Category Archives: Responsibility

Culture, Economics, Education, Politics 2020, Race, Representation, Responsibility, Terrorism

Brown Injustice

June 29, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

America is confused. It seems a sudden event, this confusion, but it has been a long time coming. Rational patriots hope only that the radical leftist and fascist forces have sprung their trap at the wrong time, thinking that Americans, particularly white Americans, have finally grown so soft that we’ll all just roll over and wash the feet of black people for the sheer joy and justice of fawning over a brown-skinned person.

Once we’ve reached that level of automatic love and justice, we can readily let brown-skinned criminals out of jail regardless of their offenses, because someone’s great, great grandfather was a slave, known or unknown. Just being brown is close enough. All of our successes and failures are contained in simple formulae: more whites are better off than the average black person, therefore whites, as a group, are ALL guilty of something that has negatively impacted brown-skinned people… as a group, you understand.

Now, black people are pretty smart. Most have larger cranial volume than most whites; they are physically stronger in most cases, and, as a group derive from dozens of tribal heritages – racial types you might say – but now that they are in the United States they are all one race, one tribe, one aggrieved group, one voting bloc, one drug-dealing, white-hating, criminal-minded, low mentality group – easily led to welfare and other addictions… if you don’t look too closely. If you do look at blacks and other brown people, really look at them, you’ll find that they are as diverse as white people, Asian people, Indian people, Arabic people and so on, and on and on.

Most black people work for a living. Doesn’t seem like it, but most are competent and responsible and trustworthy. But not all. There are problems, not all of their own making… if you really look at how blacks are marginalized by governments and weak-minded whites, among others. Among those others are black racial leaders. No one has marginalized blacks more effectively than purported leaders who gain both influence and wealth by placing black individuals into a group, contravening the real American Dream.

Like any American citizen, any black is an individual, and equally treated (by law) under the law. Any black or brown citizen should have the same opportunities to “get ahead” in society and status and wealth, based on that individual’s own strengths, attitudes, education and will to succeed. The “government” cannot give an individual higher status or a higher level of attainment, although it can give him or her money in various forms. He or she knows deep down, that he or she has not earned the money/support just received. Black racial leaders, on the other hand, make a living by making blacks believe that they are owed that money or support. Whites have treated blacks so badly in the past that they have taken away blacks’ opportunities in this racist society, and simple fairness requires reparations. Thanks to us, your black leaders, here they are.

Except, they aren’t. No, no. Welfare is separate. Money transfers up until now are barely just, though vital and seriously demeaning. They don’t “count” toward reparations. Real reparations involve big, large, grandiose, unheard-of and astronomical numbers of dollars. We’re talking about multiple TRILLIONS of dollars. Welfare, free health care, Head Start and WIC, AFDC and a dozen other transfers, are mere window-dressings, drops in very, very deep buckets. Once the “reparations discussion” gets serious, the real price tag and the breadth of beneficiaries will take shape. Suffice to say that a starting point for said “discussions” could be every black person of unspecified fraction of black ancestry, is deserving of a share. We’ll get to the size of the fraction when discussions get serious.

Barack Hussein Obama, for example, was born to a white mother and a dark-skinned Kenyan about 100 years after slavery ended with the capitulation of the Confederacy. He claimed more than once that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia, but everyone else who would benefit from denying that claim finally convinced him that he was wrong, after all, and was born in Hawaii. Maybe. Still his family had no connection to slavery, including the Arabic part of his father’s ancestry, and no connection to segregation and Jim Crow laws in the South after the Civil War. He appears to have lived a highly privileged life, in fact, even becoming President – a quite corrupt one it turns out, not in terms of money but of process, intent and belief.

Would he be “entitled” to reparations? Would his children, who are “blacker” than he is? If so, paid by whom? Taxpayers, obviously, particularly white ones. But what about the millions of brown and black taxpayers? What is their “debt” to black people? Prudence indicates that there isn’t one, so a lot of people would have to be excluded from the special reparations levy on white people.

There are millions of whites who emigrated to the United States since, say, 1870. Do they somehow share this unprecedented burden? Well, say BLM balloonists, “they” all were prejudiced against blacks, so they owe us, too. And Chinese indentured laborers – most of them weren’t willing immigrants; what do they owe? Nothing, seems Prudent.

And all of the immigrants over the past 60 or 70 years… or since World War II, let’s say, carry no burden of making black Americans richer because of slavery in previous centuries.

Then, we’ll have to exempt people related to courageous abolitionists who fought slavery their whole lives. There wouldn’t be a “Juneteenth” without them. Add in descendents of soldiers who fought in the Civil War to end the Confederacy, particularly of those who died – hundreds of thousands of them – and there are relatively few people: descendants of slave owners, who might be connected tenuously to the institution of slavery.

There are descendants of people who fought for the Confederacy, who might be prime targets of this scheme, except many of them were fighting for their states, not for slavery, per se, and many, like Robert E. Lee, who was very opposed to slavery, itself, were complex patriots, many, many of whom died. What more do they owe? If we isolate blacks who can trace their genealogy to slaves, do we then separate out those who are doing very well in America? Shouldn’t we look only at those who are still suffering from the effects of slavery? Or, from the effects of severe prejudice? How do we distinguish between racial prejudice and anti-social acts that would keep anyone from wanting to hire or help, or even be within the field of vision of the individual committing them?

Prudence knows who should be compensated: Native Americans. None of them emigrated since any time in American history. Their history and treatment is far worse than that of any other group, and they are a group that is identifiable.

Do you know who is enslaving blacks today? Mostly other blacks in the welfare-industrial complex. And they do so with the best of intentions; they hired on to federal and state welfare programs to help less fortunate black and brown people. Welfare is the second most corrosive acid ever concocted, exceeded only by other liberal-leftists, some of them, black, who make a living keeping hatreds raw. Shame on them. The continued failure of many blacks to advance economically and educationally, keeps those foul dragons powerful. Many actually fight against better educational opportunities for the very people they claim to share the suffering of. For shame.

There is a speech that a wise president ought to deliver – none has, so far:

“Ladies and gentlemen, Americans of all heritages, welcome! America does welcome you, it is our exceptional opportunity to do so. There are times in the life of every nation when its citizens must be reminded of their purpose and mission among the family of nations. None is quite like that of the United States of America. Our first Civil War was our separation from the Kingdom of England, of which we all were subjects. We paid mightily in blood and deprivation and with acts of heroism rarely seen even in war.

The United States were sorely tested on moral and Constitutional grounds in our second, ‘THE’ Civil War as we call it. By the numbers of participants on both sides, it was the bloodiest, most fatal war we’ve ever fought. At a time when medical practice was ignorant of germs, antiseptic conditions or instruments – often bone saws – or of anesthesia, patriots on both sides risked everything for their beliefs. Yes, Confederate soldiers were also patriots. Many cared not a whit for slavery, but they risked, and gave all for their state and their new country, not so many years – just ‘four score and seven’ – after the United States was itself brand new. The civil War of 1861 was a terrible purging of a nation’s soul. Work barely begun in the Constitutional Convention in 1787, was finally completed in the destruction of ‘the South.’ From the thousands of funerals on both sides sprang the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to our founding Covenant. When the Declaration of Independence declared it self-evident that all men are created equal, it did not clarify that non-whites were also men, and created equal too. Finally, that was rectified by the Fourteenth Amendment, and strengthened in terms of voting by the Fifteenth: the first voting rights ‘act.’

