Recently in Political Theory Category

Yeah, this pretty well sums up my thought about this issue:

As bad as the real estate bubble and subsequent meltdown was here in the US, the bubble in China is worse and the meltdown will be far more spectacular. Unlike the one in the US, the Chinese meltdown includes entire cities built in anticipation of demands for housing, manufacturing, and consumer spending. It is this last that shows just how badly the Chinese government has overestimated the demand, particularly in light of the highly inflated prices for housing.

One other difference - while shopping malls in the US have been struggling remain open as retailers either fail or decide to move to another location (sometimes to the web), many new malls in China never had the retailers to begin with. One mall, called the South China Mall (also known as the Great Mall of China), was supposed to be the biggest retail mall in the world, with over 1500 shops under one roof. Instead it sits virtually empty, with few operating shops and even fewer customers.

To see how bad it is, an Australian news crew visited one of the new cities. Thousands of apartments sit empty, as do many of the retails shops.



Billions of dollars spent on ghost cities where very few live. This is what happens when the government decides what the demand will be rather than letting the private sector figure it out and build only what they can sell.

Is the UK on the verge of abandoning the EU? It's looking more like a more attractive option as the monetary/finance crisis deepens and threatens to pull the UK irrevocably into a bankrupt and less democratic European superstate.

What options does it have to preclude this out come? Only two variations on a theme, that being withdrawal from the EU. That leave them with two possible options once they've done so: Go it alone or seek alliance elsewhere. Going it alone may seem attractive at first, but it does leave them open the vagaries of the world market with no one else backstopping them. So perhaps they should seek an alliance elsewhere. But with whom?

Well, how about NAFTA? After all, the UK has far more in common with Canada and the US than they do with France, Germany, or Belgium.

Britain does have other choices. To find the country's new role, British leaders should look to North America.

Alone among EEC members, Britain narrowed some of its major trade networks when it joined. It also traded ordinary Britons' right to virtually bureaucracy-free movement, temporary or permanent, between the U.K. and British Commonwealth nations.

--snip--

While much trust was lost between Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth because of this move, strong personal, cultural and economic ties remain and could be revived. Ask the average Briton where he'd feel more at home, Paris or Toronto.

Canada and Australia have well-managed, vibrant economies. Both countries sit on huge deposits of natural resources of ever-increasing value. Britain's top-tier financial sector and still-excellent technical capabilities already play a role in Canada's economy. These ties could be much strengthened.

Britons also feel at home south of the Canadian border. Contrary to an oft-repeated myth, links between Britain and the United States are not reducible to the personal relationships between presidents and prime ministers. The U.S. and the U.K. have always been each other's primary financial partners. A few simple measures could substantially deepen this relationship, especially once Britain no longer needs to adhere to EU rules.

The only thing the UK has in common with the rest of Europe these days is proximity and a centuries long history of armed conflict with a number of countries there. Perhaps it's time for Britain to remember the rest of the Anglosphere and to consider re-aligning itself it with it. I have no doubt it would help both the UK and the other nations of the Anglosphere.

And the UK's trade with the rest of the EU? I have reason to believe that while there would be some fall off in trade, in the end it won't be all that much. And increased trade and relations with the rest of the Anglosphere would certainly help make up any shortfall from the rest of Europe.

Frankly I see little if any downside to the UK withdrawing from the EU and realigning itself with its former colonies and Commonwealth members.

Harking back to my earlier post about clueless "you owe everything you have to the government" US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, here's an object lesson about how government is not the leading 'agency' when it comes to roads, utilities, housing, and so on being the only thing that allows entrepreneurs to create anything, including jobs.

To take a look at her lunatic vision and how it is so wrong all we have top do is look to China to see how absolutely wrong she is about the whole thing.

China, anticipating the need for more housing, schools, and recreational facilities for all the people who will be working for all of the new businesses have built entire new towns and cities to provide all those things. The only problem? They're empty. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Some have been empty for ten years and the only people living and working in them are the government employees tasked with maintaining these ghost towns.

