But what can be said about leaders who look right at the problem then turn their heads away evading the obvious? Who even correctly identify the problem in concrete terms as Editorial Page Editor Stephen Henderson did in his Sunday 3/24/13 editorial “Revenue and spending all out of balance” but fails to examine the premises underlying the malady. Mr Henderson correctly cites in a nutshell the obvious concretes: Detroit government can no longer afford to provide economic services that it used to provide.

But instead of calling for a discussion on the question “What is the proper role of a city government? What services are it Constitutionally required to provide? Which ones are not so required? Mr Henderson and most other leading intellectuals are calling for new ways to raise money in order to keep doing the same old thing. In fact, on the same editorial page professor George Galster calls for a regional solution. Translation, hit the suburbs up for more money. But no one is asking the question why does the City have to provide all these economic services? Most are not political services like police and courts which are constitutionally required. So why not let others provide them?

What do us ordinary folk do when the paper boy keeps throwing the paper in mud puddles or worse, or when the auto repair shop has fixed our car 4 times in the last two weeks, or the trash pick up guys keep destroying our cans, throwing them around like cardboard? Well, if complaining doesn’t work, most of us start looking for someone else to provide these services. This I submit is what Detroit must do to keep from sinking lower on the desirability scale: get someone else to provide these economic services. Let competition and a freer market provide them.

Look at the Information Technology industry like cell phones, I pods and such. The IT industry is one of the least regulated industries in what’s left of our semi-free market. Thus people are still free (relatively) to come up with new ideas, market them and enjoy the rewards. Almost daily the quality of smart phones, I pads and such goes up while the costs fall. Isn’t this what we all want for our schools, roads, EMS and other services? Quality rising and prices falling?

But Detroit can’t get there from here by following the same failed policies of the past or by evading the consequences of its adopted premises. If city economic services can be sold or auctioned off and deregulated to the level of IT, Detroit will once again explode with prosperity.

This is the basic question that Aristotle took to be the beginning of politics, the first and basic question which gives rise to the field.  Until recently, I thought so as well — until I realized the error involved.  There is another question that comes before this one, but which almost no one even knows is there to be asked.

Today, political questions are approached in pragmatic terms: How should men best be organized?  What’s the most efficient way to organize our groups, our societies?  If you examine nearly all political discussions, both ancient and modern, they pertain to that question right there.  Going forward, I’ll describe such questions as pertaining to “the problem of organization”.

Are all political questions problems of organization? If you can find anyone in the mainstream nowadays who is even aware that there could be such a question, their answer would be “yes”.  To them, there is no deeper fundamental political issue.  For such people, the idea that there might exist a prior moral fact or principle that constrains the manner or options of organization simply does not compute.

From Leftist government power freaks, Catholic “distributists” and other religious theocrats to libertarian “nudgers”, mainstream political discussion nowadays consist entirely of debates over whose ideas would “work” best when imposed as organizing principles.  To them, politics pertains to solving the problem of organization — with only incomplete concern over dissent or such a thing as the “rights” of any involved individuals.

Objectivists (and the deepest core of the collectivist Left, and certain of the religionists) DO see and acknowledge that deeper question: before one can ask “how” should men organize, one must first consider *why* they should organize, and on what moral terms.  This is the question I call “the moral problem of society”.

When men first consider the possibility of cooperation, of associating with one another, they find that this new state of being — “society”, the state of association —  offers a tremendous potential benefit,  and a great potential danger.  The benefit, of course, is the economic potential, of specialization and division of labor and teamwork that multiplies potential productivity and offers additional protection against external dangers.  The risk?  A danger that was not present before: the potential for the use of force by other men. Crime, theft, murder, and slavery. The man in front of you may wish to be your friend, colleague, trading partner — or a thief, enemy, or oppressor.

Clearly, to realize the benefits of society, that risk must be mitigated, if not outright eliminated.  A society with no moral constraint against the use of force is not a society at all — it is a war of all against all.  Men are better off isolated and alone than living in such an environment.

Before there can be “problems of organization”, society must first be made civil; there must first be established the moral terms upon which men organize, terms which work to constrain men in society such that men can realize the tremendous benefit and value in working together.

The forbearance of the use of force, to leave men free to think, act and organize as they choose, is the first principle of civilization in the Objectivist view.  This is our answer to the moral problem of society: that force cannot be tolerated and must be abolished, that individuals are morally sovereign and must be left free from the threat of force.  Hence “individualism”, the moral base for organizational capitalism.

This is the context in which I understand Ayn Rand’s statement that  “Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”

The only alternative is the idea that force *is* permissible, that society is somehow *above* moral law (and therefore, significantly, its own moral agent), even if individuals are not.  Hence “collectivism”, the moral base for every other politics in history.  I’ve often discussed the end of the Left’s road; this right here is where it begins.

This is how the moral problem of society defines the true measuring stick of politics: individualism versus collectivism.  This alternative is exhaustive; a society is of one type or the other, and this remains true no matter the particulars of how such societies are subsequently organized.

This is why it is important for us as Objectivists to remember that when we discuss individualism versus collectivism, or “the individual versus the State”, we are dealing with the moral problem of society.  When we discuss inefficient government, the pitfalls of government intervention, perverse versus good incentives etc. *then* we are dealing with problems of organization.  There’s nothing wrong with doing this, but if we don’t retain your grounding in our stand on the moral problem of society and our awareness of it as a separate and prior alternative, it’s easy to get thrashed around in a maze of concrete arguments — because mainstream political discussions all deal with questions of organization.

How many times have you had people wave aside your principled arguments and demand that you provide “practical solutions” (“how would you voluntarily fund government?  Who builds the roads?  What about the poor? How do you deal with the “free rider” problem etc.)

How many times have you heard alleged “pro-capitalists” arguing for liberty in terms of its “benefits to society”?

How many times have you argued against the idea that “The government should mandate X” by saying it’s not the government’s business to mandate anything, only to be asked “Why not, don’t you think X is a good idea?”

How many times have you encountered someone who hears “individualism versus collectivism” in terms of “being all alone” versus “working together” (thereby conflating collectivism, a type of society, with society as such), even despite the plain evidence that  people plainly “work together” under capitalism?

How many times have you heard Leftists conflate “society” with government, and/or peddle the myth that “government is ‘us’”?

Yes, collectivism is part of the intellectual bedrock in our culture, always part of someone’s given assumptions about which they care not to make the effort to question, and that is what’s going on in these examples.

But there is an additional insight to be had in realizing exactly how it is that collectivism remains frozen in place as a background assumption everywhere we look:  in the mainstream mind, the problem of organization IS the whole of politics. This is the gigantic frozen abstraction fallacy sitting at the root of mainstream politics.  They are treating as “society” what is in fact only one of two types of society, and their entire approach to politics is trapped in that frame.  This is why they see individual liberty and force as merely two pragmatic options to be “balanced” against one another as society (the ultimate moral agent — not any individual) sees fit.

