Socialism requires the involuntary servitude of the citizens for the nebulous and never-ending "greater good" of society, having elevated the State (or "society") to a position superior to the individual. Ownership of one’s time, property, labor, and even one’s own body is a plastic concept, mutable to the "needs" of the "greater good".

The antithesis of Socialism (or Collectivism by any other name) is the philosophy of individual liberty, whether that antipode is called Individualism or Libertarianism, wherein the Individual is held as supreme, and society is considered merely a network of voluntary cooperative agreements that exists solely to facilitate and protect individual liberty. Ownership of one’s time, property, labor, and one’s own body is a static concept, absolute, sacrosanct, immutable.

The two cannot be reconciled.

Socialism in practice rests upon the use of government powers of intrusion, coercion, and confiscation to take away from the individual his control over his time and efforts, and from the industrious the fruits of their labor. It is thus no more and no less than institutionalized forcible enslavement and theft, and such can never be justified in a civilized society.

On these grounds, Socialism is repugnant. This will not change.

Moreover, those who promote or support Socialism out of their own petty benefits therefrom, or out "crabs in a pot" envy, or even out of claims of so-called altruism, are not only thieves and slavers, but cowards, as they hide behind "the will of the masses" in order to use the government to steal and enslave by proxy.
On these grounds, Socialists themselves, as individuals and as a political group, are repugnant. This will not change.

Individual libertarianism (for lack of a better term) rests upon voluntary associations, agreements, and contracts, relegating government use of power to the role of securing trade and property against theft (of various sorts). It is nothing more or less than institutionalized freedom, and is the acme of a civilized society.

In a system of individual liberty, what is the worst that can happen?

There will be inequality of outcomes, obviously, as the excellent will outperform the median, and the median will outperform the base. Some of these outcomes will be extreme, as well: There will be some who emerge and become fabulously wealthy and influential; There will be some who plummet to the depths of poverty. However, what will happen in the main is the emergence of the overwhelming majority of the average people doing comfortably well. Moreover, history shows that the innovations powered by the excellent fairly rapidly become available to the rest of the population – over and above the creation of novel industry that requires paid workers. Additionally, history shows that both the wealthy and the average have an established track record of providing assistance to the impoverished, voluntarily, out of their own pockets and for their own reasons.

This is the *worst* that individual libertarianism can produce.

By contrast: What is the worst that can happen under a collectivist system?

Auschwitz. Gulags. One hundred million citizens (more, probably) murdered by their own government.

That’s the worst, in one way of looking at things.

What else?

As it is impossible – I say again: IMPOSSIBLE – to raise the performance of the base to that of the median, and of the median to that of the excellent, the only way to create equality of outcomes is to, instead, RAZE both the excellent and the median to the level of the base. (That there will be an untouchably powerful ruling class enforcing this collectivist utopia should go without saying, and such should irrevocably void any claims to equality the proponents of collectivist can spout, but… oddly… It needs to be said, and those claims will still be made in spite of patent reality). The result of such "equalization" is, and can only be, a period of serial cannibalism as first the median and the base devour the excellent, and then the base devours the median, producing in the end a sea of uniform squalor and misery (ruled by what is effectively an alien overlord class).

So, in sum, the choice between the two philosophies is, in terms of practical results, very clear:

Individual libertarianism produces a normal distribution of results at any given time, and over time produces a general trend towards greater prosperity for all, using government power only against those who take without permission.

vs.

Collectivism produces an abnormal distribution, with almost everyone poor and miserable, and ruled by an elite class that takes everything, redistributes some to mollycoddle the masses, and enforces its whim through murder of its own subjects.

This really ought to be a simple choice.

kingprout

Statistics: Posted by Coyote — Sun Nov 11, 2012 8:56 pm

Socialism requires the involuntary servitude of the citizens for the nebulous and never-ending "greater good" of society, having elevated the State (or "society") to a position superior to the individual. Ownership of one’s time, property, labor, and even one’s own body is a plastic concept, mutable to the "needs" of the "greater good".

Individual Liberty, wherein the Individual is held as supreme, and society is considered merely a network of voluntary cooperative agreements that exist solely to facilitate and protect individual liberty, represents ownership of one’s time, property, labor, and one’s own body as an immutable concept, absolute and sacrosanct.

The two cannot be reconciled.

Socialism in practice rests upon the use of government powers of intrusion, coercion, and confiscation to take away from the individual his control over his time and efforts, and from the industrious the fruits of their labor. It is thus no more and no less than institutionalized forcible enslavement and theft, and such can never be justified.

Moreover, those who promote or support Socialism out of their own petty benefits or out of claims of so-called altruism, are not only thieves and slavers, but cowards, as they hide behind "the will of the masses" in order to use the government to steal and enslave by proxy.

Individual libertarianism rests upon voluntary associations, agreements, and contracts, relegating government use of power to the role of securing trade and property against theft (of various sorts). It is nothing more or less than institutionalized freedom.

In a system of individual liberty, what is the worst that can happen?