I'm sure Elizabeth Warren would think such a venture is exactly how things have been done in the US. But that isn't the case. History shows that businesses arrive, build factories and the roads that lead to them. They pay to have water, sewer, and gas lines run to their businesses. The same is true of electrical and telecommunications lines. The government doesn't pay for any of that.

Well, that's not entirely true.

Some states, cities, or towns cut deals in order to entice new businesses to come to their areas. Some even go so far as to take private property by eminent domain to hand over to them all in the name of increasing the chances of having new jobs come into being. (That worked out so well for the city of New London, Connecticut after they won their case in the US Supreme Court - the infamous Kelo vs New London decision.)

But to attribute all of the infrastructure needed for businesses to even operate solely to government is being disingenuous at best and irrational at worst. For the most part developers pay the cost of adding to the infrastructure need to support new construction, not the taxpayers. And then the businesses pay utilities bills for the electricity, water, gas, and sewer services, sometimes to the municipality and sometimes to private utilities. But none of that is paid for through taxes. So Warren's claims that government is the one who provided all those things is only partially correct, end then only peripherally. Government may be the agent for some of those things, but they generally don't use taxpayer dollars to provide those things.

Roads are different, but even then it isn't as if roads were built just for the businesses she's demonizing. They were built for everyone, including her and the businesses that provide the jobs for the people she says she wants to serve.

Can Mayor Dave Bing turn Detroit around? (This isn't the first time I've asked this question.)

Maybe. He has a long way to go before anyone can say Detroit has been saved.

He is doing one thing long overdue for his blighted and ever shrinking city: tearing down abandoned homes that have become nothing more than shelter for the homeless or hideouts for drug dealers, rapists, and other criminals preying upon the rest of Detroit's citizens. Some of those dilapidated homes are too dangerous to be occupied even by the criminals or the homeless.

I think I can safely say many of us have seen video or photos of what's left of Detroit's once vibrant neighborhoods, with many of them looking like something out of a zombie-apocalypse movie thriller. Most of the homes and buildings in those areas aren't worth rehabilitating or renovating, leaving block after block after block of decaying homes and businesses empty and soulless.

One of the more interesting parts in the article linked above are the thoughts of those actually performing the demolitions. You wouldn't think that tearing down abandoned homes would be an emotional trial for the wreckers, but for many of them it is.

Wreckers hide it, but when you spend weeks with them, riding in their trucks, sitting in their machines, trailing them all over their job sites right out to the dump where they'll deposit the remains of a house, it becomes clear that they're a reflective and empathetic group. They're raconteurs and historians. They want you to know what they've seen in this city. They want to take you there. They believe it'll help.

Mark Sherman insists on driving me down a street called Robinwood, a few blocks from Adamo's home base. "This one," he says, "breaks me up every time I'm on it." The stretch is so blighted it seems haunted. Somehow it's totally devoid of color. All the Craftsman-style homes, with their tapered support columns and stonework porches, are empty. "You can see," says Mark, tugging on the brim of his black John Deere cap, "these were really beautiful. Unique." And he's right. They're exactly the kinds of homes young families in Portland and Los Angeles line up to live in. "This is the perfect example," he continues, "of what can happen in two years. Two years ago, this street was mostly full. This is what happens when nobody cares."

They try not to think of the people who used to live in those homes. Those who worked hard, raised families, took pride in their homes, now long gone, leaving echoes of what used to be behind them.

I'm not sure I could do their job and not feel what they do. But they know it's a necessary job, so-called creative destruction, where the only way to rebuild Detroit is to remove those homes and other buildings that are now a blight infesting their city.

Will it work?

Only time will tell.

Over the years I have had interesting conversations, and not a few heated discussions with progressives of all stripes. Far too often their arguments devolve into what they feel about something rather than what they think about it. Other times it's one lame talking point after another, many which sound good on the face of it but aren't backed up by personal experience, or history. It's all theory and feel-good sound bites. Failures in practical applications of their beliefs are explained away with excuses like "It was implemented poorly" or "Everyone has to be brought into the fold otherwise it doesn't work" or "We won't make the same mistakes the others made."

