Servitude vs. Destroying Evil

As I looked once more at the images of those flaming buildings, I thought back to the day of that ignoble event. I relived my thoughts and feelings at the time, going to work on the west coast and hearing that a plane had struck one of the World Trade Center buildings. The incredulous voices of the radio announcers, speculating on an horrific accident and the number of lives that might have been lost - running through my mind, as I started work. Going back to the radio at the top of the hour and hearing that a second plane had struck the other tower. Stunned...dazed response from all - by the most monumental body blow in living memory.

Catching pieces of news as it came in, the lethal fires, the exasperated rescuers unable to reach those above the strike zone, the panicking victims, jumping, rather than dying in that inferno, the Pentagon HIT and finally, a pile of rubble in the streets of New York as the most visible signs to describe our capitalist society succumbed to the flames and were no more......and all air travel halted. Freedom, also, brutal injured that day.

When I think back, a number of other things are refreshed in my mind. Seeing the carnage, I’m once again reminded of how little it takes to be destructive. A single match can undo a lifetime of productive effort, yet that foolish, popularly-repeated phrase, ‘man is destructive’ evades everything from the pyramid, to space travel. Those few determined fanatics, who valued their own lives less than another person’s death, armed with a few hour of aircraft simulator flight hours and utility knives, destroyed billions of dollars worth of infrastructure.

Their ‘kill ratio’ surpassed 150 to 1 and they change the very fabric of the society they despised.. They were immeasurably successful - up to this point.

Thinking back, I see the USA to be as fragile as those buildings were. And how only the intellectual disarmament of America made the 9/11 massacre possible.

So what did we get - the first call by the new, still-in-shocked president, after the dust of the Trade center building had settled, was for ‘Americans to go back to normal, the government will solve this outrage and justice will prevail’. A reassurance that this government fully knew its responsibility, to provide the protection from physical harm a free people need to resume productive lives. And, we were told to spend, a rational activity in an abundant capitalist society, but behind the scenes, a nervous government seeing looming transfer-payments entitlement while a nervous people waited, straining a fragile financial system with a shrinking revenue flow.....ominous signs.


The very first thought I had when that first building was struck, was that the Empire State building had sustained an airplane hit, shrugged it off, and stands today in all its glory, albeit, bathed in the colors of red China, a graphic display of the intellectual rot of the country. In the months of cleanup and investigation that passed, two things - the war against asbestos had succeeded on helping the hijackers achieve their purpose - the building only had an illusion of strength above the seventieth floors. And the slime began to ooze from where it had been shocked into silence.

We heard shrill denouncements, of unaddressed environmental concern at the cleanup site and, America asked for the attack because of years of inconsiderate foreign policy, belligerently steamrollering over passive underdeveloped nations, stealing the resources from these peace-loving helpless people, across the entire face of the earth.

And we heard about Bin Ladin. Quietly, for, if one read between the lines, he had issued a decade of invitations to fight - The USS Cole, a couple of embassies, but easy to overlook if the dress holds dried semen stains. Oh, could that be the intellectual bankruptcy thing again?

The face of the enemy became more visible as we saw modern weapons carried on the backs of donkeys in Afghanistan’s gravel pile. We saw a people, utterly impoverished by their commitment to a medieval religion, lead by zealots with no consideration for human life. And we saw precision guided bombs, turn rubble into different rubble.

We watched months of deliberation, posturing, pleading, looking for support, and finally an American president deciding to, essentially, go it alone and the army forming on the border of Iraq, a face-off with one of the most brutal bandits to ever take over a county. We were graced with film footage of literally a surgical strike, taking out the strongest army in the zone, careful to avoid civilian death, and winning in less than two weeks of fighting. And then, our exhilaration shattered as that intellectual bankruptcy set in once more.

A nation with militarily supremacy , showed that it lacked the knowledge of how to win the peace while on the home front the barricades were going up and the random searches began. What I believe could have been simply solved by retro-fitting secure cockpit doors and sporadically arming the flight crews, was instead solved by a bureaucracy ill fitted to think. The politically correct absurdity, considering everyone a potential homicidal terrorist, brings us now, eight years later, passport requirements to travel over what used to be considered the friendliest border in the world. And the militarily decisive blow needed to end the reign of terror - still undelivered.

