Death of Democratic Republic

 

The United States was founded as a Constitutional Democratic Republic and according to John Adams, “We have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Another comment on how a Constitutional Democratic Republic can be brought low came from Benjamin Franklin, who predicted, “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” But it is not completely the people’s selfishness that is sinking the United States and that was predicted by Alexis de Tocqueville who added this adage to the above, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” Anyone care to guess which of these three problems is driving the American experiment in self-rule into the ground fastest? Kings and Queens argued against giving power to their subjects claiming that humankind was completely incapable of self-rule as their own greed and indifference to consequences of their actions and their lack of training in governance would all lead to disastrous results if not immediately, guaranteed to do so over time. People, they claimed, would tend to destroy wealth in the name of equality and that there would never be sufficient wealth to satisfy the redistributors as they would continue to destroy all concentrations of wealth in their mistaken proposals and programs meant to introduce fairness and equality until those who generated wealth were no longer sufficiently financially capable of investment and thus unable to continue to produce wealth for those pursuing fairness to steal.

 

The problems faced currently are that the government absorbed one means after another which had formerly been the purview of religious and charitable institutions. This led to two immediate results; the government was required to demean and spread suspicions that religious institutions and charities were incapable of fairness and that they were too steeped in religion to provide assistance without guilt. They made the claim that the poor need not listen to a sermon in order to receive a meal. Then came the claims that many religious institutions and charitable organizations were possibly providing substandard nutrition or preparing their meals in unsafe manner in potentially unclean environment and might spread diseases or serve contaminated food. This then led to the establishment of regulations and inspections and requirements of reports including the calorie, vitamin, fat content and immeasurable other breakdown of the meals provided to such a point that churches and charities simply gave in to government pressure surrendering their position as the provider of aid to the poor to the government as they could not continue against the power of government regulatory powers. The same occurred with providing shelter for the homeless and many other such assistances which slowly but inexorably became government programs. Food Stamps, Government Provided Shelters, Welfare, Section 8 Housing and on and on program after program and government had complete control over what had been privately provided charity which was financed through religious institutions and donations from people willing to provide funds for these causes. Now the funding comes from taxation which means that government has replaced voluntary donations with forced donations. Some have referred to this as the government playing Robin Hood taking from the rich and giving to the poor. That gets Robin Hood completely wrong as he stole from the government and returned the funds to the public from which it was taken (stolen according to Robin). The Sheriff of Nottingham and the King were not the rich, they were the government and the peasants were not only the poor but also the people who the King and Sheriff of Nottingham taxed (stole) the money (gold and silver) from and thus Robin Hood stole from the government and returned to the tax payers. Today the government is literally taking from the rich and giving to the poor through taxing the rich and returning that treasure to the poor who did not pay taxes thus it is completely not Robin Hood-like but completely separate.

 

Hunting Your Uncle Sam’s Deer Are We?

 

But there is another form of gifting public treasure which is far more evil than all the previously mentioned programs and which does not actually benefit the people and is almost always left out of demands for ending government funding. This is most often referred to as corporate welfare. Government gives away many millions, no, wait, certainly billions of dollars, to numerous companies often for questionable reasons. On the web corporate welfare is defined as bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment for corporations. This often ends up becoming taking money from the people, including those who compared to these corporations and companies are the poor, and giving to the corporations or the rich in some means. According to Cheat Sheet the eight largest recipients in ascending order are, Nike @ $2.03 Billion, Royal Dutch Shell @ $2.04 Billion, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles @ $2.06 Billion, Ford @ $2.52 Billion, General Motors @ $3.58 Billion, Intel @ $3.87 Billion, Alcoa @ $5.64 Billion and Boeing @ $13.18 Billion. Well, we can understand the General Motors as so many now refer to GM as Government Motors and apparently we can say the same for the rest of the Big Three auto motive companies from the United States. Now if one were to challenge the government, or your local Congress Critter, about these subsidies of such companies and their response would be that they are essential for the national defense, they are required in order for them to compete with companies from other nations who subsidize their industries or they might simply stutter and sputter and call on the next questioner.

 

Another area where government largess is generously spread around is in the agricultural endeavors. Farms are actually paid to raise dairy cows because before refrigeration there was the need for dairy cows to be raised throughout the United States in order for dairy products to be available in every location. But with the wonders of refrigeration, these subsidies are superfluous as now dairy products could easily be transported from the dairy states to those where such farms are economically impractical due to lack of water, grass and the other requirements necessary for raising healthy dairy cows. There are also subsidies to farms growing corn and since these have climbed to near astronomical proportions as the ethanol industry demands more corn, the acreage of wheat production has plummeted while corn has replaced wheat in many areas. This has created two problems beyond potential wheat shortages worldwide, as raising corn requires additional nutrients and more water, the demand for irrigation waters is lowering the water tables at an increased rate and runoff of fertilizer has increased causing difficulties in many river runoff areas, especially places of slower moving or stationary water as this runoff leads to poisoned fish and over growth of algae and other plants in rivers and especially lakes. Further, farms are often paid not to raise certain crops or raise certain animals in order to allow food prices to remain substantial enough for farming to show a profit. These programs end up assisting the industrial farms to a far greater degree than the family farmers they were proposed to assist. Again, the reason for these programs has been to continue to make farming profitable rather than having the rules of supply and demand to control what farmers grow.