Consider the downstream effects of this error.  People who substitute collectivism for society, will therefore conflate society with *force*.  “You gotta have some force in society, man, can’t let anybody just do what they want.”  To such minds, the question of the moral terms upon which society is based or by which it is constrained make no sense, because force is a given, implicit in the concept “society”. That’s why their response to any competing politics is to demand and argue each other’s coercive “solutions” — and why a common attack on Objectivists is that we don’t provide any (yes, they don’t take us seriously because we are not telling them what to do — we are not seeking to coerce them as *we* see fit!)

In their minds, all politics are problems of organization — and individual liberty, instead of being the moral premise upon which society is constituted and constrained, is just one of many organizational options that are decided, limited and “balanced” against one another as society chooses!  Liberty is a matter of permissions, not rights, in this view; for such people, the debate is not over whether or not the people should be chained, but over the “optimum” number of links they should have.

When Ayn Rand says that capitalism cannot survive on any other philosophical base, this is the point of failure right here.  You certainly can build a society that is “organized” around individual liberty and individual initiative, that has the superficial characteristics of a capitalist society (such as private property, businesses, stock markets and banks). But so long as force is understood as permissible somewhere in the system and that “society” decides organizational matters, sooner or later those who covet wealth (or worse, power) without knowing or caring for its source will make use of the peculiar tools such a society necessarily has lying around.  If it pays off today, they’ll go for more tomorrow.  Men find themselves increasingly under attack and end up banding together into tribes for protection, or to attack other tribes as the society degrades into the war of all against all.

This is the *organizational* source of such societies’ instability — and I daresay, is the reason why human civilizations have always collapsed throughout history.

Individualism, strictly speaking, is not a “system” at all from the standpoint of the organization problem. It is merely the moral context within which systems are built by free men.  It does not tell you whether a hippie co-op “works” better than a corporation, that you should have stock markets, or how a government might best be voluntarily funded.

None of this is to say that we should have nothing to say to such problems of organization.  We do.  We simply have to be careful to first put down the fact that we are not primarily arguing for any particular organization of society; we are arguing for a specific moral context within which men in the state of association with other men operate.  How men organize within that context is up to them.

As for those who, after all of this, demand: “But what if force is our only option?”, I have only one answer: that’s why I need an AR-15.

But I’d like to take a moment to examine the fact that the gun control-freaks’ laws are not only immoral and impractical, but also stupid.

And I mean literally stupid, as in: if the gun control-freaks were to be given an exam on the guns they’re trying to legislate, they would get an “F.”

The type of gun used by the murderer wasn’t clearly known as of the beginning of the control-freaks’ screeching, but this did not stop them from calling for bans based on the speculated types. I had seen conflicting reports from various media sources – some said he used an automatic rifle, others a semi-automatic rifle. Several had said it was one of the many kinds of rifle derived from the AR-15 pattern, which could be either. The types of control proposed by the freaks have been varied, but they are all stupid and I will now detail how this is so.

Some control-freaks have called for a ban on automatic weapons. An automatic weapon is one that is capable of firing continuously as long as the trigger is held, and ammunition remains (which it won’t, for more than a few seconds). This proposal is stupid because automatic weapons are already de facto banned. The 1986 FOPA law banned the sale of any new automatic weapons, and tightly regulated the transfer or sale of all existing automatic weapons. No new automatic weapons have been legally sold in the United States for over 25 years, and very limited number of pre-1986, used, automatics are only sold or transferred with extremely tight and restrictive federal licenses and background checks. The price of such weapons, as a result, is prohibitive – starting at a minimum of approximately $25,000, and going up to many times that number for a well-preserved example. Considering that the Mexican black market price of an AK-47 (an automatic rifle) can be as low as $100, it suffices to say that any criminal desiring an automatic weapon is not likely to obtain it legally. So the control-freaks proposing new automatic weapons laws are being incredibly stupid.

Other control-freaks are calling for bans on semi-automatic rifles. Given the above facts about automatic weapons, it is quite unlikely that the Sandy Hook murderer used an automatic rifle, so they have avoided that idiocy at least. But this idea is also stupid. The control-freaks are no doubt blissfully unaware of the fact that a semi-automatic rifle functions no differently from any common pistol. “Semi-automatic” only means that the rifle will fire when the trigger is pulled, without having to cock it and manually extract the spent shell casing after every shot. The only rifles that don’t function this way are bolt-action rifles, which are specially designed for increased accuracy, especially at long range, and are usually used with a magnified scope by game hunters or military snipers. There isn’t any such thing in production today as a conventional rifle that is not at least “semi-automatic” (expecting, of course, replicas of antique firearms). The control-freaks are almost certainly stupidly ignorant of these facts, which utterly disqualifies them from intelligent conversation on the issue, much less proposing anything as serious as a law.

But the most astounding stupidity of all has to be those control-freaks who are proposing a renewal of the so-called “assault weapons” ban. Unlike the previous two, the name “assault weapon” is not even a technical term at all. It is actually only a translation of a nickname that Hitler gave to a newly invented rifle of the time. As a result, the “assault weapon” ban of 1994 that the control freaks want to reinstate governs an eclectic combination of both essential and non-essential firearm traits. Here is an illustrated example:

The criteria that the ban is concerned with includes (but is not limited to) such absurdly nonsensical things as whether the shoulder stock is adjustable to users of different sizes, if a pistol exceeds a certain weight (?), the shape (as above) of the hand grip on a rifle or shotgun, and whether an automatic version exists of a given semi-automatic (??). This is akin to trying to ban “dangerous automobiles” based on whether or not they had power windows.

(It also contains the lone essential element of magazine capacity, but magazine capacity is hardly relevant to the Sandy Hook murders. The murderer almost certainly had to reload his weapon; this did not stop him. The only thing that did stop him, as is almost always the case with this kind of tragedy, was the (all too) eventual armed response. By contrast, a fact that is relevant is that it is quite common for such murderers to commit suicide as soon as any kind of armed resistance is encountered, which is exactly what happened at Sandy Hook. A little-known fact is that another public massacre was cut short almost immediately after Sandy Hook by a citizen with a concealed-carry pistol. He didn’t even need to fire a shot, in fact, as that murderer did indeed commit suicide as soon as he was confronted by an armed man. The media were nearly silent on the latter story, as an armed citizen cutting a massacre short would have served to deflate their gun control-freak narrative.)

I don’t want any of the above to take away from the most primary fact that the gun control-freaks’ laws are immoral, or even the secondary fact that they are impractical. Even if the control-freaks did not make the stupid, ignorant errors that I’ve detailed here, their laws should still be thrown out on their ear on moral grounds. But it’s also true that these control-freak regulators are stunningly, stupidly, ignorant about the actual facts of the things they seek to regulate. These are people whose entire “careers” (if they can be called that) are built upon proposing and making laws, and they haven’t bothered to learn even the basic facts about the things they seek to strip us of our right to. This is entirely revealing of the immoral character of not only these outrageous laws, but also of the ignorant brutes who propose them. And that much, at least, bears mention.

