Julian Assange, PFC Manning, and Lynn Woolsey

Julian Assange is a half-baked pseudo-crusader who apparently has nothing more worthwhile to do in his life than prey on the prejudices, ignorance, and fears of his audience.  And his audience is quite the bunch (now including the Taliban), predisposed as they are to the prejudices, ignorance, and fears that Assange preys so easily and deftly, upon.  PFC Manning looks like a quasi-innocent, the dim bulb in this string.  He deserves our pity.  Now, let me introduce Representative Lynn Woolsey, United States Congress, representing the 6th District of California.

The information about US military operations in Afghanistan that Julian recently posted appears to come from a leak that was in violation of US law.  A not-too-bright PFC Manning of the United States Army is now being entertained by the United States Marine Corps at their special brig in Quantico, Virginia.  In a recent piece in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat online forum, Lynn cited Julian’s WikiLeaks posting as justification for her vote(s) in the United States Congress against funding for military operations in Afghanistan.  So we have three actors:  Julian, PFC Manning, and Lynn.  Let’s look at the role each of them has played.

Julian is a nobody, he is a transient in search of quick release, he is an opportunist who preys on ardent dimwits like PFC Manning.  When Julian shows up to testify at PFC Manning’s court martial, I will believe that he cares about his sources.  Until then, he is a pathetic waste of an apparently quite expensive education.

PFC Manning is a minor enigma, just the latest in a string of homegrown weak sauce leakers.  It is conceivable that he will face the firing squad.  And he will be alone, unless my judgment of his co-conspirator, Julian (above) is way off target.

Which brings us to Lynn, Representative Woolsey, who left her specialty of giving speeches to an empty House chamber to make a rare public declaration.  And what a declaration!  She is a long time elected official of the United States Government, until recently a democracy where “once the decision is made, we all get onboard”.  But I don’t think she got that memo, because here she states that Julian’s leaks, apparently courtesy of PFC Manning, support her decision to oppose funding for Afghanistan.

This is a problem for me.  Lynn is an official of the United States Government.  She cites a source, that to all appearances derives from a grave violation of US law, as justification for her decision.  Is this illegal?  I’m not a lawyer, but it doesn’t look illegal to me.  Is everything that isn’t illegal just fine and dandy and admirable and OK in every way?  Not if you’re an elected official of significant power and trust.

By citing Julian’s leaks, Lynn gave high credibility to pointers to his activities.  Her citation give tacit endorsement of the practice of breaking security regulations and laws.  By granting credibility to the product of illegal activities, she provides “wink and a nod” expiation for the activities of Julian, and perhaps even more so, PFC Manning.

Someone is going to jail for a long, long time (if they’re lucky).  And it won’t be Julian, and it won’t be Lynn.

Julian will continue his credulous, naive, childish behavior to suit his own self-serving purposes.  If he had been around in 1862, and had an Internet to hide behind, he could have published the telegrams from the front that President Lincoln received.  And there would still be Americans living in slavery.  If he’d been around in 1942, and had an Internet to hide behind, he could have published the telegrams from the front that President Roosevelt received, and NATO would consist of Canada and the United States (and Australians would be speaking Japanese).  Message to man-child Julian: when you are fighting great evil, bad things will happen.  Just Google “Sherman’s march to the sea”, you diffident, dissipated little twit.

For PFC Manning, I have only sorrowful regret.  If things turn out as I (and a lot of other people) suspect, you will spend the rest of your life in jail.  Even if that life is a lot shorter than the actuarial tables would predict.

But for Lynn, I reserve nothing but contempt.  You are an elected official of the United States Government.  You have a position of trust and power, you have access to any information you desire.  After the fiasco of your ill-advised editorial, I would not blame the Department of Defense for striking you from all access to defense information and sources.  In fact, now that I think about it, DoD would be derelict if they didn’t limit your access in the wake of your giving authoritative citation to a “leak” source.

