BBC Asks, “Is Sport Sexist?” While Promoting Inequality

It long ago became clear to me that, despite all the pretense, protesting and politicking, no one who has ever seriously thought about equality actually believes in it. When making this case, one could point to how Eric Holder’s DOJ is currently suing the Pennsylvania State Police for treating women equally (how dare they!), but there’s perhaps no better example than a recent BBC writer who asks, “Is sport sexist?”

The author, Aimee Lewis, poses the question because there are still sports where the women’s categories don’t precisely correspond to the men’s; for example, she mentions how women gymnasts and swimmers don’t always compete in the same kinds of events, the no-contact rule in women’s lacrosse and how in tennis, “While men play five sets at Grand Slams, women can only compete over three sets.”

Now, the last example well illustrates the convoluted thinking underpinning much of the equality movement. Is the correct way of framing this that “women can only compete over three sets”?

Or it is that men must compete over five?

This is especially relevant since the equality police long ago lobbied for, and succeeded in getting, equal prize money for women at the Grand Slams (Wimbledon, French Open, U.S. Open, Australian Open). In other words, the male players must now work longer for the same pay and thus are actually earning less per hour than the women.

Equality?

The head of the Women’s Tennis Association, Stacey Allaster, was asked about this recently, called it “an old discussion” and said, “[W]e’re ready, willing and able to play five sets if that’s what they’d like us to play.”

Question: Years ago, did Allaster merely say, “We’re ready, willing and able to accept equal prize money if that’s what they’d like to offer”?

No, she zealously lobbied for it.

Why isn’t she lobbying now for equal work for her players’ equal pay? Sure, it’s human nature to want the benefits others have but not their liabilities. But if you really believe in Equality™, you don’t just shout the word in an effort to institute a different model of inequality, one that benefits you or your agenda.

Having said this, I agree with Lewis’ implication: sport is “sexist.” After all, there is a separate realm of athletics that’s protected from the best competition and is only available to one sex. It is, of course, called women’s sports.

This isn’t just snark. There’s a simple answer to any feminist complaint about inequality in sports: You want the men’s money, exposure, standards, respect or something else?

Compete in men’s sports.

And women have the opportunity. Golfers Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie have received “sponsor’s exemptions” to play in PGA (men’s) events. Women have tried out for the NBA and have attempted to work their way up to baseball’s major leagues through the farm system. The door, Ms. Allaster, is open — you just have to be ready, willing and, most importantly, able to walk through it.

The point is this: It’s silly and hypocritical to lobby for equality within an inherently unequal system while simultaneously supporting that system. And if you do, do you really believe in equality in principle? Or only as ploy?

To arbitrarily say that female athletes should earn the same as male ones is like saying that lightweight boxers should have the same purses as heavyweights. It’s like saying the best handicapped “differently abled” athletes (as in the Special Olympics) should not only get paid, but they should earn the same as the able-bodied. And what of elite high-school athletes? The mile record for 15-year-old boys is better than the women’s world record, and the boys’ American high-school record is considerably better. And with some variation, these gaps hold across sports, yet most of these hard-working male athletes will never succeed in the men’s professional ranks and will never earn even what the women do. Should these young sportsmen not only be paid but be compensated as handsomely as the pros?

The answer is simple: If the market — which is just economic democracy expressed through purchasing decisions — valued events for the handicapped or juniors as highly as it does professional men’s sports, those arenas would command the same revenues. The same is true of women’s sports, of course, but in that case we’re expected to offer a special dispensation from the market forces that apply to anyone and everyone else. We’re also supposed to ignore professions in which women are paid more, such as modeling, in which 2013’s 10 top-earning female models commanded 10 times as much as their male counterparts.

Equality?

The reason why heavyweight boxers have always received more money and exposure (satisfied the market more) than lightweights is because the heavyweight world champion is the world champion. This is the same reason men’s professional sports command greater revenue and exposure than athletic arenas for juniors, the handicapped or collegians — or for women. The best male athletes are the best athletes. Other sports categories exist to provide other people with opportunities to compete, have fun and build character. They are not jobs programs.

The truth is that not just sport but all of nature’s and man’s world is a place defined by varying degrees of quality, not equality. This is no doubt why the Bible barely mentions the notion, except when referring to weights and measures. It’s also why I tend to doubt that anyone who has ever pondered equality deeply actually believes in it. It sure is a great rallying cry, though, when trying to overturn the status quo and institute a special-interest-group favoring system of inequality.

For this reason it actually would be beneficial to eliminate sex-specific categories in sports, let everyone compete together and allow the cream to rise to the top. After all, to use a twist on Lincoln’s observation about laws, the best way to eliminate a bad social movement is to apply its tenets strictly. If we actually had to live with the reality of “equality” instead of just its rhetoric, lobbying for equality might go out the window really, really fast.

Calico Discussed At The Google Camp

When the billionaire tech jet set decides to let down their hair, what do they talk about around the campfire? According to the New Your Times, “Google is sponsoring an elite conference this week at a golf resort in Sicily, with a guest list of chief executives, investors and celebrities, all of whom were invited to bring their families. On the agenda are high-minded discussions of global issues — along with relaxation by the Mediterranean Sea.” How quaint! . . . For the real scoop, Here’s What Went On At Google’s Exclusive Conference For The Rich And Famous In Sicily.

“Sicilian blogger Tony Siino talked to an attendee about what went on, and told Business Insider via email that the conference, dubbed “The Camp,” was three-days of intellectual discussions, relaxation, and sight-seeing.According to Siino’s source, morning discussions included a wide range of topics, including how to extend human life and the design of cities of the future.”

Reported by NBC local TV channel in the Bay Area has “guests include Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd C. Blankfein, executives from German and Spanish banks, Uber chief Travis Kalanick, Tesla boss Elon Musk, Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts and Snapchat boss Evan Spiegel. Also on hand is Ben Horowitz, venture capitalist with Marc Andreessen at make-or-break Silicon Valley fund Andreessen Horowitz.”

Spending quality time with the family between sessions in the next round of tech discoveries hardly seems to be the best use of time. Yet, time may well be the ultimate objective if you can uncover the mysteries of anti-aging research. Life Extension Magazine reports that Google Life Extension is investing in a venture called California Life Company, or Calico for short, and its goal is to extend human life by 20 to 100 years.

At this point, Google is being highly secretive about their plans for Calico. All Google would reveal is that Calico will focus “in particular on the challenge of aging and associated diseases.”

Calico could produce startlingly counterintuitive breakthroughs, as a result, of Google’s strengths in the following areas:

• Non-commercial dedication — rather than a focus on commercial marketing of mediocre drugs as pharmaceutical companies now do.
• Vast consumer access and core data-handling skills — with unprecedented data gathering, pattern-matching, and causal-relationship detection.
• Ability to attract the brightest minds — potentially preferring to work on life-and-death problems instead of cutesy apps and games.

Further speculation in an essay – How’s Google Dabbling in Health, Life, DNA, and Immortality? – cites areas of research has cutting-edge technology pushing the limits of the wheel of life itself.

“A CNN article listed a few common subjects, like cryonics (a process where the body is preserved in liquid nitrogen), cryotherapy (which exposes injured patients to very low temperatures for short periods of time), cloning and body part replacement, nanotechnology (deploying small robots to overcome the problem of incorrect DNA replication, one cause of aging), and even research into telomeres, the ends of a chromosome that protect cells against degradation.”

Hidden within a “feel good” sentiment behind the altruism to elevate the life span of the human race is an unconvincing skepticism. In an article like Google Wants You to Live 170 Years, just does not seem believable to a rational observer.

“What Google brings to the table is data. “Not just one set of data, multiple forms,” says Harry Glorikian, founder of life sciences consulting firm Scientia Advisors. “Search data, GPS data, all sorts of other pieces, electronic breadcrumbs that you produce all out there to get a picture of you.”This data could be paired with each person’s genome — a partial genome can be mapped today for $99 via 23andMe (another Google investment), but many are hoping a full genome will cost as much in the next few years.”

Even if such ambitious projections that life extension might become common-place for the masses, it does not guarantee that everyone will be a candidate for future “Camp” invitations. Google hardly needs to market the secrets of the gods in order to maintain or enhance their cash flow. The Globe and Mail describes the gathering, “Like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – an annual gathering of the elite at a snowy ski resort – the upstart conference from Google projects an aura of exclusivity. Its existence has not previously been disclosed.”

Following the example of other enigmatic elitist stratagems, “The Camp” shows no signs of a charitable motivation when the onion is peeled. Michael Downey in the account, Google Wants To Extend Your Life laments that not enough is being done to achieve the holy grail of Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth.

“Tragically, while the government spends over $3 billion annually on “health concerns” of the elderly, it operates on the assumption that aging is not a disease. Corporations lack the longer-term view needed. And extremely few of the world’s 1,426 billionaires, with a total net worth of $5.4 trillion, have included anti-aging research in their charities.”

Do you really believe that the beautiful people, much less, the corporatist return on assets crowd, or the great democracies of the planet are eager to share any medical, genetic or nanotech leap forwards with the chattel serfs? Attending boot camp for the peasants is quite different from rubbing elbows with these Nouveau riche Sicilian Dons in the global technocratic mafia. The blueblood patricians of the banksters’ families will enlighten their newly made men into the rules and ways of the global syndicate.

The Calico family franchise promises to be more alluring than the temporary ecstasy of a drug high. Most godless souls want to live forever, since rejecting an afterlife is automatic to such atheistic masters of the universe. Google has proven to be a “New Age” android. Hence, it is natural for apps, developed to manage the life cycle, become part of the smart set. The key question is will the source code become available to the masses, or will the elites maintain the restricted knowledge only for their devil witch coven.

Tired of Writing About Genocide? Then Write About FOOD!

OMG, I am so sick and tired of writing about American-sponsored neo-Nazis in the Ukraine, American-financed genocide in Gaza and American-backed ISIS murderers in Syria and Iraq.  Geez Louise.  It’s enough to make me sick!

But not sick enough to stop eating.

Even though women and children are starving in Gaza and refugees in Erbil are hunkering down in city parks and Ukrainian babies are being shot by swastika-waving skin-heads, I still gotta have three or four square meals a day.

And all the average American can say about this insane world situation is, “Where the freak is Erbil?”  It’s in northern Iraq, stupid.  “Oh yeah?  So where is Iraq?”  It’s that rat-hole where three trillion of your tax dollars have been pounded down in the last 20 years.  Iraq is the reason you have no jobs, no infrastructure, no schools — and no solar heating.  

“But what’s a Gaza?”  Huh?

“It’s that charnel house in Palestine where Netanyahu practices being a fascist.”

“Who is Netanyahu?”  He’s that guy in Israel that you pay billions of dollars to every year so he can commit genocide.  Oh, good grief.

I need comfort food!  Now!

Forget about genocide and dead babies.  Let’s talk about sushi!  And mac ‘n’ cheese.  What is your favorite food?  I think mine is ice cream.  But I’m not sure.  Chocolate cake sounds good too.  

I once ate a beef stroganoff MRE in the Green Zone.  It was delicious.  And they had deep-fried tarantulas on offer at a roadside stall in Cambodia.  Yummers!  

Got caught in a massive five-day storm off of Antarctica one time and popped Dramamine like it was candy — but still managed to eat. 

Was stuck in Shenyang, China, for three weeks while waiting for my visa to North Korea to come through.  Thirteen million people in that city and only ten of them spoke English.  So I just drew a picture of a chicken and showed it to waiters.  That worked fine until one waiter brought me a live chicken.  Er, no.

And about a year later, when I finally did manage to get into North Korea, it was amazing to discover that Pyongyang featured luxury hotels, casinos, golf courses and elaborate 150,000-person choreographed mass games, all geared toward European tourists — who came in droves.  The food there, however, was on the level of mediocre California Chinese take-out — but I still felt guilty eating it, knowing how many North Koreans had starved to death in the past.

In Uganda, a young girl was selling homemade flour-and-grease chapatis on the street that were so good that I still dream about them.  “What’s a chapati?”  Oh shut up.

The hummus and matzos in Israel/Palestine were great, served under an olive tree in Hebron.  Loved Bethlehem and old Jerusalem — but why do people still keep accusing me of being anti-Semitic when I’m actually only anti-fascist and anti-apartheid?  I just don’t understand.  As Barb Weir is always fond of saying, “How come they never accuse the brave people who fought against apartheid in South Africa of being anti-white?”

On the beach in Yelapa, Mexico, an hour’s boat-ride south of Puerto Vallarta, friendly ladies will sell you lemon meringue pie right there on the beach.  But now you don’t even have to go to Yelapa to get it, you can buy lemon meringue pie right there in Puerto Vallarta.  Definitely worth the flight down if you can afford it — and if you can’t, there’s always the chocolate cream pie at the Sweet Adeline bakeshop here in Berkeley.  

In Motswedi, in northern South Africa, their potato fries are the best.  Just ask for Mma Peter if you go there.  Everyone knows her.  And give her a big hug from me if you do.

In Damascus, the oldest city in the world (I think), they had fabulous ice cream for sale in the souk.  That’s ICE cream, not ISIS cream.  If it had been ISIS cream, I wouldn’t have had to pay for it myself — Congress woulda footed the bill.

In al Anbar province, Iraq, I accompanied a U.S. Marine colonel and his staff to a “goat pull” thrown by the local sheik.  You gotta love goat meat.  But now that whole area is overrun by ISIS thugs, thanks to Bush, Obama and Hillary Clinton and their grand competition to see who can destabilize the Middle East best.