That last one is always my favorite, allowing me to use one of two rejoinders, those being: "Yeah, you'll make worse mistakes!" and "Do you know the definition of insanity? It's doing the same thing over and over, but expecting the results to be different this time." That always brings them up short.

But I am not the best person to speak on such matters. That title belongs to those who lived under the oppressive regimes of "progressive" or "socialist" utopian countries. More often than not they're capable of skewering ever single talking point or nonsensical utterance brought forth by the 'enlightened' progressives because they suffered under the very system the progressives wish to force upon us.

One such is ex-Soviet immigrant Oleg Atbashian, who poses a number of questions progressives are loath to answer:

Dear Americans, these are some questions I have collected in 16 years of living in your country. Please see if you can answer them for me:

If all cultures are equal, why doesn't UNESCO organize International Cannibalism Week festivals?

If all beliefs are equally valid, how come my belief in the absurdity of this maxim gets rejected by its proponents?

Once a politician labels the truth as hate speech, can anyone trust him to speak the truth afterward?

If a politician gets elected by the poor on a promise to eliminate poverty, wouldn't fulfilling his promise destroy his voting base? Wouldn't he rather benefit from the growing numbers of poor people? Isn't this an obvious conflict of interests?

How did the "war on poverty" end? Has there been a peace treaty or a ceasefire? Who is the occupying force and who are the insurgents?

Why weren't there demonstrations with anti-feudal slogans under feudal rule? And under Stalin, no anti-communist demonstrations? And under Hitler, no anti-fascist demonstrations? In a free capitalist society, anti-capitalist demonstrations are commonplace. Is capitalism really the worst system?

If the poor in America have things that people in other countries can only dream about, why is there a movement to make America more like those other countries?

If diversity training benefits everyone, why do those classes mostly consist of white heterosexual males?

How come those calling Sarah Palin a "bimbo" often look like part of Paris Hilton's entourage?

How come the unselfish Americans hate their country out of personal frustrations, while the selfish ones defend America with their lives?

If being a winner in nature's struggle for survival is selfish, does being extinct make you an altruist?

How come so many anti-American radicals are wearing American brands, listen to American music, watch American movies, and play American video games on computers designed by American engineers?

And finally, if all opinions are equal, how come a liberal who disagrees with a conservative is open-minded, but a conservative who disagrees with a liberal is a bigot?

Indeed. Read the whole thing and if there are any questions you can think of that might also annoy progressives, add them to the comments of Oleg's post.

Here are a few questions gleaned from the comments:

Why are gun control advocates so violent?

Why is it that the Left's mantra is "Celebrate Diversity" yet they all think the exact same and anybody who has a "diverse thought" is taken to the town square and hung?

Why is it I've never worked for a poor person?

If Communism was such a shining example for everyone, why didn't they put up a "Picture Window" instead of an Iron Curtain?

If all cultures are equal, then why are the liberals down on red-necks and conservatives?

Why do all leftist states have to build walls to keep their own people in, whereas rightist states have to build walls to keep other people out?

Why is leftism never judged by its reality but only by its lofty promises?

And the list goes on and on. Can any of you think of questions that would annoy progressives?

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

I could have gone with my traditional Thanksgiving Day post, a repost of one of Andrew Sullivan's Thanksgiving Day posts from long ago, but this year I felt I needed to take a different tack and remind you of the forgotten lesson of the first Thanksgiving.

Had today's political class been in power in 1623, tomorrow's holiday would have been called "Starvation Day" instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn't be alive to celebrate it.

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

Is this Thanksgiving Day message a politically motivated one? Of course it is. After all, the history of the first Thanksgiving gives us much to ponder about present day conditions and those wishing to repeat the failed social experiment tried by the first English settlers in New England.

One of the reasons the Pilgrims nearly starved to death was because unlike today, they had no one else's largess to 'appropriate' in order to survive. It wasn't like they had the means to take what Indians had from them. (Yes, I wrote 'Indians'. I refuse to use politically correct terms just to not offend those who would gladly be offended on behalf of the original indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent.)

