Civil Service

The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.
Ronald Reagan

The purpose of government is to serve the people; not the other way around.

Education

There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.
Will Rogers

He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.
Adolf Hitler

It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.
Benito Mussolini

Last year Chavez' Minister of Education, Aristobulo Isturiz, laid the groundwork for the new "Bolivarian" education program to be imposed in Venezuela when he announced: "Teachers should be the first soldiers of the revolution ... No Director of a public school shall have his, her job validated unless an evaluation is made, so that we are certain that they know what is the type of republic we want."
- http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/hugo-chavez-brings-autocracy-to-the/

A few thoughts on education:

1. The Constitution of The United States does not give the federal government any authority over public education, unless the rights protected by the constitution itself are somehow violated by a public education system. If you can find any constitutional authority for the feds over education, let me know.

2. Education is very powerful. What better way to shape the values and world-view of the next generation than lock them in a room for several hours a day from an early age, give the teacher an air of authority, and tell them what, not teach them how, to think. It is perfect for social engineers and would-be partners with God, seeking the ever elusive utopia, to monkey with the very values that drive our society. These are people who view the average American as a complete idiot, unable to make the right decisions for himself let alone raise his own children, or vote for the right people (hence ACORN and such). But they can’t just do what they want in a democratic republic with a constitutionally limited government. They must get permission from the very people they detest to do what they want. Controlling the education system is more than just a cornerstone in their social engineering plans, it’s a means of securing power in the future. This is the purpose of the NEA. This is why they can’t stand private schools (except the ones they put their own children in to escape the defective and often physically dangerous schools they themselves created), or home schooling. This is why they cannot tolerate vouchers or any system that will give parents a choice of where their kids will be educated. They can’t risk the possibility that kids will be taught real history, real economics, the ideas of people like John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, let alone Jesus Christ.
Public Education holds way too much power and influence to centralized, to be entrusted to a whatever political party happens to be in vogue at the moment. The education of our children is the responsibility of the parents. The family, not the government, is the foundation of civilization, and should remain so.

My Health Care Poposition

Here’s my plan to fix our health care “crisis:
First off, we have a mandatory single payer system; that way we’ll have one big pot to work from, and everyone will have to play by the same rules (except congress and the president of course). The employers will pay for it so that no one has to worry about the cost (except the employers of course). Now, to save money and fix our Social Security/Medicare problem, treatment will be severely limited to those over seventy (why should we have to pay for expensive hip replacements and pacemakers for people who are just going to turn around and die?). For them, and those with terminal illnesses (defined as those that cost too much money to treat) Quality of Life clinics will be opened in every community to provide “end of life care” (I.E. euthanasia), pain pills, and cremation services all for free. We will cover prenatal care and child birth, but limited to one child per family. Parents may choose to have more than one child, but they will be penalized for each child over the limit. By encouraging people to have fewer children, we can dramatically reduce our demand for natural resources and our carbon footprint, while cutting back on the demand for healthcare. A DNA sample will be taken from every fetus. Those whose DNA show indicators of certain defects or a predisposition towards certain costly diseases and disorders will not be eligible for coverage. However, pre-birth, partial-birth, and post-birth abortions will be provided for free. Anyone with unhealthy and expensive habits, (such smoking, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, and unhealthy thoughts) will be enrolled in a six month re-education camp to correct their unhealthy ways.

Actually, scratch all that. we’ll just go the natural route: natural selection and survival of the fittest. We abolish healthcare of any kind. If you can’t survive a common cold, a little swine flu, a bout with brain cancer, a little depression or schizophrenia, down’s syndrome, staph infection, car accident, Christianity, conservative beliefs etc. we don’t need you hanging around polluting the gene pool for our children. To show we’re compassionate, we will still provide the Quality of Life clinics in every neighborhood. That should solve all our problems and cost us almost nothing.

What do you think?

What is wrong with these people?

