iPandora

Liberalism/Socialism is a failed philosophy, from it’s do-something-diseased adherents to it’s lack of accomplishments besides the enslavement of entire populations and the beating down of everything good and beautiful and worthwhile.

And here’s more proof:

Good, Good, Good, Good Intentions!

I’ll take socio-political philosophies for 400, Alex.

“Tried in just the US of A for over 70 years and still hasn’t succeeded any better than it did anywhere else, though it had significantly more resources and better minds here than anywhere else.”

What are social welfare programs?

The reasoning for minimum wage, social security, and Fannie Mae–all programs of the 1930s–was similar: Let’s use government to help people get higher wages, have money for retirement, and buy houses. The intentions were good and Americans bought the good intentions and ended up with broken programs and high taxes. After that, some Americans wanted more government programs to save us from the previous government programs. And so on. Seventy-five years later most of those original programs are still around sucking the wealth of the nation, and Americans are left with less liberty and higher taxes.

(The Tyranny of Good Intentions)

Money, Money, Money, Must Be Funny, In A Rich Man’s World!

Pass The Check!

Liberal leaders in California are realizing they can’t have their cake and eat it too. The world doesn’t operate according to their wet dreams, it operates according to timeless and inescapable laws against which there is no protest.

For 15 years (Los Angeles Mayor) Villaraigosa was an organizer for the Service Employees International Union and the city’s teachers’ union. Now he is trying to cope with, and partially undo, largesse for unionized public employees: “I have to sign the checks on the front, not just the back.”

(Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard) Riordan and (investment advisor Alexander) Rubalcava say two numbers—8 percent and 5,000—define the city’s crisis. L.A. has conveniently but unrealistically assumed 8 percent annual growth of the assets of the city’s pension funds. The two main funds’ actual growth over the last decade have been 3.5 percent and 2.8 percent. And Villaraigosa added 5,000 people to the city’s payroll in his first term.

(George Will: Nightmare Numbers in LA)

And When You Go To Arizona, Be Sure To Wear Your Tanning Lotion There!

People who think that the strong immigration enforcement laws recently passed in Arizona are unpopular and unconscionable need a fact check.

Even in the liberal mecca of Massachusetts, 70% of people favor a ban on government benefits for illegal immigrants.

Yes, America was founded by immigrants. Our fathers and grandfathers were immigrants. But they were legal immigrants, going through the systems and structures, such as they were, for normalization, naturalization, and citizenship.

There is a system, however broken, for citizenship. And if there are problems with the system, let’s fix it. But to allow scofflaws and criminals to benefit from the nation they refuse to honor and respect confounds reason. And to encourage such outlaw behavior even by otherwise law-abiding and peaceful people does not engender respect or love or other such feelings we hope to develop in those who wish to sow their seed in the fertile soils of the United States of America.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

Lax credit and easy spending policies are products of both Democrat and Republican leaderships in years past. The conservative movement has recognized the failures of this more so than their compatriots in the liberal movement. Calls for the privatization of Fannie and Freddie, two of the main contributors to the whole system of easy credit, are not likely to be heeded by the current elected leadership in Washington D.C. And Fed Chairman Bernanke believes such easy credit is the best policy, despite it’s contribution to the economic failures of the last several years.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

Political correctness is losing favor across the ideological aisles. This false equality of outcome which relies on enforced restrictions on true equality, that is, the equality of potential, has been a pernicious evil in our country. But other perniciously evil policies continue to thrive here. Policies that drag down those who have achieved in order to not unnecessarily burden those who will not achieve with that natural and good desire to become something other than the abject failures. Except that’s not right, you can only fail if you’ve started at something. Many of these haven’t started anything and therefore aren’t failures but worse. Any system that encourages people in any way to remain nothings is evil for it robs them of their humanity as surely as Nazi extermination program robbed so many of their humanity.

You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

In that iconic moment when Joe the Plumber’s question drew out then Senator Obama’s statement that we need to spread the wealth around, it revealed a misunderstanding of economic systems that time has not changed. If you want to grow jobs, you make it easier for companies to make and keep money. If you take what they make for your own wealth redistribution programs and to “spread it around” you hurt not just the business you wanted to stick it to, but all its employees and potential employees as well. This isn’t rocket science.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.

Ever since FDR, liberal leaders have been adept at pitting class against class. There is no inherent nobility in the individual man whose mind and heart must be won. There is only the group, the LGBT, the blacks, the whites, the lower class, the middle class, the upper class, the “them”, the “us”, the hispanics, the wage earners, the corporations, the haves, the have-nots. Targeted fiscal policy meant to assuage the ire of a particular class are unconstitutional as they do not benefit every American equally, which is a requirement of federal policy. It’s vote-buying and favor peddling. And the result is a torn and fragmented society beset by such tensions within it cannot unify to address situations without.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

The poor will always be among us. This doesn’t free us from a responsibility to assist them. Instead it requires we develop consistent and repeatable patterns of assistance with several criteria. There must be a filter that prevents moochers and freeloaders from taking resources that would be better appreciated and taken advantage of by those deserving poor. And the money for such charity must be given willingly, not taken without recourse. A rich man who does not give to charity only illumines the shallowness of his own soul. He does not deserve theft of his goods, only the scorn of society.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

This is a failure of nearly everybody in leadership in Washington D.C. and a result of an uncareful electorate who do not take real pains to determine the true character of the candidate or who believe that character doesn’t matter.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.