Lynn, you are not operating against the Establishment.  You are the Establishment.  It is incomprehensibly, stunningly inappropriate for you to act the rebel as you sit in your seat on the floor of the House and vote yourself a pay raise.  Name someone else who gets to do that?  Now remind me what you are so rebellious about?  That’s right, Lynn, you have a huge void where your “suck it up” ought to be.  You are a non-hacker, in the old fashioned meaning of the word: take the benefits but shirk the responsibility, leave the hard work to others.

Nothing else matters here, Lynn, except this.  If I were a government official with classified information, and you asked for access to it, I would say, “No, Ma’am”.  If you asked why, I would reply, “Because you have demonstrated a lack of discretion regarding classified information”.  But hey, that’s just me, thank goodness for both of us that I’m not in that position.

G’night all, and may God continue to bless America!

Things Progressives say – prosperity

I believe that everyone engaged in public affairs wants prosperity for as many Americans as possible.  Left, center, right, I believe they all want as many Americans as want to be prosperous, to be prosperous.  But I am certain that there are fundamental differences between the extreme left, Progressives, and everyone else across the entire spectrum spanning from moderate left to extreme right.  Progressives want prosperity to be dispensed by government and labor unions, period.

This is where Progressives tip their Marxist hand, the only purpose for individual initiative, private business or private property, is to generate revenues that government can tax or labor unions can tap.  The Progressive world view is distinctly “Eastern/Collective” as opposed to mainstream American values, which are “Western/Individual”.

I’m having a little fun here, but this is the continuation of the thousands year old struggle between Greece and Western Civilization on one side, and Persia and Eastern Civilization on the other.  The Progressives take the Persian view that all power and all wealth derive from the King.  The rest of America takes the Greek side that power derives from the consent of the governed, and wealth derives from individual labors and decisions.

As I continue to look at Progressive positions, especially the positions informally stated by individual Progressives in the public forum, this begins to form a more complete overall picture of this mutant political position.  For example, on the Huffington Post message boards any article regarding Israel draws swarms of rabidly anti-Israel self-proclaimed Progressive zombie posters.  Well, it begins to make sense, why swarms of individual Progressives are such intractable opponents of Israel.

Simple, really, now that the fundamental East/West nature of the political struggle is exposed: Israel is the avatar for the Western/individual value system, while the remainder of the Mid East (including Palestine) are avatars for the Eastern/collective value system.  If Israel succeeds, it undermines the fundamental Progressive position that Western individualism is bad.  This also explains why Conservatives tend to be such staunch allies of Israel, a nation that typifies individualism in a sea of collectivism.

This Progressive stuff is all good fun and seems like a big party, as long as there are adults around to make sure that no one gets hurt too badly.  But when the adults are Progressives, then it’s only other, more sober adults, who can prevent real, lasting harm.  If we permanently sacrifice Western individualism for the temporary comfort and expediency of Eastern collectivism, we will have lost mankind’s great treasure from God.  Progressivism is a political philosophy suitable to adolescents and young adults, they should rebel.  But any adult who clings to Progressivism is lost in time and should not be encouraged, much less enabled.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Thoughts and questions on public employee unions

This has come to mind due to current discussions on www.watchsonomacounty.com, which often result in multiple, strident responses from local public employee union representatives (self-appointed or not, I don’t know).  But before I go any farther, I’m goint to state my background as pre-emptive self defense here.

I spent my life at sea as a merchant seaman.  Seamen’s unions were among the earliest and most necessary.  In the early days, it was common for a ship to arrive in San Francisco after a passage around Cape Horn from New York with several seamen simply “missing” … vanished, gone, presumed dead.  A seaman could not quit his job, leaving before he was excused (and starved and beaten and driven to the jaws of death) was a crime, and in all cases he became not just a fugitive, but forfeit all wages due after months of labor.

When I started going to sea in 1969 aboard MM&P/SUP ships out of San Francisco, the 1934 waterfront strike was living history.  In my working life, I rose to a position where I was management and dealt with the seamen’s unions all the time.  I always treated them with the respect due, and never had a union beef go against me.  So please, if you think you’re union, don’t waste your time getting on my case.  Both of my brothers are union, my son and his girlfriend are union, I strongly support them all.

