inequality and will generally make most people better off.  Now, there are many very wealthy and high income people in New York.  But the median household income tells us that income point at which half the households make more and half make less.  Thus there can be a minority of people who are have very high incomes who do little to shift the median income level up when most households are making far less than they are.  New York state is famous for its income inequality in fact.  Not withstanding the preaching of its controlling Progressive Elitists.

The minimum wage in Oklahoma is the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour.  According to the advice now being given to us by many Progressive Elitists, it should be $15/hour.  They claim this would give so many more purchasing power that they would spend their local economies to a condition in which everyone would have higher incomes.  But, the people of Oklahoma have managed to do far better than New Yorkers for the most part by ignoring this advice.  They have also ignored advice on the advantages of big government to a considerable degree.  It appears that the experiment has been done here.  The people who inherited the land of the dust bowl and a large Native American population are better off economically than New Yorkers, who have the national financial and business center of the nation.

There is far less income inequality in Oklahoma than in New York.   Most households have higher effective median incomes.  Wow!  The people of fly-over country are beating the pants off of those New Yorkers guided by the all-knowing Progressive Elitists.  Now who would have thought that Okies could win this contest so handily?

So, hi Mom, Betsy, Scott, Peggy, and my nieces and nephews in Oklahoma.  Congratulations on beating those New Yorkers economically and for not following their advice on matters of politics.  It is a very good idea to keep the cost of living low and the cost of doing business low by keeping government smaller.  Keep on trucking!  Keep electing those smaller government Republicans and leave those Big Government Democrats to the New Yorkers, who are killing themselves.