 

There is an example of supply and demand working its magic in eastern Colorado where many farmers with some of the best topsoil grow sugar beets for a simple reason, if their crop of sugar beets is of high enough quality they will catch top dollar from the Coors brewing company to use in their production of Coors beer. The land is quite capable of growing other crops but not one which can bring such a high price as Coors offers the incentive for such quality sugar beets in order to assure themselves a ready supply locally of the requirements for their product. As for the grains for their beer, well, they are located quite near great fields of grains within a short distance including in Colorado wherever the soil is not rich enough to grow high quality sugar beets of which there is ample acreage. Still, was government not to provide these subsidies there would be some disquieting periods of economic upheaval after which there would be fewer companies in many industries and the healthiest and most efficient companies would survive? Perhaps there are a relative few companies which were necessary for military readiness but in the modern era there are very few companies who are purely reliant on military spending to survive as the demands of the private sector now has requirements of ships, aircraft and even automotive who can change some production to produce military products such as armored vehicles. Further, military production is now done on a very sparse demand with rare but occasional high demand when replacing longstanding equipment. For these demands one would likely find entrepreneurs more than willing to make bids and then invest in the necessary production facilities to produce armored vehicles while ships and aircraft already have ready manufacturers. But if such an argument could be proven to have merit, then perhaps some outlay might be called for.

 

The problem is that with corporations, people, even NGO’s all making demands on government claiming that they require the government largess, their service is worthy of government largess, or some claim is found which demands government funding combined with the elected representatives use government funds in order to buy the faithful votes of a particular constituency by warning that other political challengers would cut or end the flow of money, food stamps, housing allowances, utility payments, free stuff and so on thus buying support to keep them in office. Because the people lost their faith in religious institutions as the government spent much time, funds, advertising and editorials in parallel with increased regulations matching the claimed weakness of religious institutions and charities allowing the government to incrementally replace them in caring for the less fortunate.

 

Then they quietly over time subsidized corporations initially claiming their necessity for the defense of the country in times of war and subsequently simply arguing that the companies or corporations were necessary economically and without the “temporary” assistance, nothing ends up being temporary as once the money is outlaid it is never retracted, these companies would potentially go out of business putting some unacceptable number of employees out of work. What is really being protected is a company which is not sufficiently competitive and if allowed to go out of business it would soon be replaced by somebody with a better idea or a better means for production or something making them competitive. It might be argued that the national security requires at a minimum one company in every vital industry for the possible future protection of the nation. Where this argument hits a snag was the steel industry which almost went completely out of business as their production equipment and processes became outdated. The entire industry faced this challenge and some companies went out of business and others retooled and became modernized allowing them to return stronger than before. Some of the retooling received government assistance but this once it was a one-time outlay and not a continuous flow of revenue. Should these outlays continue the government will continue to spend more than it can possibly collect which will forever add to the deficit which will eventually cause hyperinflation which will end the time of the United States as a super power? If the government attempts to collect sufficient tax revenues to allow these payments to continue at current levels, then the entire financial system would collapse as eventually those who were being more heavily taxed would find working a fool’s game and simply join those on the dole.

 

The other choice would be to scale back payments or start terminating programs allowing those currently on support to have their funds slowly lessened eventually being terminated in some predefined period of time. Another option would be to ramp back until the payments were completely terminated on the subsidizing corporations and companies and even farming, especially the large corporate farming conglomerates. Finally, the government should deregulate the assistance from charities and religious institutions allowing them to return to what they had so adequately provided before being driven from assisting people in need. Such a return to the religious institutions serving the public and their communities and taking a greater role in their communities and the nation the United States could potentially find some returning to their religious affiliations simply because as active members in their societies, they would become relevant again. The removal of religious institutions from their community functions and relevance might have been a contributing factor to the loss of faith in the nation as a whole. Humankind is a funny animal in that he does not conscience things which serve no real purpose and religion had always been the caretaker of the needy in the United States. When government removed this function from the religious institutions and took away their function as adoption services, they made religion superfluous as government had replaced it. Without government returning valuable functions to religious institutions and private charities, then these functions will become solely the province of government and government will become the new religion, which was their intent.