It took nearly 100 years more to rid our many states of ‘Jim Crow’ laws and codified segregation. But black people are amazingly strong and resolute, stoic and faithful. They are incredibly talented and beautifully expressive. For hundreds of years and in dozens of countries, whites and many other “non-black” people have tried to keep black people down, or separate. For shame. But they keep rising up!

Blacks constantly show their intelligence, creativity, skills and abilities in virtually every field of study, science, invention and strength. And as they rise up and excel in their professions, they lift up all of us. There are so many examples of excellence, duty, honor, fealty and faith among black men, why aren’t the loudest black politicians holding them up for young black men to follow? Is there no political power there? Is political power found only in marshalling hatred?

We have recently seen the harvest that hatred brings. Along with statues of Jefferson and Washington being torn down by ignorant, hate-filled rioters, a statue of John Greenleaf Whittier was vandalized, despite his outspoken abolitionism and calls for total emancipation. Yet even this was excused by one black apologist bemoaning the fact that black poets and writers of the same era did not receive enough attention. Perhaps this ignorant, stupid act of vandalism will ‘fix’ what didn’t happen in the 1800’s, but that is unlikely. What fools rioters and vandals and their apologists are.

Such acts of destruction and blind hatred must not be excused no matter how angry or hate-filled someone is. They must not be rewarded by venal politicians hoping to buy kindness from hate-filled gangs.

What fools these blind, empty-headed politicians are.

There is so much good that black and brown people are responsible for; there is so much good to build upon. Who among us truly believes that anything good will be built on utter, blind hatred?

My fellow Americans, it is time, indeed it is our duty to learn and grasp our own history, our own heritage, and the exceptional engine of freedom that our Constitution is. The mantle of American citizenship includes the defense of freedom and the inalienable rights that flow from it. If we don’t do so; if we let this fragile gift slip from our hearts, there is no one to our west who will save this, the last great hope of mankind.”

Economics, Governance, Representation, Responsibility

ARE-EEE-PEE, SPEAK FOR ME

June 16, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Thank Goodness they are willing to fight for us... — U.S. President Trump Addresses Joint Session of Congress – Washington, U.S. – 28/02/17 – U.S. President Donald Trump addresses Congress. REUTERS/Jim Bourg – RTS10VKB

The United States was born in a time of idealism, and “we” incorporated many ideals into our structure of distributed governance within which power is distributed across centers of responsibility: executive, legislative and judicial. Ostensibly, the legislative center is the most powerful because it represents the people, not the government. That’s a critical distinction: the EXECUTIVE and associated departments thereof, is the government; the REPRESENTATIVE LEGISLATURE (House and Senate) represent the people and the states, respectively, TO the government. In other words, the legislative “branch” is not technically part of the government. It exists to reign in the government and to make certain that the executive branch is conducting business AS THE PEOPLE WANT it done.

Unfortunately, but ideally, the system depends upon honest executives and honest representatives, and that means widespread sharing of a moral code, never a perfect circumstance, and much less so today than ever in our short history. The trouble with dishonest representatives is that they quickly figured out that they can vote themselves riches from the federal treasury. Taking more money required new justifications, mostly comprised of establishing one’s own importance and unique abilities to act as our representative. Senators started out very differently than representatives, and much differently than they claim to be today.

Senators started out being chosen by the legislators in their respective states, based on the concept of states being somewhat sovereign and deserving of their own representation, specifically separately from citizens, themselves. That is, states’ interests deserved to be watched out for, essentially to keep the federal government from encroaching on states’ rights and authority, which was a good thing for states to do. It didn’t take too many decades before legislatures demonstrated their inability to agree on who to send to Washington, particularly in the run up to The (second) Civil War. By 1900 vacancies in the Senate were common and years long. Voters were really irked.

Finally, in 1913, the 17^th Amendment was passed providing for direct election of senators, as there had always been for representatives. “More democracy” always sounds good, despite its own spotty record, and there has rarely been a senatorial vacancy since then. The upshot of direct election is that Senators, with their 6-year terms, are now simply more important “representatives,” who may or may NOT represent the interests of their state, and the Senate is the favored way for the lucky Representative to feather his or her retirement. It’s a nice, cushy job with few responsibilities. Senators don’t have to answer for every vote, and have found that they can depend on voters’ forgetfulness, while they campaign for re-election in the sixth year of their terms. Those unlucky Reps have to campaign every other year, if not more, with voters remembering more of what they promised and have done in the first half of their terms.

Still, one of the bright marks of the failure of our ideal system is the 95% re-election rate for our “elected” representatives. Along with voting themselves (automatically!) increasing amounts of pay, Reps and Senators take part in the finest health care and pension programs in the country. And, they have monstrous staff and support agencies who barely enable the two houses of Congress to get their work done! The work burden is unimaginable. There’s plenty of vacation time to provide relief from those burdens and to allow for basic mental health, there’s so much stress.

There’s so much stress, in fact, that basic work required by the Constitution and the by the citizens who send these sacrificial men and women to Washington to reign in the government on their behalf, often gets rushed through if done at all… stuff like an annual budget, for example. Not that it must be annual; the constitution says “…from time to time.” With all the stress noted, bi-annual budgeting would be perfectly useful IF, and only IF the Congress published a “…regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money… from time to time.” Other burdens not listed in the Constitution are preventing this requirement from being fulfilled. What a load… these public servants bear.

Now that the financial underpinnings of representatives and senators are firmly in place, and now that most of those same are likewise firmly in place, we find that members of Congress are mostly representing the GOVERNMENT to US, not us to the government. If you, the employer of these elected bureaucratic swells, ever attend a meeting where one is speaking – maybe even a “Town Hall,” – you’ll find the discussion one of why things that their employers (you) want done by the “government” can’t or won’t get done. Then you begin to recognize that our “representatives” are anything but… unless money is going to enrich a favorable someone in the district or state. Then it’s full steam ahead.

You may also realize that the language of Congress is not freedom, justice or Prudence, it’s power. Oh the money is nice, and all the trappings and perks, they’re okay. If a congressperson is able to take sufficient advantage of his or her influence over public monies to become wealthy during his or her decades of sacrifice, who really cares? But when talking power, there are but two potent factors: re-election and avoiding blame. For these things it is crucial that voters vote at least twice: once with their checkbooks and at least once at the ballot box. Indeed, public service has become so service-oriented that if voting at the ballot box is too great a burden for you, why friends of the congressperson will do it for you! And if there are citizens too infirm, confused or temporarily deceased, why they’ll make sure that voting isn’t burdensome on them, either. Re-election, step one precedes all things.

Step two, also an unending step, avoiding blame for much of anything, requires careful cultivation of scapegoats, but not just any scapegoat, he, she or they – especially “they” – must be plausibly portrayed as directly responsible (blame-worthy), probably responsible (blame-worthy), responsible for someone who made the mistake (blame-worthy), part of a group that has historically been responsible for a history of mistakes (blame-worthy). It’s simple, but requires a number of staff to keep abreast of. So, do you get it? Re-election and avoiding blame… re-election and avoiding blame. One need not be a genius to run or win for congress; just understand two principles. The rest of us are left to deal with honesty, honor, duty, tolerance, charity, courage, wisdom, thrift, family, service to others and Prudence. There is a point to this disparity of lifestyles.