There will be inequality of outcomes, obviously, as the excellent will outperform the median, and the median will outperform the base. Some of these outcomes will be extreme, as well: There will be some who emerge and become fabulously wealthy and influential; There will be some who plummet to the depths of poverty.

However, what will happen in the main is the emergence of the overwhelming majority of the average people doing comfortably well. Moreover, history shows that the innovations powered by the excellent fairly rapidly become available to the rest of the population – over and above the creation of novel industry that requires paid workers.

Additionally, history shows that both the wealthy and the average have an established track record of providing assistance to the impoverished, voluntarily, out of their own pockets and for their own reasons.

This is the *worst* that individual libertarianism can produce.

What is the worst that can happen under a collectivist system?

Auschwitz. Gulags. One hundred million citizens (more, probably) murdered by their own government. That’s the worst, in one way of looking at things.

What else?

As it is impossible – I say again: IMPOSSIBLE – to raise the performance of the base to that of the median, and of the median to that of the excellent, the only way to create equality of outcomes is to, instead, RAZE both the excellent and the median to the level of the base. (That there will be an untouchably powerful ruling class enforcing this collectivist utopia should go without saying, and such should irrevocably void any claims to equality the proponents of collectivist can spout, but… oddly… It needs to be said, and those claims will still be made in spite of patent reality).

The result of such "equalization" is, and can only be, a period of serial cannibalism as first the median and the base devour the excellent, and then the base devours the median, producing in the end a sea of uniform squalor and misery (ruled by what is effectively an alien overlord class).

So, in sum, the choice between the two philosophies is, in terms of practical results, very clear:

Individual libertarianism produces a normal distribution of results at any given time, and over time produces a general trend towards greater prosperity for all, using government power only against those who take without permission.

Collectivism produces an abnormal distribution, with almost everyone poor and miserable, and ruled by an elite class that takes everything, redistributes some to mollycoddle the masses, and enforces its whim through murder of its own subjects.

This really ought to be a simple choice.

Statistics: Posted by Coyote — Sun Nov 11, 2012 8:55 pm

Health Gossip.jpg

Statistics: Posted by Gumlegs — Fri Dec 23, 2011 12:16 pm

This response written to Warren Buffett’s editorial

First, Warren Buffet’s point about carried interest is arguably correct. Basically, it is a bonus to money managers that is tied to the long-term capital gains of the investors whose money they are managing. Just because it comes out of the long-term capital gains of investors does not imply that it is a long-term capital gain for money manager. The argument is that this 20% cut of the capital gains is not inflation protected over the several years it takes to earn it, so the lower tax rate is proper. Capital gains tax rates are often a catchall for intrinsically long-term investments that are not inflation protected even if they do not involve the investment of capital per se.

Second, venture capital — what fuels our technology sector — is extraordinarily sensitive to the supply of liquid capital rich people have on hand. Rich people are the Limited Partners (LPs) behind venture capital firms. Note that this is required by government regulation, if you are not wealthy it is illegal for you to invest in tech startups. The supply of venture capital is very volatile, varying by an order of magnitude on a year-to-year basis. In lean years many tech startups go bust because the LPs do not have enough liquidity to fund the venture capital firms. Why the volatility? It is because the pool of venture capital is extremely sensitive to the free cash of rich people. When you abscond with the money of the wealthy, it creates a magnified reduction in the supply of capital available for venture capital.

People argue that it is only 10% here or 10% there but it does not show up that way at all in the venture capital pool, it is massively magnified. Venture capital supply follows the expected real return in the market very closely and accounts for things like inflation and tax losses; a 10% increase in taxes can put venture capital out of the money in many cases. And since rich people are the only people allowed to invest for the most part, they are not a fungible part of the ecosystem. With apologies, a poor person never funded my company. Anyone that claims to support both technology ventures and increasing the tax rates on those that fund them is a damned liar. If they had their way, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and myriad other companies that were built with the free cash flow of rich people would not exist. There is no two ways about it; venture capital has a very strict expected rate of return calculus that is grounded in the kind of mathematics that one finds in reality.

—–

See more commentary about how venture capital works here: viewtopic.php?f=55&t=47912

Statistics: Posted by tortoise — Sun Aug 07, 2011 10:27 pm

Obama and the Democrats may have inadvertently forced this downgrade with the passage of the Frank-Dodd Act last year. If you will recall from a thread about a year ago, a consequence of the Frank-Dodd passage was that there was a period of time when the credit rating agencies withheld their ratings altogether due to new legal exposures that had not been quantified, causing consternation in the market.

The source of that minor interruption in the ratings market was a provision in the Frank-Dodd bill that repealed Rule 436(g) under the Securities Act of 1933. In times past, one of the privileges of being one of the few government-appointed ratings agencies (NRSROs) was that they were exempt from legal liability for the quality of their credit ratings, unlike the rest of the credit rating market. Many people know that NRSROs were putting garbage ratings on some debt but fewer know that those government-sponsored ratings agencies were uniquely exempt from legal consequences for doing so. This is why they were so easy to game — all upside, no downside.

