Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Pirates vs Government Controlled Business

It is a curious fact that nothing is new and that every major event has a correlating story from history. The art of reading the tea leaves is not just the revelation of a possible true or false prophet, but also an important factor in this essay because in American History, The East India Company is the ultimate example of the merge between government and business. On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I signed a royal charter giving the Honourable East India Company a 21 year monopoly on trade with the East Indies.

This innocuous beginning in the early days of expanding global trade mutated into one of the most insidious mergers of government power with private business savvy that history has ever recorded. The more the government powers demanded, the more the businessmen demanded--and both powers received in abundance. With the company's success important to practically every royal and Parliament member along with company men and investors, the booty was in danger of being divided into mere piddles.

It was then that the Crown made it perfectly clear as to who actually owned the company. With the East India Act of 1773 the Crown declared that the "acquisition of sovereignty by the subjects of the Crown is on behalf of the Crown and not in its own right." Big government now controlled the East India Company, and because the company traded and owned factories and warehouses worldwide, the Crown now controlled practically the entire globe.

The English taxpayer was then tapped as a source of revenue to continue expanding the company so that its financial return could be as large as men of power and wealth would require. As the Pirates of The Caribbean movies have taught every young person with the ability to follow a plot line, The East India Company had a problem determining whether they were The Law or the Monopolistic Merchant of the Seas. Keira Knightly's character, Elizabeth Swann, realizes this fact and rallies the pirates to fight for freedom on both counts. Pirates were fighting for the right to be...well...pirates.

It was the East India Company and its monopolistic power backed up by the Crown that caused a sort of pirate event in the American colonies--the Boston Tea Party. Private colonial shippers like John Hancock were the target of this corporate/government behemoth. The attempt to restrict colonial harbors to ships and cargo belonging to the East India Company occurred because the company was in dire straits financially. The company needed to make as much money as possible, to pay not only the Crown and its investors but also the large Treasury debt. One of the abusive taxes that so angered the colonists was enacted to repay the English treasury which was being used like a bank to keep the golden goose financially afloat. That, along with the ability to enforce being the only fleet able to enter colonial harbors, pushed the American colonists to the point of war. Entrepreneurs like John Hancock were declared outlaw smugglers--and while a smuggler is not quite the same as a pirate, each would have suffered the same fate.

Therefore it is interesting that once again America finds herself being squeezed by a new business/government merger in this 2008 Presidential Campaign. Each Democratic Party candidate has promised a federal government solution to a declared "broken" Health Care System. This ideal is promulgated insidiously by Democrats through the failing pension funds of Detroit auto manufacturers. A government program, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, was created to supposedly protect pension plans--but unless the bankruptcy-prone corporations are able to put money in the PBGC, the pensions will remain empty. Like the East India Company, the PBGC has attempted to pass on this debt to the American taxpayer, thereby releasing the auto manufacturers or airlines of their financial responsibility. (If not for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner 's (R-Ohio) leadership, taxpayers would already be saddled with this burden.)

The federalization of health care would also release the same corporations of the debt of their agreed benefits programs. Therefore, it should be clearly obvious that whatever program the Democrats are proposing would start out deeply in the red. So their promise that the envisioned program would actually save money is preposterous.

Upon the signing of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, Senator Kennedy (D-MA) said: "This bill says to millions of Americans who fear their pensions will disappear that help is on the way.” He hopes with every fiber of his own trust fund that the holders of the pensions in question will hear his siren's call and not pay attention to the looming shoals beneath the water. The huge debt will not just simply transform into fluid cash.

Senator Clinton (D-NY), in a speech for Detroit's International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said "The creation of a universal health care system is especially important to union workers in the auto industry, who find currently find their jobs in jeopardy." The article continues: "Such workers have been battling with their employers regarding increased health care in an environment with rising retirement and health costs." But unless the average newspaper reader knows why auto workers are having problems with rising retirement and health costs, the assumption will be that everyone's costs are rising because of sinister actions by insurance and retirement fund corporations. And then comes her hard sell to the American taxpayer: "If we don't have a strong manufacturing industry, it won't be long before we don't have a strong economy."