 

Once this has been established irrevocably, which it has all but become, then they will work on replacing the only item not completely under their purview, parenting and raising children. The public schools are already making inroads on the parent-child relationship. In too many cities (one would be too many but in too many cites it is already occurring) it is being usurped by the schools. Many will claim we are being alarmist but we have witnessed this ourselves as have friends where the school teachers were telling their students that their parents were not permitted to punish them, ground them, deny them their rights to telephone usage, television viewing, listening to music, watching particular programs, going out with their friends and numerous other actions, then they should tell their teachers and the school would look into if this was proper and take their side against the parents. They were told that it might result in criminal charges if their parents did not do as the school would advise. The best resort of any parent facing this would be to explain to their child what it would be like in foster care or in an orphanage if Mom and Dad were forced to give them up because they went to the school claiming that their parents were being cruel and denying them rights. Explain what a right is and what is a privilege and the difference and then review the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and ask them where telephone use was a right. When they are unable to prove whatever grounding you are imposing is denial of a right, then explain that privileges can be revoked for improper acts and that is what you are doing.

 

One sad thing we must all understand is that in time populations will be controlled and even then the majority of people will be kept simply because work will have become an optional pursuit. Anything one does will earn a salary with a living wage guaranteed as long as you were to contributing in some manner, writing a blog, writing poetry, composing songs, performing music, performing comedy, acting out dramas, researching mathematics, teaching, inventing, growing grapes, brewing or whatever one desired. Of course if your desire is to go from one party to another, then you make the living wage. Perhaps we will all receive a credit card where there are different levels by color and your living standard is determined by which card you receive which would also be determined by a formula we would all know. Then there would be another choice where one applies and if accepted are sent on multi-generational spaceships out into the cosmos in some new direction or in a direction where we have received communications telling of planets capable of supporting life. This world will be the life of our children or grandchildren when artificial intelligence (AI) govern the planet, robots perform almost all job functions as they replace humans in production, retail, food service and everything else while AI robots perform prototyping, engineering, manufacturing, production facility construction, building construction, residential construction and every job with very few exceptions.

 

Aristotle, Euclid, Descartes
Newton, Riemann, Einstein

 

Humans would still work in some fields alongside the AI systems such as theoretical sciences and hard science research as no matter how intelligent the AI systems and robots become, there is one thing which will take far more advances than we can even begin to understand, and that is an AI which has the ability to imagine, to invent things which have no logical lead-up which require illogical jumps of reason from which proofs can then be derived but only by reverse proofs. The great discoveries of history which we take for granted today were completely beyond reason such as Einstein’s theories, Riemann’s geometry, Newtonian physics, Descartes’s “Cogito ergo sum”, Euclidean Geometry and Aristotle’s philosophies and logic. AI systems may some day get to such a level as to make great leaps in thought which are independent of straight logic, but for the time being we humans are the only ones who imagine on such a scale. That is a far future, in the meantime, in order to get there we need to repair the problems of now and do so with a great urgency.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Lunacy of the Progressive Leftist Frenzied Hatefest

 

The mainstream leftist and progressive media continue kicking up the dust in attempts to mask the violence they are stirring up underneath the clouds of confusion. They talk of President Elect Donald Trump as if he were the greatest monster to ever reach office. They avoid recognizing the facts that he was duly elected President of the United States (POTUS) and continue to harp on Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote. Truth be known, take away California and New York and for fairness sake also remove Texas and the Deep South and Trump wins the popular vote. Hillary basically won New York and California by huge, and we mean YUGE, margins making the votes in the rest of the nation merely marginal in the contest for popular vote. Problem is this was not a popularity contest or a high school Class President race where the person gaining the votes of the jocks and the blondes wins the day. This was a regulated and carefully crafted contest as defined by the United States Constitution which established the Electoral College, the second best manner for choosing a leader coming from the second best set of laws by which to govern (having Hashem pick your leader and Torah are the best ways to find leaders and by which to govern a nation if only one existed today). The problem is rules do not matter when you are running a revolution, and that is what the progressive leftists are running, a fascistic takeover of the United States if they are permitted to get away with it.