This experiment in socialism/communalism proved the innate falsehood of "From each according his ability, to each according his needs," as well as hard proof of the tragedy of the commons. The first illustrates the shortsightedness of Marx and his followers who, either by chance or choice, ignored the one thing that made Marx's theories totally unworkable - human nature. The second defines that shortsightedness. If nothing else, the Pilgrims were the first society to try living under what would later become part of Marx's theory. Because they were an insular society at the time (there were no real neighbors to go to for aid as there are today), the falsity of the theory was there for everyone who survived the famine to see.

But do the modern day socialists/communalists/communists take a lesson from that failure? Of course not. Over the past 100 years or so they have tried to run the experiment again and again, which always ends with the same tragic results, but at the cost of millions of lives. Members of our own government seem to think they can make it work when history proves otherwise. They have refused to learn from lesson of the first Thanksgiving. I have no doubt they will continue to ignore it.

Bill Whittle tackles yet another myth about the Tea party, specifically immigration and racism. As Bill tells us, far too many Tea party detractors have labeled us "stupid uneducated Neanderthals. We're white trash rednecks, knuckle-dragging proto-Nazis, KKK-loving violent extremists ready to execute anyone who won't bend their knee to the upcoming Christian theocracy...Oh, and we're domestic terrorists." We've also been accused of being anti-immigration. We're not. We're anti-illegal immigration. There's a big difference.

I'll let Bill explain it as he does so far better than I can.


I must admit I like his suggestion about going to Jessica Alba's or Lady Gaga's house and showing them up for the hypocrites they are.

Far too many people really have little understanding of the Second Amendment and why the Framers of the Constitution included it. And many of those same people have the mistaken belief that disarming a law abiding citizenry will somehow lead to less crime and violence despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

In the next is his series, Bill Whittle explains why 'they' are mistaken and why so many of the rest of us own and carry guns.


As the old saying goes when it comes to dealing with violent criminal miscreants, "Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six."

Here's the second in a series of videos from Bill Whittle explaining how it is the members of the Tea parties are smarter than the ruling elite by a few orders of magnitude, particularly when it comes to the economy.


Part I can be found here.

It's an amazing read. What fresh air of liberty!

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

So why is there a federal dept. of education? Other than a power grab by a politician (Jimmy Carter) and as a sop to the teacher unions.

It has become quite evident to me and many millions of others that the Powers-That-Be, meaning the so-called 'Political Class', are clueless and out of touch with the rest of America and the people who live there. What's worse, they are convinced they are the anointed, the only ones with the knowledge, wisdom, and the will to use it even though those they look down upon see them as nothing more than elitist snobs without a lick of common sense or decency.

What's sad is the 'common folk' - that's you and me - are right and they are so incredibly wrong. The political class has no advanced wisdom, no special knowledge divulged to them through secret and ancient organizations, and no divine right or ability to rule you, me, or anyone.

They are nothing more than a mutual admiration society striding within the halls of power with impunity, an undeserved sense of entitlement, and the arrogance to believe they are the only ones with the answers. They believe the rest of us are incapable of running our own lives and need to be taken care of. That's ironic considering how many of them can't even run their lives. They have the same problems, the same foibles, the same weaknesses, the same flaws as everyone else. But somehow I doubt you'd ever get them to admit that, for to do so would mean they aren't any more enlightened than the rest of us and that doesn't track with their belief system.

How do I and the rest if America know this? Because we see it every day on the news, on CSPAN, in the newspapers, and in almost every law passed by Congress or a large number of blue state legislatures over the past few years. Our wishes, our desires, our demands, and our knowledge of the real world is dismissed out of hand because we aren't them. Never mind that we're the ones who pay the bills, create the jobs, build the cities, grow the food, and everything else they depend on. Without the rest of us they are nothing.

Wait. What the heck am I saying? I meant to say that even with us they are nothing. Perhaps it is time for them to learn this truth.

Say it ain't so, Scott. Great blog entry by Pun Salad. There's a reason some of us conservatives read and appreciate Edmund Burke.