These action do not show a mind able of conceiving of a means to lift a conquered foreign citizenry from feudalism to a modern, free society. The decision makers of today lack the ability or the desire to create such a country as the USA was. From the time of its inception in 1776 till 1900 England and American transformed themselves from cottage industries to industrial empires. The rest of the world watched but failed to grasp what made it possible.

A small aside, I have a theory and it is rooted in the concept of common law. In those early years, when power of life or death had been stripped from the monarchy, the early law makers looked to the rules that guided the common folk in their day-to-day actions and largely, those were the rules that guided the formal laws that the infant representative governments brought forth. All of that had changed by the 1900's as the legislators took an elitists view, bring down laws that forced a sometimes, reluctant and other times willing, public to change their behavior.

England, lacking any government controlling document such as the American constitution, disappeared as an economic force rather quickly. The property rights clause in American has been able to make the destruction a longer, drawn-out process, but now the country is in a comparable state to those World Trade Center towers. To an uncritical eye, the country remained the financial giant of the world - to one with the vision of Ayn Rand, rampant intellectually bankrupt had eroded its strength before 1930. Few people now, are blind to the fact that there are serious problems. But, there are also, oh-so-few, who clearly see the direction that is not terminal to our free society.

Today, in a span of years twice as long as it took to free the world of two mighty, dictatorial empires, Afghanistan’s Taliban, living in a primitive rock pit, denies victory to what is still, the strongest army the world has ever witnessed. Domestically internal security rules are utterly out of proportion to an intelligent response to the actions of nineteen religious maniacs and, in New York, the most visible sign that all is not well. Rather than a giant defiant building showing the world the pride America has in capitalism, the productive system that sprinkles prosperity on all who accept it, we have.......... a hole.

And finally I come to servitude. This president is calling for the citizen to exchange public service for a purposeful retaliation for September 11th, 2001. The call is to forget the outrage, the pain, and the unfulfilled passion to cleanse this world of the force that drove those distorted minds to kill themselves and publicly destroy, taking with them into death, 3000 innocent people who were trying to put in a productive day. But the capitulation to servitude can only come to fruition if the nation’s people have become complacent.

Across the entire world, the chains of servitude hang heavy from the shoulder of all productive people. We need to ask ourselves, how can a heavier burden solve our problems? Clearly, this asylum is not in the hands of the healers.

And so again and for the final time, I bring up that missing intellect, vacuumed to oblivion, and I lay some of the blame for this problem on the shoulders of one of the truly greats of American history, Thomas Jefferson and his support for public education. That was the mistaken belief, that the education process could be placed in the hands of any government and remain uncorrupted. If the 56 founders of the United Stated had foreseen the utter collapse of reasoning skills that institutionalized public education has delivered to helpless children, they would, I’m sure, have burned the Constitution and started over.

But is that intellectual bankruptcy simply a result? Could it be that, as Ayn Rand said so long ago, with altruism as our basic moral code it was simply inevitable the ‘right’ would be consider ‘wrong’ and the wrong, right? The world we live in is upside down, because our morality is inverted. Do we need reminding that placing others first will lead to our own destruction? Until that poisonous idea is removed from our knowledge base, the field of education will deliver ever more broken minds. I believe, only by spreading the words of Ayn Rand can those minds be healed.

Here it is time to state that I’m a citizen of Canada but my personal stake is the same as each of you, a chance to live in a world where capitalism allows me to produce and benefit from my production. If by chance the USA become the USocialistSA, the collapse will not end there, rather the entire free world will disappear. Hence, every freedom loving individual is in this fight.

And this fight needs every healthy mind. If now, president Obama’s collectivizing plans are broken, the surge could well be enough to open a flood gate of reason and discredit collectivism beyond recovery. There has never been a better time to support the efforts of the Ayn Rand Center, but that is not the only place help is needed. Be it tea parties or speaking with anyone who support capitalism, we need to, apologetically and publicly, claim ownership of our own lives, never a bow to servitude.

And if by chance you have lost your passion, that time has transformed it to cynicism, open your mind and look at the burning buildings at the top of this page, think of the jetliner cruising over Pennsylvania, its passengers condemned to death, and remember the cry of Todd Beamer, “Let’s roll”, choosing a patriots end to life rather than helpless slaughter. It was not an act of servitude, it is an exercise in meting out justice. Recall from Abe Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here......”. Once again, let your sense of outrage loose.

desolving empires

I found this on Bill Ayers’ site....