-Inspector

(P.S. Thank you to Richard Salsman for coining the delightfully accurate term “Gun control-freak”)

(P.P.S. – A friend points out that perhaps some of them know exactly what they’re doing in proposing these, seemingly foolish, laws. Perhaps… perhaps. But, then, if they do, then it is because they expect that the public is as ignorant as they are acting. Either way, I believe my point is secure: one more in a long line of grand insults is being perpetrated against us.)

But what happens to a child taught to believe his self esteem–which is how humans experience their moral worth–doesn’t have to be earned, that it comes from the smiling faces and approval of others without any effort on his part? What happens if that sanction is not forthcoming? What is he to think of a reality that is supposed to make him happy but doesn’t? Will he withdraw from it or strike out at it?

A third and proper option would be to check his premises but Prog Ed makes sure no one develops that ability. Several generations of adults have gone through Prog Ed. Many have survived this aspect of today’s public schools having learned that true self esteem must be earned. Others will be affected in some way but few will be totally unscathed. Some of these will get together and decide to declare their schools to be gun free zones. This they think will show others how much they care about children and thus how morally good and noble they are. Some such people will find posting such attention getting signs to be nearly irresistible.

There is of course, nothing wrong with enjoying the approval of others between rational people as long as said approval is based on some earned values. But I want to urge that we purge from our schools the insane practice of instilling in children a false sense of self worth. It’s my understanding that a push in this direction has already started. Recently a teacher gave a commencement address to a graduating class telling them “No, you are not special.” This is a baby step in the right direction.

But the real solution is easy enough to see. All we have to do is look at the constantly rising quality and falling prices of Information Technology like cell phones and I-Pads and so on. We should all want this paradigm for our kids’ education. So, lets place education on the free market by taking it out of the hands of government, getting rid of regulations while retaining rights protecting laws and watch the ensuing explosion in quality and plummeting costs affordable to everyone.

I just read Obama’s election night speech because a recent PJTV show reminds us of a remarkable passage:

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on Earth, the belief that our destiny is shared — (cheers, applause) — that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, so that the freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights, and among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great. (Cheers, applause.)

This is one of Obama’s many explicit statements of collectivism. He doesn’t hide his collectivism; it’s out there for anyone to think about and judge.

He is saying that because Americans have rights, they also have the responsibilities to love, be charitable, be duteous and be patriotic. Because America protects its citizens’ rights, they owe the state. The individual must sacrifice to the collective. It’s only fair!

So all those people who came to America from Cuba, China and the rest of the world to escape collectivism did so… to be bound by more collectivism. Sure, they did.

Obama calls these collective responsibilities “bonds.” Bonds are chains. Perhaps the word “bonds” can have a legitimate metaphorical meaning in one’s personal life. You could say there is a bond between man and wife, or between parent and child — but even those bonds can be broken if an individual so wishes. Between the individual and the state, however, bonds can only mean chains put on the individual by the state.

As I said, Obama puts his beliefs out there for anyone to judge. He knows he can do this, just as he gets away with all his lies, because America is no longer a nation of people who can think independently. 12 years of public education, four or more years of college, and a culture of political correctness forge a nation of conformists, not thinkers. The mainstream media now function as the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.

As Ayn Rand said, today’s absurdities become tomorrow’s bromides. Obama states his collectivism clearly. Tomorrow his statements will be business as usual. The day after tomorrow the state will begin passing laws that forge the bonds of love, charity, duty and patriotism — for our own good. Those who shirk their responsibilities as a citizen will be thrown in jail.

Look for a law demanding two years of mandatory “service” from young people to the state in the next four years. Obama has mentioned it several times that I know of. He wants it. He equates sacrifice to the collective with the highest moral ideals. I believe he is waiting for the next crisis to test the idea. Perhaps we should be thankful that he is still careful enough to wait for a crisis. Hey, I’ll take any silver lining!

And Obama’s policies, both foreign and domestic, make future crises certain.

My blogging has diminished during the Obama years. To the two or three of you out there reading this, I’m sorry. One of the keys to being a successful blogger is to do it every day. Feed the monster, as Stephen Green says. I will never be a successful blogger.

Part of the reason is that it’s just too depressing. The naked cynicism of the left gets me down — which is precisely what they want. Perhaps if blogging were more than a hobby I would find the courage to persist, to fight every day. There are other reasons, such as those 1,000 words a day that I hear calling right now.

I don’t expect my political blogging to pick up in 2013. I do expect to finish the fantasy/adventure novel I’m writing. If I can’t find a publisher, I’ll have to publish it myself. I’ll let you know when there is news to report.

Okay — kitchen is clean, blog is written. As they say at Writing Excuses, you’re out of excuses, now write.

Right! And that’s why we still have a few freedoms left.

There are lots of things wrong with Mr. Simon’s rant not the least of which is an outright falsehood. He claims for example:

“Four adults are killed in Benghazi, and the right wing politicizes it endlessly.”

Pardon me but it was president Obama who immediately lied to the American people by claiming Benghazi was caused by an anti-Muslim video which of course, turned out to be false. It was Mr. Simon’s left wing that sought to politicize Benghazi first. Obama kept it up for several weeks even making this false claim in a public speech. He even had Susan Rice push the video nonsense.

Mr Simon then claims the gun lobby and the social media cried “…too soon. Show respect for the dead. Do nothing now.” While there indeed was some of that (the Detroit News wrote an editorial urging Gov Snyder not to sign a gun bill that would allow concealed carry anywhere in the State), the social media I visit was calling for action now not do nothing. I responded to that editorial calling for arming some adults in every school on the grounds that leaving kids unprotected any longer was unconscionable. Unfortunately, the Governor did not sign the bill. He left the kids vulnerable.

Mr Simon goes on to attack some alleged reasons for the Sandy Hook shootings. Here is his list of things that didn’t cause the shootings and why:

It’s not: the NRA is too strong, because they’re not that strong.
It’s not: godless schools like Mike Huckabee claims, because we can’t wait for America to be as pious as Mr. Huckabee.
It’s not: mental illness, because other nations don’t have that problem.

So, even though he cites no evidence for his claims, it must be the guns. In truth though, there is more to gun control that a misplaced concern for safety.

If man has an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then he must be politically free to take the actions and acquire the tools that will sustain his life. Some of those tools will be tools of self defense. The right to life must include the right to defend that life. Without the right of self defense, man has no right to life.

Gun control advocates do not respect such rights. They believe that because some weapons make killing easier than others, they should be banned to citizens and placed only in the hands of benevolent, caring, “good guys” in government. The desire for such a society goes all the way back to Plato’s notion of “philosopher kings”. This is the idea that an elite of knowledgeable rulers is best for ruling over the ignorant masses. This is exactly the attitude of most of today’s politicians and intellectuals. They all imagine what a wonderful world this could be if only they had the power of force over you and me. They have it. Some in the Democratic Party may be reluctant to use it just yet. Obama is not.

