Apparently, the estimates for the unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare were grossly underestimated. We are $107,000,000,000,000.00, or roughly $360,000 per person in the US, or $1,430,000 per family of four to keep these institutions alive. (link)

If congress were to wake up tomorrow, and declare, “From here on out, we collect nothing on Social Security and Medicare, and we pay nothing out, and all funds left will be applied to the federal budget”, we would all be $360,000 richer.

So, I actually took the time to read my Social Security Statement. In that document, there are wonderful bits that I thought others might find interesting. (Emphasis mine.)

Social Security is a compact between generations. For deca, America has kept the promises of security for its workers and their families. Now, however, the Social Security system is facing serious financial problems, and action is needed soon to make sure the system will be sound when today’s younger workers are ready for retirement.

In 2016 we will begin paying more in benefits than we collect in taxes. Without changes, by 2037 the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted and there will be enough money to pay only about 76 cents for each dollar of scheduled benefits. We need to resolve these issues soon to make sure Social Security continues to provide a foundation of protection for future generations.

I’ve barely begun my career, but I already have earned well over half a million dollars. (College pays—if you study the hard sciences.) I don’t know exactly how much I’ve paid into Social Security, but 12.4% of my salary (half by me, half by my employer) accounts for roughly $80,000.

My retirement is well after the 2037 D-Day for Social Security. My money is not going to return to me in proportion of my donation.

Needless to say, I am pretty upset. I spent $80,000 on something that I will probably never see again. I should’ve kept the money for and put into a halfway decent investment. Or, I could’ve bought 2 mini vans with that money and had them paid off. Or, I wouldn’t be paying so much in house payments right now because my loan would be for $80,000 less than it is now.

For me, and pretty much everyone my age, Social Security isn’t. I don’t know how far up the spectrum the equation is negative for, but I know that my dad, who has just retired, freely admits he would’ve been better off not putting a dime into Social Security and keeping the money for himself. The pittance of a check he receives isn’t even enough to cover the house payment — a house he could have bought several times over had he simply kept the cash.

To me, Social Security is Bernie Madoff times a billion. Just because crooks wear suits and ties can go by the name of “Senator” doesn’t make them any less crooked. It doesn’t leave their victims feeling any better.

My vote is to abolish Social Security, the Bernie Madoff Generational Theft Act. We are, as a people, better off keeping our own money and choosing whether to spend, save, or invest it.

Instead, Social Security has been a major scam. The way it works is this. Each year, they draw in more cash than they pay out. Congress wastes that cash on their pet projects.  Then, when the chickens come home to roost, congress will have to defund some other budget item because they no longer can take cash from the Social Security system. And eventually, not even Social Security will pay for itself.

I wish I had something nicer to say about Medicare, but Medicare makes the Social Security scam seem like a white lie. The sums of money involved in Medicare are horrifying, and the policies that the executives of that system have inflicted upon patients and doctors alike are indescribable.

Unfortunately for the Greatest Generation, their folly in adopting pyramid schemes to bring about fascism in America is going to override their fighting prowess of World War II. Someday, some history book will be written describing these great heroes as idiots when it comes to self-governance.

Now, where is that check box where I opt-out of Social Security and forfeit all my benefits?

Liberals often attack conservatives because they believe we don’t care about the little man. Here, I want to discuss the various social safety nets that conservatives not only believe in, but are working constantly to build.

First, let’s start with the premise of conservatism in practice. That means that there is no Social Security, no Medicare, no food stamps or welfare. It also means that hospitals are allowed, by law, to turn away the sick or injured based on whatever criteria they feel like, including their ability to pay. In this world, there is no law in the land that dictates compassion or charity. The only laws that exist are there to help grease the wheels of commerce and private interactions.

Now, what would this world look like?

The liberal mind is reeling in shock and horror. Why, won’t the streets be filled with the sick, poor, and elderly? Who will take care of these people?

Let me provide you a long list of people that will do everything they can to take care of these people.