Frank-Dodd repealed this special liability exemption for NRSROs, giving them legal exposure if they put dubious credit ratings in registration documents and prospectuses. Since last year the NRSROs — like S&P — can be sued for bad faith ratings like everyone else. They no longer have legal cover to paper over the government’s fiscal malfeasance. Consequently, multiple NRSROs are downgrading US debt to avoid legal exposure when they put their imprimatur on it.

I am pretty sure this is an unintended consequence of the Frank-Dodd Act for the Democrats. A year and some months ago none of the Democrats considered the possibility that a side-effect would be that it would restrict the ability of the ratings agencies to play ball with the political establishment when it came to US debt instruments or that US debt instruments would be in a position where they might be legitimately downgraded.

Statistics: Posted by tortoise — Sat Aug 06, 2011 3:17 pm

Here’s a link to the full text of the "budget deal" that was recently passed:
http://www.rules.house.gov/Media/file/P … 16_xml.pdf

It’s 74 pages. I’ve read it all. Here’s my summary of what’s actually in it.

Note that as is often the case with legislation, a lot of it inserts paragraphs (or modifies paragraphs/lines/clauses) in existing parts of the US Code, and without looking at (and reading large swaths of) the modified law(s), the full consequences of a change can be hard to determine. Indeed, sometimes an "edit" in a new bill can look innocuous by itself, but contain sneaky side effects once it takes its place in part(s) of the full US Code. I haven’t looked for these, I’ve just read the current bill and presumed it doesn’t have unintended (or intended) consequences that aren’t fully apparent.

Also, some of the new bill invokes arcane accounting messiness that is already part of the existing US Code with regard to the budget process, so unless one is very familiar with that process (I’m not) it can be hard to tell what really is and isn’t affected with regard to some of the new bill.

That said, let’s look at what the "Budget Control Act of 2011" says.

=============================================

Page 1: Title and table of contents.

Page 2: Severability clause. Congress declares that if any part of this Act is declared unconstitutional, their intent is that the rest shall be allowed to stand. I think that’s a bad idea with legislation like this (because it can disrupt checks and balances built into the Act), but there you have it.

=============================================

Page 2: "TITLE I—TEN-YEAR DISCRETIONARY CAPS WITH SEQUESTER"

This is one of the parts that has the "automatic" cutbacks if they go over the spending caps. Of course, they can always redefine the caps if they get weak-kneed, and the following link says that that’s pretty much what’s been done ever since the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings act was passed with similar caps/cutbacks, which negates what was supposed to be the "teeth" in Gramm-Rudman-Hollings:
http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/sequestration
The current Act has the same weakness, of course. The above link is also worth reading because it defines what Congress means by "Sequester"/"Sequestration", terms that are used a lot in the recently passed Act. It means to cause "automatic" spending cuts, which again, isn’t new with the current act, that was supposed to happen ever since the 1985 GRH bill. It remains to be seen whether Congress just dodges its own limits like they’ve been doing since 1985. Finally, the above link also points out that the cuts aren’t really all-encompassing, they only affect whatever Congress hasn’t exempted from sequestered cuts, like it has with Social Security, Welfare, Unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt (the so-called "mandatory" as opposed to "discretionary" items).

Still on page 2: 15 days after a session of Congress adjourns (once a year, basically):

ELIMINATING A BREACH.—Each non-exempt account within a category shall be reduced by a dollar amount calculated by multiplying the enacted level of sequestrable budgetary resources in that account at that time by the uniform percentage necessary to eliminate a breach within that category.

Um… Several ambiguous terms there, but it sounds as if each budget line items in a ‘"category" will be cut back (after the spending has been done for the year??) to match whatever that "category" was actually budgeted. See budget categories here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Unite … ral_budget
It doesn’t sound as if there will be an across-the-board X% cut if spending as a whole goes X% over budget, instead every "category" is going to be made to live within its own means.

Also note the gotcha in the term "non-exempt account" — I presume it means just the "discretionary" budget items, not the "mandatory" ones, plus there may be "exempt" subcategories ("accounts") within even a discretionary "category".

This also doesn’t sound like it would kick in if tax revenues failed to meet expectations and the feds didn’t have enough money to prevent blowing the debt ceiling, it just sounds like capping the actual *spending* on budget items to what was actually budgeted to be *spent*. Actual debt limit blowouts are covered below.

Page 3: Apparently the President can at his own discretion exempt certain military spending (due to pre-existing legislation), this page says that if he does, the shortfall will be taken from the rest of the Defense budget to even things out.

Pages 3-4: Clauses about how partial-year budget items or budget modifications partway through the year are not exempt from the original annual budget caps, basically, they still count as additional spending.

Pages 4-8: OMB and CBO will be used as arbiters of budget balances, etc.

Pages 8-14: Contingency exemptions for national emergencies, disasters, up to a billion or so in Social Security tweaks, etc.

