Burma/Myanmar

Mr. President, you have my permission to dedicate United States assets to securing the liberty of the people in Myanmar.

Myanmar is not on the frontlines of terrorism. However, it is an old Soviet state. The Cold War didn’t end when the USSR collapsed. There are still people and nations out there who would, if given the opportunity, reignite communism and socialism throughout the world. If they wish to do so, they must do so without violence or oppression, but by persuasion. It is apparent that Myanmar is a socialist or communist dictatorship where power is held by violence and not by persuasion. It is apparent that the people are slaves, the military slave drivers, and liberty is all but extinct in that great nation.

Coming to the aid of the people of Myanmar would also send a message throughout the world: All of you who govern by violence, all of you who think men are not born free with God-given liberties, hear this: Should your people desire to become free from your tyrannical rule, they will find an ally with the people of the United States.

Therefore, you have my permission as a citizen of the United States to protect the God-given liberties of the people of Myanmar.

Global Warming Alarmist: Bought and Paid For

Dr. Hansen has just seen the last whispers of his intellectual honesty, or the perception thereof, boil away. See, he was taking money from a political group, a practice he accused those who disagreed with him of doing. (link)

Global warming is, and always has been, a political issue. You were all duped. It was a carefully orchestrated campaign to invent a catastrophe where none existed. It was bought and paid for with money by evil men who conspired to take away your freedom.

Rush Limbaugh, and all the conservatives who “fought” this issue were right. The earth isn’t warming, and if it is, it is entirely natural and we have no meaningful effect on it, and it may not be a bad thing after all. Global warming wasn’t about the earth, it was about liberty and freedom and prosperity, and putting an end to all of it.

You were duped, and it wasn’t the oil companies. It was George Soros and the democratic party, along with all of their socialist and communist conspirators.

If you continue in believing this lie, you’ll only have yourself to blame now.

Get over it. Get on with your life, and buy that SUV you had your heart on.

Four Pillars of Society, And How to Topple Them

There are four pillars that hold society together. These are institutions that are critical to any functioning group. Without them, the survival of the group is in peril.

We all agree that government is one of those pillars. Government exists to fight evil with force. In government, we bestow the right to kill, imprison, write laws, and enforce them. Without government, it is a simple matter for evil men to band together and overpower the good. Government is simply good men banding together to keep evil men from doing so.

The second institution is business. We need to be economically prosperous, and our amoral corporations are the way we do this. This allows people to come together to seek the economic benefit of themselves, and thus each other. Without business, it is impossible to grow and move food around society, and impossible to secure the physical blessings of liberty.

The third institution is the family. The family is where our newest members are welcomed. They are raised by two loving parents (in the ideal), and are taught how to function in society. The corruption of the family means we have no way of ensuring the continuation of our society.

The fourth institution is religion. While government can only govern men’s actions, religion governs men’s beliefs. Religion sets an ideal, something to aspire to. It encourages men to aspire for it, and lays down the road they must follow to obtain it. In some ways, it can be argued that religion is the pillar that bears all other pillars up. Without a religious belief that laws must be followed, government would cease to exist. Without a religious belief that one must work and benefit society, business would collapse. Without a religious belief in the family and in dedicating oneself to it, families would evaporate.

General Pace (ret.), condemned by fools for expressing the immorality of homosexual acts, repeated his condemnation and clarified it. He stood up to those who fail to recognize the importance of religion and religious moral values. (article) (ht: Drudge)

General Pace defends it quite clearly, invoking such out-of-fashion things as “God” and “morality”. He makes the case that whether government writes a law or not, morality is still morality and God doesn’t change his will according to who is in office.

Note that he isn’t attacking only homosexual acts, but all behavior contrary to morality. Of course, those who scorn him would have us believe General Pace hates homosexuals alone, which General Pace does not.

For that, he was scorned just as the prophets in the Old Testament were. Truth is always hard for the wicked.

I cannot sit by while fools mock the wise. General Pace is right, in every sense of the word. If we as a society fail to acknowledge our religious pillar, if we ignore God and his counsels, we will be punished for it, just as Sodom and Gomorrah were. Don’t think these things were fairy tales–real men recorded these events, and those accounts were carefully transcribed from generation to generation. And we don’t draw from just one account, but several complimentary ones.

There is a law, a law that God issued, and that law has certain punishments ascribed to certain actions. We cannot escape God’s judgment, whether you believe in him or not.

