Musings

I've been reading a lot of essays and writings by many different thinkers attempting to codify how I feel about Government, the nature of Man, and Freedom. One thing that is evident from my personal experiences over the last 20-ish years of adulthood is that the conservatives in America are reactionary. They never go on the offense, except for something cooked up in the religious right. Well I'm not religious, and we have separation of church and state for a reason.

But I digress. I'm not a conservative, never have been. I prefer to take the fight to the enemy, than to give up the initiative. I chose these words carefully. This is indeed a fight for the soul of America. The time for the slow slide into a socialist, planned economy is over. It was time to fight through the 60's and 70's. Now is the time to declare WAR.

I stumbled upon the three rules of compromise, as penned by Ayn Rand: (The Anatomy of Compromise, The Objectivist Newsletter, 1/1964 - emphasis hers)

1) In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.

2) In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold two different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational who wins.

3) When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

No wonder Obama has failed to provide the promised "transparency" he made when campaigning. Point #3 shows that when there is transparency in the motivations of the two parties then we, the people, will make the logical, and therefore more freedom-based choice. The two parties seek to muddy the water as much as possible with the ubiquitous sound byte, with buzzwords that stifle thought. Only with ever-pervading confusion have the Democrats and Republicans managed to keep we Americans asleep at the wheel.

Ayn goes on:

For instance, consider the conflict between the Republicans and Democrats (and within each party, the same conflict between the"conservatives" and the "liberals"). Since both parties hold altruism as their basic moral principal, both advocate a welfare state or mixed economy as their ultimate goal.

This was written in 1964! We now have the welfare state the Democrats always wanted, and the Republicans are still reacting rather than acting. We are now firmly entrenched as a welfare state. Through ACORN and other organizations, the liberals have managed to swell the ranks of the welfare-dependent, who as a voting block, are staunchly democratic in nature. We now have a growing percentage of the population that has no useable skills. It's sad, but true, that a subsistence farmer in India has better skills than some Americans. Sure, we have a better quality of life, but without the government tit they would starve, or revert to barbarism.

The bailouts are a dramatic slide towards a planned economy. I would rather gargle broken glass than have the inept, inefficient government plan my economy. And this is exactly what we are doing. Government intervention has never, ever helped the economy. In fact, the more the government screws around with the economy, the more regulations, controls, and laws need to be passed in order to "fix" the first meddling. Rinse and repeat for a century, and you have the bureaucratic mess we live in today.

The current state of affairs needs to be fixed. The cancer has to be cut out, so the body may live. I will NOT live in a statist-collectivist-alturistic state. I would die first.