Pages 14-15: Setting a "discretionary spending limit" — this is the amount that can be spent in total on all "discretionary" budget categories (um, what, no limit on non-discretionary "mandatory" spending?):

2012 fiscal year "security category" spending limit is $684B. (Military, homeland security, etc.)
2012 fiscal year "nonsecurity category" spending limit is $359B. (All other "discretionary" spending)

2013 fiscal year "security category" spending limit is $686B.
2013 fiscal year "nonsecurity category" spending limit is $361B.

2014 fiscal year discretionary spending limit is $1.066T.

2015 fiscal year discretionary spending limit is $1.086T.
…
2021 fiscal year discretionary spending limit is $1.234T.

Pages 15-27: Definitions, tweaks to existing (now outdated) budget law, revisions to rules of House/Senate that try to prevent passing budget/law changes that simply ignore the caps, etc.

In short, this "title" section of the Act puts limits on discretionary spending for the next ten years.

…unless a future Congress sets them to something else or removes them.

Also, these all change if the "deficit reduction commission" fails, see below.

=============================================

Pages 27-30: "TITLE II—VOTE ON THE BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT"

Between September 30 and December 31 of this year, the House and Senate have to vote on a joint resolution entitled "Joint resolution proposing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States".

They don’t have to pass it. If it fails to pass, they don’t have to change it and try to pass it again. They don’t have to make a real effort to pass it or write it in such a way that it has a chance of passing. They don’t even have to make it a balanced budget amendment. All they have to do is give *something*, anything, maybe a pay raise for themselves, the title specified above, and vote on it. Period.

Woo woo.

=============================================

Pages 30-43: "TITLE III—DEBT CEILING DISAPPROVAL PROCESS"

Contrary to the implication of the title, this is where they raise the debt ceiling. In fact, they give Obama the power to raise the debt ceiling (within limits)

They do however give Congress the ability to deny a debt ceiling request.

1. Before December 31, 2011, Obama (or whoever happens to be President in December ) can submit a written certification that the national debt (actually, "debt subject to limit" ) is within $0.1T of the current debt limit (i.e. about to blow the debt cap), and this authorizes the Treasury to borrow an additional $0.9T. This triggers an immediate $0.4T bump in the debt limit, with the remaining $0.5T left hanging, pending Congressional approval/disapproval/apathy.

Congress can vote to deny the additional $0.5T, or let it slide. If they vote to deny it, the President can veto their denial, and Congress has the option to override the veto if they can, same as any other Congressional action.

2. If after the above occurs, the President may later (no time limit) submit another written certification that the national debt is within $0.1T of the new debt limit, and authorize Treasury to borrow an additional amount, as follows:

a) $1.2T, or

b) $1.5T if a balanced budget amendment has actually been handed to the states to ratify, or

c) however much the "commission" proposal (see below) includes in deficit reduction if their proposal is passed by Congress (but not to exceed $1.5T if the balanced budget amendment fails in Congress).

Congress can also vote to disapprove this Presidential debt limit increase.

Pages 43-51: "SEC. 302. ENFORCEMENT OF BUDGET GOAL"

If the commission fails to recommend $1.2T+ in deficit reduction, or Congress fails to enact those recommendations by January 15, 2012, the discretionary spending limits specified above (see the summary of pages 14-15) will be automatically changed to the following limits:

2012 (remains the same)

2013 fiscal year "security category" spending limit is $546B (was $686B).
2013 fiscal year "nonsecurity category" spending limit is $501B (was $361B).
(Total remains at $1.047T)

2014 fiscal year "security category" spending limit is $556B.
2014 fiscal year "nonsecurity category" spending limit is $510B.
(was $1.066T total with no category limits, new total is still $1.066T)

2015 fiscal year "security category" spending limit is $566B.
2015 fiscal year "nonsecurity category" spending limit is $520B.
(was $1.086T total with no category limits, new total is still $1.086T)

…

2021 fiscal year "security category" spending limit is $644B.
2021 fiscal year "nonsecurity category" spending limit is $590B.
(was $1.234T total with no category limits, new total is still $1.234T)

Note that the total spending remains the same, but that if Congress fails to meet the "$1.2T in deficit reduction (which may be achieved via tax increases)" goal by passing the commission’s recommendations (presuming the commission can even agree to such), defense spending takes in the shorts and is drastically reduced, while "domestic" spending gets to go on a spending spree with what used to be the military’s money.

Note that Obama’s own 2010 budget allocated about $700B to the "security category" — the recent budget deal allocated $686B, but if the "$1.2 trillion in deficit reduction" fail to materialize, the "security category" gets slashed to $556B, while the "non-security category" (largest subcategories being Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, HUD, etc.) get a windfall of the $130B slashed from defense.

Who approved this bullshit? Why is the military the only one that gets [screwed] if Congress can’t agree on $1.2T in deficit reduction, while total spending remains the same and "social services" get a big 39% pay raise?