At a sidewalk cafe in Cairo, a waiter jokingly offered me 200 camels for my daughter Ashley’s hand in marriage.  At least I think he was joking.  And in the Caliphate of Saudi Arabia, biological mother to ISIS and Al Qaeda (America’s military-industrial complex is the father, but insists on keeping that fact on the down-low), I lived on KFC and Cinnabons at a high-end mall in Mecca.

In Haiti, you just gotta love their pumpkin soup.  In Afghanistan, their chicken kebobs were the best — unlike in Iran, where the kebobs tended to be rather dry.  Burma offered up excellent hand-made noodles.  Argentina had empanadas and beef.  Berkeley has the Berkeley Bowl, best produce store in the world.

I love food!  I love to eat!

So why do I keep thinking about all those poor starving children in Gaza and those poor slaughtered babies in Syria and Ukraine — thanks to the Yankee dollar?

Our Population Growth Totalitarian Future

As the world explodes in violence, war, riots, and uprisings, it is challenging to step back and examine the bigger picture. With airliners being shot down over the Ukraine, missiles flying between Israel and Gaza, ongoing civil war in Syria, Iraq falling apart as ISIS gains ground, dictatorship crackdown in Egypt, Turkey on the verge of revolution, Iran gaining control of Iraq, Saudi Arabia fomenting violence, Africa dissolving into chaos, South America imploding and sending their children across our purposely porous southern border, Mexico under the control of drug lords, China experiencing a slow motion real estate collapse, Japan experiencing their third decade of Keynesian failure, facing a demographic nightmare scenario while being slowly poisoned by radiation, and Chinese-Japanese relations moving towards World War II levels, it is easy to get lost in the day to day minutia of history in the making.

Why is this happening at this point in history? Why is the average American economically worse off today than they were at the height of the economic crisis in 2009? Why is the Cold War returning with a vengeance? Why is the Federal Reserve still employing emergency monetary policies when we are supposedly five years into a recovery and the stock market has attained record highs? Why do the ECB and European politicians continue to paper over the insolvency of their banks and governments? Why did the U.S. support the ouster of a dictator we supported for decades in Egypt and then support the elevation of a new dictator after we didn’t like the policies of the democratically elected president? Why did the U.S. eliminate the leader of Libya and allow the country to descend into anarchy and civil war? Why did the U.S. fund and provoke a revolutionary overthrow of a democratically elected leader in the Ukraine? Why did the U.S. fund and arm Al Qaeda associated rebels in Syria who are now fighting our supposed allies in Iraq? Why has the U.S. been occupying Afghanistan for the last thirteen years with the result being a Taliban that is stronger than ever? Why are the BRIC countries forming a monetary union to challenge USD domination? Why is the U.S. attempting to provoke Russia into a conflict with NATO?

Why is the U.S. government collecting every electronic communication made by every American? Why is the U.S. government spying on world leader allies? Why is the U.S. government providing military equipment to local police forces? Why is the U.S. military conducting training exercises within U.S. cities? Why is the U.S. government attempting to restrict Second Amendment rights? Why is the U.S. government attempting to control and lockdown the internet? Why has the U.S. government chosen to treat the Fourth Amendment as if it is obsolete? Why is the national debt still rising by $750 billion per year ($2 billion per day) if the economy is back to normal? Why have 12 million working age Americans left the workforce since the economic recovery began? How could the unemployment rate be back at 2008 levels when there are 14 million more working age Americans and the same number employed as in 2008? Why are there 13 million more people on food stamps today than there were at the start of the economic recovery in 2009? Why have home prices risen by 25% since 2012 when mortgage applications have been at fourteen year lows? Why are Wall Street profits and bonuses at record highs while the real median household income stagnates at 1998 levels?

Why do 98% of incumbent politicians get re-elected when congressional approval levels are lower than whale shit? Why are oil prices four times higher than they were in 2003 if the U.S. is supposedly on the verge of energy independence? Why do the corporate controlled mainstream media choose to entertain and regurgitate government propaganda rather than inform, investigate and seek the truth? Why do corporations and shadowy billionaires control the politicians, media, judges, and financial system in their ravenous quest for more riches? Why has the public allowed a privately owned bank to control our currency and inflate away 96% of its value in 100 years? Why have American parents allowed their children to be programmed and dumbed down by government run public schools? Why have Americans allowed themselves to be lured into debt in an effort to appear wealthy and successful? Why have Americans permitted their brains to atrophy through massive doses of social media, reality TV, iGadget addiction, and a cultural environment of techno-narcissism? Why have Americans lost their desire to read, think critically, question authority, act responsibly, defer gratification, and care about future generations? Why have Americans sacrificed their freedoms, liberties and rights for the false expectation of safety and security? Why will we pay dearly for our delusional, materialistic, debt financed idiocy? – Because we never learn the lessons of history.

There are so many questions and no truthful answers forthcoming from those who pass for leaders in this increasingly totalitarian world. Our willful ignorance, apathy, hubris and arrogance will have consequences. Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. The cyclicality of history guarantees a further deepening of this Crisis. The world has evolved from totalitarian hegemony to republican liberty and regressed back to totalitarianism throughout the centuries. Anyone honestly assessing the current state of the world and our country would unequivocally conclude we have regressed back towards a totalitarian regime where a small cabal of powerful oligarchs believes they can control and manipulate the masses in their gluttonous desire for treasure. Aldous Huxley foretold all the indicators of a world descending into totalitarianism due to overpopulation, propaganda, brainwashing, consumerism, and dumbing down of a distracted populace in his 1958 reassessment of his 1931 novel Brave New World.

Is There a Limit?

“At the rate of increase prevailing between the birth of Christ and the death of Queen Elizabeth I, it took sixteen centuries for the population of the earth to double. At the present rate it will double in less than half a century. And this fantastically rapid doubling of our numbers will be taking place on a planet whose most desirable and pro­ductive areas are already densely populated, whose soils are being eroded by the frantic efforts of bad farmers to raise more food, and whose easily available mineral capital is being squandered with the reckless extravagance of a drunken sailor getting rid of his accumulated pay.” –Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

Demographics are easy to extrapolate and arrive at an accurate prediction, as long as the existing conditions and trends remain relatively constant. Huxley was accurate in his doubling prediction. The world population was 2.9 billion in 1958. It only took 39 years to double again to 5.8 billion in 1997. It has grown by 24% in the last 17 years to the current level of 7.2 billion. According to United Nations projections, world population is projected to reach 9.6 billion in 2050. The fact that it would take approximately 70 years for the world’s population to double from the 1997 level reveals a slowing growth rate, as the death rate in many developed countries surpasses their birth rate. The population of the U.S. grew from 175 million in 1958 to 320 million today, an 83% increase in 56 years.

The rapid population growth over the last century from approximately 1.8 billion in 1914, despite two horrific world wars, is attributable to cheap, easy to access oil and advances in medical technology made possible by access to cheap oil. The projection of 9.6 billion in 2050 is based upon an assumption the world’s energy, food and water resources can sustain that many people, no world wars kill a few hundred million people, no incurable diseases spread across the globe and there is no catastrophic geologic, climate, or planetary events. I’ll take the under on the 9.6 billion.

Anyone viewing the increasingly violent world situation without bias can already see the strain that overpopulation has created. Today, six countries contain half the world’s population.

A cursory examination of population trends around the world provides a frightening glimpse into a totalitarian future marked by vicious resource wars, violent upheaval and starvation for millions. India, a country one third the size of the United States, has four times the population of the United States. A vast swath of the population lives in poverty and squalor. India contains the largest concentration (25%) of people living below the World Bank’s international poverty line of $1.25 per day. According to the U.N. India is expected to add 400 million people to its cities by 2050. Its capital city Delhi already ranks as the second largest in the world, with 25 million inhabitants. The city has more than doubled in size since 1990. The assumptions in these U.N. projections are flawed. Without rapidly expanding economic growth, capital formation and energy resources, the ability to employ, house, feed, clothe, transport, and sustain 400 million more people will be impossible. Disease, starvation, civil unrest, war and a totalitarian government would be the result. With its mortal enemy Pakistan, already the sixth most populated country in the world, jamming 182 million people into an area one quarter the size of India and one twelfth the size of the U.S. and growing faster than India, war over resources and space will be inevitable. And both countries have nuclear arms.

More than half the globe’s inhabitants now live in urban areas, with China, India and Nigeria forecast to see the most urban growth over the next 30 years. Twenty-four years ago, there were 10 megacities with populations pushing above the 10 million mark. Today, there are 28 megacities with areas of developing nations seeing faster growth: 16 in Asia, 4 in Latin America, 3 in Africa, 3 in Europe and 2 in North America. The world is expected to have 41 sprawling megacities over the next few decades with developing nations representing the majority of that growth. Today, Tokyo, with 38 million people, is the largest in the world, followed by New Delhi, Jakarta, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Manila, and Karachi – all exceeding 20 million people.

To highlight the rapid population growth of the developing world, the New York metropolitan area containing 18 million people was ranked as the third largest urban area in the world in 1990. Today it is ranked ninth and is expected to be ranked fourteenth by 2030. The U.S. had the fewest births since 1998 last year at 3.95 million. We also had the highest recorded deaths in history at 2.54 million.  The fertility rate for 20- to 24-year-olds is now 83.1 births per 1,000 women, a record low. That combination created a gap in births over deaths that is the lowest it has been in 35 years.

This is the plight of the developed world (U.S., Europe, Japan) and even China (due to one child policy). According to the U.N. report, the population of developed regions will remain largely unchanged at around 1.3 billion from now until 2050. In contrast, the 49 least developed countries are projected to double in size from around 900 million people in 2013 to 1.8 billion in 2050. The rapid growth of desperately poor third world countries like Nigeria, Afghanistan, Niger, Congo, Ethiopia, and Uganda will create tremendous strain on their economic, political, social, and infrastructural systems. Nigeria’s population is projected to surpass the U.S. by 2050. Japan, Europe and Russia are in demographic death spirals. China is neutral, and the U.S. is expected to grow by another 89 million people. I wonder how many of them the BLS will classify as not in the labor force.

What are the implications to mankind of the world adding another billion people in the next twelve years, primarily in the poorest countries of Asia, Africa and South America? What does the world think of the U.S., which constitutes 4.4% of the world’s population, but consumes 20% of the world’s oil production and 24% of the world’s food? Will there be consequences to having the 85 richest people on earth accumulating as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion, with 1.2 billion surviving on less than $1.25 per day? Can a planet with finite amount of easily accessible financially viable extractable resources support an ever increasing number of people? Is there a limit to growth? I believe these questions will be answered in the next fifteen years as the dire consequences play out in civil strife, resource wars, totalitarian regimes, and societal collapse.  cycles always sweep away the existing social order and replace it with something new. It could be better or far worse.

Impact of Over-Population

“The problem of rapidly increasing numbers in relation to natural resources, to social stability and to the well-being of individuals — this is now the central problem of mankind; and it will remain the central problem certainly for another century, and perhaps for several centuries thereafter. Unsolved, that problem will render insoluble all our other problems. Worse still, it will create conditions in which individual free­dom and the social decencies of the democratic way of life will become impossible, almost unthinkable. Not all dictatorships arise in the same way. There are many roads to Brave New World; but perhaps the straightest and the broadest of them is the road we are travel­ing today, the road that leads through gigantic num­bers and accelerating increases.” 

The turmoil roiling the world today is a function of Huxley’s supposition that over-population pushes societies towards centralization and ultimately totalitarianism. The relentless growth in the world’s population, not matched by growth in energy resources, water, food, and living space, results in increasing tension, anger, economic decline, government dependency, war and ultimately totalitarianism. Huxley believed politicians and governments would increasingly resort to propaganda and misinformation to mislead citizens as the problems worsened and freedoms were revoked. Could this recent statement by our commander and chief of propaganda have made Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels any prouder?

“The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.”

I’m sure the people living in Gaza, the Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Thailand, Turkey, Africa and American urban ghettos would concur with Obama’s less violent than ever mantra. Disease (Cholera, Malaria, Hepatitis, Aids, Tuberculosis, Ebola, Plague, SARS) and malnutrition beset third world countries, while the U.S. obesity epidemic caused by consumption of corporate processed food peddled to the masses through diabolical marketing methods enriches the mega-corporate food companies, as well as the corporate sick care complex. Religious wars and culture wars rage across the world as intolerance for others beliefs reaches all-time highs. After three decades of government controlled public education they have succeeded in dumbing down the masses through social engineering, propaganda, and promoting equality over excellence. Obama should stop trying to think and stick to what he does best – golf and fundraising. After reading his drivel, I’m reminded of a far more pertinent quote from Huxley:

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

The chart below details the fact that 12% of the world’s population in countries producing 9% of the world’s oil are currently in a state of war. The violence, war, and civil unrest roiling the Ukraine, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan are a direct result of U.S. meddling, instigation, and provocation. The U.S. government funds dictators (Hussein, Mubarak, Assad, Gaddafi) until they no longer serve their interests, engineer the overthrow of democratically elected leaders in countries (Iran, Egypt, Ukraine) that don’t toe the line, and dole out billions in military aid and arms to countries around the world in an effort to make them do our dirty work and enrich the military industrial complex. The true motivation behind most of the violence, intrigue and war is the U.S. need to maintain the U.S. petro-dollar hegemony and to control the flow of oil and natural gas throughout the world. The ruling oligarchy’s power, influence, and wealth are dependent upon dictating currency valuations and flow of oil and gas from foreign fiefdoms.

In Huxley’s 1931 Brave New World fable the world’s population is maintained at an optimum level (just under 2 billion) calculated by those in control. This is done through technology and biological manipulation. Procreation through sexual intercourse is prohibited. Creation of the desired number of people in each class is scientifically determined and the classes are conditioned from birth to fulfill their roles in society. When Huxley reassessed his novel in 1958’s Brave New World Revisited he didn’t argue for an optimum level of population. He simply hypothesized a close correlation between too many people, multiplying too rapidly, and the formulation of authoritarian philosophies and rise of totalitarian sys­tems of government.