Bill Clinton made a telling speech at the 2007 TED Prize Award: Make a Wish Come True. He was talking about a medical group he was working with to provide medical services in Rwanda. Mr. Clinton is negotiating lower pharmaceutical sales for this group. He talks about working with non-governmental organizations (NGO's) such as the American Heart Association:
"We started a childhood obesity initiative with the Heart Association in America by negotiating industry-wide deals with the soft drink and snack food industry to cutting the caloric and other dangerous content of food going to our children in the schools. We just reorganized the markets. And then it occurred to me that in the whole non-governmental world, somebody needs to be thinking about organizing the world's public goods market."
So much for capitalism and entrepreneurship providing the means to get the desired product to the desirous customer. A new entity, a monarch of the world, will now direct products to their correct place while deciding what is proper food for each of us according to our age and health or activity level.

The former President then rambled into his work in the global warming farce:
"And that is now what we are trying to do in working with these large cities which generate 75% of the world's green house gases to drastically and quickly reduce green house gas emissions in a way that is good economics. And this whole discussion as if it's some sort of economic burden is a mystery to me...
..I think it's a bird's nest on the ground.
Considering the Clintons came to Washington practically penniless, their newfound wealth should raise more than an eyebrow, because every pirate knows that the Pirate Code is really every captain for himself!

And so I warn those drawn in by the Democrat's siren song of a secure future without want or care, with a word from the leader of the first anti-Federalist movement - Thomas Jefferson:

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Deconstructive Nihilism and the Democratic Party

After the World Wars, a new social war began in earnest; the war upon the bourgeoise. As returning veterans were glad to be home, safe, and alive, relieved to do something easy and non-life threatening like buy a cute little tract home, get a job and raise a family, another group desired in every way to separate themselves from everything that smacked of Middle Class. The more avante-garde the rejection of middle class values, the more the fashionable set applauded as Tom Wolfe observed in New York art scene in The Painted Word.

As artistic realism was deconstructed, highbrow art became not the actual painting, but the action that created it. Likewise out in society, mass meetings such as Woodstock were not so much a method for musical bands to get recognition to sell LP records, but rather the entire event was the happening. Directed by leaders in the anti-American movement, the gullible partying attendees had their personal memory of the event shrewdly replaced. As historians tell us, Woodstock had nothing to do with the music, it was about the in-your-face rejection of the values of Middle Class America. While Woodstock certainly became that, it was a manufactured reality.

In deconstruction terms, the happening became less about being there and more about being there. If all this is true, then the attendees of the happening were just window dressing for the camera, the real artists of the painting were nothing more than manipulative tent revival hucksters preying upon the emotions of their clueless marks.

Happenings became the method to re-educate the masses into believing something happened other than the simple congregating at a specific place. Sometimes, riots were instigated because the manipulators were as shrewd as Jerry Springer in collecting the class of people bent on unruliness and then tossing a lit Molotov cocktail into the mix. The art was The Happening, the action, the riot. The intent was to scare the Middle Class into submission. The unwashed mass of actual attendees thought it was all about being there and enjoying the rowdy party.

This generation steeped in the art of manipulating their witless believers are now in charge of the Democratic Party and the MSM. Every action or sound-bite is a scheduled happening to direct the supposed stupid bourgeoise they have risen above. Meanwhile, the pretentious MSM gasp at the revelation of the happening like a hopelessly rich tech investor scouring the pits of bohemia looking for art that is both not middle class and ridiculously priced. How else could the MSM know the highbrow art authority other than by the event director's rejection of the opinion of Middle Class America or by the power they command? Deconstruction has removed all factual content and the ability of elementary prioritization from the entire process.

This is why I’ve come to fear Obama over Hilary. While the nation is fully aware that Hilary is a contrived, over-processed, structured event, Obama has the dangerously glib charisma of a happening. His campaign events are inflated with the helium of him being, as Joe Biden (D-DE) has described him, a “clean and articulate black man.” The attendants to these events are given to believe the only gravity Obama faces is prejudice. However, helium makes a voice sound funny as Obama strings together brainless platitudes about higher education, nonsensical foreign policy ideas and deconstructed religious ideas that devolve good or evil into a circular argument morass, unless of course the activity was done by George W. Bush. And the tout le monde MSM reports that the helium inflated event was heralded by applause! Oh, joy! The happening happened!