First is the individual. Individuals are held responsible for their own life. They need to find a way to make money or at least grow or scavenge for food. Ultimately, their lot in life is dictating by the choices they make. Of course, we know from sad experience that not everyone is competent and a whole lot of people fall on hard times due to events beyond their control. But no one cares more for a person than that person himself. No one can meet the needs of that person but that person himself.

Next is the family. Mother, father, sister, brother, grandparents, cousins, grandchildren, all should help each other out when times are tough. No one cares more for the individual than their family. The bonds between child and parents are the strongest bonds on earth.

If the family is incapable of helping, then the needy person turns to their church. Almost all churches preach a responsibility to help the poor and needy. By turning to the church, we not only give the members of the churches an opportunity to act on their religious teachings, but to do so in the love and compassionate way that their religion teaches.

Behind the church is the community. These are people living in the same area as the people who are suffering. Note that the further we get away from the individual, the less people care about the person. Community hospitals and schools and poor houses and such are great, but ultimately, these people cannot give the same kind of care and attention that the family or church can.

When entire communities are in distress, then help can come from surrounding communities, all the way up to nations and continents. For instance, a massive flood or a natural disaster, even war, can leave entire regions and nations in ruin. In these cases, it is up to people far, far, away to give what they can. A good example is the airlift of supplies to war-torn Europe in the aftermath of WWII.

I want to compare the above support system with the support system imagined by liberals, statists, socialists, and communists. The first turn towards government, even before the individual can consider their own needs. The government is the first and final source of help. Any other competitor in the realm of charity isn’t seen as a source of help but as a nemesis. Looking at things this way, it becomes quite obvious that people who want to re-create society in this way are really mad with hunger for power. They want ultimate control over who gets what and how.

Conservative policies, such as eliminating social spending and controlling government through strict constitutional limits and limited revenue and borrowing controls, are designed to allow the support structure we envision to be put into maximum effect.

For the individual, we hold sacrosanct the concept of individual, God-given, unalienable liberty. These rights are given by God, and no individual can separate themselves from them. Using his liberty, any man should be able to grow in understanding of the world around him enough to provide for himself.

For the family, we create a legal entity called marriage and hold sacred protections, privileges, and responsibilities by law.

For the church, our government holds itself completely separated from all church activities. This is to prevent the government from interfering in the work of religious training and religious activities, such as volunteer work.

For the community, we allow communities to govern themselves. By keeping government close, communities can choose how much or how little government they want, and adopt the rules and laws that work for them. Communities are also prevented from stealing from other communities to build things that only benefit themselves.

When these things are put into place, then a wonderful thing occurs. Individuals begin to build marketplaces, where goods and services are freely traded. This maximizes their productivity and allows wealth to be created from nothing. In a remarkably short period of time, these free marketplaces turn garbage into gold. With this wealth, jobs are created, people are highered, the wages increase while the price of goods and services decrease. This has been the result of the American experiment in government.

Now, ask yourself: which is more compassionate? Trusting individuals to themselves, their families, their churches, and communities, or trusting individuals with government? Which is better at providing for the needs of the individual: free marketplaces where wealth is found in abundance, or other economic systems where wealth is not found except in the hands of a few?

Our president is our head of state. He represents us internationally.

When he bows before a foreign head of state, he is bowing for all of us.

I do not bow before emperors, kings, or any royalty. I am their equal. We are all equal. Birth, nobility, titles, even offices, do not make one person more or less important in the eyes of God.

We must impeach this president before he bows before anyone else.

Update: This is going to be painful for the Koreans (North and South) and the Chinese, not to mention the American veterans who fought against the emperor of Japan. A bit of a history lesson: Multiple Hitler by 100, and you have roughly what the Japanese were to Northeast Asia. I can’t think of a bloodier and less deserving royal line than the Japanese one.

The Romans had an ancient formula for entertaining the masses and maintaing political power. It’s called, simply, “Bread & Circus.” All you do is feed the people and then put on a show. Then the people don’t care about politics anymore.