The introduction of penicillin, DDT, and clean water into even the poorest countries on the planet had the effect of rapidly decreasing death rates around the globe. Meanwhile, birth rates continued to increase due to religious, social and cultural taboos surrounding birth control and the illiteracy and ignorance of those in the poorest regions of the world. The ultimate result has been an explosion in population growth in the developing world, least able to sustain that growth. Huxley just uses common sense in concluding that as an ever growing population presses more heavily upon accessible resources, the economic position of the society undergoing this ordeal becomes ever more precarious.

It essentially comes down to the laws of economics. Most of the developing world is economic basket cases. They cannot produce food, consumer goods, housing, schools, infrastructure, teachers, managers, scientists or educated workers at the same rate as their population growth. Therefore, it is impossible to improve the wretched conditions of the vast majority, as they wallow in squalor. Unless a country can produce more than it consumes, it cannot generate the surplus capital needed to invest in machinery, agricultural production, manufacturing facilities, and education. The rapidly growing population sinks further into poverty and despair. Huxley grasps the nefarious implications for freedom and liberty as over-population wreaks havoc around the globe:

“Whenever the economic life of a nation becomes pre­carious, the central government is forced to assume additional responsibilities for the general welfare. It must work out elaborate plans for dealing with a criti­cal situation; it must impose ever greater restrictions upon the activities of its subjects; and if, as is very likely, worsening economic conditions result in polit­ical unrest, or open rebellion, the central government must intervene to preserve public order and its own authority. More and more power is thus concentrated in the hands of the executives and their bureaucratic managers.”– Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

Despots, dictators, and power hungry presidents arise in an atmosphere of fear, scarce resources, hopelessness, and misery. As the power of the central government grows the freedoms, liberties and rights of the people are diminished and ultimately relinquished.

Source: The Millennium Report

Why I Hate Soccer

This article will be a departure from my usual fare. I will not claim there is some Absolute Truth deeming soccer the bane of humanity’s sports. I do not contend that some objective, divine standard places it in Dante’s ninth circle of athletic arenas, though I wish I could. Sport is a matter of taste, and, as G.K. Chesterton said (okay, so this isn’t a complete departure for me — I’m quoting Chesterton), “There are no uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people.” I get it. And I, I confess, like golf. So mock away. But in this piece I’ll ditch the Mr. Spock act, let my human side emote, may even contradict myself, and will say something.

I hate soccer.

I hear there’s something going on right now called the World Cup. I hear it’s in Brazil. I hear other pundits, such as Stephen Webb and Rick Moran, are commenting on it, taking opposing views. And I hear that the score between the two is 0-0 after 2000 words. But I won’t claim that soccer is un-American as did Webb or like Moran, claim it’s fun. I’ll say something truly intellectual.

I hate soccer.

When I grew up in the Bronx in the ‘70s, few played that infernal game. I was exposed to it, but could never relate. Why can’t I use my hands? I mean, I have hands. They’re remarkably dexterous appendages. They exist to manipulate all manner of things in the physical universe. I preferred tennis and ping pong to handball, sure, but that was understandable. The racquets and paddles are tools that facilitate the striking of a ball; with them you can achieve a degree of velocity and spin — which could curve the ball in fascinating ways — otherwise impossible. And velocity and spin are cool. It’s as if I need to pound a nail: I take my hand and pick up a hammer. I don’t use my foot.

That’s the crux of this entirely taste-oriented matter. It goes without saying that professional soccer players are highly skilled. But to me it’s like seeing those unfortunate double amputees who’ve learned to paint or play the piano with their toes. I say, “Wow, it’s amazing how man’s spirit can overcome.” Then I change the channel and look for something that can fill the hour’s remaining 59 minutes and 35 seconds.

So if soccer were in the Special Olympics, I’d understand it. Or maybe if it were played by birds. But why do human beings, with their particular anatomical configuration, want to use their feet for a task performed infinitely better by the hands? It’s no wonder the scoring in soccer tends to hover around Joe Biden I.Q. territory. How many baskets would be sunk in the NBA if the players had to kick the ball through the hoop, even if they could block only with their heads? How poor would the scores be in golf if you had to kick the ball down the fairway? A braggart may say, “I can beat you with one hand tied behind my back.” Soccer players try to beat each other with both tied.

Mr. Moran correctly pointed out that, contrary to Mr. Webb’s assumption, soccer is now tremendously popular in the US. I must attribute this, in part, to the influx of people from lands where they can’t afford to play much of anything but soccer. And while I’ve often “inveighed” against immigration, to use the word Rep. John Conyers (D-Soccer) did when citing my work upon waking up briefly in the House, our foreign soccer imports might be the best reason to rethink our immigration regime. “Do you play socc…er…fútbol, amigo?

Si?

See ya’.”

Check the deportation column.

Call it the Immigration and Recreation Reform Act of 2014. Entry into the US would be limited to those with a history of participation in polo or yacht racing.

So save those feet for what they were meant to do, such as kicking illegals out of the country, kicking Cantors out of office and kicking the economy into gear. A hand is a terrible thing to waste.

Michelle Obama In 1954

Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco — and Michelle Obama left her brain in 1954.

Addressing graduating high-school students the other day in the Topeka, Kansas, school district, the federal lunch lady said, referring to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, “[Y]our experience here in Topeka would have been unimaginable back in 1954….” And perhaps this is true.

It also would have been unimaginable back in 1554 or 954. After all, the institutions making that experience possible hadn’t been birthed yet.

You know, those institutions created by European/ European-descent civilization.

That civilization that Darth Vegan is tacitly impugning with her racial agitation.

The point is that if you’re going to talk about the past, don’t tendentiously cherry-pick it for destructive ideological purposes. It’s much as discussion about slavery. Not only is the focus always on the less than one percent of the history of slavery that was written in the US (it’s one of the world’s oldest institutions), but the most significant point is missed: Whites were not the first to practice slavery.

But they were the first to abolish it.

If some take offense at this, they can pound sand. I take offense at the constant derision aimed at my civilization by critics who should get down on their knees, kiss the ground trod by our ancestors and thank God for our civilization’s existence. Where else could effete ne’er do wells complain about injustice while living a life of silk, satin and Sidwell Friends and dining on Kobe beef?

Really, this all reminds me of how no good deed goes unpunished. This focus on a group’s sins to the exclusion of its triumphs is much like trying to epitomize a cracker-jack golfer by some of his three-putts while ignoring his many championships; it’s like condemning a great rocket engineer over a few failed trial launches and ignoring that he got you to the moon.

M. Obama also said to the students, “We know that today in America, too many folks are still stopped on the street because of the color of their skin….” This is absolutely true. Just this past Mother’s Day weekend a white family was stopped and beaten by a black mob because of the color of their skin.

Of course, these black-on-white racial attacks — already a frequent but largely unreported phenomenon — will only worsen with racial hustlers such as the Obamas peddling their “series of agreed-upon myths,” to use Napoleon’s characterization of history.

And this agitation has its effect. Just consider the testimonial Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, president of the Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny (BOND), gave about how race-hustling affected his attitude prior to his religious conversion. He said in a 2013 Los Angeles Times interview, “I believed the lie that because I was black, I wasn’t going to be able to make it because of the white man…. I was listening to people like Jackson and Louis Farrakhan…. He talked about the blue-eyed devil, and I believed him. I started hating white people.” And since most people don’t experience religious conversions, what’s the result of this brainwashing?

It’s that now, “not all but most black people are so racist toward white people,” Peterson explained.

And this explains the Obamas. They are obsessed with race.

Obsessed.

And what, America, did you expect when electing a far-left, radical, black-liberation-theology-church-attending, Marxist-leaning, terrorist-consorting ex-socialist-party member who cut his political teeth in the Chicago machine? Mr. Smith goes to Washington?

Well, it was actually Uncle Sam goes to Hell.

Saving Civilization Means Killing Equality

If a famine befell us and you couldn’t save everyone, would you withhold the food you had and let every citizen starve rather than endure the inequality of just saving some? If recent history is any guide, certain leftists just might say yes.

A good example of this phenomenon involved a multiple sclerosis patient in Gothenburg, Sweden, who was denied a more effective and expensive medication — even though he was willing to pay for it — because, wrote columnist Walter Williams in 2009, “bureaucrats said it would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine.” No wonder Winston Churchill said that socialism’s “inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

And another example just reared its ugly head in Plymouth, Michigan, where the locality’s high school is tearing down newly constructed bleachers in deference to the equality police. MyFoxDetroit.com reports on the issue, writing:

A new set of seating is being torn down outside the Plymouth Wildcats varsity boys’ baseball field, not long before the season begins, because the fields for boys’ and girls’ athletics must be equal.

A group of parents raised money for a raised seating deck by the field, as it was hard to see the games through a chain-link fence. The parents even did the installation themselves, and also paid for a new scoreboard.

So what happened? Some unnamed malcontent lodged a complaint with the feral government, at which point U.S Education Department Office for Civil Rights overlords decreed that the seating must go. Ain’t equality grand?

Except that equality is simply a ruse. And think about it with respect to this issue: the principle is that facilities “for boys’ and girls’ athletics must be equal,” but are boys’ and girls’ athletics equal? The striking contradiction in these male/female sports equality controversies is that calls for “equality” are deferred to within the context of the acceptance and promotion of an inherently unequal system. That is to say, if equality is the guiding principle here, why have separate leagues, teams and tours — protected from the best competition — for girls and women?

The solution, whether it’s the Plymouth situation or calls for equal prize money in tennis, is simple. If a lightweight boxer wants the purses the heavyweights get, he needs to fight and succeed in the heavyweight class; likewise, if feminists want what the boys/men have, they should try to compete in their arena. And I do advocate this: eliminate separate categories for women, and let the sexes compete together on a level playing field. After all, to echo what Lincoln said about laws, the best way to eliminate bad social policy is to enforce it strictly. If you believe in equality, practice it.

Live it.

And live with it.

And since the boys’ American high-school mile record is considerably faster than the women’s world record — and since this gap appears, with some variation, across sports — my proposal would provide some necessary “policy clarification.”

The education department’s decree is also an attack on charity. The message is that pursuing good works just might be a waste of time because, inevitably, they’ll conflict with some government regulation or mandate. It’s in addition a quasi-Marxist assault on the market. After all, the Plymouth community’s interest in building new baseball bleachers was no doubt driven by there being greater fan turnout for the boys’ games. And the market renders such verdicts all the time. It’s said that female fashion models earn three times what their male counterparts do, bars may offer women free drinks or entry without a cover charge, and no one troubles over women-only health clubs. It’s only when market determinations seem to benefit boys or men that the equality ruse is trotted out.

The truth is that equality dogma is a fiction of modern times. As for the timeless, the word “equality” appears in only 21 biblical verses, mostly referring to matters such as weights and measures. There’s good reason for this, and don’t blame it on the supposed “backwardness” of religion because a devout evolutionist would have to be the staunchest believer in hierarchies born of natural inequality. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, “[I]f they [people] were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal.” Look around you at the world of nature and man, which, if the evolutionists are correct, are certainly one and the same. How much equality do you see? Rams butt heads, and one ram wins and the other loses; wolves have alphas and one male lion dominates and leads a pride. Then, there are 3.1 billion possible combinations when a couple has a child. And, oh, what combinations they can be. How many of us can play golf like Tiger Woods, defy gravity and shoot baskets like Michael Jordan or compose music at four years of age as did Mozart? People have greatly varying IQs, physical capabilities, personalities, inclinations toward virtue and gifts. Equality is a pipe dream.

This variation exists among groups, too. Ashkenazi Jews have the world’s highest average IQ, while Asians enjoy that status insofar as major groups go. And disease and conditions have no regard for equality, either: the Pima Indians have the highest rate of diabetes on Earth, breast cancer afflicts mainly women, the incidence of Tay-Sachs disease is highest among Jews, black men suffer from prostate cancer at twice the rate whites do, while sickle-cell anemia is found almost exclusively among blacks. I guess reality is “racist.”

Reality is actually this: it’s completely illogical and contradictory for a person to claim on one hand that he believes in classical, cosmic-accident evolution, but on the other that all groups somehow, quite accidentally, wound up the same in capacity, inclination and worldly abilities. After all, since evolution holds that groups lived and developed separately for millions of years — subject to different environments, stresses, adaptive requirements and to the luck of the draw — their winding up “equal” was, for all intents and purposes, a mathematical impossibility.

Earlier evolutionists recognized and accepted this reality, mind you, and in fact became eugenicists. Note here that the term “eugenics” was coined by Charles Darwin’s cousin Sir Francis Galton. Also note that the concept greatly predates the term: Greek philosopher Plato advocated murdering weak children, and the Spartans had actually done it.

This doesn’t mean I embrace eugenics or classical evolution (my views on the latter are found here). The point is that whether you believe we’re accidentally different or that, as St. Therese learned, there are even divinely ordained hierarchies in Heaven, equality is certainly not a thing of this world.

This helps explain why entities prescribing “equality” — such as the early French republic and all the Marxist killing-field regimes — become the worst tyrannies. Since equality is wholly unnatural, its mullahs must violate man’s nature, must trump it and twist it, in an effort to pound their sinister square peg into the round hole of reality. And woe betide he who defies their self-deified will.

Cries for equality are today the second-to-last refuge of a scoundrel (shouts of “racism” are the absolute last). Contrary to what Churchill said, however, they don’t actually visit upon us an equal sharing of misery. Rather, the pigs more equal than others will dispense the ever-diminishing pork to the peons, as they feed at the trough of modern man’s sloth, envy and error.