I want to say that the need for some adults to be armed in our schools is more urgent than ever. I’m told they do this in Argentina, the Philippines and in Israel. We need to do it here also.

But there is something we could do right now and that is take down all the signs that declare “gun free zones.” Look at what those signs really say: “self defense free zones.” In essence they say “attention killers, here is a free killing zone just for you.” I can’t think of a sign more politically and morally wrong than that.

Mr. Simon ends his tantrum with a quote alleged to have been spoken by one of the teachers to her students: “Wait for the good guys; they’re coming.” Except she was referring to “good guys” as police in their role of protecting our rights while Mr Simon’s “good guys” were police in the role of taking away our right of self defense.

[UPDATE (12/24/2012) Bill Brown: Added link to creators.com version of the op-ed.]

I’m not going to talk about guns right now. I’m sure someone is going to call for some law at some point, and drag me into that. But, right now, I want to highlight that sick, murderous freaks are a product of a sick society.

Ours is a sick society. One that does not value reason. One that does not value control over one’s faculties. One that does not have a proper concept of a healthy self, and therefore no concept of healthy self-esteem – genuine, real self-esteem, not the fake imitation they make with gold stars.

I don’t have the first clue what long chain of failures made the inhuman freak responsible for today’s sick, unspeakable acts, but I confidently predict that a lack of those values – reason, control over faculties, and (genuine, not fake) self-esteem, was involved.

Our society isn’t focused on producing genuine adults anymore. On producing thinking, reasoning men and women – and not sick, overgrown children. Mature individuals who think independently, live productively and seek to earn real, genuine self-esteem and the pride that it brings in a life lived well. Adults capable of judgement – yes, judgement: that isn’t a bad word (and I would bet that if some more of it were applied, tragedies like this would happen less often). Reasoning beings who stand with conviction on their honor – their integrity and their honesty.

That is what we need.

I wrote the above in response to the tragedy in Newton, CT. Obviously, since then, stupid and evil laws have indeed been called for to take away our rights and make us still more vulnerable to such massacres. I’d write on this in detail, but it seems that Richard Salsman has rather beaten me to the punch.

“Gun control-freaks want to blame mass shootings on ‘too many guns,’ but the real problem is far too few guns and too little gun freedom. Restrictions on our Constitution’s 2^ndAmendment right to bear arms invite slaughter and mayhem. . . . Here’s the perversity of the gun-controllers: they’ve convinced politicians and law enforcement officials that public areas are especially prone to gun violence, and have pushed for onerous bans and restrictions on gun use in such areas; but that means they themselves are accessories to such crimes, because they’ve actively encouraged government to ban or restrict our basic civil right to self-defense; it means they’ve goaded stray crazies into publically slaughtering people with impunity. Self-defense is a crucial right; it requires gun-toting and full use not only in our homes and on our property but also (and especially) in public. . . . The evidence is overwhelming now: no one any longer can claim, in candor, that the gun-controllers are ‘pacific,’ ‘peace-loving,’ or ‘well-meaning.’ In truth they are avowed enemies of a key civil right and abject abettors of evil…

The blood of Newtown’s victims are on the hands of those politicians who’ve helped impose “gun-free” public zones.”

-Inspector

Every stimulus in history didn’t fail… they just weren’t big enough. We need a bigger stimulus and this time… will be different!

In case it wasn’t clear, I’m talking about Obama. He’s been an unmitigated disaster for the country, and people elected him again, convinced that what we need is more of the same, but harder.

I’d say good luck with that, but I’m stuck on this boat and going down with it.

Gee, thanks.

Don’t get me wrong – Wet Noodles wasn’t going to ride in on a white horse and save the day. We’d be screwed under him, too, because he is too much of a wimp to do anything but more of the same. It’s just… jeez. People had a choice between a guy who was maybe, weakly, limply going to make some kind of effort – any effort whatsoever – to not bankrupt us and a guy whose plan was: FULL SPEED AHEAD TO BANKRUPTCY. And the American people made their choice.

-Inspector

How could we get it so wrong? Was our thinking the triumph of hope over experience?

Here was my thinking: Obama was campaigning to shore up his base. Romney already had his base — where else would they go? — and was campaigning to win moderates and independents. Therefore, Romney would get more votes. Moreover, the polls are all wrong due to liberal bias and the Bradley Effect, in which a small percentage of those polled lie that they will vote for a black man because they do not want to be thought of as racist.

This entire line of thinking turned out to be wrong. The polls were right. The Democrat base was energized and turned out on election day. Most astonishing, Romney did not have his base. Romney got 3,000,000 fewer votes than McCain in 2008 and 7,000,000 fewer than Bush in 2004. If he had just won what McCain got, he would have defeated Obama.

So what happened?

1. American voters have changed for the worse. This is the most depressing conclusion from the election. This thing should not have been close. Obama is the worst president of my lifetime, if not all time. His big government policies have kept unemployment around 8%. His foreign policy is to appease an enemy he pretends does not exist. Obama should have been demolished the way Mondale was in 1984 or McGovern was in 1972.

The American sense of life, an emotional vestige of our 18th and 19th century individualist heritage, is dying. The New Leftist culture, indoctrinated through government schooling, is reforming the American character around collectivism. The Democrats finish off the process by expanding the welfare state. Americans receiving food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, etc. will vote to stay on the gravy train. (This makes the Democrat attack on Romney’s 47% remark particularly hypocritical. Romney was essentially saying that the Democrat strategy of buying votes through handouts is working.)

2. Democrats wanted it more. To the left, power is not just politics, it’s metaphysics. It is the reason they exist. They understood that they had a lot to lose if Romney won. Obamacare would have been repealed, Romney would have repealed Obama’s executive orders, the czars would have been fired, and Democrats would have lost control of the vast array of alphabet agencies through which they plan to fundamentally transform America by bureaucratic fiat.

3. Republicans didn’t want it more. For this I blame two things. First, Romney campaigned as a moderate. He gave the base no reason to vote for him other than “I’m not Obama.” That’s not enough. And his campaign bought the conventional wisdom that Romney had to be a “nice guy” to overcome Democrat smears about Republicans. (Maybe they’re right.)

Second, Republican pragmatists cannot think in principle. These are the people who become Republican because they were born in a country club, not because they read Ludwig von Mises. They view the Tea Party with suspicion and figure it doesn’t really matter that much who is president. Pass the white wine and brie, darling.

4. Lots of other reasons, such as the power of the incumbancy, media liberal bias, Obama’s superior campaign tactics and the failure of Romney’s ORCA thing. It turns out Obama is actually competent at campaigning, as opposed to governing. Romney, for all his supposed business acumen, ran a lousy campaign.

That’s my take on what happened. How bad the consequences will be, we don’t know yet, but I suspect the American people bought themselves a whole lot of sorrow on November 6, 2012.