The end of an empire is messy at best
And this empire is ending
Like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea
We’re adrift in the land of the brave
And the home of the free.

Lyrics by Randy Newman, from “A Few Words in Defence of This country”. Seems obvious that both Mr Ayers and Newman see an America with a far smaller global influence, and just around the corner. I’d also say they aren’t sorry to see the empire label coming to an end. So why?

I caused me to think about what is happening in the US of A today. I’m sure most people regard the USA to be an empire, and depending on one’s morality, it’s either evil, or great. But before we talk about morality let’s define empire and talk about what others see.

The degree of influence a nation has on other nations is what makes a nation an empire. And the USA has indeed been a huge influence on the entire world, but is this empire the same as previous empires? Historically, the empires of the past have had their roots in the sharpest sword or the biggest canon but the US empire is a rather unique entity.

The free world’s common folk work to swill coke and cram down big Macs. Those who have them, need to protect their jeans from thieves, and the mindless electric guitar noise excites the youth around the world. Is this the empire that is crumbling, that many see as evil?

The American empire is unique in that it was not build with a club but rather it’s been held from spreading by a club. Whenever a group of people have been left free it’s the American model they build as their personal society. From Canada to France, to the now defunct USSR to China, the Muslim middle east and on around the world, Political and intellectual leaders demand restrictions to stop their own citizens from emulating the ‘good ol’ US of A.

This empires messy in the middle. The painful body piercing, the disfiguring facial tattoos , the shocking hairdos and outrages dress codes are all part of the messiness, as are the obnoxious language. The ipods and twittering and facebooking and bloggers are all part of this empire’s culture. As are highways and cars and airplanes and highrises. It’s still far from complete if we throw in space travel, atomic weapons and cell phones and oh so much more.

An empire like none before with something about it for anyone to hate, just as there are a multitude of thing to love. Truly a mixed bag that satisfies no one, yet attracts so very many.

From its inception some 240 years ago, the forceful individuals living in those 13 signing colonies, determined to fight unfair taxation and take their chances with forming a unique nation based on the ‘that all men are created equal’ thought, could hardly have predicted the social upheaval they would cause.
...more to come...

When ideas have consequences

Individual rights -when ideas matter.

The origin - It all starts when the idea that we are created or born without sin, obligation, duty etc. become widespread in a culture. the view that equality is the rule, that none can be held to be more than any other, that a covenant of debt can not be placed on the life of any person.

The justification - By way of reason it is easily understood that slavery is the result of holding a belief that people can be slotted into different categories of worth, hence, to achieve freedom for ourselves we need to reject the notion

The consequences - an individual, holding the forgoing as basic truisms in their mind, will come to realize that with no guiding deity, no prebirth obligation, they are, like all persons everywhere, their own masters. As such, their actions are their own and cloak of responsibility for neither the good nor the bad can be draped over the shoulders of another. And while the mirror of responsibility can be a cruel reminder of mistakes if we hold the wrong attitude, accepting that life is a learning experience showers us with euphoric endorphins for the things we do right.
..more to come..

On pragmatism

I’d never considered pragmatism to be anything much more than a non ideological outlook on life but after reading a post stressing how debilitating an effect it can have on the thought process, I can see that I’m mistaken and need to rethink the meaning clearly in my own mind. Doug Reich gave a great analysis here, http://dougreich.blogspot.com/2009/04/say-cheese.html .

I have difficulty accepting that a human mind can consistently hold a pragmatic outlook, deciding that reality is what everyone believes it to be. I can however, easily see that an inconsistent pragmatic approach with deviations allowing both reasoning and perceptual powers to smooth over the areas involving life and death rational decisions.

Because so much of the world we live in consists of applying manmade rules to human actions, the pragmatist is often able to function well and even to be financially successful. There are individuals who thrive in regulatory environments, where all the rules are laid out and memorization brings success. But the success would unfold only for the strongest minds as the economy of understanding complex things by way of cohesive ideas is not available to the consistent pragmatist and, only those people with exceptional memory skills could cope.

The economy of thinking made possible by using a rational, conceptual based system to integrate ideas into understandable pieces allows even the people with lesser intellectual capacity to fully understand complex thoughts.

