Freedom is a derivitive of our political and economic system. Without capitalism, we will have only the semblance of freedom doled out by the various governments who will own our souls.
A letter to my son:
I was thinking...Wednesday, February 11, 2009 3:53 PM about Darwin and Keynes. and realize that Keynes developed his economics pretty much from Darwin's theory of evolution: suvival of the fitest and natural selection. Since Darwin, his theory has been applied to many things in biology, psychology, and social sciences, as well as politics and economics. The difficulty with it as it applies to economics and politics is that, while in nature, natural selection and survival of the fitest is simply the way it goes and nobody with any sense has come along and told nature to stop eliminating the unfit and stop evolving. Well, that is the main issue with Keynes' ideal capitalism...it doesn't seem to really deal with a world of 6 billion, 5.5 B of whom nature might think unfit because they are not wealthy and famous. It is the idea that nurtured the "Protestant Ethic" which attributes the rich with being favored by God and the poor with, well, you know, they are lazy and unfit to sit at our tables. The English exemplified this in Ireland and, indeed, pretty much everywhere they went. But as more and more people started thinking about all this it has become apparent that the "unfit" may not be so easily dismissed...they have, after all votes and in many places, guns. Marx called it class warfare and presented the world with a flawed model that appeals to many "intellectuals" and certainly to many of the poor and disenfranchised. The Socialists made some adjustments to his model and produce dysfunctional societies and economies also, but it is the Capitalists that bother me. One would think they would be smart enough to act in a responsible manner toward their fellow human beings, even if it is for selfish reasons: i.e.survival and profits. But too many have simply gone way too far in their self indulgences, using politics and religion to keep the unfit masses under control...well, they are not under control much anymore. Self interest can be taken too far, just as collectivistic interests can be taken too far. I think we are seeing our system beginning to reap the fruits of its own destruction. In theory, capitalism and self interest may work and in practice it is the best economic system to produce the most robust economies, but its flaw seems to be the assumption that "self interest" is well enough defined and understood by practitioners of capitalism to keep the system from running wild and crashing...falling on its own sword, so to speak. Keynes, I believe thought that, for example, ethical behavior would guide self interest, but we all know that has never been the case. So, anyway, I don't know where this will all end up, but I hope there can be balance. Obama's plan(the basic Pelosi model) puts in place a very solid base of socialist agendas, while masking them with Pork to diffuse the light shining on the plan. Chuck Shumer said "Americans don't care if there is pork" in the plan. Hell, most Americans, like people everywhere just want to feed their families, self interest, and don't understand the complexities of economics in the modern world even a little bit.So there you have it...your father's rant for today.Love,Pops
The MAJOR threats to Freedom
Freedom to be! The beauty of human life can only be optimized if we are free. Over the past several decades we, as a nation, have begun to lose our understanding of how important freedom is and what it has taken to obtain and preserve it. We incrementally sell our freedom to the politicians for scraps of food and socialist promises of being cared for by the government.We lose our ability to choose our own way in life when we put the choices in the hands of government employees and politicians. On Memorial Day, 2001, the commentary below seems to say it much better than I can, so enjoy: E pluribus Unum!
Commentary by Elizabeth Soutter Schwarzer. E Pluribus Unum
Our Memorial Day weekend was filled with failed tributes. My husband and I saw Pearl Harbor Saturday night. What a terrible movie. Not only were some of the technical problems irritating (Look! The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was launched from U.S. Nimitz-class aircraft carriers!) but the film ignored a wealth of true stories in favor of a schmaltzy fabricated one. Then Monday, caught in the car in a spring rainstorm, we listened to National Public Radio's Memorial Day programming. More schmaltz. The playing of Stars and Stripes Forever, silky-voiced commentaries on everything from the Ugliness of War, to Abraham Lincoln, to the Role of Patriotism in Our Lives.
It occurs to me that the most compelling aspect of these tributes is their total ineffectiveness. That we are a generation ignorant of the true cost of freedom is a tribute to the success of those who paid the price.
Because of their sacrifice, a generation of Americans is coming of age with no recollection of a time when we as a nation were afraid, so we have no capacity to be grateful for the courage of those who protected us.
