The Deer in Winter

Just as there is a vital connection between body and mind, light and dark, thought and action, there is also a connection between the “law and order controllers,” who focus on reining in man’s baser impulses through the expansion of criminal statutes and “crime prevention,” and “social controllers” who seek to “improve the lot of other men,” by having government control what people ingest (restricting alcohol, nicotine (smoking) and trans fats consumption, the over-consumption of sweets, etc.), the redistribution of incomes, mandating personal safety precautions (seatbelt and bicycle helmet laws, etc.) groups that each revile the other as “fascists,” are in fact, BOTH brother fascists.

At first, this false dichotomy is hard for most Libertarians to understand. True Libertarians, who believe in social AND economic freedom/Liberty clearly see the fascistic tendencies of both controllers, BUT neither one of the controllers sees their own as, in any way, wrong, let alone fascistic.

To the Libertarian the “law and order controller” who’d criminalize what you ingest (ie. marijuana and other “illicit” drugs) is no better, nor worse than the “social controller,” who would have the state ban smoking, trans-fats, etc.

I am largely, or primarily Libertarian, although I have very strong “law and order” tendencies, despite the fact that I support first trimester abortion, the decriminalization of some now illicit drugs and prison being restricted to ONLY violent felons, with alternatives for crimes against property, etc.

In contemporary society, most Conservatives tend to be “law and order controllers,” while most liberals tend to be “social controllers.”

Ironically enough, there seems no way forward from the current political hyper-polarization than for these two types of controllers to recognize that they are NOT adversaries or oppositional viewpoints, but merely “flip sides of the same fascistic coin.”

And I use the term fascistic in the positive here. The urge to manage or control others is universal and is only looked down on by those naïve enough to lack any self-reflection at all.

The problem that confronts us, at this point is that each of us sees his/her favored form of control “benevolent” and even “necessary,” and the “other” as arbitrary, often mean-spirited and unnecessary.

ALL such human control is arbitrary, capricious and unnecessary. ALL of it done to make the controller feel important, to feel better about him/herself.

In fact, Bismark’s Germany proved that a modern welfare state must also be a “police state.” Which is merely to state the obvious that if we are to have a viable welfare state that is not going to abused to the point of unsustainability, that also requires a veritable police state where suspected abusers (and ALL who get, are ultimately suspect) must be constantly monitored, their movements scrutinized and limited and their lives as regimented by the state as is humanly possible.

That conclusion is so obvious as to be undeniable. Human nature is such that many viable people will feign dysfunction and non-viability when the option for non-productive (work-free, stress-free) living is made available. That is to say, that as we “reward” (take care of without a quid pro quo) something, we get more of it and that’s true whether we’re rewarding indolence and sloth, stupidity, poverty or disability. Whe the option for “work-free”/effort-free living is made available, many, MANY people will “follow the path of least resistance.”

Likewise, as criminal statutes are expanded, more and more of what were once considered “free (free-choice) activities” are restricted and that restriction of freedom makes more and more people less productive, or at least less prone to be productive, creating the corresponding need for a widespread and systemic welfare state.

So once it’s accepted that the goals of the “social controllers” can’t be met without the goals of the law and order controllers” being implemented and vice versa, both groups of controllers/fascists should be able to happily wake up and realize the obvious...that ultimately they are on the SAME side!

There really is no natural fight between today’s Liberals and Conservatives, they are indeed flip sides of the very same coin, but they BOTH do have a very natural opponent or adversary in Libertarians who believe no such massive human control is necessary.

Violence From a 2nd Left-wing Loon Over the last Ten Days....

Within two weeks of Left-leaning film student Michael Enright’s (above right) slashing a Muslim cabbie, comes James Jay Lee’s (above left) one-man assault on the Discovery Channel!

Is there something in the Kool-Aid our Libs are drinking?

"Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is," the manifesto reads. "That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn't, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??"

You’ve got to wonder, just what’s going on here!

This is Beau Friedlander – Vaunted “Enemy of the Right”...

Beau Friedlander (above center with Ron Reagan Jr to the left) posted a vile piece on the Huffington Post last week seeking any kind of “sex tape” that could be used to “get Glenn Beck off the air forever.”

Beau Friedlander is anti-free speech scumbag who can’t accept the FACT that he’s LOST the “battle of ideas” with Conservatives like Beck and others.