 

Truth of the matter is the progressive media is simply keeping their base energized and ready to launch protest after protest at every single piece of legislation proposed by the Republicans. As they lost the elections and lost them big across the entirety of the country and now run most cities, the failing ones, and a few states on both coasts but lost the Presidency and Congress. This simply means they will take some time to discredit everything the government does, protesting the horrors which will come from repealing regulations which stifle businesses claiming that workers will be harmed despite their being the kind of economy where everyone who desires work can find a decent paying job. Also, because there will be more jobs than applicants, wages will rise. As long as wages are mentioned, bear in mind that even if Congress passed a minimum wage bill raising the minimum wage to $15.00/hr. over the next five years the media would go ballistic claiming that by the time five years have passed the minimum wage would need be $25.00/hr. at the very least. These are ‘glass is half empty’ when they are not in power and ‘glass overflowing’ even if it is obviously empty. Just read the job and economic reports on the economy during President Obama’s time in office. They almost praised his having one quarter where the change in jobs, income average, and virtually every other statistic was exactly zero, no gain, no loss, in almost every category, a statistical impossibility without cooking the results. It was later revealed that the report was a draft and not containing actual numbers and nowhere could one find the real numbers, how convenient.

 

Much of the talk coming from leftist progressive blogs, news both formal and informal, commentary, columns in major newspapers and other outlets is shrill to the point of being instigations towards violence against Trump, his family, Pence, the Cabinet nominees, the Ambassadorial selections (especially David Friedman as Ambassador to Israel as he actually likes Israel which should disqualify him for any Ambassadorial post, not just Ambassador to Israel) and any-or-everybody linked to Donald Trump and his administration during the transition and probably continuing on into his Administration after the Inauguration. Needless to point out, but the media was really behind something better than a mere Inauguration; they had the coronation of Queen Hillary I and her Royal Court into office next month. They cannot forgive Trump for having the gall and audacity to actually defeat Queen Hillary and denying her that rightful place reserved for her, the first woman to be President of the United States. They will never forgive the American people who voted for Trump even if, or especially if, they did so to assure that Hillary Clinton never again soils their White House unless on a tour and heavily guarded checking for silverware as she leaves. The people have spoken if one ever looks at the map county by county of who voted Hillary Clinton and who voted Donald Trump and the actual immensity of Trump’s victory becomes evident. The areas of blue barely if ever stretch outside the immediate suburbs of the major cities except in a relative few bastions and even in these states like New York, California, Massachusetts, Maryland and a few possibly in New England (see representative map in shades of purple, red and blue below).

 

County by County Presidential Electoral Map 2016
Using Red and Blue Plus Shades of Purple
Simply to Indicate Percentages of Votes
Thus Improving Accuracy in our Representation

 

The above map is not as extreme as the purely red versus blue map which is slanted even further in making it appear Trump won almost unanimously outside twenty cities, which is probably not a poor description, just a tad too slanted but no more so than the near constant pounding of, “Hillary won the popular vote and should be POTUS,” “Trump Not My President,” “Dump Trump,” and “Love Trumps Hate” (see images below) That last one is somewhat confused as it could also be used as a pro-Trump poster all depending on how it is lettered. The unfortunate item has appeared in some newscasts which report on the fueled hate, rage and tendencies for violence. There is an old political adage often used on the right which goes, “If you desire to know what the progressive left is planning, simply seek out what they are currently accusing the conservatives of committing.” During the two terms of President Obama the progressives accused the conservatives, often targeting the Tea Party, of equating Obama with Hitler (this was done at some rallies but unedited pictures have shown Lyndon LaRouche supporters using signs which clearly were marked as being from his organizations (bottom Image). The lesson we can take is one does need to carefully inspect from whence messages actually derive. The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) often are seen at pro-life rallies as well as disrupting the ceremonies of fallen soldiers being interred which would appear as far right at one demonstration and perceived as far left at the other. The reality is that the WBC is a family who believe they know everything about everything with such assuredness and certitude because they honestly believe their messages are derived from Heaven. Their manners and willingness to insult the sensitivities of a family grieving proves that to be otherwise unless their Bible is worded very differently than mine and likely most of yours, dare we say all of yours. Unfortunately for the progressive left, their message is plain, clear and unmistakable. They won the election and damned be the rules. So what if we knew the rules ahead of the election, they did not go our way and thus must be corrected. That is their message on its face value, but is there another message hidden within their rhetoric?

 

Anti-Trump Protesters

LaRouche Impeachment Protester with Printed Sign
Depicting President Obama as Adolph Hitler

 

The answer is that there is another message but it is not hidden in their message, it is their message. The message they are screaming is simply that they will stop at nothing and they will get their day to make America theirs again. They promise that one of these times they will finish the job and nobody will ever be able to oppose them again. The problem is that they are dead on right and they will prevail if for no other reason, they have nothing else in life as important as ruling the lesser people. Oh yes, we the multitudes are these lesser people and unless we masses stand against their ideas we will live under those ideas. What are these ideas? Well, President Obama and Hillary Clinton threw off any masks of pretense and plainly stated these ideas and what they desire to do for starters. Quoting President Obama with excerpt below and full speech video as well,

“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t – look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires; we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”

 