[EDIT TO ADD: There are also spending cuts applied across the board, including to mandatory spending, if Congress fails to achieve the $1.2T in deficit reduction by December -- see post farther down in this thread.]

Guess who’s going to be lobbying the shit out of Congress to NOT pass the $1.2T in deficit reduction?

And if Reid/Pelosi pack the Commission with six military-hating, welfare-loving Democrats, they can block any $1.2T deal right there, [screwing] the military and giving a big boon to domestic "discretionary spending". Whee.

=============================================

Page 52-71: "TITLE IV—JOINT SELECT COMMITTEE ON DEFICIT REDUCTION"

Creates a 12-person Gosudarstvenniy Komitet po Planirovaniyu Joint Select Committee, tasked with creating a five-year-plan draft legislation that allegedly reduces the deficit by a total of at least $1.2T over the next ten years.

Consists of 3 people appointed by Harry Reid, 3 people appointed by Nancy Pelosi, 3 people appointed by John Bohner, and 3 people appointed by Mitch McConnell.

The JSC will (in theory) craft the actual US Code changes which, if implemented by Congress, would reduced the deficit by a total of $1.2T+ over the next ten years. They must accomplish this by November 23, 2011, passing it by majority vote, or else the whole effort gets scrapped.

If they actually do pass it, Congress is obligated to do an up-or-down vote on it by December 23, 2011, but if it fails, it is scrapped, and the above-mentioned "[screw] the military" limits kick in.

If they do pass it, the "savings" aren’t used to pay off the debt, Obama is free to raise the debt limit even further by an equal amount and spend it all.

As I read the Act, if the JSC/Congress act to reduce the deficit by say $1.5T over the next ten years, Obama is allowed to raise the debt limit $1.5T THIS year, and he and the Dems can spend that much more THIS year, that much more NEXT year, that much more the year AFTER, etc…

Actually, they’d be allowed to spend TWICE that much, since the "savings" give them that much more they can spend without hitting the current debt limit, *and* allow Obama to raise the debt limit by an equal amount and they can spend *that* too.

Note, by the way, that the "$1.2T+ in deficit reduction over 10 years" can be achieved entirely by tax increases — there’s nothing in this section of the Act which requires a dime of spending cuts.

And, of course, they can play the usual game of "spend more now, pack ‘deficit reduction’ into years 7-10, which future Congresses will never actually follow when *they* sit down to make *their* future budgets".

=============================================

Pages 71-74: "TITLE V—PELL GRANT AND STUDENT LOAN PROGRAM CHANGES"

Authorizing the spending of $10 billion more on pell grants, removal of "interest subsidized loans" to "professional students", and termination of "direct loan repayment incentives" (wait, what?)

=============================================

And there you have it. Further analysis/comments on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=47584.

Statistics: Posted by Ichneumon — Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:09 pm

Obama had a press conference in which he claimed that the only reason that the deficit is what it is is because of tax cuts.

This is such an easily disprovable lie, I have to wonder what is going on here.

Let’s look at historical government revenue as a percentage of GDP. If the deficit is caused by low taxes, then, naturally, we should be paying lower taxes as a percentage of GDP.

Presumably due to tax brackets lagging behind inflation, we were already at a maximum when it comes to taxes as a percentage of GDP before everything jumped off a cliff in 2008. Taxes *are* at a historical high.

Now, OTOH, look at government spending as a percentage of GDP:

We’ve jacked up government spending from 35% to 42% of the GDP in just a few years, and they have the audacity to tell us that tax cuts were what caused the deficit?

This is so depressing.

Statistics: Posted by Desty — Fri Jul 15, 2011 11:12 am

I was already asleep last night before the news came out, The story of bin Laden’s demise was the first thing that greeted me this morning when the clock-radio went off at 6 AM (EST). I didn’t post on the other ‘Bin Laden is Dead’ threads but I did page through them and then felt compelled to put down my personal thoughts.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
~Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in November 1942

Thinking back well over a decade ago I heard that the Pakistanis were angry at America. Their anger, if I remember correctly, was because the United States helped defeat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and then left the field of battle. There were reports in the media that some in the Pakistani hierarchy felt we should have done more, post-victory. In some twisted piece of logic we were to blame. However, anything that we did do would inevitably be used and misconstrued by the numerous anti-American forces domestically, in the West, and in the Third World as evidence of the Colonial ambitions and predatory intentions of the US-superpower and the war-mongering of evil men like Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder. In other words, a Reverend Wright or Louis Farakhan wet-dream come true.