President Obama is attempting to turn the Federal Government into that kind of government. The “bread” part comes from so-called “stimulus” spending. It doesn’t matter that we can’t afford to pay ourselves. He’s doing it anyway.

The circus part is a bit more difficult to master. Nothing gets the crowd going like a good public execution. That’s what he’s doing with the visible and public trials of the 9/11 masterminds and conspirators.

See, in reality, these people are enemies of our nation. We are at war with them. Under the articles of the Geneva Convention, which they haven’t even signed, they are considered “unlawful enemy combatants”. This means they have exactly ZERO protections. If I were a soldier, and I saw someone conducting enemy actions while not wearing a uniform that represents a state, I would kill them, immediately. At best, I would capture them, interrogate them, and then kill them. There is no need for a trial. There is no need for second guessing or games.

I don’t know why this is a hard concept for liberals to understand. The enemy is trying to kill us, and will eventually succeed unless we kill them first or change their minds.

However, Obama, the first geek president, has determined that rather than quietly send the 9/11 conspirators to their heavenly reward of 72 virgins, he wants to put on a grand show that will eventually end with their public execution. This way, the masses will believe that he actually cares about protecting our country from people who want to destroy it. Or at least, maybe he can distract us from the fact that our government is already infiltrated by those who want to destroy it in the name of Allah.

As for me, I’d rather have our president directing a global war against global jihadis rather than assaulting Fox News and talk radio. I’d rather have him working to defend so-called moderate muslims who have the revolutionary idea that maybe missionary work shouldn’t involve AK-47s and suicide bombers. I’d rather have him speaking out against and marginalizing states like Iran that are actively supporting terrorism here and abroad, rather than coddling them and trying to make them feel good about themselves.

Instead, he is going to open a brand new circus.

And you wonder why Nero fiddled while Rome burned?

One of the lies I have been told growing up is that the political spectrum is a line from the right to the left. People fall somewhere on that line. Extremists lie at the extremes and moderates lie in the middle.

This is, of course, terribly simplistic, and completely useless. After all, there is another axis altogether, the axis that determines how much government is appropriate at all. In Ronald Reagan’s terms, this is the “up” and “down”. “Up” refers to a government that only protects individual liberty, while “down” refers to a government that doesn’t recognize let alone respect or protect individual liberties.

Over at Red State, they are reading Liberal Fascism. The chapter they discuss covers how FDR, Hitler, and Mussolini were really three birds of a feather. (link) The differences between their views on government are hard to identify.

With that, I ask the entirely important and pertinent question: How does Obama’s view of government differ from the fascists FDR, Mussolini, and Hitler?

In response to Rep. Smith:

Dear Rep. Smith,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my email. Although I am sure you’ve sent a similar letter to the many people who mailed you on the topic, nevertheless, I appreciate the time you took to put your thoughts together.

I, like you, believe reform is important. Our health care system is good, but it can be much, much better. By denying ourselves a superior health care system, we are condemning millions to suffer needlessly.

The principle, and perhaps, only reason why people are denied health care is because of cost. The higher the cost, we learn from simple economics, the fewer that can afford the good or service. If we can lower the cost of health care, then we can provide health care to more people. Lower it enough, and it becomes something the poorest among us can have an abundance of. Our nation’s poor are fat because of the abundance of food. Wouldn’t it be nice if they were “fat” with an abundance of health care, too?

I don’t think we need to look very far for a system that can deliver a superior product or service at a minimum price. This system has consistently and reliably increased efficiencies such that every year, the entire world depends on the price of the goods and services to go down, and the quality and quantity to go up. Entire nations and international corporations plan their budgets relying on this simple fact. People trust their hard-earned money into this system as the only reliable way to generate consistent wealth.

That system is, of course, capitalism. It’s principles are cold and heartless, and its mechanism at times can seem unfair. But its effects are undeniable. Today, countries that have embraced capitalism enjoy more food than they could ever hope to eat, more jobs than they have ever had in their entire history, and a better standard of living superior to their historic monarchs and emperors.