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly in its power.

The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb its principles from the cultural atmosphere around them—from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc. Who sets the tone of a culture? A small handful of men: the philosophers. Others follow their lead, either by conviction or by default.

On September 27, I tweeted that Conor Friedersdorf “does not understand the Left, at any level”.  I did so on the grounds of this article by Friedersdorf, which included this line:

I don’t see how anyone who confronts Obama’s record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I’d have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers. (Emphasis mine.)

I, who do understand the Left, immediately thought: *Why* would anyone ever think that?

Friedersdorf is one of an ever-shrinking cadre of otherwise sharp individuals who cling to the illusion that Leftism is “liberal”, despite the clear evidence over the years that liberalism (properly understood) is *incompatible* with Leftism.  That such men still exist is, to me, a remarkable — one might even say amazing — fact.  It’s easy to blame it on evasion, concrete-bound mentalities etc. but those explanations, in addition to being Objectivist-syncratic, were never satisfactory to me.  There is more to it, a “more” which I have been exploring by means of the principle of ideological causality.

Then along came another example of a “civil liberty” Leftist brushing up against the contradictions involved in his position.  This time, the person involved shows a greater level of awareness, both of self and of the contradiction.  Even better, his experience offers a rare snapshot into the very mechanism by which ideological causality works in men, including those who do not deal in ideas.

Cory Doctorow, another “civil liberties” Leftist like Friedersdorf, tweeted the following after President Obama’s re-election:

Amazing to think that that I’m relieved at the victory of the pro-wiretapping, pro-extrajudicial-assassination, anti-whistleblower candidate.

As with Friedersdorf, my initial reaction: why would that be “amazing to think”? That’s the logic of being Leftist, there’s nothing amazing about it at all — to me.

But when I considered why would it would be amazing to Doctorow, that’s when it struck me how rich a snapshot his tweet really is, a perfectly timed photoflash exposure of the process by which ideas move a man’s mind.  Let’s step through it.

Doctorow’s tweet describes two emotions, one a reaction to the other: first, relief, and then amazement upon reflection.

The relief Doctorow experienced is a response to the fact of President Obama’s re-election.  It is (to Doctorow) a primary.  The amazement on the other hand, follows from his conscious evaluation of that emotion, in the context of his **professed** value — his civil-libertarian concerns with wiretapping, rule of law and whistleblowers.

That “relief” emotion is the more important one; the reason why it came first, is because it is a function of Doctorow’s deeper premises, the ideas he has internalized and that define (and truly **motivate**) him.  For far too many people — including Doctorow, as we’ll see in a moment — these premises are unacknowledged and unintrospected; such people become aware of them only in the form of seemingly unaccountable emotions, or “internal voices”, which can and often do conflict — sometimes violently — with one’s consciously held ideas, values and intentions.

Doctorow’s “amazement” is his sense of just such a conflict.  He sees Obama as a problematic president for several reasons, according to his conscious convictions, but the summary result coming from his initial emotional reaction – the one connected to his reactive subconscious — is *relief*.

Doctorow’s relief emotion is telling him that, at a deeper level, he believes the following:

1. there are things that are more important than civil liberties

2. those things were served by the election of a president who is plainly hostile to those civil liberties

3. In accordance with point #1, this result is a good thing.

Summation: “relief”.

That’s an important clue.  That Doctorow found this reaction “amazing” is because he is sufficiently self-aware to note the apparent incongruity with his professed (or “public”) values, and to tell us about it — but not sufficiently aware to know its source, to know the terms of the summation that the “relief” emotion represents. Those are the unchecked premises.  We know they are not checked, because if they were, Doctorow would not find their revelation “amazing” any more than I did.

Now we get to why I found this tweet so remarkable.  It represents a snapshot of how the logic of ideas move a man.

First, recall that the Left is *essentially* collectivist and nihilist.  Its end of road is not merely tyranny, or war, or mass murder; those are just waypoints on the road, means to the end.  That end-of-road is a negative, the annihilation of one idea — autonomous man, the sovereign individual, and of every derivative thereof: idea connected to these things: free will, moral individualism, political freedom/capitalism, the Enlightenment, the United States.  This is the road traveled by all Leftists whether they know it or not.

This essential core acts as a logical “attractor” of sorts, setting the logical flow of ideas (or “direction of traffic”) towards the end-of-road for anyone who accepts Leftist premises. It does so whether the premises are consciously held, picked up passively by cultural osmosis, or internalized via logical implication of accepted derivative ideas.  It doesn’t matter where a man was when he started, nor where he imagines his intended destination to be.

It does so by both conscious logic and, below the level at which any given man deals with ideas, via their emotions.

I have written before about how this process moves cultures; in Doctorow’s tweet, we gain a snapshot of the mechanism in action, of how this process happens in one man.  As Ayn Rand once said, in a quote which anticipates ideological causality:

The enormously powerful integrating mechanism of man’s consciousness is there at birth; his only choice is to drive it or be driven by it.

How does this mechanism drive men?  How does it drive a man?

Ideological causality runs in both directions.  That integrating mechanism works out the downstream logical consequences of an idea, “If A, then follows B”; it also works out the upstream implications of said idea: “If B, than implies A”. (This is why the starting position ultimately doesn’t matter.)

Highly intelligent minds perform this integration with greater speed and to greater depth.  This is why intelligent Leftists are often the most extreme, unhinged ones; they are fast travelers on the roads of ideas.  Being much more hostile to hypocrisy than their conservative counterparts, intelligent Leftists are also much more prone to willfully travel all the way to the end of the road, even embracing the truth of the hell that awaits them there.

What Doctorow’s tweet demonstrates is the tension between “surface” ideas (his putative concern for “civil liberties”) and the logical, essential core.  His integrating mechanism has worked out the logical consequences of his Leftism to a further stage than he is willing to admit — and when it gave him the results by an emotion, he was “amazed” to see the apparent contradiction.

What exactly did his emotions tell him?  What is the “something” that is more important than civil liberties?  That a Leftist like Obama be in power. Power > “civil liberties”.

That is the reality of being Leftist, which is to me an unremarkable fact, but Doctorow found “amazing” to glimpse, and which escapes Friedersdorf despite all the evidence he has at hand.  This is the process by which the core premises of any ideology move a man towards a destination which he may very well, in all sincerity, wish to avoid.

At the cultural level, the same thing happens when the inconsistent one faces attack from the more logically consistent (“extreme”) factions on their own side.  Liberals gave way to socialists, socialists give way to fascists/communists.  “In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins“, as Ayn Rand put it.

Even the notion of “civil liberties” shows the pattern; it is a watered-down remnant of the principle of individual rights inherited from genuine liberalism, but shrunken down to exclude economic/property rights and stripped of its absolutism — an increasingly threadbare “Edgar suit” of liberalism for the Left.  Where “individual rights” is a principle, “civil liberties” are merely “A Good Thing”, one of many tokens on the table which are to be weighed against other such tokens, like the “public good”… and whose relative heft in such weighings is, logically, ever-decreasing.