Well, we left, and the rest, as they say, is history. In the following years the Afghani society was taken over by a group of Islamist-throwbacks called the Taliban. We did not intervene. At the same time, the Taliban gave succor to a group known as al Qaeda run by an evil little man named Osama bin Laden. Both groups were philosophically motivated (JMHO) to varying degrees by the teachings of Sayyid Qutb. Qutb’s writings, penned in an Egyptian prison much like Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’, put forth ideas that led to the formation of The Muslim Brotherhood. Is it any wonder that many of the founders of al Qaeda like the Egyptian Ayman al Zawahiri are motivated by the writings of Qutb? And that this has found its way into the core philosophy of Radical Islam? More importantly, Qutb’s philosophy was nothing new. Besides being written in prison the underpinning was not dissimilar to that of Hitler and Mussolini in that they all longed for a resurgence and reconstitution of their societys’ past glories. The vehicle that Hitler and Mussolini used to accomplish these romantic visions was in both cases Fascism. Ultimately though, what Hitler romantically longed for was the Teutonic Knights and the idealism of a northern-European Wagnerian folk-tale past. Hitler used the Knights as analogues for heroism, dedication, duty, and sacrifice for the nation. Likewise, Mussolini romantically longed for a revitalized Roman Empire to motivate his citizens. Similarly Qutb’s writings show the same philosophical purpose and he romantically longed for the dead Caliphate and the vast civilization it held sway over. Coincidentally, Qutb not only had criticism for the current Muslim leadership of his time but also penned his disapproval of the society and culture of the United States which he saw as obsessed with materialism and violence.

Yes, Osama is dead, but the philosophy that spawned him is not; Qutb’s philosophy lives on. It is in al Qaeda, it is in the Madrasas, it is in the Mosques. Osama resided next to the Pakistani equivalent of West Point. This speaks volumes about some of the Pakistani leadership and ISI and their philosophical beliefs. Moreover, I have heard that we did not inform or ask permission of the Pakistani government before this mission. I believe this says volumes about our military planner’s opinion of the current Pakistani government. As I said previously, we left the field of battle in Afghanistan and left the country to it’s people, not Haliburton. We eventually had to return to Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban after being attacked on 911. However, not unexpectedly this was used by some as fodder for slogans like “No blood for oil” or in indictments of the US government in movies like ‘Farenheit 911’ by domestic Leftists like Michael Moore.

I have to ask that if Osama was living not in a cave, but in luxury next to the Pakistani West Point, what about our West Point? Someone long ago said the first requisite to winning a war is to correctly identify your enemy. My understanding is that in our West Point the enemy cannot be identified. That would be considered ‘Politically Incorrect’. Both Bush, and more recently Obama, have instructed that references to Islam be scrubbed in classes taught to our future military leaders. For that matter, the recently published report on the Fort Hood massacre contained no references whatsoever to Islam as a primary motivation to the incident. I must conclude that this action is being performed under the rubric of the historically recent Western concept of ‘Multiculturalism’ which spawns the thought that it is more detrimental to alienate “peaceful Muslims” by putting an actual face on the real enemy. John Kerry gave voice to this philosophy by saying that “we are creating enemies faster than we can kill them”. In truth we are being disarmed by this concept. How can one go to war and succeed without being able to identify the enemy? Rumsfeld discussed this in his book about the Bush administration’s phrase ‘War on Terror’. He said that this title was a misnomer and that, “(Terror) is a technique, it’s a method. The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize.” Rumsfeld’s words indicate that the administration was not ignorant of the real threat but instead chose policies that would lead to the threading of a political needle with politically correct nuance and word games. “Islam is a religion of Peace”, indeed! To be blunt, we are not at war with terrorism; we are at war with radical Islam whose purpose is the romantic reestablishment of the Caliphate. We did not choose them, but instead Radical Islam has chosen us through the writings of Qutb.

I fear the loss of Societal Memory through multiculturalism, the erasure of words, and our inabilty to name an enemy. I cannot pretend to speak for the other members of Darwin Central, but only myself, when I say that I am a child of the Enlightenment. To be honest, we all need a paradigm to hang our philosophical hat on as a convenient organizational construct whether it be Teutonism or Islamicism. However, it is for a thinking individual to choose correctly and continually reevaluate his/her position, and to abandon the entire paradigm if the scientific evidence points in another direction. As Ayn Rand would say, "check your premises". This is also the basis of Kuhn’s ‘The Basis of Scientific Revolutions’. I have not seen anything to point me in another direction from my present beliefs and I remain imbued with the spirit of Western Civilization and its heritage. It was why I choose to join Darwin Central after Rades’ invite in the first place. That, and my progressive and increasing disgust with the infiltration of other websites with anti-Enlightenment ideas, such as Creationism, that are held in common with Islamists. More specifically though, groups like The Muslim Brotherhood have set up front organizations in the US. We have a Fifth Column that is within the gates of the US, advising our government, and setting our policy. That Fifth Column subversively undermines the ideals of this Country as evidenced by the Orwellian scrubbing of identifying titles. To conclude: I live in the shadow of Jefferson’s Monticello whose memorial says, "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." He meant it. I mean it. Osama is dead, but this is merely the end of the beginning.