The principles of purposeful citizenship in the United States are a burden that Americans gladly accept… at least they do if educated and prepared to do so. But they are easily set aside amidst a land of plenty, including plenty of diversions. Unless we are constantly reminded or constantly remind ourselves of our exceptional responsibility in the world, the principles and responsibilities with which we are charged as U. S. citizens can be forgotten, as will our unique place in the firmament of mankind.

In other words, “America,” the ideas that created and sustain her, can be lost in a single generation. Unfortunately our elected representatives, given their disconnectedness from the exigencies of real life and utter concentration upon the two factors outlined earlier, seem to forget the longer list of principles that must be upheld by citizens who remain the strength of our nation. First of these to become foggy, slipping into haze and irresolution once re-election is achieved that first time, is honesty. This no longer means lying about what one believes or does, something that can be ferreted out with evidence and records; now it means being afraid to tell the truth about what one does believe!

Now, we need courage in order to exercise honesty. Americans have been lied-to for decades… by people who promised to “fight” for us once in office. What does such a “fight” consist of, one wonders? Does he or she, candidate to represent US, promise to tell the truth about, say, the budget? Will he or she promise to read and understand every bill that comes to the floor?

Will he or she promise to fight against any bill that includes items unrelated to the purported title and subject of the bill? Will he or she insist on budget, and therefore, policy approval, for every titled agency and program in the Executive branch? You’ll be able to judge where to give your vote if the answer to any of these questions is some mealy-mouthed explanation of why things can’t be done as we ask.

The Courage to be Honest with voters – what a concept. Maybe there’s hope for Charity (with their own money, not our great grandchildren’s), Wisdom and Thrift. Thrift would mean reducing the profligate federal budget, something that must be done as part of Honesty. Of course, they’d have to become conversant with the budget in the first place, and not simply enough to blame one another for wrong-headed spending. The federal budget is essentially a Trillion dollars out of balance. Ask any rep or senator you have a chance to meet if he or she is going to fight to cut spending? Will he or she fight to prevent raising the “debt ceiling,” so called? Honesty requires an answer, doesn’t it?

Will your representative and senators represent us with Honor? No sly side-agreements that do not serve their constituents FIRST? No personal aggrandizement through any piece of legislation? Honesty would demand proper response to these questions. Who, after all, is at the top of our system? The government? “Brrraaaap!” You’re out.

We are at the top. We are sovereign citizens who have ceded LIMITED power and authority to the federal and state governments, and to municipal governments; all other rights, powers and freedoms belong to each of us as sovereign individuals who possess unalienable rights. Don’t you forget this. People in government are there to serve us and protect us and our private properties – including our rights: private properties we are born with.

Our success as a self-governing people can be measured only by how much SMALLER we can render our governments, not by how much larger. Ask your rep and senatorial candidates if they will fight to make government smaller. Good luck.

Culture, Education, Family, Governance, Politics 2020, Race, Responsibility, Terrorism

Kneel Down, KNEEL DOWN

June 10, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter 2 Comments

For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the waves crashing against the shores of America’s understanding ought to be exposing to the wise some of the great fallacies of our corrupt and feckless political power structure. First, a crucial point: government cannot “fix” racism, but it does make it worse. Government… and politicians, can’t even describe what racism is and as a consequence, they attempt to fix something else, leaving no question as to why they have failed so miserably.

Racism is not the government’s business at any level; injustice is. That is, how individuals ACT against the rights or property of another individual are the only matters that may be adjudicated, for only they may be placed in evidence at trial. How someone feels about another individual is inadmissible since it is not provable. Often it is self-declared or, at least, a matter of others’ feelings. Brought forth through testimony today, an individual’s feelings may be different tomorrow, if not within the hour. This is the problem with so-called “hate crimes” and with the laws that purport to make the underlying, adjudicable crime worse in the presence of hate, than otherwise, such as in the presence of neutrality, one supposes.

Our Constitution protects every person under its lawful jurisdiction by the principle of “equal justice under the law.” Any individual who interferes with that principle deserves appropriate sanction under the law. Any individuals of a group who interfere with it to the detriment or damage to any individual or individuals, each deserve equal sanction. Aside from some sort of executive or threatening force applied to cause an individual to abrogate the rights, freedom, or property of another individual or individuals, the individual perpetrator is responsible for the consequences for his or her actions. He or she is not absolved of that responsibility by virtue of others also being prosecutable for the same actions.

Our various governments manipulate racial groups and their designations in order to both control “groups” and to acquire their political favor. In other words, local, state and federal governments constantly distinguish among groups in terms of legislation, special benefits that result, and differential legal sanctions, both good and bad. That is, equal application of the laws is out the window if there is racially-based political advantage to be gained. The ideal of a color-blind society is most undercut by the very governments formed in its shadow. Prudence wouldn’t mind defunding that.

One of the worst consequences of the multi-city insurrection we have endured in late May and early June of 2020, is the obsequious surrenders of mayors, governors and federal politicians, to the well-coordinated mobs that have committed thousands of crimes across the country. These include murder, assault, arson, theft, insurrection, destruction of public property, incitement to riot and public mayhem. Yet public officials, sworn to uphold the law, public safety, state’s and our federal Constitutions, have decided to ignore most of it because “people are really angry.” This philosophy deserves some analysis.

Two weeks ago soft-headed, stiff-necked governors, and mayors, were threatening to fine, if not arrest, law-abiding citizens who dared – dared – to open a barbershop or 20-seat restaurant in the face of the Covid-19 scourge of the century and the requisite lock-down and social-distancing dictates. “We’re following this week’s CDC recommendations.” None of the orders were strictly legal but lots of ‘woke’ people were and are afraid to not wear a mask outside. Some mayors say they,ll fine you up to $300 for not wearing a mask! Burning out someone’s business should be fined at least $350 by that measure.

Protesters who are upset (as is everyone else) about the excessive force in the arrest of Saint George Floyd, somehow conflate every white person’s white skin with the causes of Floyd’s death. Guilt by skin color. People with white skin may say they are glad the police officers involved have been arrested and charged, but it doesn’t count: their skin’s the wrong color. People who own businesses or private property or both, are guilty of Floyd’s death, too, making the needed “justice” for George Floyd fall upon them, and burning and looting in the wake of George Floyd’s unjust death at the hands of 4 individuals in Minneapolis, can barely begin to balance the scales of racism since time immemorial. Besides, looters apparently believe, the only way white people are going to respect black people is if they are deathly afraid of them… that part of the plan is working.

They can show respect only by kneeling and apologizing for being white. Anyone who kneels for that is an idiot… they’re out there.

Lost in all of the riots – as clearly distinguished from “protests” – are the rights of individuals supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States which every elected official and police officer is sworn to uphold. These same rights protected George Floyd throughout his long criminal career and involvements with police, courts, judges, public defenders and prisons. What are police, mayors and individual, terminally guilty white kids being ”forced” to kneel for? Being white? Being elected and somehow responsible for George Floyd’s death – when they clearly aren’t?