But the pragmatist evaluation and its application to the sciences provides an explanation to a phenomena that has long troubled me. I often wondered at the absurdity of some of the flaky so-called scientific studies or reports, claiming proof for an idea that logic or induction proves without any statistical analysis. Something like an evening news report documenting that most obese people eat more than the people with no weight problems, or some similar fact totally reasonable with out any study.

I believe the researchers hold the view that a fact can only be discerned from observation, that for the experiment to be objective the researchers must be completely unbiased to the point of ignoring reason, until the results are tabulated and then, only statistical analysis constitutes proof.

Does the true pragmatist fully rejects induction as a means to knowledge?

I have always considered pragmatism to be a beneficial trait for a person in business and a despicable vote-gathering tool in a politician. I’m beginning to see the personal destruction that the inability to understand the world or the actions of people around oneself would bring to any questioning individual. We all require an understandable future to feel comfortable about the future.

Without the ability to do inductive thinking, all issues boil down to my poll verses your poll. To the pragmatist, numbers count, status of supporter count, even the sophistication of the presentation makes a difference. Only the facts, if not presented glamorously are ignored.

Is there any thinking going on or is every thing decided by the opinion of an other, an outsider because the individual has lost ability to discriminate? Does the pragmatist inevitably derive any sense of self-worth from the opinions of others? Is the modern belief that we need rules for everything the normal outcome of pragmatic thought? Is it responsible for the elitist idea, that the common guy lacks the ability to look after their own life and needs help?

I think it is the basis of the belief that only what has taken place before can be properly evaluated, the financial community's statement, " we're in new ground here. We've never tried this before so we don't know if the printing of this much money will work". And the pirate situation, where we fear the sailors may get hurt if the are given guns, or we don't know who to punish to stop the piracy.

More to come.

jobs, work, effort

Have you heard the profound slogan "unemployment is not working"? That catchy sentence is usually followed by, "We demand more jobs". The two statements taken together, show clearly the ignorance associated with the meaning of the term "jobs".

And from the high level of unemployment in Canada we can deduce that few people really understand what is required to promote "jobs". Our political leaders make statements such as; "job sharing may be the only answer" and "the prosperity of the seventies is gone forever". No cure will ever come from people who make those kind of statements, statements that simply show economic ignorance.

Much of the confusion at the root of our unemployment problem stems from a misunderstanding of three terms or concepts. The terms effort and work must be clearly defined in order to understand the concept "job".

Let's begin with effort. Effort can be any kind of activity, mental or physical, that requires energy. Effort can be either productive or nonproductive, beneficial to our lives or detrimental. It can be work or play, both for ourselves or for others, but effort is totally self-generated. By that I mean, your effort can only be mentally directed by you.

Work is constructive effort, effort expended to support life. Work is a goal oriented and thought directed activity. And we all know when we are doing work for work is an activity that is distinctly different from play or exercise or entertainment.

The term job describes a type of work, work that someone else is willing to pay you to do. A job is an activity or a task that someone wants done and they are prepared to pay you to do that task.

Often the term job and occupation are interchanged, yet reason tells us this is not really true. One may have an occupation, but no job and one may have a job outside of one's occupation.

The term "job" is also incorrectly used to describe personal possession with regard to work. As a example, the phrase; "my job is ___" or "it's my job to ___". In actual fact, the owner of a piece of work is usually not the person being paid to do the work. This becomes very obvious if you quit a job, for the job doesn't stop. The boss simply hires someone else to finish the job.

There is still more confusion because jobs are often equated with the term duty. Many persons continue to fulfill a perceived obligation, sometimes after the pay stops and often after any pleasure for doing the task is gone.

Simply put, a job is nothing more than work or effort that is directed to satisfy another person. Your concern is payment, but a job appears when someone is willing to pay for time spent doing a particular piece of work. The prime concern of the person willing to pay for the work is always to get the work done or the product out.

Very few people comfortably accept this glaring fact. The prime concern of the person paying is not the economic well-being of the person employed. This is not due to any malicious or uncaring aspect in an employer's attitude - it's strictly reality. On a one-to-one basis this is easy to see. When you hire a person, say a plumber, your only concern is to get the job done, to get the toilet unplugged or the faucet to stop dripping. Someone who hires a thousand people concerns themselves with exactly the same thing, getting the product out.

Often needless personal devastation takes place when a man is fired or "his" job terminated yet jobs are terminated because of market conditions. To take personal offense at a market condition makes absolutely no sense.