I believe capitalism will work with health care as well. It will, reliably, reduce the cost of health care and increase its quality for every person, even the illegal immigrants and unemployed.

Unfortunately, we live under a quasi-capitalist and quasi-socialist system. We are suffering under the effects of this socialism, but we are told it is the fault of the capitalist side of the equation—”greedy” doctors and “greedy” corporations who are, in fact, the only people in the system who produce the goods and services we need.

If you ask any doctor, they can identify for you, readily, the areas where government is interfering in the marketplace. Let me list the few that I see.

First is tort law. Right now, a doctor can maintain the highest level of professionalism and still get sued for malpractice over things they have no control over. And the penalties for losing the suit are astronomical, far outside the realm of reason. We need tort law that will protect doctors so that they can rely on their best professional judgment while punishing those who are negligent or who refuse to adhere to the highest levels of professionalism. At the same time, we can limit the rewards to reasonable amounts that justly punish and compensate.

Second is government mandates. From the federal code to the state level, there are numerous inefficiencies introduced by government mandate. Among the most obvious are the various rules and procedures doctors must adhere to to receive compensation from government health care systems. These are onerous and turn the most important medical decisions over to the hands of bureaucrats who simply can not care for the individual in the system. While you have the power to change federal law, you can also protect the people from bad state law by allowing individuals to purchase insurance policies from across state lines.

Third is our tax code. This tax code makes it impossible to buy health insurance except from your employer. If you go outside of this channel, then you have to pay significantly more in taxes and higher costs. By limiting the marketplace, health insurance consumers end up paying more than they should. Rewrite the tax law so that employees are not limited in their health insurance choices to the policies that the employer makes available.

Fourth are government social welfare programs. These hide the true costs of the benefit. It also externalizes costs so that everyone within the system makes bad decisions. If we truly cared for our senior’s health, we would build a system where they can own their health policy, covered by a corporation bound by law to have on hand the assets to cover the promises they made when those promises need to be fulfilled. We would not have built a system which brings in more cash than it spends in the early years, just for congress to increase spending and bankrupt the country. You and I both know how far in debt we are in these federal programs. That’s why the health care bill you voted for contained a massive cut in Medicare spending. Today, our seniors are in danger of losing their health care not because of decisions they’ve made, but decisions congress has made. The assets needed to provide for their health do not exist and cannot exist. In the end, their health care will be denied, because it cannot be provided.

When you apply any measure against the yardstick of individual liberty, I think the answer becomes clear. Does each policy and regulation and law imposed tend to increase individual liberties or diminish them? That is, are you more or less free living under the new law than the old one? We never go wrong in choosing the laws that expand our individual liberties.

Whether or not this bill comes back with the problems fixed is irrelevant. You helped push forward a bill with many problems. If a person helps a cause that is not good, does that make the person a good person? No, if we wanted to be counted as good, we must stand only behind good things and stand against the bad things. There is no need to compromise with our liberty and morality on any topic.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Gardner

Sincerely,

Adam Smith
Member of Congress

The reason why voters in Washington State, slightly more than half of them who actually voted, approved Referendum 71 is because they do not understand marriage as we on the other side do. It’s simply that simple.

Marriage, in their minds, is about love or sharing property and lives. It’s about building a house and co-habitating.

These are all nice things, and absolutely necessary for a successful marriage. But like a car without wheels, it’s missing the big point.

Marriage, ultimately, is about building families. What is a family? A family isn’t just a group of people. It’s a very, very special group of people.

At the head of the family is the father. He is a man who has agreed to protect and provide for everyone within the family. He represents masculinity, discipline, rigor, and is the outward face of the family. The family depends on him not just for their food and money, but he is the spiritual backbone as well. He lays down the spiritual law of the family, and describes the ideal that the family aspires to.

Equal to the head is the mother. Although she does not preside over the family, she does lead and she does share in the awesome responsibility of providing for and protecting the family. (Take careful note of the word “preside”. Note that a president is not a ruler. He merely stands at the head and brings order where there could be chaos. The President of the United States rules no more over the Senate and House than a father could rule over his wife.) The mother is a nurturer. Her talents and responsibilities lie chiefly with child rearing and home making. This isn’t because mothers are inferior to fathers. This is because they excel at this role in ways a father never could hope to. As a father, I admit I lack the compassion my wife has for my children.