Are they being made to kneel before the “Black Lives Matter” organization/movement? “BLM” is based itself on lies that they repeat over and over. Every wrongful death is tragic, although not always a crime, per se. In many cases they occur as a result of a series of grievous errors, not always only by the police personnel in question. But police are the ones who must operate at a higher level of professionalism. They can’t react from fear or confusion, else they must be accountable.

The “justice” that legitimate protesters seek has been remarkably swift in the Floyd case –rapid. That’s justice. First fired in one day and charged criminally about 2 days later. A couple of days after that, the other 3 police officers present were also charged in Floyd’s death. Very swift. Two autopsies had been performed before the smoke cleared from the first riots. A go-fund-me operation had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Floyd’s family before the funeral services had been scheduled. That’s a lot of justice. Derek Chauvin, the officer whose knee caused the death of George Floyd, was served with divorce papers as he sat in jail under suicide watch. How much more “justice” can the protesters obtain?

None, that’s how much. So why keep protesting?

The actual protesters are a minority of those marching in the streets. Indeed, if one were able to interview every “protester,” the majority of them would be hard-pressed to explain what they are actually protesting. Are they protesting the death of George Floyd? Well, pretty good, so does every Prudent person. What do they hope will be the result of their protest? Better police? Cool, me too. The elimination of police? We part ways on that one because doing the ultimate stupid act isn’t Prudent at all. Is that really what protesters think they’re doing? Doubtful.

Rioters, though, are a different group, literally paid to agitate. They are where most of “Black Lives Matter” personnel are – coordinating riots. If that means looting, arson and beatings, that’s okay, in their eyes, because justice for George Floyd is not their purpose. If they cared about black people they’d be agitating to get rid of welfare or, possibly, they’d be protesting the 6,000+ deaths ANNUALLY, of blacks killed by other blacks. But they seem mainly to be concerned, upset really, about police and police departments. Regardless of color, black activists want to get rid of police. This is not a solution to problems shared by all Americans; police, law and order are a problem only for those attempting to destroy belief in our Judeo-Christian mores and America, itself.

“BLM” believes very different philosophies than you or I do, or do the vast majority of Americans. Their own statement of beliefs is in opposition to the norms of American, Judeo-Christian culture. In effect, every “victim” class they can identify, including all variants of sexual identity and “trans” sexuality, most particularly non-white, are claimed as equal-status members of the Black global movement. In this they are largely in opposition to the norms of a majority of American blacks who desire to live far more conservatively. Like most Christian or Christian-influenced people, Americans are tolerant of the need for political expression and of the redress of grievances, Prudence included of course. BLM is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, however.

BLM is purely racist. There is no pejoration in that description. Blacks, evidently can demand “black-only” this or that, whether a congressional caucus or a college graduation; whites, not so much. One of the lies that undergirds Black Lives Matter is that only whites can be racist. That is utter nonsense, of course. And racism per se, is neither evil nor negative… it is normal. Only under a regime of group identities and its hand-maiden, socialism, is “racism” a weapon. Americans are sadly in error, literally in denial of our heritage, if we accept group guilt for “racism.” Our nation and its founding is based on individual responsibility, not group responsibility. Every individual could be “racist” in the sense that he or she is uncomfortable with members of another race. It takes time and education to overcome that uncomfortability, even fear. But only a handful of individuals will act uncivilly or in a hateful manner toward members of the other “race.” That action is the only legitimate area of action for government. Bad actions may be sanctioned under the law, bad thoughts may not be.

Another aspect of what BLM “believes,” is that the “Western” nuclear family model must be undone (that is, thousands of years of Judeo-Christian family structure must be undone). BLM global wants “village” child-rearing, which is to say, some sort of government child-rearing. We’ve been drifting toward this model to our social detriment, for 60 years. As the federal government federalized welfare, removing all moral or any other judgment in the disbursal of “benefits,” black families disintegrated to such a degree that over 60% of black children are born to and raised by a single mother, which means that Headstart, Pre-K and numerous other social support programs often have more time with a child than its mother, let alone its father.

Black Lives matter is a fraud on America, since its concern is not helping black people, but rather the unseating of our nation and constitution. To communists, which they are, freedom is an affront. Any politician who accedes to BLM demands, kneels for their blessing or grovels in other ways, is presenting him or herself as the person to vote against in the next election… while elections that so many have died for, are still free.

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Race, Responsibility

LOVE OF WISDOM

May 23, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

It is our obligation to understand what things mean.

Life is a philosophy, as is death, one could surmise. Another philosophical thread might be spun from the question of whether death and life are opposite one another. The observer of, say, a live frog and a dead one can readily note the obvious differences, most specifically that the live one is capable of independent action while the one considered dead, obviously is not… but, are the two states opposite one another? Given that death is the natural end of the limited period called life, it ought not be seen as the opposite of life.

Let’s jump up a level in our contemplations. Philosophy implies belief and wouldn’t exist without it. Truth being immutable and untethered to belief, the death of, say a frog, leaving a dead, stiff carcass, is subject to only one belief: the formerly live frog has ceased the stage we call “life” and now exists in a state we call “death.” There isn’t any room for conflicting descriptions of the change of condition or, for the rational, conflicting meanings of the change, as well. Humans, however, are immersed in a sea of philosophies and, in the presence of a large smattering of scientific knowledge, our philosophies are concentrated upon – if not entirely concerned with – life and death… of humans. We believe humans are unique for whatever reasons and philosophy enables our explaining those beliefs.

One might distill that fact into simpler terms: philosophies are based on how to create life, how to live and on how to die. Too simple? Let’s consider a few. The most widely known are religious, the fire that has forged most of our beliefs: marriage, rearing of offspring, educating them and launching them into marriage, conducting our personal lives, dealing with crime and anger and unfairness and injustice, meeting our obligations to others, and being honest and honorable and fulfilling our duties… and how to worship our creator and perhaps other gods. Every religious belief structure includes dietary and sexual laws, ways to punish and ways to exact revenge, as it were… or avoid it. Structures of belief.

There are philosophers who explain the meanings of our beliefs, of our lives, our emotions and our hatreds. They try to explain why religions are complete or incomplete, why life has meaning or it doesn’t; they rationalize failure, success, happiness and depression, loneliness, gregariousness, hygiene and filth. Philosophers have, and will again, endeavor to explain industry, work, laziness and entertainment… even complete nihilism and the need for suicide. In a way, they are all explanations or understandings (opinions) about creating, living and ending life… of humans, mainly.

Humans build things. There’s a philosophy about this need to construct more than is necessary for basic shelter and safety. Humans invent ways to grow more than enough food – then we eat it all. There are philosophers trying to explain why we eat more than we need, even if it hurts us. The same is true about alcohol, drugs, tobacco, coffee and chocolate. Why are these things so important to humans? How is it that we can abuse one another and even children? People try to think about and reason about, explain and understand these odd behaviors. What do they mean?

Much of religious thought / philosophy is about the end of life and the existence or absence of a soul living in the spiritual self of every human. The majority of humans alive today believe to some degree that there are rewards or punishments awaiting them after death. It feels Prudent to consider those possibilities. If we live a rotten life do we, should we, “get into” heaven the same as the most charitable and saintly people we know? Do non-religious people have a last minute choice to win or possibly earn a ticket to heavenly realms? How good a life must one live to be acceptable to get even a decent room in the many mansions of heaven?