Wonder no longer why men sense that something is wrong, but continue to move towards the cliff.  They know something is wrong, they sense the logic of their ideas, but for lack of something — most often, an understanding of ideas, their logic and their *power* — they continue traveling down the road to hell with a dread sense of inevitability.  They smell the smoke, they feel the heat, but their damned eyes are closed.  Ayn Rand put her finger on this one too:

Today, the voices proclaiming disaster are so fashionable a bromide that people are battered into apathy by their monotonous insistence; but the anxiety under that apathy is real. Consciously or subconsciously, intellectually or emotionally, most people today know that the world is in a terrible state and that it cannot continue on its present course much longer. …

People do not want to find any answers to avert their danger; all they want, all they are looking for, is only some excuse to yell “But I couldn’t help it!”

I don’t doubt that men like this — Conor Friedersdorf, Cory Doctorow, Glenn Greenwald are three examples — would dismiss in all sincerity the notion that they *intend* to lead us to hell.  I also don’t doubt that they, in all sincerity, are capable of reversing direction and overriding the logic of Leftism — sometimes, on particular issues (as Greenwald did on free speech recently).  Men have free will after all.

Of course, if they *can* reverse course, they can do so for good — and they are therefore responsible for their choice not to do so.

And that is why they remain morally responsible for their contribution to the results, such as they are, and will not be absolved for them.

Barack Obama’s speech at the 2012 Democrat National Convention was the work of a man who is written out. He has nothing new to say; he lacks even the energy to make it look like he’s trying. But that didn’t stop him from going on for 37 empty minutes. Stalin and Castro were famous for droning on for hours before a (literally) captive audience. I believe Obama and Clinton would do the same if they could. Standing before a large, adoring audience must be the peak experience for a collectivist.

Obama’s speech was shockingly banal. Charles Krauthammer called it, ‘One of the emptiest I’ve ever heard on a national stage.’ Is this the best his speechwriting staff could come up with? How bad a tin ear must Obama have to say, “I’m the President”? As Stephen Green wrote,

That is the smallest line I have heard a President say in 32 years of listening to presidents speak.

Scott Holleran sees it in a more sinister light.

If the left criticizes Romney, the rich and Republicans for being callous plutocrats looking down upon the little people, and they do, there is no better example that it’s Obama, the New Left and Democrats that hold America and Americans in contempt and seek to command them shut up, kneel and obey government control. It was the ultimate appeal to authority: the power-lusting Nothing Man might as well have said “I’m the dictator.”

When a man is under pressure, you see the real man. I believe this election is showing us what Thomas Sowell calls Obama’s “confident ignorance.” Obama has lived in the leftist bubble all his life. He thinks altruism-statism-collectivism is moral, and nothing in reality can dent his ideology. Michael Barone thinks Obama should have pivoted to the center as Clinton did after the 1994 election; the President has shown he stays true to the left. If he were a Republican, he would be denounced as a radical or an extremist, but to the mainstream media Democrats can never be extreme. Dick Morris says this strategy is a loser.

I think Obama actually believes Keynesian economics work. Of course, all his life among leftists he had never been exposed to Ludwig von Mises or Henry Hazlitt or Fredric Bastiat or other economists that make my spirit soar when I read them because they are rational and brilliant. (Seriously, if you think economics is “the dismal science,” you have been reading the wrong economists.) In reality the stimulus package made things worse, as did the spectre of ObamaCare and Cap and Trade, among the hordes of regulations coming out of the federal government. Reality has been slapping Obama in the face since day one of his presidency, and it has got him down — but he won’t change his beliefs; indeed, that is the one thing he cannot allow himself to do. If he questions his ideology, then his entire universe will shatter, and his self-esteem with it. There are reports the man gets more excited about cards, bowling and golf than policy matters. I would not be surprised if deep down he wanted to lose in November so he could climb back in the liberal bubble and evade the consequences of his disastrous ideas in the real world.

****

Clinton’s speech was the more exciting of the two because he is more a romanticist — of himself. The prospect of penning dithyrambs to himself gets Clinton’s blood moving faster than an intern in kneepads. In a speech that was supposed to be about nominating Obama, Clinton glorified himself over and over, and managed to remind the audience that Obama is cool on the outside and has failed to deliver on the economy. Clinton sneakily even brought up the birther issue. While mocking Romney/Ryan, Clinton said:

They looked good, they sounded good. They convinced me…(LAUGHTER)… that they all love their families and their children, and we’re grateful they’ve been born in America, and all –really, I’m not being — they did.

Why would we be grateful they were “born in America”? What does that have to do with anything? I don’t think it’s a mistake that there’s a lot of nonsense out there about Obama’s birthplace. More important, there is uneasiness about Obama’s allegience to American values, the subject of a movie currently in theatres, 2016: Obama’s America. In 2008 the Obama campaign called the Clintons racist; you think Bill has forgotten that? You think he is above mentioning that Romney and Ryan were born in America just to plant seeds of doubt in voters’ minds about Obama?

****

One political party is full of ignorant, mean-spirited bigots. Everybody know it’s the Republicans, right? Wrong. The Democrats really are ignorant, mean-spirited bigots. Watch this video.

And watch this for radicalism and economic idiocy.

****

Conservatives are giddy about the disasters of the DNC. The convention started with a creepy hymn to collectivism

They took God and Jerusalem out of the platform, then put it back in even though there was no two-thirds quorum, and the audience booed. As an atheist, booing God is fine with me, but I wonder if Democrats understand they must win the votes of the American people. And why at this point would Jewish people vote Democrat? The left has become anti-semitic.

Rush Limbaugh said he was physically ill before the DNC began, and was “180 degrees better” after watching Obama’s speech.

This picture is telling. Obama does not look happy. Does he know something we don’t know? Well, he did say that if he didn’t turn the economy around in three years he would be a one-termer.

“10:17: The speech ends, and there’s a flurry of confetti. No balloons, because an indoor presentation hadn’t been planned. Obama steps forward and waves. There’s a closeup of his face and I think I see his lip curl with a bit of disgust, and I call rewind and ask Meade to interpret the face and he says: resignation. Subjectively, we think we see in his face that he knows he’s going to lose. Michelle and Malia and Sasha come out, looking perfectly glossy and pretty, and then there’s Biden and Jill and Mrs. Robinson and various other relatives, milling around, waving a bit, and then the long view of the stage shows they’ve clumped toward the rear wall. Why are they huddling there? The shots of the crowd show some ecstatic delegates — all women — and many stolid/dispirited faces — male and female. At one point there’s a hitch in the Bruce Springsteen music — a silent gap — but then it plays again. And now they’re gone.” — Ann Althouse

I understand that the Obama campaign and their Democrat PAC’s have spent, according to one number I read, $120 million attacking Mitt Romney. (Obama has outspent Romney three to one so far, but that does not stop him from whining because Romney now has more money.) I understand that the American people, in our dumbed-down age, are susceptible to such an idiotic argument as Romney is mean because he ran a company that, in the course of restructuring businesses, fired people. (And that attack is the Democrats at their most intellectual. When you descend below that, you get nonsense about Romney being mean to his dog. Seriously. This is what the left has become.)