Why Obama Is Uneducated

A few years ago I participated in a radio debate on “white privilege” with a certain man, whose name is unimportant, who had a Ph.D. in “ethnic studies.” At one point he introduced an argument by saying, “If whites are 80 percent of the population…,” which prompted me to interject and point out that whites (non-Hispanic) are now only 63 percent of America. Of course, you might think that someone with a doctorate in “ethnic studies” would know what the ethnic and racial composition of the country is.

While no one wants to be a real-life Cliff Clavin (of Cheers ), mistaking trivia for intellectualism, facts matter because they’re small snippets of reality. They’re little pictures — and, as with a jigsaw puzzle — if you have enough of them, assembled properly, you can see the big picture. This is otherwise known as being in touch with reality.

This is why a certain trend in that liberal bastion called education is quite interesting. Educators will often say today, “We don’t just teach kids facts [uttered dripping with derision]; we teach them how to think.” This is quite convenient. After all, it’s easy to test knowledge of facts; thus, such measures can reveal modern education as a fraudulent enterprise. But “how to think” is a bit more nebulous, and, if you define the expression of feelings-derived folderol as reason, your students cannot fail.

Yet there is a deeper reason why liberals eschew facts: they refute fiction. And since leftist agendas have no basis in reality, exposure to snippets of it is deadly; for, just as one small pin can pop a balloon, one little fact can shatter a rationalization.

This brings us back to Dr. Ethnic Studies. His field of expertise isn’t about anything as old-fashioned as facts, but he can expound at length on oppression, white privilege, critical-race theory and “micro-aggressions.” These things, you see, are the stuff of sophisticated modern men. Never mind that they’re complete fiction.

But liberals are raised on fiction. Fiction about America’s nature and Western influence; fiction about the races and sexes (not to mention “genders”), and fiction about sex; fiction about history and culture; fiction about economics; fiction about religion. Heck, with how liberals claim old fairy tales are destructive, they’re raised with fiction about fiction. This brings us to another fiction: Barack Obama as educated man.

If we were to mention, again, that he thought “Austrian” was spoken in Austria, pronounced “corpsman” “corpse-man” (three times in one speech) or that he called the “transcontinental” railroad the “intercontinental” one (Amtrak to Bangkok, anyone?), we’d obviously have to be racists. After all, anyone can make a mistake. But it’s one thing to commit a Spoonerism and say “a scoop of boy trouts” or, like Dan Quayle, correct a spelling-bee participant based upon the antiquated word form “potatoe” (which The New York Times used as recently as 1988). But then there are those mistakes indicating that, just perhaps, you don’t really possess the knowledge base one might expect from an educated Western gentleman.

And a fact about Obama’s upbringing is that it was defined by fiction. Clergyman Hosea Ballou said, “Education commences at the mother’s knee…,” but not only was Obama’s mother’s knee not around all the time, but what an odd knee it was. Her father had given her his first name, Stanley, because he’d wanted a boy, and Stanley Ann Dunham’s personal development reflected that bizarre beginning. She attended Mercer Island High in Seattle, which had a wing known as “anarchy alley” that was infested with radical leftist teachers. It is said that Dunham “thrived” in that atmosphere, and she became a committed left-wing atheist herself. Then there was Obama’s mentor in Hawaii, Frank Marshall Davis, a pornographic-novel writer and anti-white, card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA. And how radical were Obama’s leftist grandparents, with whom he lived in the AlohaState? Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, was the one who chose Davis to be scrambler of young Barry’s brains.

The point is that there was no prominent person in the young Obama’s life who could or would expose him to reality. It was all anti-American, anti-Western isms and destructive schism. This brings us to Obama’s mind-numbingly ridiculous of his 2008 campaign travels: “I’ve now been in 57 states; I think, one left to go.” Where does such a bizarre mistake come from? After all, that there are 50 states is drummed into every American child so that it just instinctively rolls off the tongue: 50 states, 50 states, 50 states….

That is, again, every “American child.”

It’s not that I don’t think Obama knew there are 50 states. Rather, he doesn’t have the intellectual foundation you’d expect of an educated Western man, and this includes a lack of the rote knowledge that, like an actor who has spoken a certain line in 500 rehearsals and performances, is expressed the same way every time. And this, by the way, has nothing to do with where anyone thinks Obama was born. He simply is not truly American in mind, heart and spirit.

But to fully grasp the nature of leftists’ ignorance, an understanding of their philosophical foundation is necessary. There is a certain experience many conservatives know very well: You debate a liberal, and he just seems immune to facts and reason. No matter how airtight your point, it rolls off him like water off a duck.

To explain this, let’s start with an analogy. Becoming proficient at golf involves gaining knowledge about the swing. And if you realize you’ve fallen victim to a misconception, improvement depends upon rejecting it and accepting the truth in question. But what if you were so bent on using your old swing — so attached to “hackerism” — that you simply would not accept that truth? A pustule on the face of the game you’d remain.

So it is in all of life. Everyone falls victim to certain misconceptions, and growing in knowledge and wisdom involves rejecting them when we’re blessed enough to discover refutative truths. But this can be difficult for two reasons. First, it may involve relinquishing ideas to which we’re strongly attached. This could be because they’re integral pieces of an incorrect jigsaw puzzle we’ve glommed onto, an example of which would be a committed atheist who insists there are no moral absolutes because he knows their existence implies God’s. Or it could be that an incorrect belief is embraced as a justification for a behavior (e.g., sexual perversion, heavy drinking) to which we’re attached. Or it could be both.

Second, pride can get in the way, as correcting oneself involves admitting error, often with respect to ideas we’ve spent an entire lifetime defending. It can be like giving up a cherished son.

And while most everyone exhibits to some degree this tendency to rationalize, leftists are defined by it. They are, to use a favored psycho-babble term, morally and philosophically “dysfunctional” people. They live lives of rationalization — which is when you lie to yourself, sell yourself on a fiction — and for this reason only intensify whatever dislocation from reality their upbringing, sometimes, might have wrought.

Their greatest act of self-delusion — their ultimate denial of reality and the one that facilitates all others — is their embrace of moral relativism, the idea that there are no moral absolutes. The appeal of this fiction is that it allows one to justify any behavior imaginable. After all, my sins are not sins if there’s no vice, only viewpoint. Who is to judge? Who is to say? There’s no black and white, only gray.

But once you unmoor yourself from objective moral reality, there is no limit to how immoral you can become. This is why Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov said that without God, “everything is permitted.” It’s why occultist Aleister Crowley insisted, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” And it explains leftists’ bizarre thinking. Did you ever wonder, for instance, how modern liberals can say something so preposterous as “The truth is no defense against a hate-speech charge”? It’s not hard to understand.

When a person who lives a sincere life finds that part of his ideology conflicts with the Truth, he alters his ideology. But what if you not only were attached to your ideology like a drunkard to drink, but didn’t acknowledge Truth’s existence? It is then that you, instead, rationalize away the Truth.

In fact, with his denial of Truth, the leftist places his ideology where Truth should be: the center of his life. This ideology, which just reflects his emotions, anyway, then takes on the role of God. It becomes the ultimate arbiter, the fiction that becomes “fact.” This is why Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels once said, “National Socialism is a religion. …My Party is my church….” Like him, today’s leftists have repeated a big lie to themselves so often that it has become the “truth.”

Interestingly, or maybe ominously, the Bible speaks of the end times in 2 Timothy 3 and writes of “men of depraved minds” who are “always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.” I don’t know if these are the last days, or just the last days of freedom, but our republic is now infested with millions of fiction voters who elected a fiction president based on fairy-tale promises. And it’s looking less and less like our story ends with “happily ever after.”

Greed + Cartels = US Sickcare/ObamaCare

Sickcare/ObamaCare is fundamentally broken at every level.

The incremental nature of change makes it difficult for us to notice how systems that once worked well with modest costs have transmogrified into broken systems that cost a fortune. Exhibit # 1 is higher education: 40 years ago, four-year public universities were affordable and two-year community colleges were almost free. Now students have to borrow $1 trillion to pay for the exorbitant privilege of higher education.

And no, the difference isn’t that states don’t provide the same funding–the difference is costs have soared while the yield on the investment has plummeted. Please read:

The Mafia State of Mind

Our Two Most Onerous Taxes: College Tuition and Healthcare Insurance

Our Middleman-Skimming Economy

America’s Make-Work Sectors (Healthcare and Higher Education) Have Run Out of Oxygen

Longtime correspondent Ishabaka (an M.D. with 30+ years experience in primary care and as an emergency room physician) responded to this article with an insider’s account of what happens when greed and cartels take over healthcare.After reading What’s wrong with American hospitals?, a scathing deconstruction of for-profit healthcare, Ishabaka submitted this commentary:

I could have told you what was wrong with our hospital system by 1989 – nobody would listen to me back then.

Up til the ’70’s, almost all hospitals in the United States were not for profit COMMUNITY HOSPITALS. They were LOCAL. The Board of Directors was made up of some senior doctors, maybe the head nurse, and various other prominent local businessmen and professionals. Others (mostly Catholic), were run as non-profits by religious orders. A very few, mostly very small hospitals were for profit, usually owned by a group of doctors, or even one doctor.

The mission of these community hospitals was to provide for the LOCAL COMMUNITY – one and all. Payment was various – private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, self pay – and the idea was to collect just enough money to keep the hospital going, and provide care for the poor who had no money to pay. If your grandma got bad care – you could go – in person – to the local, say, banker, on the Board of Directors, and tell him – and he would CARE.

THIS SYSTEM WORKED, and kept costs DOWN. Remember, the hospital just needed enough money to stay in the black. Often local wealthy people would will money to the hospital in which they had been cared for.

In the ’80’s – there was the arrival of the for-profit cartels – and I use the world cartels specifically – these were run by people with the sociopathic Goldman Sachs type mentality – their sole goal was to acquire huge sums of money for themselves, their hospital directors, and their SHAREHOLDERS. They used a typical sneaky technique – they’d come into town, and tell the locals they could run the hospital much cheaper, because of their economy of scale. People believed this, and the cartels bought out most of the community hospitals.

I worked at one such for-profit hospital and had a 21-year old indigent man come in who’d been struck by a car while walking, and was rapidly bleeding to death. The hospital administrator refused to open the operating room, even though I had a surgeon right there, willing and able to operate for free to save this young man’s life. The surgeon threw a fit, and he was a big wheel at the hospital and the administrator backed down – otherwise I firmly believe the young man would have died. This was LEGAL back then, before the EMTLA law was passed because similar abuses were rampant NATIONWIDE.

Around this time, the administrators of the remaining community hospitals found out the administrators of the for-profit hospitals were making tens of times their salaries – and bonuses based on profits – and started demanding similar salaries and bonuses based on PROFITS – a contradiction of the old concept of community hospitals (the article does touch on this).

How do you increase hospital profits? Number one – avoid any care for the poor you can weasel out of. Number two – cut staff to the bone and beyond (one of hospital’s biggest expenses). Most American hospitals now have UNSAFE nurse to patient ratios because of this.

As far as patient care goes, nurses are the most important people in hospitals. I know of one lady who DIED while in a monitored bed, and wasn’t found dead until several hours later due to the criminally low nursing staff ratio in a hospital I worked in. I HAD complained about the dearth of nurses, and was threatened with the loss of my job. Another side effect of this is, nursing in hospitals has become unbearable for nurses who really cared about their patients – many good hospital nurses have left hospital work for other fields. The results are appalling.

I saved the life of a patient an unqualified, under-educated nurse gave the wrong medicine to – a medicine that IMMEDIATELY MAKES YOU STOP BREATHING, because it was cheaper for the hospital to hire her than a knowledgeable and experienced nurse. The medicine is pancuronium bromide, if you want to Google it. The nurse didn’t know one of the effects was cessation of breathing – this is Pharmacology for Nurses 101, this drug is used all day long in every operating room in America (where doctors WANT patients under anesthesia to stop breathing, and put them on breathing machines during the surgery – which is very safe if done correctly).

I could go on and on. Simple things, like the instruments you use to suture cuts – community hospitals used to buy Swiss or German made ones that were of the finest quality, sterilize and re-use them over and over. This changed to disposable instruments that sometimes literally fell apart in my hands. Bandage tape that didn’t stick, instead of quality Johnson and Johnson tape – anything to save a buck.

It is not getting better, it is getting worse. The nurses I know tell me hospitals are cutting staff even MORE now in preparation for Obamacare.

I will end with a story that illustrates the difference between Old School and New School hospital administrators.

I had the pleasure of working five years in a real community hospital. One of the senior administrators (R.I.P.) was a gentleman who’d made his fortune in the grocery business. In his late 80’s, he would arrive at the emergency department entrance every morning between seven and eight am, and proceed to walk throughout the hospital. He would ask various and sundry staff how they were getting along – everyone from janitors to senior physicians. If something was amiss – HE RECTIFIED THE SITUATION. Tragically, this hospital was bought out, and is now part of a chain.

I had the displeasure of working in a “community” (really for-profit) hospital with a middle aged administrator who NEVER set foot outside his office or conference rooms – he NEVER appeared in the (very large and busy) emergency department once. This was in the early 90’s, and one year it was revealed that his compensation was $600,000 – and a brand new Lexus as a “performance bonus”. He was on the golf course by three pm every single day. That was the hospital where the woman who was being “monitored” (alarms and all that) was found very cold and dead after a delay of who knows how many hours.

Thank you, Ishabaka, for telling it like it really is. Needless to say, ObamaCare (the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act–ACA) purposefully ignores everything that is fundamentally broken with U.S. sickcare and extends the soaring-cost cartel system, essentially promising to stripmine the taxpayers of however many trillions of dollars are needed to generate outsized profits for the cartels.