Do we have to leave earth, or just life, to get to heaven? What if you aren’t good enough to take up residence in heaven? Do you remain stuck on earth somehow? Or are you wiped from creation, every record and memory, any act of love or anger toward others that you created while alive – just ‘poof’? Gone? The people who run heaven wash their hands of you? Maybe you are parked in a halfway village – or a one-third way or one-quarter way – until there is either a lull in new applications or one of the staff in heaven thinks you can be rehabilitated. These are philosophical questions because each is laden with meaning. For some.

It is possible to drift through, or fight through life without ever thinking of what your actions mean. Philosophically this seems like a sad outcome for years of living, and implies a certain sociopathy: complete disregard for others, something that has to be learned; no one is born that way. Some people, unfortunately, learn a rare but real philosophy of hatred or disregard for others, even in their families. These are they who have a high likelihood of incarceration and other interactions with government agencies. Those interactions, whether with social workers, foster care or special schools, fulfill the philosophies of others.

That is, a large fraction of society believe in government as a better source of decision-making than any family unit or parent. We can see a constant push from these types to remove children from parental influence at ever earlier ages. It reflects the philosophies of socialism which are also anti-religious. At the same time, there are smaller societies where communal child-raising has worked beautifully for centuries, only thanks to a culture supported by shared philosophies toward rights, wrongs and the stages of life. These beliefs are too rare in complex industrialized “societies” like ours. Here and there small “communes,” often religion-based, attempt to maintain cleaner and simpler cultures and child-raising is shared somewhat.

This can practically, and honestly, be done in the United States in only small, restrictive communities, because ever growing fractions of our “multicultural” nation do their best to be as different from our actual heritage and mores as possible. Parents relinquish control of their children for more than brief periods at great risk. Their teachers, counselors and coaches are increasingly likely to believe very different things about what children should believe , learn, memorize or think of the world, than what their parents believe. Those whose philosophy includes greater trust in government(s) than in individuals will tend to separate children intellectually – philosophically – from their parents. These are the ones whose guiding philosophy is that we cannot enjoy a true society until we all accept the “common good” ideals of socialism, and reject all the old ideas and ideals, including that pesky freedom we try to enjoy and pass on to our kids. Religions are an impediment for this type… unless the beliefs they espouse are destructive of the awful principles that formed the United States.

Try to find out the philosophies of your children’s teachers. If they don’t believe what you believe, why let them screw up your kids? Because the government says to?

There are a lot of money-related philosophies, too. Some of these – most of them, actually, are destructive of the lives of ordinary people: the kind that go to work and try to provide for their families and save for retirement. Most of the people who form the backbone of free-enterprise capitalism don’t have money philosophies. Money is simply a tool for negotiating life… which could be a philosophy, but isn’t worth the time. For the ultra-capitalists, worldwide bankers, central bankers, money isn’t money, it’s their lower-than-secular God. They worship the stuff.

Money is not the “root of all evil,” it is the love of money that has that effect. Those international, ultra-wealthy, celebrity and relatively hidden titans of finance, are among the most evil, amoral humans on the planet. The small-business entrepreneur who winds up wealthy is the example to emulate; the financial wizard who earns through speculation and trading and who controls multiple fortunes internationally, is not. While both may cause envy, you will have to forego your moral bases and patriotism to emulate the latter. Prudence is skeptical of entrepreneurs who become extremely wealthy because they are smart, but then decide that they are also wise. These same then try to sway governments or major institutions to follow the wealthy person’s philosophy on how life should be lived. The wisdom of history and heritage, they often deal with as impediments to the “better” or more efficient ways of life, education and freedom from which the oligarch is far removed and insulated by wealth.

There are philosophies of money and wealth that derive from the love of money. They are perceived as entitled control of others, and are divorced from the beautiful chaos of freedom.

Philosophies about human differences are key to civilization. Rarely do philosophies derived from ignorance of “others” include automatic trust or love. A philosophy of tolerance will erode natural distrust and lead to acceptance and then love and trust. One’s philosophy must include belief in a path toward acceptance – the alternative is mental barriers that devolve into hatred. Either philosophy must be taught to offspring.

Can we make laws that require belief in eventual acceptance? No, not successfully. But we can, by trusting citizens self-governed by largely shared philosophies, create a legal structure where acceptance is possible. Our Constitution is the best example of this structure. “e pluribus unum” is the clearest statement of the philosophy of acceptance: “from many, one (people or nation).” Recent failings of American constitutionalism have resulted from the intrusion of alternative philosophies into the fabric of liberty and responsibility, and from the denial of other philosophies, primarily religious.

We must remain vigilant.

Each of us will pass on, but not, Prudence’ philosophy says, like the stiff and lifeless frog. We have an obligation – one we accepted – to leave this plane of existence having lived, loved and served for the benefit of others and thus for the benefit of ourselves. A wise and Prudent soul once observed that “…you get to keep only what you give away.” Only our acts, loves, angers, hatreds go on with us to be judged. That’s a Prudent philosophy. The United States of America provides unmatched opportunities to live in ways of which we might be proud.

Culture, Economics, Family, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

So, is the cat dead?

May 16, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Even when the Governor escapes he won't know if he's dead or alive...

Every cloud has a silver lining, we tell ourselves. We believe, or hope at least, that no matter how grim conditions may be, we will emerge from them to a new level of happiness, love or accomplishment. We know – or believe – enough to sacrifice today and in this lifetime, to receive the rewards of a better life before we die… or afterwards.

So it must be with this God-forsaken imposition of leftist tyranny that politicians are blaming on “the coronavirus.” Most of us have quickly, aggressively, agreed to forego our “unalienable rights” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Most of us have agreed to be frightened by the dire descriptions of what is happening to a fast-shifting number or percentage of COVID-19-infected fellow citizens and to denizens of foreign countries. In the span of 3 weeks or so Americans watched China (until the news was clamped down) Italy and Iran erupt with thousands of deaths from COVID-19. Suddenly in early March, politicians and medical bureaucrats who days earlier had been telling Americans that they would not be very much impacted by the new coronavirus, were grimly commanding us to stay at home, stop intermingling with others, stop working or playing, and to obey, obey, obey in order to “flatten curves” and “save lives.”

It might have. There really is no way to precisely state whether the curves “flattened” because of the lockdown. It’s possible that the course of the infection rate (which is still not fully known) would have been about the same if people were given good advice and masks and told to stay out of work if exposed or symptomatic. Unfortunately, locking down a whole city or state is something the true government types have dreamt of: stopping people from enjoying life unfairly, and enforcing the stoppage with police powers. Oh! My! Gawd! “I never realized how good this would truly feel,” hundreds of mayors and governors (may) have been overheard to say. “My Poli-Sci professor tried to tell us but who could have imagined the glow?”