Oh, by the way, if I were to try and destroy the United States, I would do it in the following manner:

1. Corrupt religion. Put people in positions of power in every church, and then change the churches to no longer teach about God but the precepts of men. Turn churches into centers of philosophy and change doctrines to teach that God permits any action by anybody without condemnation.
2. Corrupt families. Teach that it is acceptable, even good, to experiment with our procreative powers, that one’s duty does not lie in the home and with raising children, and that economic success is more important than success in the home. Turn the children against the parents by lying to the children and telling them their parents don’t understand. Use whatever methods available to teach people these things, such as music, television, novels, newspaper articles, teachers, and movies.
3. Corrupt business. Turn the businesses from focusing on profits to focusing on their non-existent social duty. (The duty of a corporation lies only to its shareholders.) Do this with shame. Make “profit” a negative word by focusing on the wealth of those who profit and not focusing on the benefit to society that that profit represents. Punish those who succeed with punitive taxes. Protect those who fail with insurance and bail-outs.
4. Corrupt government. For those duties to which government is charged, fail on them. Rather than protecting the borders, open them up. Use law enforcement agencies to punish the good people for minor offenses, while ignoring festering problems such as murder rates and sexual offenses. Fill the courts with frivilous lawsuits. Fill the prisons and refuse to build more. Simultaneously, consume the government’s time with debate and concern for things it shouldn’t concern itself with, such as helping those in a tragedy or solving diseases.

If you look closely, you will see that this is precisely the Democrat Party platform, as well as the Socialist and Communist parties. In fact, any institution bent on destroying American society will focus on one or more of the above.
Don’t be caught up in this foolishness. This attack on General Pace is nothing new, and it is calculated to destroy our country.

SoundPolitics got a gem of a comment from a raving liberal and confessed MoveOn.Org supporter. Let me try to address the points. Perhaps those who suffer from Bush derangement syndrome will see the light. Perhaps not.

I am a member of MOVE ON…

Thanks for being honest.

…and since the ad came out our membership has grown by millions.

I strongly doubt that is true. However, if it is, it is still a logical fallacy: argumentum ad populum. Just because a lot of people say you are right does not make you right.

You neo cons have no right to call anyone anything.

So the right of free speech only applies to those who are not neo-cons? Interesting. I believe it applies to all equally.

Baby bush has done nothing but lie, to get us into war, about winning the war,(MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, May 1, 2001), renditions, torture, spying, wiretapping, and signing statements.

If Bush lied, why isn’t there any documentation or any record of fact on that? Let me reiterate: Bush has yet to lie, even once, about the smallest of subject.

On the entry war: If President Bush lied, then so did the entire world, including Saddam. The evidence is not that he lied or encouraged anyone to misrepresent the facts, but instead he did everything in his power to get to the truth. You should re-read the various reports that have been published on this.

On winning the war: Major combat operations did end before May 1, 2001, and all signs at that time pointed to there not being any need for a major military presence. By the way, the scale of operations in Iraq are a drop in the bucket compared to what we did in Vietnam or World War II. We are in a counter-insurgency mode, which means keeping land we had already taken from going over to rebels. In other words, if the president lied about the end of the war, then so did President Lincoln lie about the end of the Civil War, President Truman about the end of World War II, etc. In those areas as well, there was a significant counterinsurgency after the end of the war.

On renditions, torture: Cite one fact, other than terrorist testimony (which, unlike President Bush, regularly lie). I am sure with all the countless lawyers and FBI and CIA and military and congressional members involved in this issue, there would be even one shred of evidence that this is going on. Instead, we have nothing.

Spying, wiretapping: Would you rather we closed our eyes and ears as we tried to uncover plots to kill you and your friends? If you’d like another 9/11, that’s exactly what we’d have to do to get it. As far as spying and wiretapping citizens of the US, I ask you again: Cite one source, one shred of evidence. The government was sued for supposedly spying on citizens of the US, but the judge threw it out because no one had any basis of making a claim. That is, no one had proof that anyone from the government even spied on them. Instead, President Bush has been quite clear that the spying is happening on specific targets, targets that live outside the US. Until you have any evidence that contradicts that, you can’t claim he is lying. You’d think one FBI or CIA agent would step forward and say something. After all, they can’t all be Bush’s cronies, right?

All you neo con christians with your right to life, all life is sacred, until that person doesn’t pray to your god, or doesn’t agree with your message of hate, or doesn’t vote for your brand of fascism, then KILL them, those lees than humans.

I don’t know where you get the impression that those who disagree with you are out to kill you. President Bush has been quite kind to those who have disagreed with him, called him all sorts of absolutely terrible things, and accused him of destroying theTwin Towers. Not one has been arrested, tortured, or abused. In fact, all of them enjoy every civil liberty everyone else does. And message of hate? Who is it that you accuse them of hating? Do you accuse them of hating those who are trying to kill them? Or do you accuse them of hating you? I certainly don’t hate you. Pity–yes. Hate–no. And as far as I’m concerned, I value the lives of Iraqis as highly as that of Americans and anyone else in the world. That’s why they deserve the chance to throw off countles smillenia of oppression and engage for once in a productive democracy. Those men and women who are in Iraq believe the same, and are actively giving their lives to do so. I don’t believe they regard them as less than human.