What stood out to me about NPR's presentations was what it revealed about American values. It's not that Abraham Lincoln is not a giant of American history who should be memorialized he is, and he should be.
It's that the choice to honor his life this Memorial Day is indicative of a new American obsession with the individual. We have become the Culture of One (I believe that is what is behind the "Army of One") the me generation. We believe we need a Remarkable Hero, an Extraordinary Story to honor. We don't know how to honor a universal sacrifice. We have forgotten our history.
American freedom was never earned by the One, it was fought for by common people with uncommon valor. A generation that abhors militancy for its glorification of the whole over the individual has no ability to honor the concept of sacrifice over the individual stories of loss.
This is why so many critics and pundits missed the point of Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. The story of eight men risking their lives to save one was a parable of war. Why them and not me? was not a question for one Private Ryan, but for every person who ever put on a uniform and saw others in that uniform die. These words, were not for one Private Ryan, but for all those left standing after the battles were gone.
There was one good moment in Pearl Harbor. The character of Col. James Doolittle looks out over his squadron (busily working on the deck of a circa 1970's aircraft carrier) and says, This is why we will win. We are volunteers.
This throw-away line captured the essence of what we honor on Memorial Day the average Americans throughout our history who, in the name of a freedom, surrendered themselves to the incomprehensible dictates of fate.
All of the individual stories are parables. What we should honor is the very act of putting on a uniform and offering one's life.
But perhaps more disturbing than our need to credit the individual on Memorial Day is our need to treat all that we honor as history. As we mistake the parable for the cause itself, we mistake a thriving American principle for relic to the past. Sacrifice lives and breathes in America.
Hundreds of thousands of young Americans wake up each day and put a uniform that bears the promise to forfeit life or liberty to keep America safe.
These are not relics, but living, breathing volunteers who heard the call to service over the cries of veneration for the individual.
This, then, is the spirit of Memorial Day. Not hero worship, not the reverence of individual sacrifices, not a tribute to outdated principle.
Memorial Day celebrates a national spirit of sacrifice and unity.
E pluribus Unum; Out of many, one. It is the ultimate tribute the teamwork, a celebration of sacrifice and a promise to earn what we have been given. In a 1962 address to West Point graduates, Gen. Douglas McArthur said, Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand camp fires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination. I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. The long, gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country. This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: Only the dead have seen the end of war. - - - - - - - - - - - - - (Elizabeth can be reached at
Just one of the many examples of the imposition of
ideology on the population is "diversity".The proposition is that diversity for its own sake(i.e. racial, cultural, social, and language diversity) is a wonderful and virtuous way to live and work in a society. It sounds nice and plays well politically. In fact, a mixture of diversity and continuity in a population in varying degrees has always existedand in a naturally balanced society helps growth and maintainssocial order. It is un-balance in either direction that brings problems.Unfortunately, not all diversity is necessarily good. Forcing diversity into all aspects of the lives of the citizenry can cause serious stress and social dysfunction. For example diversity of language in a society or a company or a group trying to build something, say a tower in Babel, will most assuredly produce group stress, conflict and miscommunication. The techniques used to implement diversity in America have been closely related to the techniques used in the Cultural Revolution in China, the Nazi indoctrination of Germans, Stalin's reign of terror and forced re-education of the Russian people. The left in this country are essentially the same people who do this sort of social restructuring through intimidation everywhere, although the right is quite capable of the same behavior. The Islamic fundamentalists use the same group-think techniques in theirmosques to inculcate their young with Jihadist ideals and to keep the rest of the congregation in line, as do virtually all political and religious fundamentalists. True believers seem to flock to the two ends of the bell curve of sanity and actually meet at some point: the result is called lack of freedom for the majority. But, in a doctrinaire way this behavior fits neatly into the idea that the ends justify the means. If you have good intentions, then, even if you have to kill people, suppress basic freedoms or otherwise oppress the current population, it is OK...of coursethe ends/results may be unrecogizable from the original intent,but that just means another path to the ends must be pursued.