Everyone knows that Hilary Clinton’s moral compass doesn’t point due north, but it would appear that Obama doesn’t even have a moral compass. He is nothing but a deconstructed helium balloon, evidently giving Mrs. Bill Clinton a little more of a challenge than she expected. What is causing people to listen to gibberish and think it profound? It is because the ability to stage an event has nothing to do with content and everything to do with hype and the being-there mentality pumped up by the MSM. They have found the deconstructionist’s dream—a poor down-trodden half-minority who looks good in a suit and can perfectly pronounce every word in a sentence with no content. With Obama in the Oval Office, it would be like Jim Jones had been elected president. Where’s the cut glass punch bowl?

Monday, June 04, 2007

We Live In An Exciting Age

Several years ago, I read Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790's. The book so influenced me because I saw in history a fresh, invigorating vision for the future. We live in an exciting age, but to make these ideas work we must remain steady. We must keep our eyes set on the shining city on the hill, as we continue the path through the foothills singing Psalms of Ascent as we journey to the city of God.

In the 1790's the Federalist Party felt entrenched in a position of power. The elected officials felt it was their responsibility to explain the meaning of the Constitution to the people. The Federalists believed the Constitution to be flexible in regards to the power of government rather than for limiting government power over private citizens. Granted many of the elite had actually written the Constitution, but an attitude of superiority can accompany the desire to teach. Any university student can recall at least one arrogant professor during their scholarly journey.

Just because the people loved George Washington dearly, that did not make him infallible in their eyes. In two cases, the Washington administration was taken aback by the murmuring of the common citizen. The first is known today as The Whiskey Rebellion. Western settlers resisted an additional tax on the whiskey they made from the corn they were unable to get to market. The whiskey was easier to ship to market and they felt the tax was discriminatory toward their personal entrepreneurship in making a useful product rather than suffer a commercial loss. The second reaction came when the citizens were berated for their resistance. This further revealed the mindset of the Federalist elected elite, angering the common man even more.

That generation, having lived through the violence of the Revolutionary War, was not interested in recreating the same system of elitism they'd just rebelled against. Shifting to today, the comparison with the elitism of Democrat leaders, and their disconnect to the common man, could not be clearer. Remember that the generation that preached to us for years this mantra of peace, love, and tolerance gave us The Waco Tragedy.

It is an exciting time when two very clear and divergent visions for the future of America are being debated. The Republican Party platform has the best vision of fostering individual freedom along with a clear interpretation of the War on Terror. Yes, the Republican Party has some entrenched elitists far more comfortable with their Democratic opposition than with the great unwashed rabble whose votes they need to be elected. Well, that seems like an easy problem to solve as Republicans mark the final reign of Arlan Specter (R- PA), John Warner (R-VA) and John McCain (R-AZ). Like the ever-knitting Tale of Two Cities character Madame Dufarge, the jackalope has her list.

Republicanism's civic virtue is fueling alternative media such as talk radio, Fox news, and the rough and rowdy internet. Republicanism is the natural defense against an over-zealous authority. Every time the Democratic Party presidential candidates explain their fascist views of government control of a private industry like Health Care, the Republican Party is clearly the only choice for those interested in self-determination and liberty.

So vociferous was the argument between the Federalists and the newly formed Republican Party that the Federalist Party eventually ceased to exist. A new course of liberty was set and the new nation separated itself from European-style monarchy. Today, the argument between Democrats and Republicans is also vociferous. Democrats, like their Federalist predecessors, blame the citizenry of being too ignorant, and seek to silence their detractors.

If we remain true to the republican ideal of civic virtue and support our candidate for President, re-elect the worthy, and replace the entrenched, it is possible to send the Democratic Party and its socialist and fascist ideas—the negation of the individual—to the ash heap of history. We must vote at all cost; because civic virtue requires that we do the best a flawed human can do for the future of the republic. This is no time to "go wobbly" because as Margaret Thatcher also said:
Europe was created by history; America was created by philosophy.

We live in an exciting age!