One of the more lucid commentaries I've ever read dealing with the financial mess the Democrats have been foisting upon us came not from this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, but from a WSJ reader who manages to put it into perspective for those of us not infected with the progressive mind rot about economics (how it should work rather than how it does work).

Reader Geoff Wilson writes:

The Progressive mindset is a curious one. It only makes sense or becomes predictable once you realize that to them, Utopia is reached through faith in the inherent goodness of their goals. As such, it is really a religion. I say this not to disparage the concept of religion in general, but to recognize that religion is marked by a belief that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Thus, to a true believer, no amount of logic or objective evidence will sway their opinion, since in their eyes, the true test of faith is to adhere to your beliefs when all else tells that your course of action has no chance to bring about the result you wish it to.

Thus, Progressives cling to their backwards, illogical view of the workings of the economy not because they have ever been proved correct, but because they have faith that this is the way the world works, and because this is the only pseudoscientific framework that has ever been constructed that gives their desire to control other people for their own good some sort of supposed systematic logical basis. Thus, telling them that their logic makes no sense actually only serves to solidify their resolve, because Keynesian thought is actually based on the economy being controlled by "animal spirits" that are illogical. Thus, economic crashes are not brought about by predictable, understandable chains of logical cause and effect, but instead are brought about by the capricious whimsy of illogical humans, who stampede over the cliff of liquidity traps with wild abandon like lemmings.

They don't expect the economy to make sense. Rather, they expect to follow the wisdom of their high priests no matter what the economic dials and guages (sic) are showing, because the two things they have faith in are that good intentions will always triumph, and that the economy is a backwards, illogical machine that can only be steered by turning left if you want to go right.

Ah, yes, good intentions. We all know where that road leads, don't we?

How many times have we seen a government decide it knew best how to handle its national economy, only to see all its efforts make things progressively worse to the point where the economy collapses, and with it, the government that tried to 'save' it? The harshest example has to be the the old Soviet Union, where all their 5-year economic plans failed to produce anything in abundance except inefficiency, shortages of vital goods, and misery. Venezuela has been heading down that road to hell and Argentina is following close behind.

Britain narrowly escaped the same fate when Maggie Thatcher became prime minister and proceeded to undo all the damage done to the British economy by her wrong-headed, though good intentioned predecessors. She understood, as did Ronald Reagan, that no one person or group of people are smart enough to control an economy to the betterment of all.

One of the most easily documented examples has been economic central planning, which was tried in countries around the world at various times during the 20th century, among people of differing races and cultures, and under government ranging from democracies to dictatorships.

The people who ran central planning agencies usually had more advanced education than the population at large, and probably higher IQs as well.

The central planners also had far more statistics and other facts at their disposal than the average person had. Moreover, there were usually specialized experts such as economists and statisticians on the staffs of the central planners, and outside consultants were available when needed. Finally, the central planners had the power of government behind them, to enforce the plans they created.

What is remarkable is that, after a few decades of experience with central planning in some countries, or a few generations in others, even communists and socialists began to repudiate this approach.

All such control diminishes economies and acts as a disincentive for anyone trying to do anything to improve it. China and India came to understand the concept and abandoned tight government control over their economies and they boomed to a level never seen before in either country's history. It's too bad the Progressives in this country have failed to learn that lesson and are willing to make the same mistake. Of course I expect their refrain will be "But we'll get it right this time!"

The only explanation I can come up with for the Progressives' belief they can succeed where everyone else has failed is insanity. You know, the type of insanity defined so: "Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results this time."

Indeed.

Dennis Prager has made the point recently that the bigger the gubmit the smaller the citizen. I agree. Men without chests is how moderns increasingly are, to paraphrase G.K. Chesterton.

And I have come across a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson that points in much the same direction.

"The less government we have the better -- the fewer laws and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual." ~ American author Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

I don't often agree with Emerson, who is clearly a mixed bag though very influential--Christopher Lydon has memorably, and correctly, described him as the god for bloggers--but Emerson is correct.

When is reward detrimental to the wellbeing of of those receiving it?

When it is undeserved.