Just as by helping a butterfly escape it’s chrysalid prison you doom it to a short, painful life and quick, ugly death, by taking away the responsibilities of a person or natural societal group, you end up with stunted and immature people who will continue all the ills aformentioned.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

There are few things more evil than to do for someone else what they are capable of doing themselves. Particularly when they are not in dire need and what they need to accomplish is a task that would encourage or build in them traits of character not already full-fledged in their being.

A Liberal: He's offended and it's my fault.

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one.
If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands everyone know it and demands legislative action!

If a black man or Hispanic is conservative, they see themselves as independent and successful.
Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders what government program is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down (the so-called Fairness Doctrine for example).

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced.

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his through the government.

If conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed.
If a liberal slips and falls, he grabs his neck, moans like he’s in labor, and then sues.

If a conservative reads this, he’ll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he’s “offended”.

Thanks to IronicSurrealism for this email forward.

AskMen.com has a short article about why we get offended and what we ought to do about it (Caution: AskMen.com has some small images of scantily clad women if you don’t have ad-blocking software in your browser). Here are some of their solutions, read the whole article for their explanations and more solutions:

Find a middle ground to react
Read things in context
Have a sense of humor about it
Ignore it

787 Dreamliner

Conservatives are often accused of being pro-business while Liberals consider themselves more pro-people and therefore the better of the two.

As a conservative, I accept that accusation and wear it proudly. I am pro-business.

Liberals, in their desire to be more pro-people than pro-business, though, haven’t the foggiest idea they’re actually hurting people more than helping them.

The illustration today comes from the far north-west corner of the contiguous 48, Seattle.

Boeing has just decided to not build it’s new 787 Dreamliner factory in Seattle. The taxes and regulatory environment is simply too taxing. It costs Boeing too much money to expand their operations in Seattle, and so they’ve moved to North Carolina.

In Seattle it would have taken years to navigate the permit process to build the massive new hangars. In North Carolina, it took days.

Because the government of Seattle and Washington state have failed to make it easy enough for businesses to begin, run, and maintain operations, thousands of jobs will be lost directly, or moved to North Carolina, and the myriad of dependent suppliers and small businesses which were supported by the employees of Boeing will lose most or all of their income.

So the liberal mind says “Yes! We showed that polluting monster who’s boss!”. And the conservative shakes their head.

Many people will move from Seattle to North Carolina now to continue working. These are productive and well-payed people who likely paid significant taxes on their income to Seattle and Washington state. With even less tax revenue the city and the state will have to decrease social services to the unproductive public teat slurpers.

Now that can’t make the liberals happy. So they’ll raise taxes on the poor saps left behind so they don’t have to lose any of their bought-off voting bloc.

North Carolina is directly benefiting from increased construction in the short term, and a massive influx of highly skilled jobs as well as the necessary social structures and new markets for delis and theatres and parks and playgrounds. By being pro-business North Carolina will reap the benefits of massive growth in tax revenue without even raising their tax rates.

There’s nothing pro-people about an anti-business environment.

There are caveats or qualifications to 100% business centric government that I believe are reasonable and necessary.

First, I don’t agree with any government, federal, state, or local, applying special tax breaks and exemption from processes for the purpose of attracting a single company. North Carolina has pushed through a deal that makes it easier for Boeing to operate in that state than an average business started by Joe Entrepreneur. Overall, the state is still much easier to work in than Seattle, but I believe, on principle, that the fact the state government had to scramble to build this special package should have indicated their overall regulatory and business environment isn’t quite what it ought to be for everybody.

Second, government regulation is often pro-specific-business rather than anti-general-business. Al Gore profits measurably from “green” technology. He’s put his money where his mouth is. Pro-green regulation benefits him directly as companies will work with his outfits to implement the required changes.

Regulation can also be pushed by large corporations which will still effect them, but because they are so much larger, the monetary penalty will be a much smaller percentage of the large company’s operating costs than for a small company. The small company will no longer be able to compete as the regulatory costs hit them hardest.

Regulation can also be used to stifle competition and build artificial barriers to the self-regulating abilities of the free market. Network Neutrality is an example of this. Google and other large content companies are the primary supporters and lobbyists for network neutrality. They are dependent on the infrastructure companies, such as AT&T to actually get their content to the end users, and they want to use the bludgeon of federal regulation to protect them from free market pressures brought by the carriers.

With the caveats that pro-business should mean, in an ideal world, pro-all-businesses, we find that a pro-business government environment is directly pro-people as well.

If governments realized the nature of this, there would be a race to the bottom in taxation and government leanness as states vied for the privilege of being the best for business. And the growth in business would mean more employed people, higher standard of living, and more tax revenue.

The final question is: are they willfully or ignorantly blind?