Death Education:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=2771
http://iul.com/raindrop/index.htm
http://www.adec.org/about/index.cfm
http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1999/july99/columbine.html

Baby Doe:
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/QQ/Views/Exhibit/narrative/babydoe.html
http://www.cincinnatirighttolife.org/site.cfm/Life-Issues/Infanticide/Baby-Doe.cfm

Abortion:
http://racism.suite101.com/article.cfm/ruth_bader_ginsburg_talks_sotomayor_roe

Partial Birth Abortion and Live Birth Abortion:
http://www.pregnantpause.org/fantcide/borncan.htm


We could talk about all those who died of malaria since the DDT ban, or how they want to prevent "developing" countries from developing because they might contribute to global warming, their love affair with dictators such as Castro, their allowing North Korea and Iran to get nukes, their attacks on Israel, not to mention Obamacare, and euthanasia.

And they call us Nazis.

Friedman is My Hero (one of them anyway)

How can anyone possibly argue with this?

More

These are the enlightened?

This doesn't surprise me. Nor this. You might think it's far fetched, they can't mean that, no one can be that evil. Remember, it's happened many times over. And almost every time, there were those who saw it coming and sounded the warning only to be brushed off as paranoid, extremists, or fear mongers. I do not equate Obama to Hitler, Stalin, or others of their kind. Maybe a wannabe Mussolini. He uses the same tactics they used. But what scares me is what lies behind the door he's trying to open.

animals

If you knew me, and you don’t, you’d know that I’m a big Pink Floyd fan. So anyway, I was thinking the other day about Animals. For some reason I tend to forget about this album, but, in my opinion, it’s an excellent album. Sure, as a Christian and a conservative, I take issue with some of the lyrics, most of it I like and the music is some of their best. It’s very dark, though, and reminds me of Animal Farm, one of my all time favorite books, though the premise is a bit different.
All that being said, I realized the other day this dark album is a great illustration of how liberals view the world.
You have the pigs. The aristocracy. They are the rich and powerful few who use religion and commercialism to pacify the masses while they exploit them. They run the machine (go ahead, have a cigar).
The sheep are the blissfully ignorant masses. They are the stupid followers who don’t know what’s in their own best interest. They are helpless without a shepherd.
Then there are the dogs. They live in a dog eat dog world. They smile while they stab you in the back. They think of themselves as individualists, but what they don’t know is they are merely pawns in the pig’s game and completely expendable.
The one group left out is the enlightened, the philosopher kings, the anointed as Thomas Sowell calls them in The Vision of the Anointed. These are the ones who care. They are the educated elites. The believe that not only should they be in power, it is their birthright. Pesky inconveniences like constitutions and elections are merely obstacles. The rest of us are too dumb to make decisions for ourselves and would be completely helpless without them. This belief that they are entitled to power allows them to justify any lie or crime necessary for the acquisition of power. Their elitism justifies their binding one standard on us, while holding themselves to almost no standards at all.
They view the world as pre-revolution France. They dream of carrying the banner of equality as they storm The Bastille. And, of course, there’s the guillotine, revenge against those they view as responsible for all they deem unfair.
What I find ironic is their hatred for the perceived aristocracy. Aristocrats view themselves as being of noble birth, a higher breed with access to education and refinement. Therefore they have a right and a duty to rule. So, like the pigs in Animal Farm, they’ve become identical to their enemy.
However, in Pigs on the Wing pt. 1 and 2 the question “if I didn’t care…” is brought up. The idea that we need to care and look out for each other.
Dostoevsky, in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, sums up everything he’d been trying to say with his writing since he was sent to Siberia with only a copy of the New Testament (part of The Bible, for those with a public education) to keep him sane and knock some sense into is increasingly radical left wing mind. He writes:

And really how simple it all is: everything could be arranged at once! The main thing is to love your neighbor as yourself-that is the main thing, and that is everything, for nothing else matters. Once you do that, you will discover at once how everything can be arranged. And yet it is an old truth, a truth that has been told over and over again, but in spite of that it finds no place among men!