But public employee unions are a different story, and I’m about to explain why.

For the purposes of this discussion, there are two parties involved in industry and wealth creation: capital and labor.  Capital forms itself into corporations in the pursuit of capital interests.  Labor forms itself into unions for the purposes of representing the interests of labor.  Both sides benefit from the relationship.  Capital reaps profits and labor reaps a living wage.  But what happens when we change the equation?

Suppose we eliminate capital and corporations, as is the case in government employment?  Now there is no equation, there is only a ridiculously unbalanced see-saw.  On one side, you have a big old guy (labor), and on the other side, you have nobody (capital).  Actually, you have a skinny little shrimp called “government managers” who are masquerading as corporate executives, but with none of the substance.

In this case, there are no possible benefits to the side of the employer, government does not make a profit to return to their non-existent shareholders.  So who are public employee unions in opposition to?  Nobody?  Puny, shrimpy little government managers?  Taxpaying citizens who don’t have nearly the benefits that the unionized public employees themselves have?  What is this, Robin Hood in reverse?  Stealing from the poor (taxpayers) to give to the rich (unionized public employees)?

I have not one quintilla of jealousy in my soul for anyone else’s compensation package.  I will never believe that what someone else has comes at my expense, or that what I have comes at another’s expense.  I’m doing fine, and my family is doing fine.  But I have this moral outrage thing building over this imbalance and injustice.  Government, as exemplified by the extreme example of the city of Bell, California, has become the adversary of the people.  And public employee unions are carrying the banner, leading the charge of government against the taxpaying citizens.

We need an open, honest public discussion of this so that all sides can present their case.  Start with a clean slate, no preconceptions off limits.  If public employee unions carry the day, so be it and I’ll be a good sport about it.  But until this discussion takes place, my default position will be that government in general, and public employee unions in particular, need to be driven back into their cage.

Whew!!!!  Dang, I didn’t think I had that many words floating around in my head.  Goes to show, you can accomplish anything if you set your mind to it.

G’night all, and may God continue to bless America!

One insidious danger of the Internet

This thought has been building in my mind, I’ve actually tried it out a little bit to get reactions from folks.  I think it’s shaping up quite nicely, and I’ll sketch it here, possibly a final version and possibly a placeholder for future development.  This is about an insidious danger posed by the Internet.

This thought really sprouted during my time at www.huffingtonpost.com, a nasty little community if I ever have visited one.  Every time an article having to do with Israel would appear, the message board would be swarmed by the large and unrestrained anti-Israel zombies.  It was quite amazing to see: a) article mentioning Israel, immediately followed by b) swarm of posters denouncing every aspect of Israel’s action(s) and existence.  Anyone and everyone posting an opposing view was subject to incessant gang-attack by the anti-Israel minions.

Please let me be clear about this, it isn’t the anti-Israel opinion being expressed that disturbs me.  It is the swarming gang-posting tactics that I find appalling.  I first saw it on Huffington Post, but now recognize it in other ineffectively moderated spaces elsewhere on the Internet.  What is this, and where is it coming from?

Here is my conclusion, after careful thought, examination, and some discussion.  The Internet is presenting an insidious threat to our society in a way that will be most difficult to deal with.  In the past, we all had receivers.  But before someone was given a transmitter (TV show, radio microphone, newspaper column, etc) there was some pretty careful vetting.  And there was public accountability, the identity of the commentator was known and there was accountability.  Today, the Internet has undone those protections by giving everyone a transmitter.

And there are swarms of folks out there on the Internet, using their transmitter to shout down and shut up opposing views.  That’s worrisome, but that isn’t really the problem.  Here comes the problem: this careless distribution of transmitters has given those who would subvert civil society a means to contact each other, coordinate and collaborate, and build functional structures in ways they never would have been able to in the past.