There are several collateral injuries that result from any brutal attack and the requisite stern defenses governments must mount on our behalf. Businesses close down, for one, but, when you think about it, most of those were unfairly profitable, especially for the owners. Lots of people lose their jobs, for another, but, when you think about it, a lot of them are church-goers and even Christians, so the damage isn’t as bad as it could have been. If we put a stop to church-going altogether, no one will feel unfairly repressed. There are more reports of domestic violence, but that’s a problem of degree, only. Child abuse is also up, according to agencies that watch those things, but those kids were going to be abused at some point, anyway. Let’s get the federal government to send out checks to everybody and they’ll all put up with the house-arrest that is so obviously necessary.

Still, we can’t let people stew over conditions for long periods. We’ll have to add new policies and closures here and there to keep lock-down opponents off-balance. We are saving lives, after all.

There are several silver linings, though, despite the multi-trillion-dollar costs (so far) and building conflict with Red China. For one big thing, the utter inability for state governments in “progressive” states to do the right thing for even a large fraction of their populations, has been made glaringly clear. Their citizens, tenuously holding the power of voting idiots out of office, should take note: big opportunity ahead.

The purposes of those at the federal level, both elected and appointed, come in two sets: elected and deep-state. Elected officials have two goals: re-election and avoiding responsibility. Deep state denizens have only one: staying in power. Everything else is subordinate. This should help explain why change can be excruciatingly slow or, about as often, way off-target… not off any target, just off our, citizens’ target. Whatever politicians do is hitting, first, their personal targets as they become wealthy in office.

Power and re-election are drivers for state pols, too. The most common end of legislative service is retirement at age. Citizen-legislator is a mythical being from a long-ago time; today we have the inside-government “us” and the lesser, civilian “them.” In any case, once a sweeping declaration of change is made, it must be defended and justified as the very best, life-saving decision that could have been made due to forces over which the deciding politician had no control. Then, when the consequences appear to be going sideways, the same politician will defend and reinforce the underlying, out-of-control circumstances that forced the original decision.

In effect, then, regarding current political fears, it is Prudent to describe the problem as one of politicians building a box from which they cannot escape. With haphazard statistics peppering them during January, February and into March, everyone in a decision-making position – president on down – was afraid to not shut things down. “We must flatten the curve,” said the medical experts, “for if we don’t our hospitals will be overwhelmed and people will needlessly die… die…die.” OMG! The possibilities of politicians being blamed for something – being forced to take responsibility for something, anything – were growing to be a real crisis.

As each day passed and unfortunately ill-suited supply chains drew unending accusations, the future looked bleak. Hot spots seemed to be simply precursors of what was waiting around the corner for every city and state. Stormy skies for the Republic were forecast, minute by minute, to finally fall on our heads the day after tomorrow. Things were worse than we thought and getting worse than that.

Quickly, private enterprise shifted manufacturing and supply chains to fill the gaps in equipment and personal protective equipment. Hospital ships were deployed; ventilators found, refitted or newly manufactured. Less than 3 weeks later there were too many ventilators and the emergency hospitals and ships were largely unused. We’re told those successes are all due to stay-at-home orders and strictures on groups as small as, well, one.

The work of the healthcare “system” was and is remarkable as it dealt with an infectious disease not fully understood. But understanding has developed quickly, as have testings that seek current infections, and past infections, more interestingly. The folly of many policies and mandates intended to slow the infection rate, is becoming stark.

All incidents are anecdotes until they are added up. People, especially blame-shedding politicians, can adhere to the “science” of mathematics while ducking responsibility simply by adding up certain incidents and not others. Every “covid” death was not a covid death; every shutdown business was not about to cause increased infection if not shut down. School-age children were neither at risk nor a risk for others. Even public transportation turned out to not be a major source of cross-infections.

Still, shutdowns were not relaxed and even enhanced to varying degrees. Governors and mayors were just beginning to flex their dictatorial muscles when pesky statistics began to intrude into the shutdown model. Two things were never going to happen as a result: 1) Those elected executives would change their shutdown tactics to accommodate new facts; or, 2) Those same would admit they had been wrong about some of their policies.

In some states shutdown rules became ever stricter despite evidence they need never have been strict at all. Besieged governors and even judges, appear to have reacted arbitrarily and personally to citizens demanding that the shutdowns be lifted, including arrests, lifting of licenses, incarceration and harassment. Essentially none of those instances involved any provable health risk… not even suspected health risk, the ostensible basis for the “rules.” Americans should be alert to and instructed by these and hundreds of other examples: Our nation is no longer a nation of laws, but a serfdom of rules. Rather than “We the people” ratifying shared moral codes of rights and wrongs, set in law, there are now, literally, tens of thousands of rules for what we sovereign citizens are allowed to do. The solemn advisories that cause small and large “g” governors to promulgate their new rules do not come from US, but from unelected “experts” who self-declare their predictive expertise and carry impressive resume’s.

Some are, perhaps, experts in a field of study, even epidemiology, even in studies of contagions and how they spread in past, somewhat similar environments. Our newest adversary, coronavirus-19, is not the same as earlier epidemics, it was not spread around the world in the same way, it has not mutated the same way, it has different symptoms, different impacts on different demographics, different gestation periods and different sensitivities to drugs and anti-viral chemicals. But, they knew exactly what to do before all the statistics were collected and studies were underway. Presumably these “scientists” would be poised to alter their predictions upon receipt of new facts and observations. Oddly, however, in direct contravention of scientific method, they have tended to “double down” (a popular gambling term) on their first predictions, making ever more draconian recommendations DESPITE new data. It is at this point that medical science became medical politics, or ideology. Like true ideologues they had staked out their beliefs, not their science, and those positions would be defended… economies and lives be damned.

Dr. Fauci appears to be in this class of dictators. In the span of a few days he switched from reassuring the public that the new coronavirus was not a major concern for Americans, to advising that the economy be shut down, gatherings prohibited and healthy citizens be confined. Only he can tell us if any science was behind his first views of COVID-19; only he can tell us if any science is behind his current views. Anyone, however, can tell that there is no science or even judgment behind his praise of W.H.O. director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a politician willing to cooperate with or promote some very sketchy other politicians in matters of public health – including those tied to the Chinese Communist Party. Ol’ Tedros’ communist-inspired lying can be thanked for many thousands of deaths in the U. S. and around the world.

Economics, Family, Governance, Representation, Responsibility, Sex, Taxation

Hi, Jack!

April 21, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Federal Reserve Board of Governors - 1914. Every one fully aware of how to boil a frog.

The attack on western civilization by China, performed through the agency of the Wuhan coronavirus, has, finally, presented us with reasons to try to understand foreign policy, international trade, and, key to all, international banking. To the United States, international banking means The Federal Reserve, which is neither federal nor a reserve. It is time to remove international banking’s hands from the throats of sovereign individuals.

The existence of religion since time immemorial is also a factor in our understandings of money, wealth and individual value – things that bankers have devised the financial system to control. That’s an unpleasant concept: being controlled by strangers for their own profit; being forced through economics to cede one’s future and that of his or her family to the service of financial manipulators and to perpetual indebtedness they have placed on our shoulders. But, why religion? Aren’t we talking about money here? What has religion to do with my finances?