Only those with no exposure to the real costs of ObamaCare approve of the current sickcare system. Government employees who have no idea how much their coverage costs, well-paid shills and toadies like Paul Krugman, academics with tenure and lifetime healthcare coverage–all these people swallow the fraud whole and declare it delicious.

Only those of us who are paying the real, unsubsidized cost know how unsustainable the system is, and only those inside the machine know how broken it is at every level. Greed + cartels = Sickcare/ObamaCare. Love your servitude, baby–it’s affordable, really, really, really it is.

Source: Blacklisted News

Ten Most Corrupt Politicians In Washington DC

Marriane Williamson, author of the book A Return to Love, announced this past fall her plan to run for Congress in the 33^rddistrict of California to stop the “Culture of Corruption” in our nation’s capital.

Without a doubt, deep, systemic corruption thrives in our U.S. Congress. It flourishes in our White House.  Thomas Jefferson, our third president, tried to pass term limits, but failed in the face of those who love power and expect to maintain it.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, released its 2013

List of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.”  , the list, in alphabetical order, includes:

•  Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH)
• CIA Director John Brennan
• Senator Saxby Chambliss
• Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
• Attorney General Eric Holder
• Former IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller / Former IRS Official Lois Lerner
• Former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano
• President Barack Obama
• Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)
• Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

Dishonorable Mentions for 2013 include:

• Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
• Outgoing Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) / Incoming Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D)
• Former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
• National Security Adviser Susan Rice

As a 27 year old staff attorney for the House Judiciary Committee, Ms. Hillary Clinton suffered firing by her supervisor, lifelong democrat Jerry Zeifman who said, “She is a liar. She was unethical and dishonest.  She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

If you remember the murders at the U.S. embassy in Benghazi that suffered a terrorist attack that killed four people, her reply, “What difference does it matter?”

Mr. Barack Obama continues his cover-up of his incompetence in fortifying the embassy and ignoring all calls for help.  Good men died because of malfeasance and ineptitude.

Let’s start with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH):

House Speaker John Boehner became a master at what Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer calls the “Tollbooth Strategy.” As Schweizer explains in his new book, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets:

“You pay money at a tollbooth in order to use a road or bridge. The methodology in Washington is similar: if someone wants a bill passed, charge them money to allow the bill to move down the legislative highway.”

According to Schweizer, Boehner used the “.  Reference:

Additionally, Boehner continues his blockade of the E-Verify Bill to force employers to check legal status of anyone seeking employment.  I suspect the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, up to its eyeballs in promoting illegal immigration cheap labor, paid big bucks to keep E-Verify from passing into law.  No doubt Marriott, Holiday Inn, Tyson Chicken, McDonald’s, Chipotle’s, Hormel, La Quinta, endless restaurant chains, construction, painting, landscape and other huge companies paid huge bribes to make sure they continue to hire illegal aliens rather than American citizens at a living wage.

Speaker Boehner does not stand-alone.

Attorney General Eric Holder lies so much, hides so much, aka, Fast and Furious, that he cannot tell the truth from a lie.

Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) makes the “Ten Worst” list for what he actually did in 2012, but which was finally exposed in 2013. Just as with House Speaker Boehner, Chambliss’s misdeeds were revealed in Peter Schweizer’s book, 

Judicial Watch said, “Chambliss is highlighted as one of the key abusers who used  to convert campaign cash into lavish lifestyle upgrades for themselves and their family members.

The  reported, “The book details the extravagant expenses of Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, for instance, whose leadership PAC spent $10,000 on golf at Pebble Beach, nearly $27,000 at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, and $107,752 at the exclusive Breakers resort in Palm Beach, Fla. The amount Mr. Chambliss spent at the Breakers in the 2012 election cycle, the book reports, is three times what the senator gave to the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the same period.”

Former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano may be one of the biggest liars of all. In August 2013 Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stepped down from her post with “pride and regret” stemming from her failure to help push through the so-called “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.” The truth: Napolitano played a major role in doing an end run around existing immigration law by helping President Obama implement his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) directive in lieu of DREAM Act passage.

 by Judicial Watch in June 2013 revealed that Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) “Abandoned required background checks in 2012, adopting, instead, costly “lean and lite” procedures in effort to keep up with the flood of amnesty applications resulting from the DACA directive.”

The granddaddy liar of them all: Barack Hussein Obama.

President Barack Obama actually tops this “Top Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list for 2013 as the driving force behind so many of the misdeeds.

This is Obama’s seventh straight year on the list, dating back all the way to 2007 (in 2006, he earned a “Dishonorable Mention”). He is a master at catch-me-if-you-can, corrupt politics.

“This year, he has again acted as a one-man Congress, rewriting entire sections of federal law on his own,” said Judicial Watch.  “Not only is his administration secretive and ; its callous disregard for the rule of law undermines our constitutional republic. Examples include:

Perhaps Obama’s most outrageous actions over the past year were his continual lies about the ability of Americans to keep their own health insurance under Obamacare. According the  Obama misled the American people a total of 36 times between 2008 and 2013 with his promise, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” And according to , Obama knew, even as he repeated his lie, that “more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.”

Let us not forget Nevada Senator Harry Reid and all the senators that voted for the S744 Amnesty Bill that legalizes 20 to 25 million illegal aliens.  They and he never stood up for enforcement of internal employment laws against employers of illegal aliens, or our borders, but they bend over for big business’ cheap labor interests—against American workers.

Last year, Harry Reid made the Judicial Watch Ten Worst list for his influence-peddling scandal involving ENN Energy Group, a Chinese “green energy” company for which Reid “” – and which happened to be a major client of the Nevada law firm in which Reid’s son, Rory, is a principal.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts totally.  As Marriane Williams said, “We face a culture of corruption” in Washington DC that works against the interests of all Americans—but we continue voting them back into their power positions to screw all of us.  Then we wonder why our country continues an 11-year useless war, $18 trillion debt, 14 million unemployed, 48 million subsisting on food stamps, endless immigration, falling wages and vanishing Middle Class.

Predictions for 2014

The Legend of “Nostradamus, Jr.” continues…

Most predictions about the future are risky attempts at guessing. If one is fortunate, they come across a clairvoyant, who has a long established record of forecasting political prospects. In the long tradition of prognostication, by the one and only, Nostradamus, Jr., William B. Kaliher presents his 2014 prophecy. The yearly feature on the EtherZone site produced a loyal following of eager future deprived junkies. Taking pleasure in continuing this esteem exercise in sarcasm, Stuck on Stupid offers commentary on a sample of these mystic omens, which can be found on “Nostradamus, Jr.” Kaliher’s Annual Top 101 Predictions for 2014

10. A new danger this year will be Progressive heads unexpectedly exploding. Study of the syndrome will reveal after mistakenly reading a reputable publication, damaged and unused synapses in Progressives will heal sufficiently to realize even after six years imitating a president, Obama’s resume and accomplishments still don’t measure up to superwoman Sarah Palin.

Such an admission that NeoCon Palin has more accomplishments means there is an antidote to government school brainwashing.

14. Communist Mijail Gorbachov will be recognized as more enlightened than Abraham Lincoln for allowing bullied states to secede.

The realization of self-determination impacts Europe, while still unknown in the Disunited States of Amerika.

18. The original Birthers, the Hillary Clinton camp, will feed more information to their front man Donald Trump to find the grave of the real Barry Bin Hussein Obama who was born dead.

When the CIA creates one of their own Manchurian Candidate’s they better use MI6 to forge the documents.

20. Quivering Chris “Fatty” Matthews, will admit the Obama administration is the most corrupt in American history, but insist Obama is so sexy it’s no wonder the media overlooked his failures.

MSNBC casting couch requires an interview with Bill Gates and a test of how far the Feeling and Thrill Goes up the Leg.

23. Facing questioning on her failures concerning the Benghazi disgrace America’s favorite crone, H. Rodham Clinton, will harken back to her infamous Selma days, and employ her “colored voice” in an effort to claim the Senators questioning her are racist.

When under attack the best defense is a rally of all the Boyz n da Hood.

25. Newt Gingrich will change parties and be re-elected to the House as a Congressman from New Jersey.

Closet DeomcoRATS strip off their GOP garb and get down to their real roots.

27. Eric Holder’s, of Fast & Furious shame, next false flag operation in Mexico will involve sending the drug cartels 15,000 automatic rifles as well as an undetermined amount of anti-personnel and anti-tank weaponry.

Preparing for the final invasion of the borders requires the deployment of the heavy infantry.

39. Progressives and their lackeys will fail to understand why Conservatives find it hilarious the anti-corporate Occupy Wall Street operation was underwritten by corporate offices on Wall Street.

The grunts that camp out to protest the international bankers are collecting their sustenance from debit cards.

44. Illegal alien and famed American clown, Barack Hussein Obama, will handle the Iranian nuclear crisis by sending Chicago Community Organizers, commanded by dingle-berry-eating Janeane Garofalo, to pow-wow with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Chicago outfit will make a deal that they can’t refuse. Just ship some of the same nuke fuel that previously went to Israel.

45. When Hillary Clinton finally sobers up and recovers from her, (ha-ha-hee-hee-hee), concussion to testify concerning the Benghazi disgrace, she will claim the failure was because her security man, Craig Livingston, of Filegate fame, wasn’t on the job.

The queen of mean never gets dirty when a Mr. Clean crew is on duty. In this case, they were in rehab.

46. Liberal/Progressive/Democrats will be so embarrassed over being played for fools and buying snake oil salesman Albert “Carbon Footprint” Gore’s “man-made Global Warming” farce; he will no longer feel safe in England.

Brits will disclose that Gore is the programmer of the NSA information leak that exposed the global warming hockey stick.

48. It will be revealed Chucky “Sanctimonious” Schumer, Democrat, N.Y., suffered bouts of depression because 193 fellow Progressives beat him for television face time to decry the second amendment before the blood dried after the Connecticut school shootings.

Schumer’s press agent gets him a booking on the spin off the biggest loser for “POLS”.

51. Chinese diplomats will defend North Korea and the sanity of former leader and world class golfer, Kim Jong Il and his son Kim Jong-un, explaining, “With Obama in office the Jong’s aren’t the craziest leaders around. They’re actually reasonable and stable in comparison.”

Jong addresses the UN and condemns Obama for crimes against humanity.

61. Obama will confuse opponents about the tax money his thirty-plus czars take from the poor via the public trough by naming Mijail Gorbachov as the first non-Marxist in the group.

Twitter posts the first news that an IPO is ready from the bankrupt TARP interests to refloat their operations.

65. Satan’s more evil son,108 year-old Nazi George Soros, will be given command of both Obama’s first armed FEMA brown-shirt graduates http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/10/federal-goverment-graduates-first-class-of-homeland-youths/ and their armored personnel detachment.

The neo-Stasi brigade infiltrates resisting neighborhood to enforce DNA collection.

71. Democrat Party fact-falsification operation, Snopes, will deny the media quit covering Darfur, homelessness, Club Gitmo and environmental problems after Mr. Obama’s election.

Politico and the Huffington Post win pulitzer prizes for blaming Bush for ongoing Obama decisions.

72. Caring Liberals, (are there any other kind?) will band together to discover what evil is preventing tax escape artist Warren Buffet, from voluntarily and patriotically paying more taxes.

Buffet announces that Berkshire Hathaway invested into underwriting the next cycle of Democrat candidates.

80. Progressives will quit their war on Christmas when new birth questions force Obama sycophants to claim Barry was born in a manger.

Valerie Jarrett heads up the acquisitions of the CTN, TBN and the TCT networks to facilitate an orderly transition into the Church of Obama.

87. The DNC will give a special award of merit to John Boehner for his work in passing Democrat legislation.

Boehner get a CNN gig now that Gingrich joined the Democratic Party.

92. By June over half the American population will think Vladimir Putin cares more about American democracy than the administration.

Inquiries begin to see if a foreign born can become U.S. President.

95. Joe Biden will refer to the Prez using the “N” word and fellow liberals will justify his racist remark by claiming Biden has grown in office.

Obama claims he has matured as a white in office and is now under attack by his former brothers.

96. Some liberal Democrats will be removed from management positions in the Republican National Committee.

The GOP big tent collapses as a failure.

100. Barry Obama will set new records funding Green companies, including Alaskan Palm Orchards, Ltd., Arizona Cactus From South Georgia Swampland, Inc., Sliced & Diced Rare Birds of Yet-More Wind Propellers, Corp., owned by friends and political allies.

Obama reaches out to Gore to fund his retirement and provide the ex-VP with protection.

This list was selected as the tame examples. If you are daring, read the entire 101 items. A serious analysis and critical review of politics is mostly ignored by the general public. The popular culture is made up of people who cannot learn, of fools who repeat their mistakes time and again, and persons who constantly screw up.

The art in satire varies with the source and even more with the audience. Mr. Kaliher’s perspective may seem twisted to an apologist for the establishment. It might seem downright hostile to the statist, who places trust in government. However, the continual absurdity, year after year, just grows.

Both in the irony of the illustrations and in the intensity of the deranged circumstances, what comes out of the political class of illusionists, is even more frightening. Truth is stranger than fiction. Yet the refusal to admit the con game that is played on citizens is the primary reason that it never ends.

Accepting a corrupt system as normal or inevitable is defeatist to the core. Each generation of public officials move closer to act as irrelevant puppets and lap dog administers for the dictates of perverted elites. Is there humor in this act or is it beyond the abilities of the system to provide a correcting mechanism to reverse the unwavering descent into the ridiculous.