And the whole point of the father and the mother is the children. The children are brought in, normally by childbirth, but occasionally, adoption, and they become the product of that holy union. They own their parents as much as their parents own them. And their parents spend the rest of their lives, until their death, providing for the needs of their children. Not because they expect monetary compensation, of course, but because they love each other and they love their children.

We have marriage so we can have families. And the point of families is to love the children. As a society, we have a direct interest in seeing successful families. We expect each generation to rise up and keep the laws and participate productively in our economy. One day, the next generation will be feeding us, making our clothes, running our hospitals. If they grew up in a house of love, then their lives will be filled with love. That love will come back to us. Otherwise, their lives will be dark and empty, and we will find ourselves living among a dark and empty race of men.

We have lost the family ideal in our culture. It’s been degraded by unceasing attacks since the early 1900’s. The attacks took the form of first downplaying the importance of motherhood and homemaking. By portraying mothers as imbecilic or simple, and by downplaying the importance of breast feeding and the simple nurturing touch and simple acts of kindness in favor of a military-like education regime, the women in the early 1900’s were taught that their role as mother wasn’t important.

Instead, in the early 1900’s, masculinity and fatherhood was exaggerated. It’s the father who tells people what to do, who goes out and builds skyscrapers and societies and organizations and companies and charities. It’s the father who leads the ideal lifestyle, a lifestyle to which women should not aspire because they are the lesser sex. With this tyrannical power came tyranny in the home. Fathers were not presidents but rulers. Their families suffered for it.

This was clearly wrong. It sounds absurd today, extremely sexist, to even say the things that were popular back then.

The second wave of attacks came in the feminist movement. Feminism is not and never was about making women into women. Instead, like the words in 1984’s dictionary of double-speak, it is about turning women into men. Now that women were thoroughly degraded and abused by overworked, alcoholic husbands, the women rebelled and declared independence from the family. The pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. Now, any identification of the obvious difference between the sexes is labeled “sexism”, as if pointing out that a black man’s skin is a darker hue than a white man’s skin is racism.

The sufferers in the second wave were the children. Now they had an overworked father and an overworked mother, neither of whom could lead the family after 10 hours of work just to put food on the table and a boat in the yard. The children, even in affluent neighborhoods, were left to the streets. They were raised by the TV, a mechanical device that has no heart.

These children grew up without ever learning about the purpose and point of families, or even the purpose of life. So they engage in all kinds of bizarre and destructive practices that are absolutely ruinous to the institution of the family and society in general.

The new generation, a group of children born to single mothers incapable or uncaring, is growing up with a foreboding sense of doom. There is no father, no mother, no one in the world who cares for and values them. They are left alone in this dark and dreary world, to fend for themselves by whatever means necessary.

I am, of course, generalizing. With every generalization, there are exceptions. Not every American behaved in this broken way. A very large number heard the siren song of the breakup of the family and said, “No thanks.” Even when things were bad or worse, a lot of people behaved in ways that made things better. We all seem to know a single mother who keeps it together and whose children are astounding success stories. We also know of working women who still manage to raise 5 boys. And there are cases where abusive fathers didn’t manage to completely screw up their kids.

However, I state unequivocally that all of society’s problems stem from this single fact: Our families are broken.

Marriage has been downplayed as the rock upon which families are built. First came fairy-tale notion of perfection and eternal bliss between two people. Strangely missing from this fairy tale were the dirty diapers and the dishes, as well as long hours with nothing to show for it but old clothes and a meager living. Now marriage is portrayed as an institution of oppression, either as shackles to the modern human’s sexual escapades or a way to keep homosexual couples down because they are not afforded the same “rights” as married couples.

