The New Clarion

Some more passing thoughts on OWS:

Their primary impetus seems to be that someone read Marx and told them that the rich are taking their wealth from the rest of us. This was untrue in the 19th century when it was written (excepting government-backed monopolies which were anti-capitalist, anyway). And it was a baffling confusion of capitalism and the feudal system. But, more to the point, it is patently ridiculous in this day and age. The problem is, the writings that these people are ultimately basing their complaints on predate the modern age of the welfare state and its progressive tax systems.

Don’t get me wrong – we need to abolish both as the immoral and impractical monsters that they are. But, since they are here, they do make the cookie-cutter Marxist complaints of OWS a bit of a poor fit. Not only don’t the rich steal their wealth from the rest of us, but they pay the largest share of the taxes in this country, by a wide margin. Both in terms of percentage of their income, and in absolute terms. Even accounting for people like Warren Buffet.

But let’s back up for a minute. Theirs is, on a much more fundamental level, a silly idea.

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Lately, there have been some proposals in the political mainstream for a flat tax system. Such proposals are very much worth considering. The current tax code, with its system of deductions and penalties is grossly immoral – the government has no right to reward or penalize our non-criminal behaviors.

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The “Occupiers” are shamefully ignorant. Ignorant of the other 99%: the 99% of corporations that do nothing wrong.

And another point of their ignorance is: what is the distinguishing attribute of the 1% who aren’t innocent? That 1% isn’t the biggest 1%. It isn’t the richest. It’s the group that are in bed with the government; that use government power rather than free market acumen to gain their wealth.

This, then, leads to the third question they are blind to: who is ultimately to blame for this? When a man with a gun and a man with money make a deal, who is wearing the pants?

And, then, one last question I’d like to highlight, that goes unasked by OWS: Who put that man with the gun in power? They won’t ask this because it is them. THEY put a government in power that meddles in the free market. They got exactly what they asked for; they’re just ignorant of the implications of what they’d asked for. And now they’re screaming for more. MORE! MORE OF THE SAME!

Chrysler has filed for bankruptcy.

The only good thing about the prospect of automakers going into bankruptcy was that it was a chance for the government to un-do the damage it did by coercing them to meet the unsustainable terms of the auto unions. They could have removed the debts to the unions and called it a day.

Instead, they pretty much did the opposite, which neatly sums up what this administration is all about. Everyone but the unions was left holding the ball, and the government took over with their fascist “car czars.”

As you can see, with Chrylser it is going down in exactly the same way. (more…)

Congress and the media’s continual criticism of the domestic auto industry is that they lost out because they weren’t being enough like Toyota. (No, I don’t mean using non-union labor. Of course they didn’t mean that.) The repeated cry is that Detroit failed because they were “living in the past” by building large and powerful vehicles rather than making smaller, “more-efficient” cars and – especially – hybrids.

But was Toyota’s success because they produced small cars and hybrids like the Prius, or was it in spite of that fact?

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President Barack Obama delivered a speech before both houses of Congress last Tuesday and Lousiana governor Bobby Jindal gave the Republican response shortly afterwards.

Given the gravity of the moment, we at TNC decided to collect our thoughts on the speeches as a panel discussion.

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I don’t normally watch The Daily Show, but I caught part of an episode by accident today. In it, Jon Stewart was grilling a former Republican congressman about his opposition to Obama’s massive “bailout.”

Stewart had this Republican on the ropes because he was able to control the language of their discussion and this hapless Republican didn’t recognize what was going on. Stewart criticized him for being “pro-free market” while at the same time being in favor of “regulation” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Showing how much we can trust Republicans, the man’s only response was that he was in fact in favor of “regulation.”

Peeling back this dishonest language, the plain fact is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government entities. (The former congressman even said as much earlier in the discussion!) They are most emphatically NOT representative of “the free market,” and a desire to reign in the government’s entities – Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae – is absolutely not in any way a “regulation of the free market.” It is entirely the opposite.

But this utterly despicable Orwellian switcheroo of terms went completely unopposed. Therefore, “regulation of the free market” was allowed to be framed as the agreed solution to the crisis, and concurrently, the problem was implicitly allowed to be blamed on an “unregulated free market.” This is, again, a complete and utter lie, as both men knew that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were the government and not the free market.

Jon Stewart is far from alone in his use of this deception. I’ve heard it used by congressmen, newsmen, and even ordinary people since the beginning of this latest mortgage brouhaha. But it is incorrect, backwards, and, for those who know better, dishonest.

The truth is the exact opposite of what the “regulation” cheerleaders would have us believe: the crisis was caused by overbearing government entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which distorted the markets and went wild dumping billions into foolishness. The failure was of these government entities and not in any way a “free market.” What the government failed to “regulate” was not “free markets,” but rather, itself. But because the term “regulate” is traditionally used to refer to government controls, these shysters are playing a shell game of words in which they “solve” a failure of government entities by calling for more government controls on private business.

So if you ever hear anyone use the term “regulation” in this way, be sure to set them straight. Because with it, they can control – and completely reverse – the entire meaning of recent events.

-Inspector

It struck me, the other day, just how much time I have to spend making a case that so-called “moderate” wings of the dreadful movements that America faces are effectively indistinguishable from the so-called “radical” or “extreme” wings. That it is not just, to give a few (by no means exhaustive) examples, “radical” Environmentalism, “radical” Marxism, or “radical” Islam which require steadfast opposition, but Environmentalism as such, Marxism as such, and Islam as such which must be opposed.

This shouldn’t be as hard as it is. The central ideas of all these movements are essentially disastrous and in complete opposition to the individual rights that formed the basis of what America was founded on. It isn’t just that respect for individual rights is fading from our culture in the face of the onslaught of the aforementioned movements and their kin. Granted, this is a factor, but it doesn’t account for the systematic dismissal I’ve observed of any attempt at opposition. People have been disarmed against judgment of any movement by its fundamental meaning. The unspoken yet widely pernicious cultural view I’ve seen is that differences of simple degree and consistency should be allowed to excuse things which are fundamentally alike.

I’ve come to understand that this failure represents a form of systematic denial – one that has far-reaching consequences to any effort to save our country from the disintegration of individual rights that these movements are foisting upon us.

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