Unfortunately the mindset of too many of our educators is that rewards are needed to build self-esteem, and self-esteem was far more important than actual achievement. The side effect of this esteem building? Increasing academic failure because there are no negative consequences for failure. With no consequences no one bothers to try. Such a system is set up to ensure failure and minimize success. That's no way to build a future for our kids.

Leland Teschler writes:

"When I was a kid, we'd just have first, second, and third-place winners for stuff like this," he remarked. "Most of the time you didn't win anything. When that happened, you'd just shrug and go out for a milkshake. I'm not sure giving everybody a prize is healthy."

There is a body of research that shows that accolades handed out too generously may cause kids to underperform. In one case, researchers did a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders, some of whom were praised for their intelligence, others for their effort. It turned out that kids praised for their intelligence tended to give up when confronted with tough tasks at which they didn't excel. They assumed their poor performance was evidence they weren't really smart after all. Kids praised for effort, however, reacted to failure differently. They generally just assumed they hadn't focused enough and bore down on the problem.

The "everyone wins" philosophy is nothing more than means of imposing leftist egalitarianism, where equal outcome is far more important than equal opportunity. Far too often (every time, actually) the "equal outcome" is worse than if actual competition were allowed. Even the 'losers' in a competitive atmosphere will, more often than not, perform better than the 'equal' outcome of the "everyone wins" scenario. The equal outcome scenario always pulls everyone down to the lowest common denominator, which is usually pretty bad. The true competition scenario tends to pull everyone up, though not to exactly same level. Call it an effect of the Law of Unintended Consequences, sort of. It's like a scene out of Harrison Bergeron, where everyone is forced to be equal.

I suspect the everybody-gets-a-gold-star movement arose from misguided attempts to bolster kid self-esteem. After all, the self-esteem bandwagon started rolling downhill with such momentum that in 1984 California created an official self-esteem task force. But there's evidence that performance doesn't rise with self-esteem. One study in particular conducted by social psychologist Roy Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn't improve grades or career achievement. Nor did it reduce alcohol usage or use of violence. (In fact, other studies show that criminals have plenty of self-esteem.)

It seems all kinds of bad ideas, particularly when it comes to education and social engineering, start in California. The self-esteem movement started there and spread like a cancer. Self-esteem became more important than actually learning anything useful. Self-esteem became more important than performance. When I'm flying in a commercial airliner, give me a pilot that knows what he's doing over a pilot that is a marginal performer but has great self-esteem.

Self-esteem only gets you so far. Beyond that you actually have to know something and know how to perform, no matter what type of job you have.

"Under capitalism the rich become powerful. Under socialism the powerful become rich. That is the main difference between the two systems."

Author of Soft Despotism, Hillsdale College professor Paul A. Rahe speaks to Milt Rosenberg, whom I consider the best interviewer in the English-speaking world now that David Brudnoy has left us. (Hugh Hewitt is a close second.) The points he makes are profound and, I think, correct. For example, pace Dennis Prager, American Democrats should really be calling themselves Social Democrats since their policy positions are indistinguishable from those Social Democrats of Europe--except in the former being more pro-abortion. And what Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are foisting on the center-right country is a radical version of social democracy. Part of that is an ingenious re-application of the so-called Fairness Doctrine through bureaucratic approval processes. Here he's spot on. And Dr. Rahe brings up the passage of bills--health care being only the most recent--that no one has read. So what exactly is in them is anyone's guess. I think the Founding Fathers would find it intolerable that legislators are voting on massive legislation which they themselves haven't read. Can the "subterranean revolution" work? 

"No," says Paul Rahe (pronounces as "Ray"), "it's self destructive." He's a very bright thinker. What he says is true. It's demography, stupid, as Mark Steyn has figured out. I figured it out twenty years earlier reading John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces and learning from Catholic thinkers like the great Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who had it figured out much earlier. It's always been the case that middle class people (called "burghers" in the Middle Ages) throughout history have voluntarily limited their family size, which is not the case for peasants, who need their children's labor, or aristocrats, who take pride in their bloodlines, something utterly alien to American ears. Government's Social Security has destroyed the traditional social security: Having a brood better ensures that one will be taken care of in one's autumnal years. There is that commandments--the first of 613 for Jews--"to be fruitful and multiply." Then there's the commandment in the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) to honor one's parents. (Funny how it doesn't work the other way.) In exchange for the good of independence and an income, today's retirees are hurting their grandkid(s). Do they even feel guilty? No, I don't think so.