When we realize the predicament we are in, and understand the cause of it, we, as a society, will demand that we elevate in all ways possible the institution and ideal of marriage. We won’t allow marriage to be redefined from what it really is.

Yes, marriage must be between one man and one woman. And the purpose of marriage must be to build families capable of raising children in love and security. Note all the responsibilities of married couples towards their children in our law. If you don’t feed your kid, you go to jail.

Yes, in marriage property should be shared equally. So we mandate that by law. It’s not a “nice to have” bonus of marriage. It is an “agree to this or you don’t get married” condition. Quid pro quo between the state and the married couple.

Yes, in marriage, divorce should be rare and difficult. Again, not a “nice to have”. It’s “agree or else.” We, as a society represented by the state government, demand that married couples do everything in their power to resolve their differences before they even consider dissolving that union. If they can’t agree to that, don’t get married.

Only married couples with stable incomes and clean, orderly homes should be allowed to adopt or handle foster children. Why? Because every child deserves a mother and a father, and when the state has determined that a family is wholly unsuitable for child-rearing, it should only place them in homes capable of child-rearing.

In all things, the focus isn’t love or sexual relationships or cohabitation or property rights. It’s about raising children in the best environment possible. And that environment can only be found when a man and a woman love each other and commit themselves wholly to providing for and protecting their family.

If we allow the discussion to be about love or sexual relationships or cohabitation or property rights, then we will lose the argument every time. But if we talk about the children and the necessity of providing for the next generation, then everyone will agree that stable homes with a mother and a father who love each other are the only way to go. And we’ll use the instition of marriage to get the results we want.

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that there were two types of people. Each type is inherently incompatible with the other.

Naturally, these two types of people will begin to affiliate with their similar type and disassociate with the other type. Eventually, two groups, each representing each type, will form. Ultimately, they will draw a geographic line between them and declare that that line should not be crossed. Or, if it must be crossed, it must be crossed in a way that will leave the two groups at peace one with another, despite their differences.

This is the natural way of things. As long as the two types are separated, and the boundaries for where those two types are allowed to be natural are set, there won’t be any fighting or warfare between the types. However, as long as there is a disagreement over the boundary or the acceptable behavior when visiting the other’s territory, there will be trouble.

Why is this important? Because for many, many years, the United States was the one place in the world where you could go to get away from the Socialists. (Socialism really is, fundamentally, equivalent with tyranny in any form, be it from the crown, the pope, the elected dictator, or whatnot.) Once you crossed the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Rio Grande or the 49th Parallel, you were welcomed to a land where the government was limited and the citizens were expected to govern themselves.

Today, this is no longer the case. Perhaps we were too welcoming and not discriminating enough. Perhaps we allowed socialists into our country who came here for the money but didn’t want to leave their socialism behind. Whatever the reason, today, capitalists are trapped, unable to flee to any country on earth who welcomes liberty and despises tyranny.

I have a simple request, a request that if honored will save a lot of lives and a lot of arguments and a lot of fights. It is simply this:

Socialists, begone!

If you think government is a wonderful idea, why don’t you go live where government is king? North Korea, Cuba, Red China, these are the countries where great people rise through society to become great government leaders. In these countries, the power of government is wielded mercilessly on behalf of the people’s welfare, not their rights. Their inspiration is drawn from a long list of bloodthirsty tyrants, starting with the Babylonian and Persian kings, moving through Alexander the Great and the wonderful Roman emperors. Then it moves through the European feudal system that eventually, with the blessings of freedom, were efficiently optimized into the Fascists and Communists of Europe.

If those countries are too harsh for you, there are a hundred countries with varying degrees of socialism. You can experiment with government-run health care just by moving a few miles to the north! Or catch a flight and land in any number of European countries where health care is as free as the air and sunshine. I hear Venezuela doesn’t have a problem with those nasty opposition news outlets. FOX news doesn’t exist down there, and Rush Limbaugh’s voice cannot be heard!

I simply want to live free from tyrants like you telling me what to do. Go live somewhere where change isn’t needed, where the status quo is your idea of utopia.

Socialists, begone!