Now why does that sound familiar to me?
It is simple. If everyone loved one another in this biblical sense, a genuine desire for the welfare of others, in deed as well as words; if everyone had the wisdom to know what is in the best interest of themselves and others; if everyone had the self-control to overcome the emotions and temptations that push us to act otherwise; we’d have little or no need for government at all. Any economic system would probably work.
Though we aught to promote these values, we must deal with the world as it is and not how we wish it was.
We are people. People are people. All have fallen short of the glory, and all are subject to emotions, hormones, passions, lusts, temptations, ignorance, confusion, selfishness, and momentary lapses of reason. Even good people, and I do believe most are good natured at heart, are capable of doing horrendous things. David, a man after God’s own heart, slept with another man’s wife and had that man killed to cover it up. On top of this, there are those who aren’t good. I don’t believe they were born evil, but somehow they allowed themselves to become evil. This is Planet Earth after all.
For these reasons, we need government. The primary, and I believe, original purpose of government is to protect the people, not to rule over them. The government serves the people, not the other way around.
So what am I trying to say with this rant?
If it is this difficult to govern our own lives, why would be let a stranger, especially politicians and bearcats, govern our lives for us. They too are only human. They are not infallible, even Obama. They are all subject to temptation, stupidity, and the corrupting forces of power. This is precisely why their power should be limited.
These pigs, I mean “anointed” are no more than vindictive, arrogant, narcissistic busy-bodies seeking to congratulate themselves and give their meaningless lives some meaning by prying into everyone else’s business and telling them what they are doing wrong. I deal with way too much of this at work, I don’t want to get from my government as well.
But I guess, that too, is life on Planet Earth.
I guess that’s about all I have say for now; it's late and my brain's gone comfortably numb. If you’re still with me, if your attention span is long enough and you have nothing better to do, thank you for reading. Any thoughts, questions, corrections, or suggestions are more than welcome.
Oh, and condescension is not love.

conservatism: it isn't just a word or team name.

Conservatism is not a narrow philosophy......it is the philosophy of the Founding Fathers. It is the philosophy of liberty, opportunity, private property, national security.

It is a philosophy that promotes the liberation of the individual, that nurtures competition, and that embraces all people regardless of who they are, or where they have been.

It is a philosophy that rejects the authoritarianism of the few, of the politician, of the bureaucrat; and promotes limited, stable and predictable government authority.

It is a philosophy that rejects the bankrupting of future generations to pay for the benefits of the current generation.

It is a philosophy that expects its citizens to abide by a just and righteous and predictable law and demands the same from aliens who cross our borders illegally.

It is a philosophy which emphasizes the family and faith, over government.

Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny. It's the only one. It's based on thousands of years of human experience. There is nothing narrow about the conservative philosophy. It's a liberating philosophy.

It is a magnificent philosophy.

It is a philosophy for the ages, for all times.

---Mark Levin on the radio
April 28th, 2009

I stole this from Unaffordable Lollipops for the Electorate.

just thinking

So I was thinking about a health care system where some bureaucrat decides who's ailments are worth spending the money to treat and who's aren't; who's life is worth the money to save and who's isn't. Then I got to wondering how euthanasia fit's into all this; couldn't we save a lot of money if we just "put down" some of our more expensive fellow citizens? Where's and how fine is the line between voluntary and involuntary euthanasia? Who get's to decide? Heck, if we just offed everyone over 65 we could put down the social security crisis. Imagine how much we'd save on medicare.

Then today I began to wonder how eugenics and abortion fit into the question. I haven't dug deeply into it, but a quick scan of the net resulted in a few interesting links:



http://www.eugenics.net/
http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html
http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/eugenics/eugenics.html
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml
http://www.blackgenocide.org/sanger.html

I haven't read through all this information and these don't necessarily reflect my own views on the subject.