So what are the reasonable expectations for 2014? Will the Republicans take the Senate? Will an amnesty immigration bill pass? Or will the administration find a magic medicine to cure Obamacare? The score card usually misses the final outcome of the game.

When drawn together, all the Nostradamus, Jr. Predictions for the last ten years, the picture seems far more enlightening than entertaining. The sorry state of affairs, when considered as a continual trend towards a loss in quality of life, is the only conclusion possible. Only a lazy meathead refuses to face the facts and adjust behavior when the seer speaks.

He Predicted What America Would Become

In 1899 the great libertarian scholar William Graham Scholar of Yale University delivered a speech in which he warned that the Spanish-American War was a crossing-the-Rubicon event in the nation’s history that had finally transformed the nation from a constitutional republic to an empire. Empire was what the Pilgrims escaped from, and the American Revolution was fought against, for in an empire the average citizen is viewed by his rulers as nothing more than a tax slave and cannon fodder. Americans would soon become, he warned, exactly what their country was founded to oppose.

The speech was entitled “The Conquest of the United States by Spain” to denote the fact that the Spanish-American war, an imperialistic war of conquest, was no different from the types of aggressive wars that the old empires of Europe had been waging for centuries. Having devoted his adult life to scholarly pursuits in the field of political economy (among others), William Graham Sumner was prescient in his predictions about what America would become once it embarked on the road to empire. Among his observations were the following:

The Spanish-American War, like future American wars of imperialism, was “justified” by a string of “sensational assertions” that are easily proven to be untrue. Spain never threatened any American “interests,” and would have been the last to have an incentive to sabotage the Battleship Maine, the calamity that stoked war fever and got the masses (“Boobus Americanus” in H.L. Mencken’s words) behind the short “war.” Scholars like Sumner may have easily seen through the government’s lies, but not the rationally-ignorant masses.

“Where is the statesmanship” in lying and manipulating the public into an aggressive war, Sumner asked rhetorically. This of course had become the new definition of “statesmanship” ever since Lincoln manipulated the Northern-state-public into acquiescing in his waging of total war on their fellow American citizens in the Southern states so that the “duties and imposts” could be collected there, as he promised in his first inaugural address. To this day, Republican Party propaganda mills like the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College pretend to offer courses of study in “statesmanship” of the sort that was mocked and ridiculed by Sumner.

If “self-government” for people of the Spanish empire was the ostensible purpose of the war, why was the American public not involved in any way in instigating the war?, asked Sumner. There was not even an opinion poll taken, he pointed out. This point echoes the words of Randolph Bourne in his famous essay, “War is the Health of the State,” in which he pointed out that the public never has anything to do with the preparations for war. It is always a dozen or so connivers and schemers in the executive branch of government, hidden even from elected members of congresses and parliaments, who plot and plan forwars.

Was the war merely a public school civics class writ large? Sumner also mocked the idea promoted by the war party that Americans are merely interested in teaching Filipinos about democracy and self-government, and then we will leave. Sumner did not believe that “we” would ever leave the Philippines. We are still there today.

The struggle for world domination (imperialism) is destructive of democracy. Although American military interventionism was being sold to Boobus Americanus as a means of spreading democracy, Sumner pointed out that such tactics had led Spain into monarchy and bankruptcy, but such facts were simply ignored by the American war party.

Why do Americans believe they have a “civilizing mission,” Sumner asked. The answer to this rhetorical question lies in the deification of Abe Lincoln by the Republican Party, which in effect was the entire federal government, in the previous thirty-five years. Lincoln’s deification led to the deification of the presidency in general, and to the federal government as well. As Robert Penn Warren wrote in his outstanding book, , the Republican Party in the post-war years claimed to possess a “treasury of virtue” that supposedly justified anything and everything the government did anywhere on earth by virtue of the fact that it was the American government that was doing it. This is what “justified” American entry into World War I, for instance, wrote Robert Penn Warren. It was given the obnoxious name “American exceptionalism.” Sumner noted the absurdity of employing Lincoln’s “all men are created equal” rhetoric from the Gettysburg Address to argue that it is somehow “liberating” for people of other countries to be governed by us.

William Graham Sumner warned that “a matter of mind” that views other peoples as “less human” than you would lead to “cruelty and tyranny” by the American government, as was the case with all other governments in history that ruled over empires. This of course was always the way of empires. Southerners were demonized to “justify” the mass murder of tens of thousands of civilian women, children, and old men, and the bombing and burning of entire cities like Atlanta and Richmond during the “Civil War.” The Plains Indians were dehumanized as “savages” while the brave men of the U.S. Army murdered tens of thousands of Indian women and children from 1865 to 1890. Now it was the Filipinos’ turn. At least 200,000 Filipinos were eventually murdered by the U.S. government for resisting becoming a part of the American empire. According to historian Joseph Stromberg, only about 15,000 of them were actual combatants.

“We must devise a government” for other peoples is another piece of war propaganda that Sumner found to be intolerably arrogant and hypocritical. This argument has been used over and over again by generations of American warmongering and imperialistic politicians. A recent example would be Obama’s September 25, 2012 speech before the United Nations in which he praised the dead CIA operative Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack on the American “embassy” in Benghazi, Libya, after being sent there as Obama’s “representative.” He was sent there, said Obama, to “craft a vision for a future” for Libya and Libyans.

The next time you witness a large American flag covering the entire football field before an NFL game; or the flyover of fighter jets before a sporting event; or people wearing American flag shirts and pants while watching the “President’s Cup” golf tournament (which this year featured a naked female streaker carrying a large American flag); or listen to drunks at a bar cheering and shouting “USA! USA!” while watching American bombs dropped on someone in a foreign country on the bar’s boob tube; or attend a church service decorated with flags and listen to a sermon that thanks “our heroes” for murdering people in foreign countries, think of this comment by William Graham Sumner: “The thirst for glory is an epidemic which robs people of their judgment, seduces their vanity, cheats them of their interests, and corrupts their consciences.”

The “essence of militarism,” Sumner observed, is to despise constitutions, to sneer at parliaments, and to look with contempt at civilians. All the neocon talking heads, from Limbaugh to Hannity and Levin and others, adopted the slogan, “9/11 changed everything” every time someone like Judge Andrew Napolitano would argue that the government was acting in contempt of the Constitution with its warrantless wiretaps, internet and cellphone spying, the PATRIOT Act, etc. All American presidents have simply ignored Congress, for the most part, in instigating wars; and of course all politicians at all times (with one or two exceptions) look with absolute contempt at the average citizen.

Sumner wrote of how the war party of his day was making the “the times have changed” argument for war. This was reminiscent of Lincoln’s similar argument that “we must think anew and act anew,” by which he also meant “to hell with the Constitution.”

Militarism destroys capitalist prosperity, Sumner also warned. He observed that all during the late nineteenth century most Europeans were busy working, investing, starting businesses, and improving their standards of living peacefully under a growing capitalist system with little attention being paid to militarism. Such behavior is absolute poison to the state, however, which considers it to be a mortal enemy. So when European war parties began to militarize, Sumner wrote of how government military spending was crowding out private sector growth so much that European capitalism was being “arrested, diverted, and crippled.” This is always the effect of the growth of militarism in particular and of government in general, and in Sumner’s time America was about to embark on the very same economically-destructive path as the Europeans had so foolishly done.

How will we know when we have become like the Old European empires?, Sumner asked. His answer was that America would become awash in “war, debt, taxation, diplomacy, a grand-government system, pomp, glory, a big army and navy, lavish expenditures, and political jobbery – in a word, imperialism.” This has been a textbook definition of American society for quite a long time now, and becoming more and more so by the day.

“The great foe of democracy is plutocracy,” Sumner declared, and militarism always fuels plutocracy. It does so trough “jobbery” (i.e., crony capitalism), diverting the public’s attention from their real economic problems, large government expenditures that benefit a few well-connected defense contracting corporations, and large government expenditures and debt that make the strong stronger and the weak weaker.” This of course is a precise definition of how the American warfare/welfare state, funded by the Fed, has so greatly enriched the “one percenters” at the expense of almost everyone else, as documented in great detail by David Stockman in his book, , and by Hunter Lewis’s. This is also a major theme of my books, ; ; ; and .

In light of all this, it is understandable why an acquaintance of mine who is a Yale graduate recently remarked that of all the paintings and photographs of famous Yale professors and alumni that adorn the Yale libraries and other buildings on campus, the image of William Graham Sumner cannot be found.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of , , ,. His latest book is .

Source: Thomas DiLorenzo  |  LewRockwell.com

Why “Equality” Must Die

Take a look at the following list and tell me if anything strikes you:

• Prudence
• Justice
• Temperance
• Courage
• Faith
• Hope
• Charity

 

Viewing these, the Seven Cardinal Virtues, anything make an impression? Okay, now try the Seven Heavenly Virtues of:

• Chastity
• Temperance
• Charity
• Diligence
• Patience
• Kindness
• Humility

 

Anything? What strikes me is that equality is not among them.

Scour great works, such as the Bible, and you won’t find much talk of equality — that is, unless you consider The Communist Manifesto a great work.

One thing about virtues — which are defined as “good moral habits” — is that their exercise doesn’t require the cooperation, or compulsion, of another person. I can cultivate prudence, temperance, courage and the other virtues in myself, and I can do it all by myself. So while a virtuous society is desirable, virtue can also be a purely personal goal. And this is one time when focusing on the self needn’t be selfish, for we should take the log out of our own eyes before worrying about the speck in our brother’s.

But equality is far different. Just as there can be no numerical equality without at least two numbers, there can be no human equality on an island with a population of one. And while you could increase patience through personal change, increasing equality necessitates societal change; it involves raising people up as much as they’re able — which requires their cooperation — and insofar as they’re unable, it involves bringing others down. This is where compulsion enters the equation. The point is that, unlike with virtues, increasing equality is always an endeavor of the collective.

Another quality of virtues is that, as Aristotle noted, their cultivation is necessary for a happy life. And lack of virtue in the collective can make life harder, such as when the government stifles just economic freedom (excessive regulation), suppresses truth (hate-speech laws) or imposes some other aspect of tyranny. We also want our survival needs fulfilled: enough food and water and a roof over our heads. And we’d like the opportunity to pursue proper pleasures and dreams and exercise our creative capacity. But is actual “equality” necessary for happiness?

A long time ago, in a “previous life,” I was an aspiring tennis player. I wanted to be the best. Alas, though, it just wasn’t in the cards — I didn’t have the talent of a Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. Yet the cards also taught me something: being a famous athlete just isn’t that important, and it certainly isn’t necessary for happiness. And what would it say about me if my happiness (or what I fancy such) were dependent upon those more talented fellows being brought down to my level?

Using a more common example, consider income inequality. If Bill Gates had never made his billions, it not only wouldn’t have put one more cent in your pocket, society would be poorer because we wouldn’t have the jobs and productivity-enhancing products he created. Moreover, when the rich invest their money in stocks, companies are provided working capital. The rich may put it in banks, too, and banks aren’t just money warehouses; they provide loans to businesses. So both these activities facilitate economic growth and more job creation. Given this, what does it say about a person when he nonetheless wants the rich cut down to size? Well, it reminds me of Friedrich Nietzsche’s line in Thus Spake Zarathustra: “If there were Gods, how could I bear not to be a God? Consequently there are no Gods.” The class-warfare warrior may claim fellowship with the poor, but often something else lies deep in his heart: “If there are rich people, how can I bear to not be a rich person? Consequently, there must be no rich people.” Like Nietzsche, he is what he is; that his ire’s targets are greater or have more doesn’t make him less. Regardless, he’s only satisfied to be what he is if those who would have or be more don’t exist. This is because of one or both of two deadly sins: pride and envy. The cures for these, by the way, are the corresponding virtues of humility and kindness — not “equality.” Equality is the voodoo medicine of the vice-ridden man blind to virtue.

Be thankful equality isn’t necessary for happiness, too, because it is completely contrary to nature. Some species are more dominant than others; some unsuited to survival become extinct; and within species some members are bigger, stronger or faster than others. And animals have their dominance hierarchies; a silverback leads a gorilla troop, a wolf pack has an alpha male and female and chickens actually do have a pecking order.

People are no different. There are natural-born leaders and followers, alpha and beta personalities, and individuals have different gifts and capacities. The world had always recognized this, too. In fact, when young Therese of Lisieux was bothered by the idea that people would have different places even in Heaven, she was instructed to get her thimble and her father’s tumbler and fill them with water. She then was asked, “Which is more full?” Of course, secular modernists will criticize this as a Christian justification for prejudice and discrimination, but what does their world view imply?

The reality is that there’s a huge contradiction between belief in cosmic-accident evolution and belief in human equality. First, when even just one couple has a child, there are a whopping 3.1 billion possible combinations. Then there’s group variation. Do you really believe groups could have “evolved” isolated from one another for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years — subject to different environments, stresses and adaptive requirements —and wound up being the same in every respect? This is a mathematical impossibility and a brazenly unscientific notion. As G.K. Chesterton put it, if people “were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal.”

Whatever your belief about creation, group variation in physical being and capacities is apparent. A gynecologist once told me that black women didn’t suffer as frequently from descended uteruses because they have stronger abdominal walls. And Dr. Walter Williams tells us here and :

Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black men as white men. Cervical cancer rates are five times higher among Vietnamese women in the U.S. than among white women. …Male geniuses outnumber female geniuses 7-to-1. …[D]uring the 1960s, the Chinese minority in Malaysia received more university degrees than the Malay majority — including 400 engineering degrees compared with four for the Malays, even though Malays dominate the country politically. …[Jews are] only two-tenths of 1 percent of the world’s population. Yet between 1901 and 2010, Jews were…22 percent of the world’s [Nobel Laureate winners].