Statistics: Posted by DoctorMichael — Mon May 02, 2011 12:31 pm

I was already asleep last night before the news came out, The story of bin Laden’s demise was the first thing that greeted me this morning when the clock-radio went off at 6 AM (EST). I didn’t post on the other ‘Bin Laden is Dead’ threads but I did page through them and then felt compelled to put down my personal thoughts.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
~Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in November 1942

Thinking back well over a decade ago I heard that the Pakistanis were angry at America. Their anger, if I remember correctly, was because the United States helped defeat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and then left the field of battle. There were reports in the media that some in the Pakistani hierarchy felt we should have done more, post-victory. In some twisted piece of logic we were to blame. However, anything that we did do would inevitably be used and misconstrued by the numerous anti-American forces domestically, in the West, and in the Third World as evidence of the Colonial ambitions and predatory intentions of the US-superpower and the war-mongering of evil men like Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder. In other words, a Reverend Wright or Louis Farakhan wet-dream come true.

Well, we left, and the rest, as they say, is history. In the following years the Afghani society was taken over by a group of Islamist-throwbacks called the Taliban. We did not intervene. At the same time, the Taliban gave succor to a group known as al Qaeda run by an evil little man named Osama bin Laden. Both groups were philosophically motivated (JMHO) to varying degrees by the teachings of Sayyid Qutb. Qutb’s writings, penned in an Egyptian prison much like Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’, put forth ideas that led to the formation of The Muslim Brotherhood. Is it any wonder that many of the founders of al Qaeda like the Egyptian Ayman al Zawahiri are motivated by the writings of Qutb? And that this has found its way into the core philosophy of Radical Islam? More importantly, Qutb’s philosophy was nothing new. Besides being written in prison the underpinning was not dissimilar to that of Hitler and Mussolini in that they all longed for a resurgence and reconstitution of their societys’ past glories. The vehicle that Hitler and Mussolini used to accomplish these romantic visions was in both cases Fascism. Ultimately though, what Hitler romantically longed for was the Teutonic Knights and the idealism of a northern-European Wagnerian folk-tale past. Hitler used the Knights as analogues for heroism, dedication, duty, and sacrifice for the nation. Likewise, Mussolini romantically longed for a revitalized Roman Empire to motivate his citizens. Similarly Qutb’s writings show the same philosophical purpose and he romantically longed for the dead Caliphate and the vast civilization it held sway over. Coincidentally, Qutb not only had criticism for the current Muslim leadership of his time but also penned his disapproval of the society and culture of the United States which he saw as obsessed with materialism and violence.

Yes, Osama is dead, but the philosophy that spawned him is not; Qutb’s philosophy lives on. It is in al Qaeda, it is in the Madrasas, it is in the Mosques. Osama resided next to the Pakistani equivalent of West Point. This speaks volumes about some of the Pakistani leadership and ISI and their philosophical beliefs. Moreover, I have heard that we did not inform or ask permission of the Pakistani government before this mission. I believe this says volumes about our military planner’s opinion of the current Pakistani government. As I said previously, we left the field of battle in Afghanistan and left the country to it’s people, not Haliburton. We eventually had to return to Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban after being attacked on 911. However, not unexpectedly this was used by some as fodder for slogans like “No blood for oil” or in indictments of the US government in movies like ‘Farenheit 911’ by domestic Leftists like Michael Moore.

I have to ask that if Osama was living not in a cave, but in luxury next to the Pakistani West Point, what about our West Point? Someone long ago said the first requisite to winning a war is to correctly identify your enemy. My understanding is that in our West Point the enemy cannot be identified. That would be considered ‘Politically Incorrect’. Both Bush, and more recently Obama, have instructed that references to Islam be scrubbed in classes taught to our future military leaders. For that matter, the recently published report on the Fort Hood massacre contained no references whatsoever to Islam as a primary motivation to the incident. I must conclude that this action is being performed under the rubric of the historically recent Western concept of ‘Multiculturalism’ which spawns the thought that it is more detrimental to alienate “peaceful Muslims” by putting an actual face on the real enemy. John Kerry gave voice to this philosophy by saying that “we are creating enemies faster than we can kill them”. In truth we are being disarmed by this concept. How can one go to war and succeed without being able to identify the enemy? Rumsfeld discussed this in his book about the Bush administration’s phrase ‘War on Terror’. He said that this title was a misnomer and that, “(Terror) is a technique, it’s a method. The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize.” Rumsfeld’s words indicate that the administration was not ignorant of the real threat but instead chose policies that would lead to the threading of a political needle with politically correct nuance and word games. “Islam is a religion of Peace”, indeed! To be blunt, we are not at war with terrorism; we are at war with radical Islam whose purpose is the romantic reestablishment of the Caliphate. We did not choose them, but instead Radical Islam has chosen us through the writings of Qutb.