The entire Democrat Party stated it clearly when they refused any Republican amendment to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and passed it in both the House of Representatives and the Senate without a single Republican voting for this universal government guaranteed and funded, sort of, healthcare. When this fails, and it is failing, then the democrats will insist that healthcare in the United States is broken, which they know they broke, they will claim the only answer is a single payer government healthcare, their aim from the beginning. We know this because it was what Hillary Clinton tried to form into a comprehensive plan when her husband, William Jefferson Clinton, was President. Even the Democrats rejected such a plan back then because they knew they had to make healthcare even more burdensome before the American people would accept an all government system. That was the idea behind the PPACA, to destroy the insurance industry and make healthcare so broken the people would demand something, anything, and that will be when they get the socialist healthcare like Canada, Europe, and Mainland China. Their aims are the same that socialists have chased and imposed whenever and wherever they can take control, and eventually they will take control. The progressive ideals started with Theodore Roosevelt and was crystalized and defined by Woodrow Wilson and carried into programs by Franklin Delano Roosevelt with Social Security, higher Minimum Wage, a federal labor board which dictated prices and virtually all sides of manufacturing to retail which had to be retracted as the people all but revolted carrying proverbial pitchforks and torches to Washington through the voting booths.

 

Lyndon Banes Johnson gave us the Great Society which was far less great, not so much society, not actually civil, but was most definitely socialist and destructive all but permanently destroying many cities and even far more families as much of the aid to poor was a set of demands which demanded that parents be single parents and then they decried there being so many single parent homes, especially in the inner city communities, meaning minority generally and blacks in particular. They claimed that without the Democrats in power the welfare, food stamps and other programs would be taken from the poor should Republicans ever be elected. Since Lyndon Baines Johnson there have been a few Republican Presidents including Nixon, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush and these programs did not disappear but now the claim is President elect Trump will take away these programs as the latest scare tactic. Then President Jimmy Carter decided that instead of having one Cabinet Department of Health, Education, and Welfare he made a separate Education Department as a new Cabinet position and competency and education quality have declined to the point where the United States is near the bottom of the industrial and developed world. The constantly proposed solution has never been to return education to the local level, preferably as close to the individual schools and their communities as possible but to spend more money and with these increased funds they demand that the schools hire people to assist the schools in utilizing these funds. The new hires use up most of the money just in salaries and then bemoan not having sufficient funding to meet the demanded programs, more funding. Schools have gone from a three or four room main office with one Principal, one or two Vice Principals, a relatively small number of councilors, two to three secretaries and the teachers were the hall monitors. In today’s schools many have two or more Principals, numerous Vice Principals, a small herd of councilors, a diversity coordinator, an EEOC coordinator, other coordinators and advocacy positions and all of these people have staffs and investigators, some have police in their halls, and instead of less than half a dozen offices there are now an entire wing of the schools used for administrations. Back before the Department of Education schools had a few necessary officers and that was all but now they have administrations and when you get such a formal title it takes more funding to staff these important administrators who mostly fill out reports demanded by Washington D.C. and half of the teachers teach two or less classes and spend the rest of their time filling out reports to prove they satisfied all the demands on diversity, multicultural education, inclusion teaching and who knows what else. They have changed reading from phonics to whole word recognition where the pupils are taught words by recognition of the symbols, the letters, but the letter have no sounds of their own, they just make a sound in the recognized form of a taught word. If your schools did not teach you some words, then you must not need those words, which is a great way to enforce limitations to thought because without the words how can one express new ideas?

 

Then there is new math because the old math of traditional methods was a failure because it did not use the latest psychologically meaningful method where the student will understand by having images in their heads from this system where every year they try a new approach and then complain that the children are confused and having trouble. The solution is let us try this new, new, new math. Math as taught today would bamboozle Euclid, confound Aristotle and would have left Bernhard Riemann lost and unable to reinvent geometry such that it could be applied to all surfaces no matter how irregular, and his mathematics enabled Einstein’s theories of relativity to have the necessary mathematical groundwork. Professor Riemann passed away on July 20, 1866 at the age of thirty-nine; a great loss for modern analytic geometry. Just under thirteen years later on March 14, 1879 Professor Albert Einstein was born. I would like to have seen these two men work together to solve the lofty questions of the geometric forms which make up our universe. Oh, did we mention that both these men learned math the old school way, the way we learned math and how one of us was able to take, and still working on fully understanding, a course using Professor Riemann’s book and theorems where n-dimensional space becomes one’s friend or one’s nemesis.