And is the last statistic any surprise? Ashkenazi Jews have the highest I.Q. of any group.

Because this is an inherently unequal world, the actions of equality dogmatists such as today’s liberals can be understood as rebellion against nature. This also helps explain why they — from the French Revolutionaries to the communists to today’s liberals — practice tyranny. When your agenda is so contrary to nature and, more to the point, man’s nature, people will quite naturally act contrary to it. In fact, they will quite naturally be contrary to it. And since people can only be what they are, the agents of unnatural agendas will often say they are not to be. For no one likes having his plans spoiled, and these social engineers, enraged, will lash out at those not “good enough” to conform to the program. This of course is everyone, and killing fields are the ultimate result.

We’re not there yet, but the cultural killing field is all around us. We have government decrees stating that if groups perform differently on a test (e.g., a police exam), it is by definition “discriminatory”; and that students must be punished in racially proportional ways. We see quotas and affirmative action and lawsuits and destructive discrimination, as we tear ourselves apart fighting nature. And why? Among other things, if you believe all groups are equal in all ways, it follows that you’ll attribute different performance outcomes among them to discrimination.

One might now wonder why liberals don’t apply their diversity tenet “Embrace differences” to what really matters. After all, if you watch golf on TV, do you want to see “equality,” where everyone would have to be a duffer, or the best? Do you want “equality” in an art museum or ethereal beauty? Gifts displayed by others are to be relished, reveled in and revered. And the only thing preventing this is, again, those twin demons of envy and pride.

And what of equality dogma? It gave us the drab, cookie-cutter projects of communist Eastern Europe. It breeds ugliness and mediocrity.

Equality is not a virtue.

It is not a laudable goal.

It can never be a reality, as some will always be “more equal than others.”

And if anything deserving of the name civilization is to live, equality, as an aspiration, must die.

The Rapture Problem

In this column last week, I stated the salient reasons why pastors will not take a public stand on issues regarded as controversial or political. I believe every point I made are the real reasons pastors refuse to stand for much of anything–or even objectively study anything outside their comfort zone. To read this column, go to:

Why Pastors Won’t Take A Stand

To review, most pastors refuse to take a stand because:

1. They are success oriented and have an innate aversion to anything that is considered to be controversial. And, to them, there is nothing more controversial than politics.

2. They are afraid that if they take a controversial stand, they will lose members–and more importantly, tithes and offerings. Most churches are neck-deep in debt and are heavy-laden with staff and overhead. The thought of losing even a few giving families is enough intimidation to make sure that they do nothing to offend the people of the congregation. And since the pastor never addresses controversial issues or preaches “hard” sermons, his congregation is filled with people who harbor myriads of big-government, socialist ideas and would immediately bolt at any mention of Biblical Natural Law principles that ran counter to their leftist ideologies.

3. They have an erroneous interpretation of Romans 13 that civil government must be submitted to regardless of how evil or immoral its laws might be. This fallacious interpretation of Romans 13 (which is taught in practically every Christian school and college in America) has made them de facto slaves and worshippers of the state. As did Germany’s pastors and Christians in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, America’s pastors and Christians suffer from national “exceptionalism.” This fallacy leads them to believe that by serving the state, they are serving God. In their minds, one cannot be “right with God” if they are not totally submissive to the state.

4. The 501c3 non-profit corporation status of the Internal Revenue Code under which the vast majority of churches throughout America operate has intimidated pastors and church leaders to the point that they will do–or not do–almost anything to stay in the good graces of the IRS. To most pastors, this means staying absolutely as far away from political issues as possible–even if those issues were moral and spiritual in nature a long time before they were considered political.

5. Most pastors are ignorant of the Biblical Natural Law principles of liberty. In the same way that many attorneys are completely ignorant of constitutional government, pastors are completely ignorant of Biblical Natural Law principles. Attorneys are not taught constitutional principles in law school, and pastors are not taught Biblical Natural Law principles in Bible school.

But there is one more reason why many pastors will not take a stand that I did not address in the aforementioned column: their belief in a pre-tribulation rapture.

The word “rapture” does not appear in the Bible. The English word “rapture” is taken from the Latin word “rapere” and means to “catch away.” Theologically, it means that Christians will be caught away or taken to Heaven while they are still alive. There are several scriptural passages that Christians believe relate to this event, but the most cited is I Thessalonians 4:16, 17: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up (Greek word “harpazo”) together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Of course, Christians throughout the centuries have taught and believed a variety of nuances of eschatology. The various interpretations of The Second Coming of Christ are almost limitless. There are pre-tribulational, pre-millennialists; mid-tribulational, pre-millennialists; post-tribulational, pre-millennialists; partial-rapture, pre-tribulational, pre-millennialists; post-millennialists; pre-wrath, (almost) post-millennialists; amillennialists, etc. And to each of these interpretations there is a plethora of sub-divisions and schisms.

Christians have historically believed that they will be resurrected to be with Christ. However, that conviction–historically and by itself–did not prevent Christians from being engaged in whatever the political, social, or cultural battles of the time might have been. From the earliest days of Christianity, believers were politically and socially engaged in their communities and countries. During the Roman Empire, a baby was not protected by law until the father granted it official human status. Until then, babies could be legally killed or allowed to die. Christians by the thousands would go out into the streets at night and rescue babies that had been “thrown away” and left to die. During the Dark Ages, when the Bible was banned, Christians continued to widely copy and distribute the scriptures. Reformers such as Ulrich Zwingli died defending Switzerland’s Protestant Reformation on the battlefield. Colonial Christians (including pastors) in great numbers participated in America’s War for Independence. The great German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, joined a Nazi resistance movement. Each of these Christian believers held their individual, respective views of the Lord’s coming and personal resurrection, but this did not keep them from being politically, socially, and culturally–and sometimes militarily–involved in their communities and countries.

However, with the broad acceptance of what has become known as Dispensationalism, many pastors and churches in America have almost totally removed themselves from political affairs. Except for voting (which is mostly kept private), pastors avoid politics like the plague. A few will talk in very broad and general terms about America “turning back to God,” etc., but what that means specifically is seldom addressed. And if pressed for an explanation, most pastors will piously say, “God has not called me to get involved in politics.” I’m not sure that God has called them to play golf either, but that doesn’t prevent a host of them from engaging regularly in that worldly activity.

Dispensationalism, as it is called today, was popularized by John Darby, C. I. Scofield, and Lewis Sperry Chafer. In more modern times, John Walvoord, J. Dwight Pentecost, Charles Ryrie, Tim LaHaye, and Hal Lindsey contributed immensely to Dispensationalism’s theological acceptance. The key element of Dispensationalism, as it relates to eschatology, is the doctrine of a pre-tribulation rapture of Christians. The idea is that the world is going to continue to get worse and worse until finally the Anti-Christ will arise as a global leader and will usher in seven years of “Great Tribulation,” wherein a sizeable portion of the world’s population will be destroyed. But before “The Great Tribulation” begins, Christian believers will be raptured into Heaven. Dispensationalists further believe that following the seven year Tribulation period, Christ will physically return to Jerusalem and establish a 1,000 year reign (called The Millennium) in which the Davidic Kingdom will be restored to Israel.

Now, let me state plainly that it is not my intention at this point to disparage the sincerity of faith and belief of the vast numbers of pastors and Christians who subscribe to Dispensationalism. Whether the pre-tribulation rapture is a correct Biblical interpretation or not is NOT the focus of this discussion. I find a sizeable number of pastors and Christians who subscribe to post-millennialism and other forms of eschatology to be just as disengaged from speaking out and engaging the political process as pre-tribulationists.

That being said, I believe it is an absolute fact that many pastors and Christians are using the doctrine of a pre-tribulation rapture to justify sitting back and doing nothing to actively resist evil and wickedness. In their minds, there is no need to be politically involved because everything is going to get worse anyway–but they are going to be raptured to Heaven before it all falls apart. I have actually had pastors say to me, “Chuck, by resisting evil government, you are fighting against God, because it is God’s will that government gets worse and worse so that Jesus can come back.”

The wretchedness of this kind of thinking should be obvious to any rational person. In the first place, how arrogant are these American Christians to think that they are so special that God would have to rapture them before any real tribulation began? Think of the millions of Christians in oppressed nations throughout history–and even today–who have already been, and continue to be, IN GREAT TRIBULATION. The tribulation of Christian martyrs throughout church history is legendary. Have they never read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs? Do they not know what has taken place in southern Sudan over the last 20 years? Have they not read the history of Christians in Mao’s China, Amin’s Uganda, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, etc. Who do they think they are? Why should Christians in America be spared what Christians throughout the world have endured and are enduring? Even if their interpretation of a pre-tribulation rapture is correct, that doesn’t mean for one moment that Christians in America would not be called on to suffer great tribulation at the hands of a wicked and oppressive government–especially considering that the vast majority of pastors are doing almost nothing to resist our government from becoming wicked and oppressive. For the doctrine of a pre-tribulation rapture to be used as some kind of sit-back-and-do-nothing-because-a-divine-Seventh-Cavalry-is-coming-to-rescue-us attitude is the height of absurdity. Dare I say it borders on blasphemy?

Secondly, people who use the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine as an excuse to justify being disconnected from political involvement by saying things like, “Jesus is coming soon, so it doesn’t matter!” are demonstrating either acute cowardice or immeasurable ignorance.”

Christians throughout the millennia have looked for the return of Jesus. The doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ has been held sacred by Christians of every generation for over two thousand years. That Jesus is coming soon doesn’t stop us from going to school and getting an education; it doesn’t stop us from going to work every day to earn a living; it doesn’t stop us from planning our financial futures or saving for retirement; it doesn’t stop us from teaching and training our children; it doesn’t stop us from learning and exercising personal skills; it doesn’t stop us from locking our doors or buying expensive alarm systems to protect us from the bad guys; and it doesn’t stop these disconnected pastors from spending years trying to perfect their golf game. Neither should it stop us from preserving the liberties and freedoms of our nation.

I am reminded of the Old Testament king of Judah, Hezekiah. He was told by the prophet that God was going to judge his country with great oppression, but that it would not happen until after he expired, some 15 years later. Hearing that, Hezekiah said (paraphrase), “Oh goodie! At least it won’t happen while I’m alive.”

I ask you, what kind of father and grandfather would rather see his own children and grandchildren endure persecution and oppression than him do something in his lifetime to prevent it? What kind of uncaring, hard-hearted, pleasure-mad sorry-excuses-for-manhood are we that we would not want to sacrifice our own comfort, our own possessions, our own lives, in order to provide something better for our children and grandchildren?

These stand-for-nothing pastors do NOT know when Jesus is coming. And they do not know what kind of tribulation their children and grandchildren are going to endure at the hands of future tyrants and despots because they refused to do something that could have prevented it.

Our Christian forebears believed in the return of Christ and in personal resurrection. Whether they were pre-millennial, post-millennial, pre-tribulational, mid-tribulational, post-tribulational, etc., they didn’t allow their personal interpretation of Bible prophecy keep them from doing what was the right thing to do when it was in their power to do it. They were statesmen, leaders, and even warriors. They worked; they dug; they studied; they taught; they led; and they fought. And when needed, they risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Are we really more spiritual than were they? Are we really more studied? More intelligent? More dedicated? More sincere? More courageous? Or more Christ-like?

How dare this generation of spoiled, lazy, comfort-laden, cowardly, sheepish, success-motivated, passive pulpits sit in judgment on the Christian men and women of history who, regardless of their personal interpretation of eschatology, actively engaged in the social, cultural, and, yes, political affairs of their countries–and helped bequeath to us, their posterity, a free and independent land? How dare they use the doctrine of the rapture as an excuse to justify their own indifference? And more importantly, how dare Christians tolerate such cowardice and carnality?

Thirdly, Dispensationalists allow their interpretation of Bible prophecy relating to future Israel to obfuscate the divine principles of liberty as it relates to present America. Preachers such as John Hagee have twisted the scriptures to support almost unlimited wars of aggression against Middle Eastern countries in the name of befriending Israel. In reality, unconstitutional war, nation-building, foreign interventionism, etc., is no friend to Israel, the United States, or any other country.

America’s foreign policy is a global nightmare. It has made enemies where none existed. It has made it increasingly difficult for American missionaries to give the Gospel to people in foreign countries. In many countries, it has inflamed the persecution of Christians. It has greatly contributed to the economic bankruptcy of the United States. It has turned the affections of the world against us. It has turned many American Christians from peacemakers to warmongers. Under the rubric of the “war on terror,” America is being turned into a giant police state. In truth, the Warfare State that has been created in this country is not a blessing to Israel (or any other country), but a curse. But the Dispensationalists’ interpretation of prophecy tends to blind them to these maladies.

Yes, many pastors and Christians have a rapture problem. But the problem is not really the doctrine itself but the way it is misapplied. I know pastors of all theological and eschatological backgrounds who are actively engaged in the freedom fight; and I know pastors of all theological and eschatological backgrounds who are disengaged from the freedom fight. It’s up to the man. If men want to, they can hide behind anything. And when pastors choose to hide behind the rapture, it becomes a problem for all of us.

American Workers: Hanging On By The Skin of Their Teeth

After five years of Obama’s economic recovery, the American people are as gloomy as ever.  According to a Bloomberg National Poll that was released this week, fewer people “are optimistic about the job market” or “the housing market” or “anticipate improvement in the economy’s strength over the next year.” Also, only 38 percent think that President Obama is doing enough “to make people feel more economically secure.”  Worst of all,  Bloomberg pollsters found that 68 percent of interviewees thought the country was  “headed in the wrong direction”.

So why is everyone so miserable?  Are things really that bad or have we turned into a nation of crybabies?