None of these loons has an original thought.  Years ago, they were surrounded by a buffer of normal-enough people that they never reached critical mass.  Now, with everyone having a transmitter, they can contact each other, swarm, gang-post, and in worst case scenarios they might be able to spill over from cyberspace into the real world.  So even the unoriginal takes on a freshly sinister aspect.

This worries me, and I really don’t know what to do about it.  I guess we could all ignore this development.  Or some mythical ‘we’ could counter-attack.  Or we could pass laws and draft regulations.  Personally, my approach is to abandon spaces that are not carefully and vigilantly and effectively moderated, and whine like a little baby when gang-posters are spoiling a space I’m in.  One hundred years from now, after our culture has adapted to consume and digest the Internet, we will all look back on this era and laugh about it.  Ha!Ha!Ha!

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Adapt the education, Adapt the culture

University of Phoenix is running ads on TV saying that we need to adapt our education to suit the 21st Century.  But what about adapting our culture to suit the 21st Century?  There are only a handful of cultures that are “working” in the 21st Century.  Ninety seven percent of mankind are living in cultures that date back 150, 250, or 1400 years.

If we should adjust our education, than how can we exempt our culture?  Who would brag about having an AD1860 education?  Or an AD1750 education?  Or an AD650 education?  Yet we cling to AD1860, and AD1750, and AD650 cultures.  How droll, how unmentionable, how political incorrect.  Advance your education, but cling to your obsolete, dysfunctional, maladjusted culture!

Until this becomes the discussion, we will continue to flop and flip and flounder.  The only worthwhile discussion: update your education, update your culture!  This is my message, this is my gift to my country.  There is nothing to be gained by updating your education if you don’t update your culture.

G’nite all, and may God continue to bless America!

A better personnel evaluation system

During a conversation this past weekend with a lady who works at a very large, well respected corporation, the subject came around to the last major project I did before retiring.  At first we discussed general project management issues and techniques.  When she learned that the project was to build an automated personnel evaluation system, that became the focus of the discussion.  It quickly became apparent that at this major, well respected company they struggle with the same issues we did.

Their grade inflation is so bad that supervisors have been informed that the highest grade possible simply will not be used.  We faced a similar situation, where supervisors would regularly assign what we called “Straight 5’s” (highest possible value in all areas).  To address this issue, and the larger issue of variable human tendencies in assigning values, we designed an incredibly effective and clever solution.

Setting the stage

It almost doesn’t matter what type of personnel evaluation system we’re talking about.  As long as values from a defined set or list are assigned in one of more specific areas, we can translate to a matrix with “subject – value” pairs.

It doesn’t matter whether the subject areas are predefined job skills, job/task accomplishment, development objectives, or something else.  And it doesn’t matter whether the values assigned are alphanumeric, descriptive words, or anything else, as long as the possible values are from a defined set or list.  As long as the evaluation document consists of “subject – value” pairs values assigned by humans, there will be two serious problems:

1) Evaluation inflation, where median values are assigned at first, but escalation over time leads to a Lake Wobegone corporation, where all employees are above average;

2) Individual human tendencies in assigning values to the evaluation of subordinates, some supervisors tending toward assigning higher or lower values than other supervisors.

It doesn’t matter how cleverly worded, or how much guidance and training are provided, these systems will always tend to gradually fail over time.  Review of personnel evaluations after the fact is analogous to trying to “inspect quality into the product”.  By that time it’s already too late, effort has been wasted and now some possibly unpleasant rework will be needed.

Fixing this problem

Both of the serious problems associated with human-generated personnel evaluations that use a “subject – value” structure can be solved through a simple mechanism.  We referred to it is “normalization”, although that term is not entirely adequate.  First, though, it is important to make the point that this method can only be implemented in an automated personnel evaluation system.  In a paper-based, manual system the record keeping would quickly become prohibitive.  With an automated system, this solution is almost trivial.

Here is the fix: maintain statistics on the tendencies of all evaluators (supervisors) who produce personnel evaluations.  Apply the evaluator’s tendencies (average) to each individual evaluation, to produce a “normalized” set of values.