Anyway, I'd love to know what you think.

thoughts on happiness and control

“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
- Alexis de Tocqueville


In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert describes a couple studies about control and happiness. In the first study (E. Langer and J. Rodin, “The Effect of Choice and Enhanced Personal Responsibility for the Aged: A field Experiment in an Institutional Setting,” Journal of personality and Social Psychology) two groups of elderly nursing home residents were given a house plant. The first group was told they were responsible for the care of the houseplant. The second group was told the staff would take care of the plant for them. Six months later, thirty percent of the of the residents in the second group, the ones with no control over their plant, were dead, while only fifteen percent of the first group, those who had control, were dead.
The second study (R. Schulz and B. H. Hanusa, “Long-Term Effects of Control and Predictability-Enhancing Interventions: Findings and Ethical Issues,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) had a more tragic outcome. They arranged for students to pay regular visits to nursing-home residents. Members of the first group were allowed to control the timing and duration of the visits. After two months, the members of the first group were happier and healthier than those who had no control over the visits. Several months after the study was concluded, however, a disproportionate number of the first group had died. Imagine being stuck in a nursing-home and having little control of your own life. It would be tough. The first group was given a taste of control over their own lives and benefited greatly, but when that was taken from them, they were worse off than if they never had it to begin with.

The Declaration of Independence states that governments are formed solely to secure our unalienable rights, namely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It also states that when any government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to abolish it. Now we can debate the what happiness is all day long, but what I do know is that no man, no matter how powerful or eloquent, can give it to you.; you must pursue it yourself. You are your own property. You are also your own responsibility. If you hand over your responsibly, you hand over control. If you look to someone else for happiness, you will never be happy.
We are in the process of handing over control of our employment our income, our retirement, our education, our children’s education, the care of the needy in our families and communities, our housing, our transportation, and the list goes on and on. The federal government gets all of it’s authority from the people, hence “We the People…” As the government gains more and more authority over more aspects of our lives, such as how much we can pay our own employees, it gets that authority from us. We, as individuals, are losing control of our own lives. Not only is this destructive to liberty, obviously, it is destructive to the pursuit of happiness and possibly even to our physical well-being. History is full of example of how governments with unlimited power are destructive to the individuals right to life.
If I continue I’ll start rambling even more than I already am. There should be plenty there to chew on. Think about it and let me know what you think.

all things in common

Picture this:

You’re in school. The teacher assigns a research project to be done with a group. What are the chances there’ll be at least one member who slacks off and lets everyone else do the work? What are the chances there’ll be one member who does most of the work? What are the chances that everyone will bring the same amount of effort, talent, knowledge, etc. to the table? Is if fair if everyone gets the same grade regardless of their input?

Almost every situation I’ve been in where I worked with a team, there were those who slacked off, and those who picked up the slack. At times I felt like I carried the whole operation on my back, and times when I knew I wasn’t pulling my weight. Though there were times when I got frustrated with doing more than my share of the work, I always felt, and slept better than when I didn’t do my share.

If you haven’t read Animal Farm by George Orwell, do so. It is short and well worth your time. My favorite character is a horse by the name of Boxer. He wasn’t the brightest animal on the farm, but he had the biggest heart, and the biggest muscles. Out of loyalty, he practically killed himself working to keep the farm from collapsing. Everyone sang his praises, but most were content to let him do most of the work; why should they work hard if he would do it for them? He eventually wore himself out and the pigs rewarded him by sending him to the knacker’s.

Of course, Orwell didn’t pull this story out of the air, it is a story that has been played out time and time again throughout history. As long as there’s someone to pick up the slack, there will never be a shortage of people willing to produce the slack. That’s human nature, and no gifted orator with an even more gifted teleprompter will change this.

Here’s some links you might find interesting:
http://www.mises.org/store/How-Capitalism-Saved-America-P260.aspx

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8236

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1742553/posts

Lincoln Speaks

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Obama's unclean lips aren't worthy to let the name of Lincoln pass through them. He has no right to sit in his chair or defile his monument with his presence, and we should not tolerate it.

6.5 billion, give or take.

What is on your mind at this moment? What are your concerns, worries, hopes, dreams, sorrows, joys, and struggles at this moment? What about yesterday? How about last week? Can you even remember? Think about this day, last year; chances are you can't even remember.

What does that say about the things that are on your mind right now? Do you think they will matter tomorrow, next week, a year from now, or even ten years from now?

The estimated population of this planet is over 6.5 billion people. I think it's safe to assume all 6.5 billion people have something on their mind at this moment. They all have their worries, concerns, troubles, and such.

Our life expectancy is somewhere around seventy-five years. How long is seventy-five years compared to a thousand? or several thousand years that make up recorded history? How long have people lived on this planet? How many lives have come and gone in that time? I doubt anyone really knows.