Religion, and most particularly Christianity, forms the basis of “western” beliefs and of our basic self-governance, as well as our economic beliefs and practices. We share most of our basic beliefs, and it is Prudent to list them, however much you tend to quibble:

Honesty. We value honesty in our dealings with one another and, if we are wise, in our “dealings” with ourselves. Our contracts are enforceable; our word is our bond.
Independence. We value our personal, “civil” rights, at least as we think we understand them. That is, we have inherent value and we agree that everyone else does, too. We believe we have the right to personal liberty that does not hurt others, and that we are “sovereign” and yield to government only as much of our rights and freedoms as we deem necessary for the safety, protection and happiness of all.
Responsibility. Despite the constant corrosion of socialism we recognize that we are responsible for our actions and their consequences. The concepts of personal responsibility have been stretched and twisted, but we still expect to pay our bills, clean up after ourselves, interact with basic civility, and keep our promises both verbal and written.
Sacrifice. All sort of activities, choices and financial decisions are rooted in the belief in doing without some comfort or desire now, for a greater reward later. For the faithful this extends to an afterlife that rewards “good” behavior and choices while on Earth; and for all of us it defines civility, and civilization and even education. The very idea of earning status, wealth or recognition is founded in recognition of sacrifice for later reward. There would be no actual charity without a level of sacrifice. Even investment for future growth and reward fits this model.
Health. Virtually every religious belief structure includes a significant portion of its accumulated writings devoted to diet and food preparation or combining. There is often an “apothecary” of useful plants and methods of animal sacrifice and religious feasting. Their attendant cultures incorporate many of these rules and so do individuals and families. We grow up believing in a certain amount of responsibility for the health of our bodies – some to the point of worshipping the body instead of the spiritual “powers” that gave the instruction way back when.
Self-defense. Most religions view the corporal body as a mere vessel for the “soul” to use on Earth for the balancing of karma, for some, or for the fulfillment of one’s “divine plan” or other forms of good works, sacrifice and charity. In most traditions, suicide is sinful and cowardly, showing an unwillingness to face the tests the supreme spiritual being, God, places before us. Therefore it is inherent that the possessor of that body defend it and keep it safe. Wasting its life is the wasting of spiritual energy that has been given – literally “gifted” – to it at conception, or at “quickening” or at birth, and renewed each morning.
Procreation and sex. How to live and how to create life properly are the most vital instructions in most religions: essential fertility. How to assure the proper upbringing and acculturation of every child, how to maintain parental responsibility until children’s age of maturity – a set date – are crucial components of how to extend belief in the God or gods issuing the instructions. All of these are spiritual events more than they are social or simply cultural. Strong societies and nurturing family or village environments are the result. Breaking or flouting these rules for life yields some of the strongest sanctions in every belief structure.
Justice. Every religious tradition that recognizes spiritual beings, God, gods or saints / ascended beings of some sort, is replete with how INjustice shall be dealt with or adjudicated, or, in so many, many words, how justice is to meted out to offenders of the laws laid down by God, gods, prophets and other spokespeople who have some form of direct communication with the supreme being. In most cases these instructions (commandments) become codified law to be applied by those granted their position to specifically do so, be they “judges” or spiritual leaders. In each of our hearts is the blueprint of what is just punishment or retribution for all sorts of infractions.

In view of our cultural / legal understandings and beliefs, it should be incumbent upon us to rise up and replace any system or group or institution that BY CHARTER steals from us daily, while it forces us to indentured servitude, which is to say, economic slavery. Our inherent power of sovereignty should also undo the fiefdoms of any who continue or promote such servitude – most of whom we think we freely elected to begin with.

Well, fellow sovereign Americans, have you not noticed how little changes no matter who is elected or which party holds the most power? Is it not a little disconcerting how people from “Wall Street” are always holding key budget power in every administration, as well as becoming Treasury Secretaries? Aren’t you troubled a small, unsettling amount, by the fact that our “national debt” (which doesn’t begin to measure our national obligations) only grows, and now is in the realm of $26 Trillion – more than all the economic activity of the whole country in a year?

Please don’t throw up your hands and say there’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t give a nickel to a politician unless he or she is willing to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. “The what?” you say. “What does the Federal Reserve have to do with all this moral stuff you listed earlier?” Aside from unknown dietary habits, the Federal Reserve has no morals, and has been stealing steadily, through good times and bad, from Americans and from the United States, since it began to operate its conspiracy in 1914. How it abuses the procreation part is outpictured in its economic handiwork.

“Conspiracy” could be a good word for their peculiar crimes: “Con” means together; “piracy” means piracy. “Piracy Together” among the 12 private reserve banks. You may think it is too complicated for your practical, day to day brain, and that is exactly why the Federal Reserve System is designed the way it is. But it is designed to commit legal THEFT, and it affects every purchase, mortgage, car loan and candy bar or quart of milk you buy. It threatens the integrity of the United States – its very independence – and each of our personal freedom and sovereignty. If recent collusions between the federal government and the “Fed” over the coronavirus bailouts haven’t exposed the rot to you, you’re not paying attention.

Please, Prudence begs you to devote a bit of time to this video:

https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/century-enslavement-history-federal-reserve/

The Federal Reserve is a diabolical, century-long fraud upon the American people… including you, your parents, your children and their grandchildren, if we do nothing. Vondir!

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

ALL AHEAD: LEFT!

April 18, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Even government has to employ the Constitution...

There’s a new economics in town. It’s based on virus avoidance. A majority of Americans have bought some, if not all the virus-avoidance products suddenly for sale. Some of those are advertised as something the wise, concerned, empathetic and news-trusting person definitely should have: things like toilet paper and sanitizing wipes, for example, or things like people-avoidance, face masks and fear. When sales dropped a little, politicians got up on their pedestals and decreed that most of these products were now mandatory, while others, for some arcane, authoritarian reasons, were forbidden.

The latest viral threat has exposed a host of new sales experts, male and female. Unlike the multitude of regulations these same, new sales reps have instituted to protect buyers of everything from prescriptions to orange juice and canned soup, there are provided no guidelines whereby the hoped-for… no, required buyers of the new virus-avoidance products these abrupt sellers are peddling, can fairly judge which are good and wholesome and which are not. Yet, purchase and swallow we do, lest we miss out on the greatest shared sacrifice of all time – the first to bring our nation to its knees.

There is no choice between bitter or sweet, it’s virtually all bitter, and since we are the tough, always successful American people, we join in the sacrifice to show just how patriotic we truly are. There are even new badges of courage, so to speak, like face masks and oddly walking so as to avoid others, not to overlook cowering at home as one of our greatest strengths. The only side-effect of the lately prescribed purchase we all must buy, is a new, nearly universal distrust of everyone else should we be threatened by their presence. Since the FDA- and CDC-approved products are so new, no one knows if the side-effects are long-lasting or even permanent. Small additional price to pay.

Those who are skeptical of our national reaction to our newly purchased fears, are perceived as barely deserving of the right to buy food, even less the right to buy toilet paper. This is a great unifying moment. Obviously it does make sense to wear a face mask of some sort when entering a market or hardware store, although, in a perverse way, it also seems Prudent not to do so, as wearing one indicates acquiescence to the miasma of dictates, pronouncements and unconstitutional separation from “inalienable rights” that hundreds of thousands died for prior.