Example

Elizabeth is a supervisor who evaluates personnel in her team.  Tom and Gene are employees in her team.  For the purpose of this example, assume that a portion of the evaluation system at their company uses the words (‘always’, ‘usually’, ‘generally’, ‘occasionally’, and ‘rarely’) for a certain section of the evaluation form.  Behind the scenes, these words can be translated to numeric values (1-5 or 5-1) with no loss or change in meaning in this process.  It doesn’t matter how many possible value are available (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, or more).

Each evaluator, over time, develops a personal tendency in assigning this values.  That tendency is tracked by the system.  In this case let’s say that Elizabeth’s tendency is to assign a value between ‘usually’ (4) and ‘always’ (5), in this case her tendency is toward a ‘4.2’ (she has assigned 4 values of ‘usually’ and 1 value of ‘always’ in the five previous personnel evaluations she has done).

Elizabeth has assigned a value of ‘usually’ (4) to Tom and a value of ‘always’ (5) to Gene.  Remembering that Elizabeth’s personal tendency in assigning evaluation values is a ‘4.2’, here is how this system plays out.

Tom:  4 / 4.2 = 0.95
Gene:  5 / 4.2 = 1.19

Nothing has been changed, the evaluating supervisor’s assigned value remains as the evaluator originally set it.  The fractional value simply adds additional information to the process.  Here is how this additional information will be interpreted:

Tom’s ‘0.95’ indicates he falls very slightly below his supervisor’s tendency.  Gene’s ‘1.19’ indicates she falls a fair bit above her supervisor’s tendency.  Looking at the arithmetic (which underlies all of these systems in any case, whether apparent or not) simple interpretation becomes obvious:

‘1.0’ would indicate exactly average for the evaluating supervisor.

Above ‘1.0’ indicates above the average for the evaluating supervisor, a ‘2.0’ would be double the average.

Below ‘1.0’ indicates below the average for the evaluating supervisor, a ‘0.5’ would be half the average.

Corporate policy decisions

There are several details that anyone implementing a system like this needs to resolve.  How many data points are required before useful statistics are available?  Are all positions put in the same pool, or are separate statistics maintained for various job descriptions?  How is the history handled, do more current evaluations affect the calculation for earlier evaluations?  As long as those decisions are made soundly for the organization, are transparent, and implemented consistently in the system, it is unlikely that these corporate policies would undermine the basic value of a system like this.

Voila

Once this system is implemented, evaluation inflation and individual tendencies are completely compensated for.  The system encourages positive behaviors by supervisors who evaluate subordinates.  It allows individual employees and corporate decision makers an accurate picture of where employees stand in suitability for current and future job assignments.

Pushback

There is likely to be pushback from both evaluating supervisors and employees, possibly also from corporate management.  Evaluators may want to give a boost to all of their employees by assigning high values; this system compensates that behavior out of the statistical product.  Employees may want to believe that they really are above average (Tom in the example above), when in fact the above-middle value assigned is below what their supervisor normally assigns.  Corporate management may push back for any of several reasons (implementing a system like this is very likely to encounter resistance from various parts of the organization).

I don’t have any magic spells you can cast to overcome resistance.  My best advice is to start by developing a small group of converts.  Practice with, and on, them.  Have backup when you present (try to avoid being outnumbered many-to-one, many-to-two is much more effective).  Suspicion will prevail, building trust will be a major task.

Conclusion

I do believe that this system will be a revolution for the better in American industry.  I wish you the very best in implementing a system like this.  If you get there first, you will soon have a competitive advantage over others in your industry.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

zfacts is wrong again

The speculators over at zfacts are wrong again, several times:

http://zfacts.com/p/1159.html#8593

Pretty much conventional Progressive rubbish, from one end to the other.  After you check the link, here are the major errors in fact and logic:

“And that means "cut government spending," which means fewer jobs. Fewer jobs! Can you think of a worse time to cut back on jobs?”