The reason people are so pessimistic is because the economy is still in the doldrums and no one’s doing anything about it. That’s it in a nutshell. Survey after survey have shown that what people really care about is jobs, but no one in Washington is listening. In fact, jobs aren’t even on Obama’s radar.  Just look at his record. He’s worse than any president in modern times. Take a look at this graph.

More than 600,000 good-paying public sector jobs have been slashed during Obama’s tenure as president. That’s worse than Bush, worse than Clinton, worse than Reagan, worse than anyone, except maybe Hoover. Is that Obama’s goal, to one-up Herbert Hoover?

Obama has done everything he could to make the lives of working people as wretched as possible.  Do you remember the Card Check sellout or the Wisconsin “flyover” when Governor Scott Walker was eviscerating collective bargaining rights for public sector unions and Obama blew kisses from Airforce One on his way to a campaign speech in Minnesota?  Nice touch, Barry. Or what about the “Job’s Czar” fiasco, when Obama appointed GE’s outsourcing mandarin Jeffrey Immelt to the new position just in time for GE to lay off another 950 workers at their locomotive plant in Pennsylvania.  That’s tells you what Obama really thinks about labor.

What Obama cares about is trimming the deficits and keeping Wall Street happy. That’s it.  But the people who elected him don’t want him to cut the deficits, because cutting the deficits prolongs the slump and costs jobs. What they want is more stimulus, so people can find work, feed their families, and have some basic security. That’s what they want, but they’re not going to get it from Obama because he doesn’t work for them. He works for the stuffed shirts who flank him on the golf course at Martha’s Vineyard or the big shots who chow down with him at  his $100,000-per-plate campaign jamborees. That’s his real constituency.  Everyone else can take a flying fu** for all he cares.

Then there’s the Fed. Most people don’t think the Fed’s goofy programs work at all. They think it’s all a big ruse. They think Bernanke is just printing money and giving it to his criminal friends on Wall Street (which he is, of course.) Have you seen this in theNew York Times:

“Only one in three Americans has confidence in the Federal Reserve’s ability to promote economic growth, while little more than a third think the Fed is spinning its wheels, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll….
The Fed has been trying for five years to speed the nation’s recovery from the Great Recession by reducing borrowing costs to the lowest levels on record….
Most Americans, it would appear, remain either unaware or unpersuaded.” (“Majority of Americans Doubt Benefits of Fed Stimulus“, New York Times)

“Unpersuaded”? Are you kidding me? Most Americans think they’re getting fleeced; unpersuaded has nothing to do with it.  They’re not taken in by the QE-mumbo jumbo. They may not grasp the finer-points, but they get the gist of it, which is that the Fed has run up a big $3 trillion bill every penny of which has gone to chiseling shysters on Wall Street. They get that! Everyone gets that! Sure, if you want to get into the weeds about POMO or the byzantine aspects of the asset-purchase program, you might detect a bit of confusion, but –I assure you–the average Joe knows what’s going on. He knows all this quantitative jabberwocky is pure bunkum and that he’s getting schtooped bigtime. You don’t need a sheepskin from Princeton to know when you’ve been had.

And that’s why everyone is so pessimistic, because they know that the Fed, the administration and the media are all lying to them 24-7. That’s why–as Bloomberg discovered–”Americans are losing faith in the nation’s economic recovery.” Because they don’t see any recovery. As far as they’re concerned, the economy is still in recession. After all, they’re still underwater on their mortgages, Grandpa Jack just took a job at a fast-food joint to pay for his wife’s heart medication, and junior is camped out in the basement until he can get a handle on his $45,000 heap of college loans. So where’s the recovery?

Nobody needs Bloomberg to point out how grim things are for the ordinary people. They see it firsthand every damn day.

Did you catch the news on Wal-Mart this week? It’s another story that helps explain why everyone’s so down-in-the-mouth. Here’s what happened:  Wal-Mart’s stock tanked shortly after they announced that their “inventory growth …had outstripped sales gains in the second quarter…. Merchandise has been piling up because consumers have been spending less freely than Wal-Mart projected….” (Bloomberg)

Okay, so the video games and Barbie dolls are piling up to the rafters because part-time wage slaves who typically shop at Wal-Mart  are too broke to buy anything but the basic necessities. Is that what we’re hearing?
Indeed. “We are managing our inventory appropriately,” David Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said today in a telephone interview. “We feel good about our inventory position.”

Sure, you do, Dave. Here’s more from Bloomberg:

“US. chains are already bracing for a tough holiday season, when sales are projected to rise 2.4 percent, the smallest gain since 2009, according to ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based firm. Wal-Mart cut its annual profit forecast after same-store sales fell 0.3 percent in the second quarter. …
Wal-Mart’s order pullback is affecting suppliers in various categories, including general merchandise and apparel, said the supplier, who has worked with Wal-Mart for almost two decades and asked not to be named to protect his relationship with the company. He said he couldn’t recall the retailer ever planning ordering reductions two quarters in advance.” (“Wal-Mart Cutting Orders as Unsold Merchandise Piles Up”, Bloomberg

So we’re back to 2009?

Looks like it. When the nation’s biggest retailer starts trimming its sails, it ripples through the whole industry. It means softer demand, shorter hours, and more layoffs. Get ready for a lean Christmas.

The Walmart story just shows that people are at the end of their rope. For the most part, these are the working poor, the people the Democratic Party threw overboard a couple decades ago when they decided to hop in bed with Wall Street. Now their hardscrabble existence is becoming unbearable; they can’t even scrape together enough cash to shop the discount stores. That means we’re about one step from becoming a nation of dumpster divers.   Don’t believe it? Then check out this clip from CNN Money:

“Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings, according to a survey released by Bankrate.com Monday.  Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults. Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all..

Last week, online lender CashNetUSA said 22% of the 1,000 people it recently surveyed had less than $100 in savings to cover an emergency, while 46% had less than $800. After paying debts and taking care of housing, car and child care-related expenses, the respondents said there just isn’t enough money left over for saving more.” (“76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck“, CNN Money)

Savings? What’s that? Do you really think people can save money on $30,000 or $40,000 a year feeding a family of four?

Dream on. Even an unexpected trip to the vet with pet Fido is enough to push the family budget into the red for months to come. Savings? Don’t make me laugh.

The truth is, most people are hanging on by the skin of their teeth.  They can’t make ends meet on their crappy wages and they’re too broke to quit. There’s no way out. It’s obvious in all the data. And it’s hurting the economy, too, because spending drives growth, but  you can’t spend when you’re busted. Economist Stephen Roach made a good point in a recent article at Project Syndicate. He said, “In the 22 quarters since early 2008, real personal-consumption expenditure, which accounts for about 70% of US GDP, has grown at an average annual rate of just 1.1%, easily the weakest period of consumer demand in the post-World War II era.” (It’s also a) “massive slowdown from the pre-crisis pace of 3.6% annual real consumption growth from 1996 to 2007.” (“Occupy QE“, Stephen S. Roach, Project Syndicate)

So the economy is getting hammered because consumption is down. And working people are getting hammered because jobs are scarce and wages are flat. But we live in the richest country in the world, right?

Right. So what’s wrong with this picture?

Stand Fast In Liberty

People are strange creatures. And sometimes Christians are the strangest. One would think that people who experience freedom in Christ would be the first ones to desire and defend the entire gamut of liberty. One would think that Paul’s words would deeply resonate with Christian folks: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1 KJV)

Unfortunately, many Christians today are as much in bondage as anyone outside of Christ. They are in bondage to tradition, ceremony, liturgy, etc. It is no hyperbole to say that they are as enslaved as were the Pharisees of old.

I recently reread Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. It has been awhile since I last read it and needed to be reminded of the old sage’s counsel. In his memoirs, he recalled how he had been invited to attend a Presbyterian church on the invitation of the parson whom he had befriended. He said he attended the church for five consecutive Sundays. He stopped attending after the fifth Sunday. The two reasons he gave were 1) the preacher had a very dry and boring delivery, and 2) the preacher was trying to make everybody good Presbyterians and not good citizens.

I believe Franklin’s observation could be made regarding a sizeable percentage of the pastors and churches in America today–regardless of denomination. Baptist preachers want everyone to be good Baptists; Pentecostal preachers want everyone to be good Pentecostals; Methodist preachers want everyone to be good Methodists; Lutheran preachers want everyone to be good Lutherans, etc. And if one does not subscribe to the traditions and tenets propounded in these churches, he or she is relegated to infidel status. But where do you find pastors and churches trying to make good citizens out of people? That’s why one will find judgmentalism and Phariseeism rampant in most churches today. As long as one has the form, little else matters.

Not only is good citizenship not taught in most churches; it is actually lampooned and denigrated. They teach that because the Scripture says we are citizens of Heaven, we have little or no responsibility to our country, State, town, etc. Of course, that doesn’t take them away from the mall or the television set when their favorite ball team is playing or the lake or the golf course.

But not only are so many of today’s pastors and churches enslaved to denominationalism, they are also enslaved to incorporationism. That might not be a real word, but it is a real truth.

Nowhere in Scripture is the church seen as a denomination or corporation. It is not even described as an organization. Yet, ask the average so-called Christian today, and they will tell you unless a church has a denomination, a building, and an incorporation status, it is not a church. I have actually heard professing Christians say that if a church did not have the IRS 501c3 government incorporation status, it was not a real church. Can you imagine that? Unless the church is not officially approved and sanctioned by the state, it is not a real church.

But what were churches before 1954, when then-Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson introduced and successfully passed the 501c3 government corporation law in the United States? Think of it: over 1900 years of Church history, and there was never any such thing as a church being incorporated by the government; but since 1954, if a church does not have the 501c3 government corporation status, it is not a real church? Holy Cow, Margaret!

Ladies and gentlemen, the churches in the Book of Acts were not government corporations; the early churches that followed the apostles were not government corporations; the independent churches of the Dark Ages were not government corporations. The Reformation churches were not government corporations; the Pilgrim churches were not government corporations; the colonial churches were not government corporations; and the independent churches in oppressed countries today are not government corporations.

The Church can have only one Head, and it is not the government. It is Christ! To put the Lord’s Church into a place of subjugation and submission to the state is nothing short of heresy and blasphemy. And by accepting the 501c3 government corporation status, that is exactly what these modern pastors and churches in America are committing.

As a result, pastors and churches are afraid to do anything that might offend the IRS or jeopardize their tax-exempt incorporation status. This has left the Church in America impotent and silent. And, yes, I know, for some pastors it doesn’t take anything as monstrous as the IRS to keep them quiet; the threat of offending the donor base is all the intimidation many pastors need. Geez!

My study of history teaches me that when God’s people sought true independence and freedom, a spiritual awakening usually accompanied such a movement. The Church in Acts refused to be controlled or intimidated by Judaism; the Reformation Church refused to be controlled or intimidated by Romanism; the Pilgrim Church refused to be controlled or intimidated by European statism; the colonial church refused to be controlled or intimidated by British imperialism; the Confessing Church in Germany refused to be controlled or intimidated by Nazism; the true Church in China today refuses to be controlled or intimidated by communism, etc.

But what are most churches doing in America today? They are being controlled and intimidated by incorporationism–specifically, the 501c3 section of the Internal Revenue Code of the IRS.

However, all over America, Christians by the thousands are seeking deliverance from government bondage. They are tired of waiting for recalcitrant and apathetic pastors to take a stand, and they are leaving the 501c3 government-controlled churches by untold thousands. Many of them are seeking independent churches, while others are starting their own home churches. I know, because many of these folks write to tell me that they are gathering in living rooms, community centers, VFW halls, American Legion halls, etc., to watch our service at Liberty Fellowship each Sunday afternoon at 2:30pm Mountain Time.

To watch my messages live online, go to:

Liberty Fellowship Live Stream

And if you want to watch my archived messages online, go here:

Archived Video Sermons

In fact, my message last Sunday deals at length with what I am talking about in this column today. Be prepared though: I preached for 1:45. Can you imagine? And people didn’t leave or even squirm. Even teenagers and little children sat and listened intently. Beyond that, I was interrupted several times with enthusiastic applause by a very positive and appreciative audience. Imagine that! Oh! And when I finished, no one came up and wanted to talk sports. Try that in these government-controlled 501c3 churches today.

I fully realize that there are some very courageous preachers out there who are pastoring 501c3 churches. I pastored one myself for over 30 years. For me, getting out meant relocating 2600 miles away to the Flathead Valley of Montana. Obviously, not everyone can do that. I also realize that trying to take a church out of the clutches of the 501c3 tentacles of the IRS is like trying to get out of the Mafia. Maybe harder. But I also know that the Christian migration toward freedom and independence has already begun. And there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. This is God’s doing.

The Church is the Lord’s Bride, and He will not allow His bride to sleep in a whorish bed forever. Just as has been the case throughout history, God is calling His bride out of the bondage of government submission and servitude into the glorious light and liberty of Christ.

It will not be very much longer until there will be only two types of churches in America: the official, state-controlled churches that are sleeping with Lucifer and the true churches of Christ that are basking in the liberty of the Gospel. Christians will not be able to stay neutral.

As I said, the exodus has already begun.

And, while I may not live to see it, I am convinced that as the call for liberty continues to swell in the minds and hearts of both Christians and non-Christians alike, God will send an accompanying spiritual awakening to this country; or at least, to regions within this country. It is inevitable. And, again, while I may not live to see the fruition of this awakening, I am also convinced that what we did by moving to Montana–and what the people of Liberty Fellowship are doing here–and what liberty-minded people are doing all over this country, is at the “tip of the spear” of a freedom fight that will truly change the course of history.

Dear Christian, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.” God will never send an awakening to those who are content to sleep in servitude.

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