 

Riemann Surfaces

 

Back to another certainty where a great writer posed that if the government determined it to be true and taught everyone that 2+2=5, would that make it true? He also introduced us to Big Brother and a farm with some very strange animals, and the strangest of all were the pigs as they replaced the farmer. This author was a wild and crazy socialist idealist as a youth and became one of the world’s foremost adversaries to socialism as he gained experience, and we would believe wisdom. This man’s name was George Orwell, born on June 25, 1903, and died on January 21, 1950. His change of heart was a result of his observations of the three greatest socialist nations of his lifetime, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), Communist Mainland China, and Nazi Germany and its socialist allies of Spain and later Italy. He predicted or witnessed social upheavals, depredations of morality, financial strident control resulting in shortages all the while enjoying the grandeur that the British Empire and the fledgling nations which sprang from her colonial holdings and how they differed so much from many of the other European colonial nations upon gaining their freedom. He attributed this to the fact that the British did not punish beyond taxes the entrepreneurial spirit and actually often worked at nurturing such exploits. The British also insisted that their colonial entities have adequate schooling to serve the crown to a higher level which brought wealth to both the crown and the colony. The other colonial European powers enforced a strict almost caste system with redistribution of resources always keeping the best possible for their own subjects and the crowns back home giving little regard to the peasant populations, as they viewed them, for all they were worth was a laborers to comply with instructions.

 

Imagine what we would be looking at in eight years had Hillary Clinton won and also achieved reelection. After a second term it would be unlikely that anybody more conservative than Bill Clinton could even imagine getting elected. The system would have been so overwhelmed with immigrants due to at least two if not many more waves of pardons for illegal aliens, there we go again, we mean undocumented workers, or is it citizens sans affirmation. Hillary Clinton had stated she believes that borders are not necessary to define a nation and that citizenship belongs in the ash-heap of history as the antiquated concept it represents. Equality in all things for all with our minders, our betters receiving a double, then triple and even more for their share as they are so much more deserving and their work more demanding scurrying around repairing this, tweaking that. Really there is no better way to describe how it all ends in a socialist nation as all one need do is look around the world and see which nations are stagnant, which are thriving and which are basically defunct and failed. The United States will thrive again; it is just a matter of how long it will take to slash away generation of barnacles from the Ship of State, which in English means ridding the books and the businesses of many of the useless regulations, reports and other government imposed restrictions and impediments. The USSR, dead and buried but still not exactly thriving as many of the detrimental resentments from almost a century of socialism and top down planning takes a while plus having such a steep negative growth rate withering away their population and the poor distribution of power which still remains far too centralized and held by a select few. Then there is mainland China which was doing so poorly they decided that cutting their population size would be easier than growing more food despite having much rich farmlands and good rivers. Their one child policy, a social engineering project if ever we saw one, produce almost two generations of mostly male children and now they are having some difficulties, like nowhere near sufficient women for the men to marry, what to do other than admit your plan backfired as you never anticipated that people would do whatever it took to have one male child. Abortions in China during this period were almost exclusively of girls which simply tell the story; one cannot force policies to have desirable outcomes, only allowing people freedom to reach their own desired outcomes and freedom to pursue life will produce the best results. The greatest example of the absolute bankruptcy of socialism comes from a nation with vast oil reserves and was once the beacon for democracy and free market economy with the highest per capita income in South America. Everybody figured they had it made and their government acted confident in that being true. They had a revolution and Marxists who believed that the Soviet example was the best form of fair governance and that they knew what went wrong and were going to show the world successful socialist governance. They had everything going for them with oil reserves and surpluses of almost everything. That was in the 1998 when Hugo Chavez won election running as a populist candidate. Often socialist progressivist governance comes to power under the guise of popularism which is code for giving people promises of plenty of free stuff. Once in office you take from those with wealth to fulfill your promises of giving the poorer people free things. When you steal from Bob, Bob will not vote for you in the future. But if you steal from Bob and give free things to George, Fred, Susan and a dozen or two dozen, it all depends on how much you give and what you can take from Bob, but then you get all those other people voting for you, so who needs Bob’s vote.

 