Previous articles on the free market:

• Chipotle And The Beneficent Free Market
• Walmart And The Healthy Free Market

John Stewart gets his comeuppance when Bill Whittle on PJTV sets the record straight regarding necessary force and the nature of human-inflicted necessary tragedy in times of war for the  “snowy standards of (this) liberal’s Olympian intellect and morality.”

The video is 16 mins long but oh so very worthwhile.

Want to know how to kill a butterfly?

Help it.

Yes, it’s that easy.

You see this newly metamorphosized creature, brimming with potential beauty and wondrous mystery, struggling weakly against the tough confines of it’s chrysalis shell. Moved with pity you gently tear the chrysalis further, freeing it’s hostage, the beautiful young butterfly.

And yet, what is this?

The fair creature is still weak. It’s body not energized with the pangs of struggle, and it’s abdomen still engorged with liquid it must now pump into it’s wings. Without the necessary and draining struggle for freedom from it’s chrysalis, the butterflies strength is stunted and it will not have the strength to pump it’s wings full.

It will fall to the ground and become easy prey to the other creatures waiting for food or it will simply die.

It is good to minimize suffering whenever we can. It is our moral responsibility to strive to help and assist others however we are able.

However, all assistance and relief must be provided with an awareness of the necessity of the situation.

Does a parent do their child good by covering for them when they cheat or break the law? Often, it is a parent’s failure to provide the necessary discipline at home that allows the child to grow up to break the law, and the best thing they can do is to allow that authority willing to provide the necessary correction the freedom to mete out the necessary punishment.

Does a parent do their child good by demanding the opening of the school basketball court to where they are skipping classes and failing everywhere except for their “mad skillz” on the court? Wouldn’t it help the child by standing firm beside others who care and require higher standards from children who obviously have drive and intelligence?

The easy solution is often fraught with foreseeable future failure.

An often maligned conservative standard is to expect more from people. It is completely true that this perspective tends to hurt more than the soft tyranny of low expectations held by many of a liberal bent. However, the people who grow through adversity are stronger people, more independent and more positively beneficial to the independently interdependent system our Founding Fathers devised for us.

It has been said the most difficult part of raising children is consistency, and also the most rewarding. Consistantly providing instruction, correction, support, guidance, and parental leadership will take life from me and cause hurt and pain. But it will reap rewards far beyond any mushy permissiveness or laissez-faire Spockian parental philosophy.

Our dear child is to be a butterfly, and I shall not do more nor less than hold his hand as he struggles through the various chrysalis’ life passes him through. I not ease his way only in giving him the tools he needs to accomplish his own way.

I will not kill my butterfly.

I like this part of him, and for this reason we conservatives ought to do what we must to quell our gag reflexes and vote McCain into office.

In a speech on his philosophy and standards regarding the Supreme Court of the United States, John McCain specifically referenced Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr, and the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist as epitomes of those he’d choose.

He called them:

“jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference.”

What a concept: “know their minds, know the law, and know the difference”.

A liberal sees their mind as the law. If man is the chief end of himself, he is his own highest law. If that man is one of authority and power, his mind is the law of those he rules.

Whim and feeling have greater weight than principle and immutable law.

Rush Limbaugh, in a “Pearl of Wisdom” included in his latest Show Notes email explained the how the liberal ideal actual creates dystopia instead of the utopia they desire:

Liberals stand up for principles, but they never stand up for people. People always suffer when liberalism succeeds — and when people are suffering, I don’t think you can shout the warning too loud that it needs to stop.

With the whim and feeling of liberalism leading us by our noses, we cry “Foul!” when shown stories like this one from Indiana last night titled “Indiana’s primary turnout high, despite photo ID law“:

About 12 elderly Roman Catholic nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place because they didn’t have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow members of Saint Mary’s Convent in South Bend, even though they had been told earlier that they would need to get such an ID to vote.

“One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, `I don’t want to go do that,’” McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drive.

Elsewhere across the pivotal state, voting appeared to run smoothly, despite the fears of some elections experts that the photo ID law could cause confusion at the polls.

The money line is at the end of a picture description in the sidebar of the story:

McGuire said most of the nuns were in their 80s or 90s, and the other nuns had spoken with them frequently about the need to get out to a Bureau of Motor Vehicle branch for their free ID.

A practical and normal person led, not by whim and feeling, but by a reasonable balance of justice and mercy would see those old ladies and think “they were warned, others offered to help, there was no fee, they knew better”.

Instead, with the leading title, we are coerced into thinking how mean and ugly those conservative leaders in the Indiana State House who had it out to get these poor old ladies who just wanted their voice to be heard *sob*.

Come on people, do we expect nothing from anybody or anything except the government?

People are capable. People have will and ability. People are free moral agents, with choice and consequence set before them.

The creeping liberal ideology seeks to devalue individuality by removing all force of will from individual people. By passing the place of moral agent from an individual to a group they steal all originality and identity.

And changing the government is not the only answer.

It is more important to work in individual people’s lives, showing them the increased labor of individuality is worth while for the increased liberty it provides.

Samuel Adams put it this way:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.