The New Clarion

What do you get when you elect a community organizer as President? You get a White House that spends it’s time and energy organizing the community toward political ends. It seems to be the only thing our President’s mediocre mind knows well.

You also get a White House that wants people to inform them of anything their fellow citizens do that seems “fishy.”

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Don’t miss John Lewis’s classic reply to this email.

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There is a big controversy brewing over one of the “unintended consequences” of recent legislation intended to protect children from lead in toys: children’s books printed before 1985 are disappearing from the market.

Whether they meant to do it or not, this “cleansing” of the children’s book market in favor of books printed after 1985, will do the same for the ideas printed after that date.

Note in particular this comment from the linked article at The Atlantic:

Burning or banning books is one of the worst things that can happen in an open society. But in this case it is not the CONTENT of the books that is being restricted, but the potentially dangerous materials that were used to create the books.

The following simply could not be more apt:

You don’t want some recalcitrant hacks to come out with treatises that will wreck our entire program, do you? If you breathe the word “censorship” now, they’ll all scream bloody murder… But if you leave the spirit alone and make it a simple material issue – not a matter of ideas, but just a matter of paper, ink and printing presses… [y]ou’ll make sure make sure that nothing dangerous gets printed or heard – and nobody is going to fight over a material issue.

– Dr. Floyd Ferris discussing Directive 10-289, from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.

This passage was already close to the mark vis-a-vis McCain-Feingold (“Money is not speech”); it’s nearly literal in this case.

Two American women, imprisoned by North Korea for alleged crimes, are today free and back in America.  Former President Clinton is basking in the glow of his successful rescue mission. When Dennis Kneale had Yaron Brook on CNBC last night, Kneale called Clinton a hero for getting the two American women released.  The Obama Administration presumably looks upon this as the first fruits of its foreign policy of being willing to talk with America’s enemies.  All of that is what is seen.  Now let’s look at what is not seen.

These two women were nothing but bargaining chips to Kim Jong Il.  He used them because he wanted to get something from us.  Perhaps he wanted more than he got.  But he got two very substantial things: one, he got America to negotiate with him in an obvious blackmail situation; two, he got no less than a former President of the United States to come and sanction him as someone worthy of such an honor.  The enslaved people of North Korea will be seeing images of the two talking together cordially, seemingly the best of friends.  Those heroic souls in North Korea who still dream of help from America in deposing the despot, instead see us come, hat in hand, begging the Dear Leader to release two American women from prison.  Not a word about any North Korean political prisoners, let alone any forthright demand for the total dismantlement of the criminal regime. 

The result is that Kim Jong Il is strengthened in his position, and his heirs after him.  Further, he is encouraged to use this successful tactic—taking hostages and then making demands—by our rewarding him with what he wanted.  As in all capitulations to hostage takers, in saving one or two people, we have increased the chances that many others will be kidnapped in the future.  

That is what is not seen, either by the Administration or its fawning cheerleaders in the media. While Obama and Clinton pat themselves on the back over this so-called success, Kim Jong Il and other criminal regimes are plotting their next move, secure in the knowledge that blackmail works against America.

JunkfoodScience has another great article on health care. She takes a long look at one provision of Obama care bill now before congress, the part about end of life planning. The article starts with quoting verbatim the provision on ending life. You don’t have to read it all. I only read half of it at which point it was getting unintelligible. One thing I did notice was that the phrase ‘as defined by the Secretary’ was repeated many times, i.e. lots of subjectivism.

The article gives a fascinating history of the managed death movement which details I didn’t know before. But the fact that epistemology is of critical importance, that ideas rule the world, is given in these two paragraphs, among others:

“During the six decades after this first legislative attempt, “euthanasia proponents have learned a lot about public relations,” they wrote. “One lesson is that all social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering. If words or their meaning can be changed, the quest to change hearts and minds will be achieved.”

This important article, traces how the meanings of words have shifted, forming new patterns of thinking — words like ‘terminal’ (which laypeople wrongly think means that death is unavoidable and very close); ‘treatment’ (which has morphed from care given in efforts to cure or ameliorate a medical condition to come to mean prescribing fatal overdoses and lethal injections); and ‘comfort care’ (where a prescription for a “drug overdose, legally prescribed” is now called “comfort care” and, according to Oregon’s Medicaid director, is covered under Oregon’s Health Plan).”

(This is what happens when a society has no objective theory of concepts and why it is important to study philosophy, especially Objectivism which provides one.)

This article reads like a nightmare.I will only say though that I would support assisted suicide if the patient freely consents and no one is compelled to administer it. The dying process is part of life. If quality of life is important, I would think that quality of dying would be important also.

I posted on how some witch doctor wannabes are planning who gets to live and die in a pandemic as part one of a two part post here.I noted in part:

“If you’re wondering why would anyone want such a policy? Power. The lust for control over others. There is no mistake about it. The desire by some to regulate the lives of others is the desire to control all of it including the end points, birth and death.”

This proves the point that there is no such thing as partially accepting a principle (like government regulating your life). Once accepted it must be accepted in its entirety (total dictatorship) or totally repudiated. It is time to totally repudiate government control of medicine and proclaim man’s right to live for his own sake with a free market in medicine.