I get all this, but I still wonder why they had to devote so much precious airtime to “humanizing” Mitt Romney. And I laugh at right-wing pundits joyously proclaiming, “He’s human! He’s human!” Great. So glad the GOP didn’t nominate an alien from space. Can you imagine Goldwater succeeding in today’s milquetoast Republican Party?

Listening to speech after speech I wondered, “Is this the best the Republicans can do?” They would not have needed to “humanize” their man if they had been capable of mounting a self-confident, morally certain intellectual defense of capitalism and individualism. Something on the lines of Howard Roark’s courtroom speech, for instance. No, the speeches read as if they were written by Alvah Scarrett rather than Roark.

But I’m no political pro. Doubtless, the Republican brains knew what they were doing. I suppose they know that trying mount an intellectual argument for today’s booboisie is a fool’s errand. How much more effective it is, in this Age of Oprah, to tell a sob story about Mitt and a dying 14-year old boy. I admit, in contrast to the narcissist Obama, whose greatest achievement is writing two books about himself, these stories of Romney’s altruism are powerful. Romney comes off as a man with deep values that he takes seriously. If Romney is no Howard Roark, Obama very much a Peter Keating, more interested in impressing people than actually doing anything.

Romney should win in November. With the economy as bad as it is, in the worst recovery since the Great Depression, the election should not even be close. The Tea Party formed spontaneously because the American people were shocked by the Democrats’ power grabs in the first two years of Obama’s presidency. This election should be a landslide on the order of 1972, 1980 and 1984. If it is not, take it as a sign of America’s cultural decline. Take it as a sign that the Democrats have changed the sense of life of the American people. And be afraid.

Since it should be a landslide for Romney, he should get enough votes to overcome Democrat voter fraud. I fear that the statist-collectivist Democrats now agree with, and secretly admire, Joseph Stalin, who said it doesn’t matter who casts the votes, but who counts them.

What worries me is the day after the election. What do the Republicans do then? What will be their mandate? Having campaigned as a bleeding-heart altruist, how can Romney make any significant cuts in government? The Republicans are now the party of Medicare, which has something like $40 trillion in unfunded liabilities. It’s impossible to pay that off. Medicare needs to be phased out. How can Romney/Ryan begin this critical project when they have campaigned as Medicare’s saviors? Having promised to replace ObamaCare, how can Romney move toward freedom in medicine?

Is this what it takes to win nowadays? Must the Republicans become welfare statists to gain power?

What price victory?

Let’s be clear up front: Ryan is not the perfect candidate. He has HUGE problems. He is a religious conservative, an enemy of abortion, and has voted for such statist power grabs as the prescription medicine bill and TARP. In other words, he is a Republican. He is most certainly NOT an Objectivist, although the left seems to think it will help them to pin that label on him.

Contrary to many of the political race-horse pros, I think the Ryan pick was a brilliant strategic move. Obama and his PAC’s have spent hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to “define” (smear) Romney’s character. Think of the nonsense the media has obsessed over in the last few months: Romney is a bully; Romney is mean to dogs; Romney is a wimp; Romney is rich and out of touch; Romney won’t disclose his taxes; Romney killed Joe Soptic’s wife. In one day all of that effort was was destroyed. This election will not be about Romney’s character, but about ideas. This election will give voters a clear choice — do you want more government or less?

I submit this is a disaster for the Democrats. When ideology prevails, the left loses. Look at the landslides of 1972 and 1984 and Contract with America in 1994.

Ryan credits Ayn Rand with inspiring him to enter politics. He used to give copies of Atlas Shrugged to staffers. This is all to the good, and is why he is one of the better Republicans. But this year he has made an effort to disavow Rand. Yaron Brook said today he is suspicious of the timing. He thinks Ryan made it clear he is not an Objectivist because the Romney team was vetting him, and Romney wanted to clear up this troubling association with the atheist Rand. An atheist has no chance of gaining power in today’s Republican Party.

Despite the many problems with Romney/Ryan, I intend to vote for them in November. Obama’s first term has been a four-year, vulgar display of statist power. Obama must go. I don’t think freedom in America can survive a second Obama term. He has shown he cares nothing about the will of the people, the legislative process or the rule of law. What power grabs he cannot push through Congress, he will declare by executive order like a dictator. And not having to worry about reelection, he will be unrestrained to do whatever he wants. For the sake of all that is good, including your money and your liberty, this man must be defeated.

The moment Obama is defeated, I will begin watching Romney/Ryan carefully. Nothing statist or collectivist that they do will be ignored. By 2016 I fully expect to loathe them as much as I loathed Bush. This is better than the enormities we would suffer with Obama II.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think this election will even be close. Romney/Ryan vs. Obama/Biden is the Chess Club vs. the Choom Gang.

UPDATE: Slight revision. Changed Choom Club to Choom Gang, the correct name of Obama’s high school gang of stoners.

Do you know what “rationing” means in the context of health care?

This. This is what it means.

Well, you know, they have to consider the interests of society as a whole. And, apparently, that interest is that old people die. What of their individual interests? Don’t be silly; it’s not about individuals. Besides, it would be selfish to want to live.

Alright, turning the sarcasm off: end of life triage decisions about costly medical care are no fun, no matter what. But at least in a free system, you can pay for as much or as little of it as you earn and/or as you choose. Despite socialist whimpering to the contrary, it is just to have the care that you earned. Justice is even in the language: observe the word, “earned.”

This may seem harsh at first glance, but what socialists fail to understand is that reality itself is what prevents any alternative. Socialism does not make this decision kinder or more just. Socialist Utopians claim that it “should not be about money,” but that is a physical impossibility. No power on earth can make it not about money. They can make it not about your money, but it’s still about money… just the state’s money instead of yours. The state could tax away every dollar on the planet, and it still would not be enough to provide medical care to everyone without triage. It wouldn’t even be close.

And when it’s about the state’s money… believe me, the decision does not become kinder. If you’re old enough, the state’s interest is that you die. I am not kidding about that. That is a grim, mathematical, truth.

Kinder, that is not. And it does not become more just, either. Your money may not be a perfectly just measure** – perhaps you were good and brilliant in life, but unlucky. (or had your wealth destroyed by socialism…) But it is at least somewhat just. It is literally what you earned. You are picking nobody else’s pocket, and that is just. Contrast socialism, which is – by definition – unjust. It is a gigantic system of trafficking in the unearned. Of taking from those who have earned things and giving to those who have not earned them.