Hugo Chavez eventually ran out of people like Bob who had great wealth but there was still stuff to steal in order to continue to give stuff which needs not only to continue but now they demand bigger and more expensive stuff. So you nationalize the oil and gas industry and run them like a government agency. Well, that did not turn out as well as hoped so they nationalized the banks because obviously the banks had robbed the people of their money. Meanwhile the progressive leftist mainstream media lauded the greatness of Hugo Chavez who was still largely popular. Well, Hugo Chavez died of cancer in March of 2013, but he had a protégée who won election in April of 2013 making Nicolas Maduro the new President. The problems kept snowballing but all the government knows is socialism must work if only we make the right adjustments. People are starving; those with property do not leave their homes for fear of personal harm coming to them. Christmas was promising to be joyless which is one thing no government can allow, right? The government found the problem, apparently the main toy manufacturer was trying to gouge the people by charging high prices and get wealthy on the backs of parents buying gifts for their children at those inflated prices. The government took millions of toys and sold them at ridiculously low prices and how this raised moral in the capital and possibly places beyond, but there will be no joy nor toys to steal next year so this will be the last Christmas for the foreseeable future and socialism has brought the former jewel of South America to the brink of ruin and potential revolution. I think somebody should seriously think of heading out before being invited to leave more than Venezuela as they storm the capital with their remaining but fleeting strength. Every revolution has its turning point and the socialist revolution in Venezuela has actually gone beyond theirs. If ever there was a pressing reason to utilize the ridiculous and undignified Monroe Doctrine, it would be to assist Venezuela in holding fair elections and work to return the nation’s business to businessmen and women and assist their getting the nation back on its feet. Intervening with humanitarian assistance in this case has many an argument going for it as the United States used to and still does receive a share of our oil from Venezuela, so it is not like there is no self-serving interest in this case. But the people of the United States should have pictures of the extent to which socialism allowed to run rampant can destroy an otherwise healthy and prosperous nation and do so in less than twenty years. Why wait for the next lesson to possibly be the United States because should the people ever elect another progressive to the White House and allow them a pen and a phone as they will make quick work of reinstating everything up to and including all President Obama and the progressives before him had established and then add their own trinkets because that is how the progressives progress. Never ever retreat could easily be their motto, so to resist them never give up and never surrender and as Thomas Jefferson, or maybe Wendell Phillips, wisely wrote or stated, history can be so blurred and just imagine what the Internet will do to this with all the posts and tweets flying every-which-way, but to the quote in closing,

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Ancient Thoughts and the World Today

 

I read an e-mail article which listed what it claimed in its title to be “20 Quotes From Ancient Greek Philosophers That Liberals Still Don’t Understand” and four of these in particular got my brain reeling, drowning in swirling daydreams and thought perhaps it might be fun to share. I found myself gravitating to three philosophers where one was the most gifted student of the other and the other their sole peer. Below are the thoughts in decreasing order of relevance, or at least in ease of application and understanding. This dictates we tackle them in reverse order working from the sublime imperatives from which we then reach the inevitable brutal and undeniable truth.

 

“Republics decline into democracies and democracies

degenerate into despotisms.” – Aristotle

 

“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs;

when he first appears he is a protector.” – Plato

 

“A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion,

a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.” — Socrates

 

“The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered

by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.” – Plato

 

 

Plato Socrates Aristotle

 

That places our starting point with Plato and the concept, “The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.” This is true in every government which depends on the opinions of the people discerned through an elective process. Be the system parliamentary, republic, direct democracy or other form where the voting public consists of eligibility of the greater part of the adult electorate and where promises gains votes those promises will come fast and loose. This will inevitably lead to greater and greater promises which will become more and more immediate often inventing problems and difficulties which are designed for easy quick solutions which can be readily enacted and implemented despite there being no reality to both the invented problem and an easy answer. Everything becomes something which requires an immediate solution and this demand continues to grow and now the people soon demand that even the greatest difficulties of the world be solved with the same brilliance, alacrity and without difficulty or complications. The expectations have become unrealistic but then when the people are demanding miracles, those who desire to hold office will make promises which they know cannot be solved with promises which they know will never be solved and only lead to greater problems as the half measures designed as quick actions which are definitive, definitive failures causing more and deeper problems. The demand for immediacy by the public eventually leads to the need for a savior.

 

That brings us to the next quote from Socrates which states, “A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.” This is where taking the false promises of charlatans who are the sole makers of empty promises selling them as definitive solutions to the most knotty and complex of problems starts us down a slippery slope. These have the ability to sell a framing of the problem in such a way that their solution appears obvious but nobody seems to think why if the solution which now appears so simple, easy and immediate that it did not appear for the last body of officials. Nobody wants to question whether the defining of the problem has been molded and crafted simply to facilitate the elevation of the individual and not done to reach a viable solution. These charlatans always play emotional weaknesses and know the desires of the people more than they understand the problems but emotionalism plays well, think Donald Trump with one difference, imagine Trump with a solution to the Middle East which is easy, immediate and apparently just hidden from view in such a way that only Trump could see it. Of course Donald Trump has not put forth such a solution and instead has simply sold that things will be great, trust Trump, great. Well, it is so completely different than Yes We Can. Both “Make America Great Again” and “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth” are empty boasts on which all problems can be put aside as the personality is sufficient to repair every problem. These set up a system of morality which is made of empty platitudes that caught the people up in an emotional defining of the world and choosing a leader purely on emotion which eventually leads to disappointment making the situation primed for the next step.