Admittedly, this could not come at a worse time, but in essence what we’re talking about here is another bailout, AFTER we already busted the bank bailing out, well, the banks.  And as painful as it may be, individually, the statistics show that extending unemployment benefits reduces not just the pain of unemployment, but the motivation to find work.  Other government spending programs are even less well thought out for results.  What the deep thinkers over at zfacts fail to comprehend is that we are down to our last bullet.  You don’t just go firing off your last bullet without knowing for sure it is the right way to fire it.  Listen to Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, in 1939, after eight years of runaway government (FDR) spending:

“We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. After eight years we have just as much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot.”

zfacts think we should spend more to solve the problem, and then they go on to repeat this obvious error:

“Only when WWII cut through the silliness and the government spent like crazy, did we pull out of it.”

That is a half truth.  The full truth is that WWII would have utterly ruined us, except for two NOT so fortunate, yet fortuitous, circumstances:  1) the entire rest of the world lay in ruins, needed to be rebuilt, and had no capability to rebuild themselves without US industry, and 2) the Greatest Generation, who had survived the Great Depression and fought and won WWII were in charge.  We pathetic wieners of the Me Generation have neither advantage.  So the basis for zfacts appeal are vacant.

But it doesn’t stop there.  zfacts goes on to claim, “the recession is mainly a matter of unemployment and the people who are hurt are generally not those who speculated on house prices.”

Not so.  Those who speculated on home prices (about 1/8th of homeowners) are now both unemployed and ruined financially.

Next zfacts error: “Of course wasteful government spending is bad. But if you notice you are wasting money on TV channels you don’t watch, do you cut your spending across the board?”

Bad example.  People nowadays are turning off their cable altogether as they run out of resources.  Maybe the folks at zfacts continue to pay for cable TV, but more Americans every day are either turning off the paid tv (for over-the-air HD), or switching to a less costly (if equally wasteful, relatively) alternative like satellite.

Wasteful government spending, on the other hand, is unaccountable and utterly crushing our children’s future.

Next zfacts miss: “But an economy cannot be overheated and in recession — that’s a contradiction.”

The zfacts writers were apparently in school somewhere when the Nation suffered the agony of our 1970s-era “stagflation”, when inflation and unemployment both rose and remained nearly intractable.

What I have noticed about the Internet is that hardly anyone ever stops, considers, and changes their mind based on the facts presented.  That is nearly accurate for me, except that I recently switched political affiliation.  No matter how many time that fallacies such as the above are pointed out, next week the OP or someone else will be back at it.   Oy vey.

G’night all, and may God continue to bless America.

Tolerance

We are a tolerant society.  We don’t always live up to that ideal, but that is the standard by which we measure ourselves.  When we fall short, we grapple and struggle to become better.  However,  tolerance is not a suicide pact.  Our standard of tolerance does not obligate us to tolerate intolerance.

America is a very young country.  We are naive.  Before we come to positions on very ancient matters, we should make sure we are informed as to that history.  Knowing that I open myself to accusations of intolerance, still I recommend this read to anyone who wishes to have an opinion on the mosque to be built at the site of Ground Zero.

Intolerance must be resisted if freedom and tolerance are to survive.  America is not obligated to tolerate anything that someone proposes, we are entitled to discern the intent and potential outcomes.  As a Supreme Court justice once said, freedom of speech does not include the right to cry ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater (this is offered only as an analogy, not as an example, to illustrate that our rights have limits).

The French legislature recently passed a ban on the public wearing of clothing covering the face, clearly aimed at the Islamic burqa.  We here in America would probably find such a ban troubling.  But the Battle of Tours was not fought on our land, by our forefathers, some 1300 years ago, to preserve Western Civilization.  So in that extremely, concretely, real sense, as Americans, we must work hard to avoid being that worst of all things:  enormously powerful and dangerously naive children.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Things that Progressives say – civil rights

My Representative, Lynn Woolsey, is the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive caucus.  And she has done nothing to impress me with her wisdom, diligence, or talent.  Having had some casual internet contact with self-proclaimed Progressives, I figured maybe I could get a better read on Woolsey if I knew more about Progressives.