I fear the loss of Societal Memory through multiculturalism, the erasure of words, and our inabilty to name an enemy. I cannot pretend to speak for the other members of Darwin Central, but only myself, when I say that I am a child of the Enlightenment. To be honest, we all need a paradigm to hang our philosophical hat on as a convenient organizational construct whether it be Teutonism or Islamicism. However, it is for a thinking individual to choose correctly and continually reevaluate his/her position, and to abandon the entire paradigm if the scientific evidence points in another direction. As Ayn Rand would say, "check your premises". This is also the basis of Kuhn’s ‘The Basis of Scientific Revolutions’. I have not seen anything to point me in another direction from my present beliefs and I remain imbued with the spirit of Western Civilization and its heritage. It was why I choose to join Darwin Central after Rades’ invite in the first place. That, and my progressive and increasing disgust with the infiltration of other websites with anti-Enlightenment ideas, such as Creationism, that are held in common with Islamists. More specifically though, groups like The Muslim Brotherhood have set up front organizations in the US. We have a Fifth Column that is within the gates of the US, advising our government, and setting our policy. That Fifth Column subversively undermines the ideals of this Country as evidenced by the Orwellian scrubbing of identifying titles. To conclude: I live in the shadow of Jefferson’s Monticello whose memorial says, "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." He meant it. I mean it. Osama is dead, but this is merely the end of the beginning.

Statistics: Posted by DoctorMichael — Mon May 02, 2011 11:31 am

J’ACCUSE!

A "Profession" is widely defined as a field of endeavor requiring highly specialized training and ability, having a set of ethical standards administered by its own members, and whose practitioners perform services for the benefit of their clients, and not for their own personal benefit.

Medicine, law, and the clergy are sometimes named as the only true professions, while more expansive definitions encompass accounting, engineering, architecture, and similar fields.

The JournoList scandal causes us to revisit the question: is journalism a profession?

I accuse it of failing the test!

Does journalism require a specialized training or ability? Not really; all it really requires in contemporary news organizations is the ability to write semi-coherently and purport to accurately provide an accounting of facts. In essence, anyone who can ask "who?, what?, where?, when?, and why? (and how much?)" and who can convert those answers to semi-coherent text, has the requisite talents. It does not require post-graduate training to be a news reporter or analyst.

So, on this front, Journalism fails the first test of being a profession.

How about "ethical standards"?

One of the leading voices in the U.S. on the subject of Journalistic Standards and Ethics is the Society of Professional Journalists. The Preamble to its Code of Ethics states:

…public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards

Well, that’s a start. But is there any mechanism by which Journalists can eject those who fail to to live up to their ethical standards from their putative profession? When’s the last time you heard of a journalist being disbarred, or de-penned, as it were? Did Jason Blair lose his license to lie in print? Unenforced ethics are no ethics at all, except for show and tell.

I accuse Journalism of failing to enforce any meaningful ethical standards.

Add to this the obvious failure of the 400 members of the now infamous JournoList e-mail group to rein in the ethical lapses of the members of that list who openly used their journalistic influence to aid a partisan political campaign by suppressing negative stories and threatening to smear other commentators who sought to publicize the negative stories to which the JournoListers objected. Clearly, using one’s position as a journalist to further one’s own political agenda (while maintaining the fiction of objectivity and service to the public) is an ethical violation, and opposing some of the more juvenile and pernicious proposals seen on the list on the grounds that it won’t work very well hardly rises to the level of professional approbium, let alone ethical enforcement.

On this front, Journalism fails as a profession.

Similarly, do journalist perform their services for the benefit of their client (which some would say in the case of journalists is the public at large) and not with regard to their own personal benefit or gain? As we have seen in the JournoList case, the particpants were happily furthering their own personal political agenda by manipulating the media they worked for to suppress coverage of damaging stories about their preferred candidate, and collaborating with others in their so-called profession in hatching schemes to intimidate members of their own profession who did not share their radical left wing political agenda. In short, they short-shrifted their clients — the public — in deference to furthering their own personal political agenda. They lied by omission, and thus failed to tell the public the whole unvarnished truth about Obama’s 20 years of listening to racist anti-American sermons every Sunday by Rev. Wright. Worse still, they sought to silence others from telling that story.

I accuse the JournoListers of violating the canons of Journalistic integrity, objectivity, and keeping of the flame of truth.

What the JournoListers did was ethically equivalent to the doctor who denies his patient the latest most effective medication because the pharmacy he owns carries a competing and less efficacious medicine, and then compounds that ethical violation of trust by attempting to smear every other doctor in town who WOULD prescribe the more effective drug. Would you like to have your children treated by a doctor like that? Happily, you don’t need to worry, because medicine became a profession in the early 20th century, and ethical standards forbid doctors from profiting from the prescription of drugs and treatments to their patients, and those who try to do so get run out of the profession by their peers. That’s what it means to be a profession.

Wouldst that the same were true for journalists; but as the JournoList scandal teaches us, Journalism has no real ethical standards, no self-enforcement mechanism, and apparently a large segment of its own practitioners who could care less. Thus, journalism is a trade, or craft, and not a profession, no matter how much it pretends to be one.

Is it any wonder Journalists feel threatened by people in pajamas, blogging from PCs in their basements? Their monopoly on opinion manipulation hangs in the balance, and the radical political activists masquerading as journalists will have no truck with that.

Statistics: Posted by Elmo Zoneball — Sun Jul 25, 2010 2:34 pm