 

We go back to Plato where we read, “This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” When the solutions are minimized such that false solutions become the norm, we reach a mire so deep that only a savior is believed to be the only possible solution. A person who is charismatic and has a plan, a plan that sweeps the public up with the promises, causes them to fall head over heels for the man with the plan which will heal their nation and restore it to greatness and return every glory which was once true and real. The savior and restorer of the greatness are seen as one who will revamp the government and streamline the process and accomplish that which formerly was not possible. The protector comes with promises if only you can and will trust what he knows must be executed to bring about the future promised by this protector. The promise is that once they are loosed from the restriction built into government and being freed from the tethers designed to limit and constrain government, but the savior cannot be constrained by such petty inconveniences. The releasing of the tethers and streamlining the methodology leads only one place, tyranny, and tyranny inevitably leads to one thing, despotic ruin.

 

This last revelation finished the slide defined so accurately by Aristotle who stated, “Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.” The Republic was seen as the finest form of governance no matter the style, be it direct elections, parliamentary or anything between or alongside where the people hold the power and the government has to respect the people’s power. With time the republic governance reaches a point where their society actually needs minimal government and definitely does not need any interventions, new laws, programs or anything else but the government has to find relevance in order to form promises around which will grant them the support of the people and result in their next election. This leads to demagoguery and populism which tend to bring an end to the slow and deliberate governance and replace it with governance which has a tendency to divide the populace into groups based on positions on issues, some real and some manufactured by the politicians themselves. Such governance works by promising larger groups of citizens benefits which will be paid for by smaller groups treasure, usually unwarranted wealth made by abusing the workers and these political riders of white horses topped with a wide brimmed white Stetson hat riding off into the sunset after collecting the votes of the masses. This results in a government which will end in bloated inefficiency where the promises have far outstripped revenue collection and has built a deficit which only grows along with the government. The collection institutions are inefficient often using half the collected wealth simply to finance their department making it obvious an impediment to balancing the budget as that cost is rarely figured into the formulas promoted by the political charlatans.

 

As noted above the situation reaches some critical point where the population is primed for a savior, the one who can return sanity and prosperous times. This promise keeps growing and as this savior has made some progress they start to complain how the government itself is preventing them from rescuing the society from itself. Slowly but surely they strip down the government taking over one layer after another until they no longer stand for reelection, their continued leadership has been accepted as permanent. Soon the other governing bodies are replaced with sycophants and lackeys making them simply the echoes of the dictator allowing for them to hold ultimate power and makes for efficiency in all operations which saves revenue which further permits the dictator to show success after success.

 

But even an all-powerful dictator runs into problems eventually as they too continue promising more and more until it becomes necessary to find new sources of revenues. This has historically led to wars which eventually make for the end of the rule of dictators as once they start to attack neighbors, the neighbors are likely to form alliances and end the spread and conquest of the dictator and after conquest the people may eventually make their way back to representative governance. The one rule is that the generation which falls and allows the rise of a demigod will not return to free governance with it more often taking many years, even centuries, before the people will be permitted to rule themselves. This is evident today as Europe and the Western world is slowly lurching its way down that well-worn path to ruin while developing nations have shown a sign of seeking to develop representative republic governance, what Aristotle, Plato and Socrates all believed was the most favorable form of governance.

 

Where on this merry-go-round your nation is can be figured simply by measuring the freedom each has as an individual and the size and scope of the governance. In all situations where the people are more powerful than the government and are capable of changing the entirety of their legislature and their leaders with regular elections, that would point to a society with a great deal of freedom and is a republic. With the power shared or favoring the government agencies over the people, then one is likely no longer in a republic but in a mere democracy, a good place from which an engaged population can turn things around. But if the governance is under a single person or small cabal which is unelected and not dependent on the approval of the people and rule as they wish, that is the final stop of a democracy where it dies and will not be reborn during the lifetime of any of its citizens, even any infants born during the year of the final elections, a meaningless election at that.

 

That is both the end of freedom and the start of the path back to liberty, freedom and the rights of man. The unfortunate truth is that the vast majority of humankind has never known freedom or even truly elected governance and probably never will. For this majority of the planet will require great expenditures by the free world to instruct, educate, form and develop the basics, principles and understanding of the mechanisms required. After the entire world finds itself on the merry-go-round where we slide from freedom to despotism and finally revolution and a return to republic and the new optimism which will eventually end in disappointment until humankind learns to control their appetites and refuse to follow demigods who promise perfection and untold riches and joys, delivering none of them and few promises being realized. Perhaps that is our fate or maybe we will eventually learn to control our slide of our own personal weaknesses. Perhaps we will learn and our species finally break free of petty differences, greed and acting in a manner which eventually leads to our subjugation when our greed outpaces our good sense. Perhaps.

 

Beyond the Cusp