It's clear all those people lived their lives one day at a time, with their own daily joys and struggles, such as we. It is impossible to comprehend, but sobering to try.

Often our worries seem so big they overshadow everything else, but in the whole scheme of our life, are they really a big deal? In the whole big scheme of things, do they even matter at all? Why is it then we expect the whole world to bend over backwards to submit to our will? and why is it we feel persecuted when we don't get our own way?

I don't know, but it's something to think about.

I had this thought today: If you weren't alive, dealing with all the stuff life throws at you, what else would you be doing, staring at the lid of a coffin? At least since Cain killed Able, there's been an endless parade of injustice and ugly nastiness for men to deal with, and there's nothing new under the sun. And one may very well make the argument that the dead are better off because all this is behind them. And one may even make a better argument that the still born are better off for they never had to deal with any of it all. Maybe so, but I'm not in either category.

So what of it? Should I whine, complain and moan. "Oh poor me. Why must I be born in such evil times?" Tell me, what times were not evil? What times would you rather live in? Think about it sometime.

So maybe we can do better. Maybe so. Maybe we should try. Of course; is there a better way to live than to do good, to fight for justice and peace? But all we can do is all we can do, and it's a never ending war. And this is a long way off from my real complaint.

So what is my complaint? There are way too many whiners. I've known way too many people who feel they've be cheated in life by prejudice, poverty, the man, the system, or whatever other injustice they can come up with. I don't pretend such injustices don't exist, I've already said as much, and some are pretty bad, but most of these people have it pretty good, all in all. They just don't see it because they're focused on the negatives, real or imagined. Worse yet, they refuse to be happy until everything is fair, until all that is crooked is made straight. I hate to say it, but they'll be waiting a long time. Life has never been fair, what makes us think it will be now? On top of all this, too many of these people sit on their butts, waiting for someone else to come along and fix their problems for them, usually the government. Dit moi, would you trust your most valuable possession to a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats? So why would you trust them with your own happiness? Most people have their own problems to deal with, what gives you the right to demand they deal with your problems? If you're unhappy with your life, get off your butt and do something about it; it's your life, don't give it away to someone else.

Yes, there are people who have real problems, and who need help. I hope it is never said of me that I don't care for others, especially those in need. But all that makes this even worse. We live in a country where the poor have a higher standard of living, more freedom, and more opportunity than an incalculable vast majority of those who've graced this earth with their presence. Far too many of us, myself included at times, maybe all of us, use these things as excuses to not do anything with our lives, either because of fear, or just plain laziness.

I don't know what's worse, wannabe victims or those who refuse to be happy, who feel guilty because someone in the world may not have it as good as they do. So I have an apple and you don't, so I'll chuck my apple so we're both equal, then I'll congratulate myself on how much I care. Or, I'll eat my apple, but complain about it and try to make everyone else feel guilty about eating their apples. Either way you still have no apple. All I've done is made myself, and maybe a few others unhappy along with you. Maybe I should get over myself, stop trying to be Hercules, and be content doing what I can with what I have. The point is, we have too many do-gooders who tear everything down to make themselves feel good. There are far too many people scolding us everyday, telling us why we should feel guilty, telling us what we are doing wrong, what we are doing that will either kill us or destroy the world, telling us what new crisis we should be worried about, and how we're all victims, and how helpless we are. I've about had all I can take. But then again, I don't have to listen to them.

But what's worse than all this? Blood sucking politicians who propagate such guilt and victim hood, dress up like super man to save the day, collect the votes, and pat each other on the back for how much they care, even though they haven't fixed anything.

But enough of that. I've gone on far too long. So am I whining? Or am I doing something by writing about it? The line is very thin sometimes. Does any of this make sense, or am I mad? Yet another fine line. I guess you don't have to listen to me if you don't want.

So I'll leave you with this: do good, work hard, and enjoy what you have however little it may be. There is far too much that is good and beautiful lying right under our upturned noses to throw away.

Maybe someday I'll learn to take my own advice.

Au revoir.