The welfare state is a frontal attack on both the family and on the Judeo-Christianity ethic that sustains and nourishes the domestic cell whose health is of paramount importance for society. The state can now be considered--on balance--a parasitical appendage to society, by being excessively large and counterproductive.

Let me just preface this by saying, We Are Doomed. Progressives worry about corporations; however, the real threat to liberty may be in the menace of the herd.

Truthfully, it's mixed, democracy's record. The Founding Fathers, of course, viewed it with disdain, even if they were "small r" republicans. See the letters Jefferson and Adams exchanged with each other. People are now waking up to its ills. I learned from my mentor Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn that democracy interfered with people's dinner tables, something a monarch in the Middle Ages would have never dreamed of doing. Think Prohibition.

Two incidents happened in the past couple of years that may shed some light on democracy in America: one, when I couldn't smoke after having a delightful repast at the Center Harbor Diner. I never did smoke my pipe, but it was wonderful to realize I could; second, a third-generation West Pointer (his dad and grandfather both retired as generals and he himself will likely do so as a full-bird colonel) completely agreed with my negative assessment of democracy, allowing the dimbulbs to gang up on the productive and knowledgeable. Wow, I thought, perhaps a threshold has been crossed. This guy is in Iraq right now, purportedly for democracy.

I have also taken to heart the insight in On the Disadvantages of Democracy from that thoughtful American who wrote the Leatherstocking Tales, James Fenimore Cooper:

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

Ever since the New Deal revolution, in which a timorous Supreme Court--after the aggressive court-packing attempt by FDR--gave up certain Constitutional guarantees, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments in the Bill of Rights have been wholly abandoned. They definitely provide a counterballast to overweening centralization in the nation's capital that we've seen since the New Deal (1930s) and Great Society (1960s).

It's so bad, in fact, that those who actually believe in them are considered by the not-so-bright attorney for Anita Hill to be likely candidates for domestic terrorism in her ridiculous Department of Homeland Security report that caused a brouhaha when talk show host Roger Hedgecock disclosed, correctly, that returning Gulf War veterans were being IDed as possible sources of "right-wing domestic terrorism." The mind boggles. Janet Napolitano's resume is certainly thin gruel for the momentous job she has now. I'm only aware of talk show host Neal Boortz's bringing it up. Why is that?

Believing in the Bill of Rights is now outside the mainstream of contemporary thought. How long will it be before the rights crumble that are supposedly being protected?

In a thoughtful essay at LewRockwell.com "God, Socialism, and the Free Market,"  Dr. Shawn Ritenour, an economics professor at Grove City College in Penn., continues this line of thinking:

Three words: Restrict the Franchise.

Even John Stuart Mill in On Liberty said those who are recipients of government largess--the Victorian way of saying on the dole--should forgo their voting privileges. Any right to vote in the Contitution? Not that I see.

Check out this wonderful (second) paragraph on the topic by C.J. Maloney's Making Democracy Safe for the World:

Yet, even when things look hopeless and all recorded history tells us our democracy is doomed, that's no excuse to give up the ghost. Even in the darkest of times people still give it their best because hope springs eternal, and as a great American once asked in another time of trouble, "was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor"? Hell, no, it wasn't, and there is still time to save our democracy, but to do so we must  remove the millstones that hang about our system's neck--we must restrict the franchise. Caroline Baum recently noted, "when half the population is on the receiving end of government programs and has no skin in the cost, they will encourage their elected representatives to vote 'yes' on every new benefit that comes down the pike." That, right there, is the root of America's overriding problem: our future-crushing, insurmountable fiscal deficits.

You mean the 84 percent of lifetime earnings children born today will need to pay in order to pay for the clearly unsustainable entitlement programs?