The market is the sum total of all voluntary exchanges, all the trading that takes place in the entire world. The loss of a job means that an employer can't make money selling that particular effort on the world market. This may show a lack of accuracy on the part of an employer in assessing the market correctly and in desperation he cuts out work that costs too much. The market is refusing to pay.

A fact to keep in mind is that all persons pay on a voluntary basis. Be it product or work, everyone is faced with three choices. They can; (a) pay the price, (b) do the work or make the product themselves, and (c) do without.

If an employer is unable to sell our effort at a profit , we must look to the market ourselves and find a place where we can exchange our effort for the things we require for life. We will have to sell a product or our time ourselves. Selling directly into the market is the fastest way to learn just how much your time is valued by everyone else, and establishes a realistic view of personal worth.

It's the willingness of exchange that is too often forgotten. Pay does not come from unwilling employers. Expecting too much pay for work is the cause of unemployment.

Most people forget that effort is individual and self-directed. It requires thought and our effort, if constructive is called work. Can we wait for someone else to solve our problems, especially when the cure probably must come from within ourselves? Our effort is really the only commodity that we do control.

On a daily basis, time is the single commodity we all receive equally. Our personal sense of worth, our egos, depend on personal accomplishments. It is the effectiveness of our time utilization that governs our personal satisfaction with life. The power to use our time constructively comes from our own minds, the rational thinking process all of us are capable of following if we try.

Yes, unemployment is not working, but to demand a job is to demand a willingness beyond our control, a mythological impossibility. Recognizing that exchange is voluntary is the first step back to the affluence that we had and yes, can have again. Work is truly unlimited and does not need to be shared. The market supports anyone that offers a value for sale, but only if the price is right. Jobs are plentiful when a person's efforts are valued. The market is there and the choice is up each of us.

free markets

I was having a thought the other day and concluded that a person who believes in free markets as a solution to economic problems, will inevitably develop a positive outlook on life.

An integrated view of how a free market works means that one makes the fundamental assumption that each individual has a better idea of what they want than some central controlling body. Now if an individual can have control of their own actions but are denied the ability to control the actions of someone else, we're going to see a different world. Things never get better when everyone is focused on what someone else wants and with each person's limited knowledge of what is best for the other guy, forces the other guy to accept their standard.

On the other hand, the people who what to fine tune our society can only wind up frustrated. Its never possible to find a leader who give exactly what some meddler thinks is the right amount or form of meddle. Even when the so-called right amount of meddling is proposed the victim often squirts out from under the dominating thumb and doesn't do what they were supposed to do. So the controller usually draw the conclusion that the leaders are corrupt, that his fellow man is ungrateful or that the world just isn't fair.

In the end, a believer in free market realizes that economic problems tend to disappear when the intervention is reduced while the controllers remain forever frustrated as nothing ever seems to work the way they believe it should.

The free marketer's biggest problem remains cutting through all the bs and selling capitalism.

truth

Truth:
As human beings, the most significant problem we face today is the same problem all of our ancestors have faced throughout history - how can we be certain a particular thing is true or false. How can we know when we’re being misled?

Each of us, as individuals, must be able to see what to reject and what to accept in order to get the most out of life, to use our time to support things we won’t later regret, to avoid looking back at life and saying “I’d have done better if I’d realized “that” was nothing but a lie.”

Some of us are lucky enough to have parents who give much thought to truth and falsehood, who have consistent beliefs and pass their evaluative tools on to their children.

Other lucky members of society may, when going through school, meet an exceptional instructor who teaches them to reject all learning by rote, to question the validity of all things, especially that for which questionable proof is offered.

Largely though, the vast majority of people, myself no exception, fail to learn that many of the things we are taught early in life to be true, are in fact false. Some ideas (like santa claus) were never meant to be taken very seriously as the originator knew them to be false and was very aware that the society regarded them as false as well. These kind of lies aren’t real dangerous. The very dangerous ideas are those ideas believed to be true by the person feeding us the information.

The importance of learning a reliable method to determine truth can’t be overstated yet we will not, at present, be able to find a significant number of people who even agree on what is an appropriate method to determine the validity of an idea. Some will tell you to believe the bible. Some will say trust the experts. Some will say believe nothing.

For myself, the fog finally lifted after studying the philosophy of objectivism and learning that reality doesn’t lie. If facts observed in the real world are rejected to prove an argument then the argument is necessarily false.