Rather than listen to what they have to say about themselves, or read what other people write about them, I went into the wilderness and spent a few weeks interacting with hundreds of Progressives.  Having only the sketchiest of formal educations, I don’t have a rich background in the history of political views.  But I believe I was able to stitch together a pretty good understanding of modern American Progressives.  And they say the darndest things.

“Our rights don’t come from the Creator, they come from us”

Progressives want to sell the idea of there being a “right” to health care, an education, daycare for children, and a whole bunch of other things.  I first pointed out that legitimate rights never come at the expense of someone else.  If someone else is paying for it, then it’s an entitlement, not a right.  One Progressive challenged this by raising the issue of the abolition of slavery, “Well, that cost the slave owners, didn’t it?”  The obvious response there is that slavery was a crime against humanity, and when a crime is ended, the perpetrator(s) are not held to have “lost” anything.  A mugger having been caught and stolen property recovered, the mugger has forfeit nothing (except, perhaps, his freedom if convicted).

Progressives cling to the false notion that since the Constitution  does not include the source statement on rights from the Declaration of Independence, that our rights must come from a vote of the people.  And from that, they claim we can vote ourselves whatever rights we deem fit.  The Constitution, of course, was never intended as a statement of rights, it is the blueprint and operator’s manual for a government.  The Bill of Rights was added to satisfy certain members, as a positive statement that Congress may not abridge rights (but saying nothing about where these rights come from, it leads us back to the Declaration of Independence).

By insisting that our rights come from a vote of the majority, the Progressive will place everything at risk in hopes of establishing a right where none exists.

I simply cannot overstate how important it is to clearly understand where our civil rights come from.  They come from (as you prefer), Nature or the Creator.  The logic behind this is as apparent as anything else in Nature.  Man did not create gravity, or oxygen, or stars, or anything else that exists in Nature.  A man born to nature, without the constraints of society and with no other person in sight, has these inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Therefore, it is logically impossible for these natural rights to derive from the act of humans.  In this area, man only has the power to spoil Nature’s work, and that is what the Bill of Rights forbids.

Most importantly, and most dangerously: if one accepts the idea that we can vote ourselves whatever rights we choose, then inevitably someone will decide to use the vote to revoke rights they find displeasing.  Progressives, I believe by and large, would generally not mind that turn of consequences, at least as long as their party controls the legislative and executive branches of government.  Of course, when politicians they disagree with return to power, I suspect the Progressives will be squealing a different tune.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Progressives, corporations and government

Progressives are easy to understand: hate corporations, love government.  Now, I proposed this to a wide audience recently, and I got no satisfactory response:

“The difference between a large corporation and the government is that the government is legally empowered to use force against the citizens to coerce certain behaviors.”

This may seem wrong to you, offensive, or both.  If it does, I ask you, please explain where this is wrong?  Corporations and government have slightly different shareholder bylaws, but in essence they are identical.  Except government has a near monopoly on coercive force (thank God for the 2nd Amendment).

Now, my question for Progressives is, “If you distrust and hate corporations, and government is essentially an ‘armed corporation’, then why would you ever think to trust government?”

I do understand sophistry, and maybe you think I’m guilty of it.  If so, I apologize, but I’ll say this.  It is honest sophistry, because I truly cannot explain to you where the “trap door” is in this logic.  It isn’t like I know that my position on this is based on some occult sleight of hand, and that I’m hiding it.  I know no such thing.  If you don’t trust corporations, why would you ever think of trusting government?

Politicians survive by tricking, errrrr … winning over, voters.  Corporations survive by doing exactly the same thing, except that customers can stop buying any time, they don’t have to wait for an election.  Dear Progressive, if you think that government is the solution, then you really need to drop back and look at this realistically and pragmatically, instead of ideologically.

Tomorrow, why we don’t need protectionism OR government programs to fix our economy and provide employment for Americans.  G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!