Meanwhile, you believe that neo-cons shouldn’t have the right to speak freely. Who is it that hates?

You people are the biggest haters since the KKK which you probably are a member and leader.

On the contrary, the Republican Party has been adamantly opposed to the KKK and its principles even before it was founded. KKK members tend to belong to the Democrat party–that’s why the South kept voting democrat throughout the integration years. Look back in history, brother. Republicans fought and sacrificed to see that the Black People could enjoy the blessings of liberty as much as the white people. Or did you forget the whole Civil War thing, the whole reconstruction thing, and the whole Pres. Eisenhower (R) integration thing?

Our country has spent the last six years being run into the ground by your religious fanatical right wing.

On the contrary, the last six years have been some of the best years America has ever seen in its entire history. Today, we are more wealthy, more employed, more productive, and more economically satisfied than I believe we ever have been. More people own homes (including people of non-white descent) and more people own businesses. These last six years have been kind to me and all the people I can see. Economic indicators say my anecdotal evidence isn’t unusual.

Liberal crusher, your kind has made us strong.

If this is true, then you should be quite happy. Liberals will take congress and the presidency. But for the past 20 years, your kind has been unable to make any political progress. In fact, the small victory you had in 2006 was quite short-lived and pyrrhic. Unable to accomplish any of their campaign goals, it looks like the democrats will be going back to their districts with dim hopes of re-election.

Forget vouchers—tax credits.

I am a huge advocate of school vouchers. Actually, I am a huge advocate of getting government out of education–completely. School vouchers are the way to get there, and that’s why I support them

Adam B. Shaeffer on National Review Online today suggests that those who support school vouchers may find more success in education tax credits. (link) I certainly am persuaded.

Education tax credits allow taxpayers—corporations and individuals—to pay less taxes if they give some of their money to a school or a scholarship program. As is the case with other tax breaks, powerful lobbies are quickly assembled to support these programs because there is a lot of money in avoiding taxes, particularly when the purse strings are controlled by those with a vested interest in the target of their tax cuts. Not only that, but the recipients of the money also have a vested interest in the program.

For instance, the deduction for home mortgage interest is never going away because homeowners like saving a bundle on their taxes, and mortgage companies like collecting a bundle on interest. If a politician threatened that tax deduction, they would feel the wrath of the millions and millions of home mortgage interest payers and receivers. And since money is at stake, they are going to throw money into their efforts to persuade the public and politicians not to change the program.

The same will be true with an education tax credit program. Schools, scholarship programs, and education philanthropists alike want to spend money on education. If they can save a bundle on their taxes doing so, they would like that even more. And so, they will fight to protect a deduction for education spending.

This is very different from the voucher program, which is only supported tepidly by the parents of the children who benefit by it, and which only benefit the schools who receive the vouchers very little. The voucher program, unlike the education tax credit, is controlled by a government bureaucracy that will have to write the checks and can play all sorts of games to determine whether or not the claims are valid.

Not so with tax credits, where the burden of proof is to show that the money really wasn’t spent on education, after the fact. As well, there is no limit to how much money a school or scholarship program can raise, unlike the voucher program.

That said, I do not like complicated tax laws designed to help certain people pay less taxes than others because they do certain things with their money. I would rather have a limited government that collected a tiny fraction of our money in taxes and provided only the services we allowed it to via the constitution. But that is wishful thinking at this point.

To Mr. Card…

I read Mr. Card’s piece today on immigration. Apparently, he believes people like me that are adamantly opposed to illegal immigration want to shut down the borders and drive out all the illegal immigrants with force.

Let me speak for myself.

I want our borders open. I want people to come to America freely, as long as their intentions are peaceful. I don’t mind if you just want to come here for work or to trade or to learn. That’s fine.

If you want to be an American, by all means, I welcome you with open arms, no matter what your race, religion, or whatnot. All you have to do is learn our culture, our language, and our law. If you want to become one of us, become one of us. When you have demonstrated that you are one of us, I will gladly accept you as an American citizen and share with you all the rights and powers I have as an American citizen.

If you want to take over our country, change our culture, or steal our money, or commit any kind of crimes, you are not welcome here and you never should be.

If you hate America and want to kill Americans and destroy our nation, then you are my enemy and I pray you will die a horrible death at the hands of our military or our allies.

This is the way I wish America was. This is the way America used to be, and not too long ago. Back in the 1920′s, we had open borders. We welcomed people from all over the world openly when we knew that they were coming with honest intentions. We were also firm with our enemies, and didn’t play games that cost us our sovereignty and security.

This is whte way America cannot be and still be America. We have a few problems we need to solve first before we allow people to freely immigrate here.