In short, any socialist interfering with the market necessarily adds injustice by trafficking in the unearned. More injustice than its proponents promise it will “fix.” (promise, and never deliver) Whatever you think of the justice of what happens in freedom, abridging that freedom is necessarily more unjust.

-Inspector
*(TANSTAAFL)

** “Perfectly,” in the Platonic sense, which is to say, fantastical.

Ayn Rand, “Extremism”, or the Art of Smearing

——————————————

Blogger Ann Althouse comments on the knee-jerk Leftist response by E.J. Dionne to yet another mass “gun-free zone” shooting incident:

I’m fascinated by this notion that we do sometimes pass laws and therefore that means that we should pass laws. The resistance to passing laws is some nasty dysfunction caused by a nefarious interest group — here, the NRA — but good people want to do something.

My comment to her post follows:

I’m fascinated by how the Left has so successfully and deeply entrenched everyone, even non-Lefties, into default “boxes” of thought without anyone noticing.

Well, anyone minus one, as I did notice it. EJ Dionne’s presumed range of options is to either pass more laws or to do nothing.

Completely left out is a third option: repeal laws.

Am I wrong? Not Althouse or anyone in this thread seems to have noticed; search “repeal” on this page and there’s one comment with that word in it, and it’s a reference to Prohibition.

Leftists’ entire political worldview rests on that unstated premise: laws only ever get passed. Government control only ever expands, and “at worst” it stops growing.

It throws William F Buckley’s slogan “Standing athwart history shouting Stop!” into a new light, doesn’t it?

It should be clear that we’ve reached a pass where conservatism’s professed goal, even if they adhered to it 100% (which, quite pathetically, they don’t) — to be a brake on history — has failed, as it must fail.

A brake only slows you down; it does not change your direction.  We don’t need a brake anymore; we need an accelerator and a 180.

Let’s turn this bucket around.

What attracts immigrants to a country? The prospects of a better life – as defined and imagined by those immigrants. This last point becomes interesting when you turn the question around: What kind of immigrant does a country attract? The kind that seeks to gain whatever values of whatever nature that the country in question has to offer, noble or not. Retirees move to Spain for the weather and the relaxed atmosphere. Frustrated males move to Thailand for the girls and the not-so-girls.*

Historically, people have moved to America because they wanted to live life by their own terms. We frown upon that in Europe.

Why do people move to Sweden? Insofar as it is a modern industrial society, Sweden doesn’t differ much from other Western (or Northern) European countries. Yet the number of immigrants, refugee and otherwise, that it accepts from the Middle East and Africa every year is, by the standards of both continental Europe and its closer Scandinavian neighbors, record-setting and wildly out of proportion to its own population. “Welfare” is more than a decent guess, but that answer can’t be the whole truth; Norway and Denmark, despite also being social democracies, aren’t having these problems nearly to the same extent.

Proponents of Capitalism know that welfare systems are corrosive to a society’s individuals; Norway and Denmark are no exceptions. But they’re missing the ingredient that would turn their welfare explosive: mass immigration. Onerous as they are, the taxation and redistribution going on in these countries remain relatively stable in the short term because they’re done chiefly by, for, and to a mostly gainfully employed Western populace.

Simply put, they aren’t importing large numbers of unskilled people and putting them on easily accessed, longterm welfare. Sweden is. The consequences in the form of crime, unemployment, social strife, and the increasing alienation of native Swedes, were clear enough yesterday, are painfully so today, and will become catastrophically so tomorrow.

But why was this allowed to happen to Sweden in the first place, and why can’t the increasingly disgruntled Swedes seem to mount an effective opposition to the policies of social engineering enacted and maintained by their elected politicians? That will be the topic for my next entry.

* I know Thailand has more to offer, but stereotypes can be hilarious when they’re at least partially true.

Since it was so hot outside and since my only pair of shorts were in the laundry hamper, I conceived it to be in my selfish interest (properly understood) to buy another pair. So pleasing was that move, I bought two. It felt good to be selfish. Agreeing with me, the wife bought a top for herself. We also bought a few other goodies to make us happy just as our founders intended.

Later we joined the wife’s brother and his significant other for dinner in an air conditioned restaurant for some happiness causing food. After that we invited them to our selfishly air conditioned house for some strawberry shortcake. Can you imagine eating strawberry shortcake outside in 98 degree heat? Yuk! You’d need a straw for the ice cream. So there was an implied thank you to the scientists who selfishly (for profit) invented, and the businessmen who selfishly (for profit) marketed, air conditioning. Isn’t selfishness wonderful!

After our company left and thanks to a rain delay, I got to watch the Detroit Tigers pursue their happiness (and mine) by beating the Minnesota Twins in a baseball game. (This was a good thing because the Tigers haven’t been very good at achieving their happiness lately.)

All in all it was a truly American day. No sacrifices were offered or demanded. No suffering required. Just people following their own rationally understood self interest and enjoying life proper to humans as the founders intended.

Yesterday the court upheld Obamacare as a tax increase, and sure enough, Congress has the power to levy taxes. It’s right there in the Constitution; you can see for yourself.

You can’t expect the Supreme Court to save America from continuing down the road to serfdom. Not only is our culture moving that way, but the Court would have to rule against its own precedents such as Wickard v. Filburn, which stretched the Commerce Clause to cover any economic activity that affects interstate commerce. It would take five remarkable Justices to defy the rest of government, academia, the media and the nihilist postmodern philosophy or our culture — and apparently, the Court has only four such men.

The idea of being limited by the words of an 18th century document makes people like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi laugh. To them providing for the general welfare means whatever the state thinks is good for you. And their intentions are good; all they want to do is give us all free health care. Any further argument is just politics and legalistic quibbling.

Do you think the word “fascism” is hyperbolic? The “tax” in Obamacare will be payments to health insurance companies. If fascism is the form of socialism in which private property is kept nominally in private ownership but dictated by the state, then Obamacare is something Mussolini would have loved.

I believe the Affordable Care Act has been deceptive from the beginning. The purpose of Obamacare is to create a mess. What will happen when insurance companies must cover people with pre-existing conditions? They will lose money, and then they will go to the government for subsidies in order to remain in business. Eventually, the statists will argue that health care would be cheaper to the taxpayers if the federal government eliminated the middle man and managed it on the European model. (Yes, that model that is now in economic crisis.)

I think they will succeed. If there is one thing I am confident our government can create, it’s a mess. You must remember, Obama does not work on the old model — that of getting practical results and spreading prosperity. He doesn’t care if his policies work. He only wants the strong to sacrifice to the weak and the individual to sacrifice to the collective. To leftists this is good and all else is evil, even if evil is more practical.

The Supreme Court cannot save freedom in America. Can anyone? Is there any hope? We need cultural change, which means the spread of reason, individualism and free market economics, which means the philosophy of Ayn Rand. A nation gets the government it deserves.

“This is bad, it’s wrong, and it’s immoral. And somebody needs to say that.” Somebody did.

Next thing you know we’ll be needing papers to travel.