Beau Friedlander is a writer living in Brooklyn.

He was the editor-in-chief of Air America until it closed in 2010, and is the former publisher of Context Books, an award-winning small press.

UPDATE: Beau Friedlander has publicly apologized to Glenn beck saying, “I stepped over the line.”

The (relatively) Short Reason Why Marxism NEVER Works.....

"Humans must be sustained day after day in their ecology-economy, or they will perish. Surplus humans can, of course, be kept by the efforts of others, if not by themselves, but that that status itself can have morbid consequences for those so kept, singly or collectively, by others. Too many humans for their ecology-economy to sustain on the basis of each individual human’s efforts within that ecology-economy creates a human ecological-economic crisis."   (H. M. Stuart of Alexandria Blog)

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That ties in very well with your earlier observation of Marx’s foundational dictum, that “...the latest today being that Louis Blanc’s phrase “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is as easily the sustaining mantra of the predator, the beatitude purred by the tiger as she lovingly munches on the young herbivore, as it may be supposed to be anything else.”

That “communal” dictate has NEVER led to a “fairer, more sustainable economy,” it leads inevitably and unavoidably to an ecology/economy peopled almost entirely by gluttonous citizens with chronic bad-backs, that is people with VERY high NEEDS, with a VERY low capacity for WORK.

It leads to that because it rewards that - people with high NEEDS levels and low OUTPUT capacities.

On the other hand, a society predicated upon a dictum like, “Those who do not work, shall not eat,” is one that rewards productive effort and punishes sloth, disability and feebleness, regardless of whether those so punished are capable, thus deliberately indolent, or not.

As Marxism would ultimately pits a shrinking number of producers against a swelling tide of parasitic indigents. It makes enemies of those whose livelihoods depend on cooperative effort (labor and management). The unavoidable and unenviable result of that is either the mass extermination of the indigents or “useless eaters,” OR the horrific enslavement of the most productive in the name of some amorphous and immoral “greater good,” it is feared that its antithesis (the free and unfettered market) would leave no business and thus no subset of jobs secure and it would punish the disabled right along with the shiftless and lazy in perpetual "social Darwinism."

That misplaced fear, seems to be why most of our current problems seem borne of "good intentions. In seeking to protect established industries and all the established jobs that come with them, government and business entered into a partnership (in around 1912).

Unfortunately, such partnerships are always rooted in a short-sighted vision, of what's best for those established concerns is also best for the people...and by extension the government.

That's rarely if ever true, or at least not true for very long.

Inevitably such partnerships choke off new technologies and new innovations and the hungrier, leaner upstarts that might supplant these established enterprises (and yes, all those established jobs) in their cribs. That also winds up choking off the source of what would've been even more new jobs and more new products IF "nature were simply allowed to run its course."

Darwin observed the natural state of all life...adaptation via crisis, with the weakest left behind, or as Aristotle observed it even more tersely, "The strong take advantage of the weak and the smart (clever) take advantage of the strong."

Looking to sidestep the destruction of "the weak" through the evolutionary process is NOT necessarily a "noble goal." I think Nietzsche made a very good case for that in his "The AntiChrist." Evolution can ONLY lead to "the better" IF the weak and dysfunctional are pared off...amd left behind." (NOTE: "the weak" may not be the unemployed or underemployed at all. They may be in that state due to the ills of an unworkable economic system, but the strong ALWAYS adapt and overcome...the weak, whether in boardrooms or trailer-parks will ultimately be exposed)

BUT, even if it is conceived (by general consensus) that avoiding the unpleasant aspects of evolutionary transformation at all costs is a noble or laudable goal, we STILL can't simply look on "anything that circumvents natural selection" as "to the good."

Marxism is one primitive and highly flawed attempt to circumvent what some see as "the abuses of evolution." In fact, it appears to replace the abuses of Darwinism with even more terrible and terrifying abuses and dislocations.

Sometimes there is simply no "humane" way to do what must be done.

For instance, it is ironic that it's the "civilized" West (Europe and America) that is right now being riddled with violent crime. Sweden and France both have ceded entire regions over to their Third World populations. Sweden, which has about the population of New York City has rape, armed robbery and assault rates far higher than New York City!

Arab-Muslim countries represent 7 of the top ten nations with the lowest violent crime rates on the globe.

Hmmmmm....WHY would one think that is?