The first is socialism. The experiment of socialism has failed everywhere it was tried, even here at home. I won’t bother defending freedom and liberty and denouncing socialism. Let me just state that Social Security, welfare, and all these other government programs that give money away are not right because they are socialist. As long as we have socialist programs, we must be selective in who is allowed to come here. No one may come if they are going to ride the socialist system, costing me additional tax dollars. Only those who will benefit the American nation by working hard and paying their own way will be allowed. If we do not do this, we will bankrupt our government and destroy the fabric of society by growing the leeches of society and shrinking those who produce wealth.

The second problem is law enforcement. We have laws, but they are not enforced. What we don’t want is a bunch of people coming to America who believe that breaking laws are okay. It’s not okay, and it will never be okay. We Americans are ruled by law, and if all Americans do not honor, respect, and keep the laws that we write, we will only have chaos. We will be no different than the countries the immigrants are fleeing from. I understand why people don’t like this idea of enforcing the law. They don’t like it because people get hurt by it. But those people are not innocent. They are guilty of violating our laws. They are guilting of breaking the standards of conduct we the people have established to maintain order, peace, and security. They are guilty of hurting us, individually and collectively. You cannot do this and not get punished for it.

The final problem is war. There are people who are trying to destroy our nation. We haven’t stood up to defend ourselves until recently, after we saw the twin towers fall and our pentagon attacked. If we do not take the threats of foreign belligerants seriously, and we do not do our homework to make sure that these belligerents do not get in our country, then we cannot open up the borders for free immigration. To do so would be national suicide. Imagine allowing Hitler to send his agents into America en masse, or Japan to send her agents to our country in World War II. If they were allowed to freely cross the borders and freely operate within our borders, then we would be fighting a war in our borders, exactly where we prefer not to fight our wars. We like our wars overseas, fought in the homes and villages and towns of our enemies. We prefer to kill the bad guys before they succeed in killing us.

These are very serious problems, ones that if we do not address, open immigration only makes more serious. To allow people to cross our borders freely at this time in our history is suicide. We cannot long survive this massive influx of people who do not want to assimilate, who do not want to produce but consume, who do not want to abide by our laws that we wrote, and who do not want to see America survive.

My plan to implement open immigration, where anyone who wants to partake of our freedom and prosperity may do so freely, is to do the following three things:

(0) First, build a fence and secure our borders. There is no reason anyone should ever cross our borders except at the legal crossing points. This is an absolute. It is uncompromisable. Why would anyone who wants to come to America honestly want to sneak in our back door?

(1) End all social programs in the US, and adopt constitutional amendments to prevent them from ever being implemented again.

(2) Enforce the law, absolutely, everywhere. We don’t have to go house-to-house looking for illegal immigrants anymore than we go house-to-house looking for murderers and rapists. If we simply enforce the laws we already put into place, in the way we enforce laws, they will go home on their own. If that means we need more prisons, build more prisons. If that means we need more prosecutors and judges and policemen, hire more prosecutors and judges and policemen. We are, as a nation, bordering chaos because we do not take the enforcement of our laws seriously enough.

(3) Treat foreign threats seriously before they can harm us. Maintain a strong international intelligence network and a strong military presence throughout the world. Use that military to kill those who are plotting to kill us, before they kill us. Use that military to overthrow governments who raise their fist in violent threats against us. Use that military to establish peace throughout the world, and encourage the development of democracies and representative governments that engender peace and prosperity, rather than governments that are a machine for war. We won’t have to question those crossing our borders if we know who our enemies are and are watching them closely, and if there simply aren’t enemies plotting to kill us.

As far as Mr. Card’s insinuations that a shortage of labor would lead to skyrocketing prices, labor strikes, and a poor economy, I only have to say he knows nothing about how economies work. The only times our economy has suffered is when government has interfered with the free interchange of labor, goods, and ideas. Adam Smith is right, Karl Marx was wrong, and history bears that out in countless demonstrations of fact.

When we face a shortage of labor, the economy adjusts to handle it. Labor-intensive products either go up in price, or are replaced with less labor-intensive products. Americans are innovative, and we have long ago changed our farming techniques from labor-intensive ones to much less labor-intensive ones. We can only expect more of the same in the future if government stays out of the way of the American ingenuity engine and the freedom of the people to buy, sell, work, and innovate.

Mr. Card normally has some good insights into today’s politics, but on immigration, he has done a whole lot of listening to one side and believed all the strawmen arguments they put forward. Perhaps he should spend some time reading closely what leaders on the pro-enforcement side have to say rather than making things up.

And as far as Mexico’s economy, what ails them is not the US and the lack of or the excess of the enforcement of our laws. What ails them is a corrupt government that has taken far too much power from the people and has done little to protect the rights of the ordinary Mexican to buy, sell, work, and innovate. Mexico is enslaved to their socialist government, and they have nothing but their government to blame for it. We can do little but try to persuade the government to let the people go because as it is, Mexico offers no military threat to the security of the US.