Well, maybe because the West is now "too civilized" to punish real miscreants effectively, too timid, unsure and introspective to question the validity of the alleged "rage of the underprivileged," to treat thugs as society needs them to be treated.

In the West, a mass murderer, IF put to death at all, is put to death in a manner that is far more painless and humane then that which most cancer patients suffer.

In the Arab-Muslim world a mere rapist (no murder, certainly no multiple murders) is buried up to his waist, covered with a sheet and savagely stoned onto death in full view of the entire community, young and old, men, women AND children.

Is it any wonder why the Arab-Muslim world has a lower violent crime rate?

Again, sometimes there is simply no "humane" way to do what must be done.

Abused by Business and Industry?

“One of the things business wants to do in pursuit of forcing wages down and eliminating fringe benefits entirely is to increase the number of people looking for work, even as they do everything possible to decrease the number of jobs available to American workers.” (a liberal blogger)


This conclusion ignores two major factors that need to be considered, (1) that government has been far and away one of the MOST abusive AND least productive employers in existence and (2) that the current economic climate was caused by a veritable criminal act by government, litigating and otherwise coercing privately owned and publicly traded banks and financial institutions to “expand more credit to more low income Americans.”

One of the things we should ALL have had a huge problem with G W Bush over was his making “reducing the black/white home ownership gap a primary mission of my administration.” (His wasting $12 BILLION/year on fighting AIDS in Africa was a 2nd one, although there may have been a “good deal” resource-wise” in that for us, though I’m not sure of that) Still, given that slightly over 30% of blacks live in poverty compared to about 11% of whites, that “mission” is impossible without first addressing the underlying cause of the home-ownership differential, to wit the poverty differential.

Bush and other “Moderate” Republicans (Orin Hatch, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, etc.), all bought into the Jack Kemp “Ownership Society.” That turned out to be a misguided canard, based on the hopeful, yet wishful thinking that “homeowners tend to be more goal oriented, more personally responsible, socially Conservative people, the kind who’ll ultimately vote Republican.”

A canard as dangerously ill-conceived as the Democrat’s view that an influx of (traditionally socially Conservative Catholics) from places like Mexico, Honduras and the Philippines will be more likely to vote Democratic once they settle in and become citizens.

The facts showed Kemp’s vision to be wrong-headed, liberal/Utopian thinking. Home ownership itself has no magic powers. Home ownership doesn’t make a person more responsible...it’s quite the reverse! More responsible people tend toward the responsibilities of home ownership.

At any rate the “cheap money” program that brought such odd bedfellows as G W Bush, Barney Frank, John McCain and Chris Dodd together also tanked the economy.

Today America’s businesses are looking at a very unstable domestic future, one in which they can’t accurately estimate their expenses, because they can’t estimate what government is going to do going forward.

As for the plight of the American workers, it’s virtually ALL of our own doing. You ever hear the phrase “You can’t get rich working for someone else,” well it’s not only true, but you can substitute “comfortable” for “rich” and it’s equally accurate.

When workers demand cheaper goods (as consumers) that begets both a burgeoning trade imbalance AND outsourcing our manufacturing, as we buy cheaper goods from places with much lower standards of living and much lower worker costs, generally overseas. Those cheaper goods make life a little easier, but then the worker (as an employee) wants more money for an even better life…that, in turn ratchets up all the domestic costs of production, making the things we produce here (housing, services, etc) much more expensive.

There seems to be no way for the worker to escape the matrix that higher wages bring about much higher across the board costs that plummet his standard of living, while calls for cheaper goods and services results in massive trade imbalances and outsourcing as business and industry responds to that consumer demand. The best thing any worker can do is to constantly improve and expand their skill base.

One of America’s major problems right now is “structural unemployment.” There are plenty of jobs for physicists, accountants, geologists, petroleum, electrical and chemical engineers, etc. but far fewer decent paying low-skilled factory jobs.

My wife (an accountant) has a saying, “You should not try to make a “career” out of a job anyone else can walk off the street and do within ten minutes.”

An example of that is the cashier job…the fact that self-checkouts are so popular is a testament to both the inefficiency (and probably the discourtesy) of the “cashier-class” AND the ease of doing that “job.” If I can walk in off the street and do myself, what someone else is paying someone $10/hour for, that worker is a dinosaur approaching extinction, whether that “worker” is aware of that or not.