Nascent socialists love a good crisis like this viral one. Now, what they have dreamed of since entering their first poli-sci lecture or law class, and subsequent entry into “government” itself, there is presented a chance to change the world, re-order disorganized society, and to clear the path through the jungle of liberty that those sufficiently wise can follow to a brighter future. Those who cannot share the vision of an orderly nation will need just a little coaxing to walk arm-in-arm with the wise followers… ahhmm, except walking arm-in-arm will be disallowed to prevent a “second wave” of coronavirus. And, no hand-shaking or sharing others’ spaces, now deemed to be a 3, 4 or 5-foot circle according to the Ministry Of Social Distancing.

Exposure of the best and worst of federal regulation is one of the blatant results of dealing with COVID-19. Evidently there was some concern among intelligence operatives back in November of 2019, that the rapidly spreading, perhaps new contagion, bore watching in the off-chance that it would spread outside of China. Initially their concern was focused on problems for U. S. assets in South Asia. Still, it wasn’t actionable: there was little hard information and it was wholly a Chinese problem. It was good that our arcane intelligence caught wind of the problem, but anything further depended on the honesty of the Chinese Communists. Well.

At some time after the problem surfaced, perhaps the beginning of December, the Chinese not only hid their unique problem, but allowed millions of people to leave Wuhan before they realized they had to lock the city and region down if there was any hope of containing the spread of this new disease. With disinformation as its prime public function, the Chinese Communist Party argued against travel restrictions and coerced the UN’s W.H.O. to repeat their lies for 3 or 4 weeks. First “it doesn’t spread from human to human,” as Chinese trade and technical personnel spread across the world carrying the new “smallpox” to the indigenous tribes of America, Italy, England, Spain, Germany and Iran, among many others. No infected blankets – human-to-human works better than expected!

No one seems to want to consider that COVID-19 has damaged the world’s economies, including ours, on purpose. “Oh, no! No country would ever do that. The Chinese are wonderful people. This was an embarrassing mistake that China feels terrible about.” Indeed, China feels SO badly that it has striven continuously to blame the United States for the disease. The trusted professionals at the W.H.O that China controls, have done their best to reinforce Chinese proficiency at handling the virus, in the face of unending disinformation about the extent of COVID-19 in China, the brutality employed to contain it and about the tens of thousands of deaths that have happened. While the world suffers the constant spread of this new virus, China has miraculously experienced the end of the spread to the point of virtually no new cases and business is up and running and kids are back in school. Okaaayyy. Ignore the western news people who have been kicked out of the country, China is the model to follow. Can you say, “disinformation?”

Relative only to the United States, it has cost only about $10 Trillion in denied business and market wealth to fight the virus… so far. That’s assumed to be a lot of “money,” but it’s not. It is a Hell of a lot of obligation far into the future. There was no money to borrow from the Federal Reserve; the FED didn’t have $2.2 Trillion. What it does have is the right to create lendable “money” out of thin air, and charge Americans interest for it. It’s a nice business to be in. Having received the imaginary air-money from the consortium of private banks we like to call the Federal Reserve, the Federal government, all legislatively legal-like, deposited bits of it into millions of business and personal bank accounts to help us all “fight” the novel coronavirus that China sent us. China’s model for supposedly containing and defeating the COVID-19 coronavirus, is the model most “Western” countries – ostensible democracies and republics – adopted, rather than the Swedish model of good sense and personal responsibility, without national business shutdowns, that is working about as well as the Chinese model of repression is working for the rest of us.

Measuring the astronomical and ongoing costs our fascist lockdowns of businesses and individuals are imposing, one could speculate that we could have posted two nurses and a personal assistant at the side of every vulnerable elderly person and otherwise medically weak person at a cost of about one-twentieth of that $10 Trillion. A private chef could have prepared gourmet meals for each thrice daily and fluffed their pillows on demand. The rest of us could have gone about our business, using care and best practices to minimize infection. One could observe that those who have imposed the shutdowns and stay-at-home orders – all in contravention of our Constitution – are enjoying it a little too much.

As in all matters of great moment and of life-and-death, literally, we are witness to tawdry congressional machinations. Without hesitation certain key congressional figures have attempted to insert completely unrelated issues into “emergency” economic legislation rushed through to save the economy. What constitutes “emergency” legislation for those on the left, includes having voters vote up to 45 days “early” and to vote by mail to “maintain social distancing.” These are election-stealing tactics. The left: socialists, liberals and our beloved Democrats, never relax in their battle to unseat conservatism and the strengths of tradition. Every defeat of their radical (anti-traditional) plans is never accepted, but is a key to how to bring a different tactic to bear in the next battle to unseat a specific tradition. The famous instruction to leftists is “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” and “no” means simply, “later.”

Every aspect of traditional life – and belief – is naturally political to leftists in an environment of hateful anti-traditionalism. COVID-19 is a political matter on which sides must be taken and defined. In some way the attack of this new scourge is not a common enemy all Americans should unite against. No, it is an opportune moment to instill ever greater socialist plans and practices, virtually while people aren’t watching. If a few dozens or hundreds of people die in the execution of socialist plans, that is a reasonable cost to install “equality” and to tear down the capitalist, unfair economics of the Constitution and of Christians. China made the same calculation when the (perhaps) accidental release of COVID-19 presented an opportunity, as well.

As epidemiologists have grabbed the economy by the throat, the ostensible requirement of “social distancing” has extended to include everything from weddings to funerals, school classes and restaurants, most jobs and even walks in parks and on beaches, and, quite logically in the eyes of leftists and fascists, our new governors have prohibited Church services! In a nation glued together by religious freedom and codified disestablishment, and built by believers in God, this is extraordinary. This exposes the disdain that leftists hold for religious faith: religion is nothing more than social gathering and virtue-signaling such as the left understands all too well. Amazingly, at the same time that Chinese Christians are risking imprisonment, if not their lives, to hold surreptitious prayer meetings, Americans, and more oddly, their pastors and priests, have acquiesced to the dictates of secular functionaries to avoid church services. What if prayer works?

Secular leftists are laughing in their latte’s as they think they have proven the fallacy of religion. Erstwhile Christians are congratulating themselves on being good rules-followers, not grasping the peril their meekness has placed them in. Regardless of Constitutional guarantees, churches have shown that they will readily forego their faith and their rights when so directed by non-believers. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Nearly every religious tradition around the world includes some form of prayer in unison. There is great effect from unified belief – it’s the strongest force on earth. Are all churches agreeing that there is no one to hear their silly prayers? Are Sunday services mere collection-plate convenience? Good grief! Prudence has seen prayer work in the physical world. No pastor should fail to resist the attempt to squash this essential right – and duty.

Finally, it is hopeful that so many private efforts have sprung into being to supply medical equipment and help to other individuals. Companies have changed course in matters of days to provide masks and ventilators and hand-sanitizer. Remarkable organic chemists and biologists are testing, creating, and improving drug therapies and even potential vaccines to defeat COVID-19. Americans, most especially those of us who have dealt with the risks of private life and economics, are generous, charitable people. Even while unable to work and with their incomes limited or missing, Americans are being asked to donate and they do.

The brunt of the multiple variations of shutdowns and lock-outs has been borne by private interests: individual workers and contractors, small and large businesses, and charities and non-profits to differing extents. The pain has in no way impacted public employees economically. Yes, first responders are working longer shifts – on overtime. Teachers have had to learn (where union-willing) how to teach on-line. Big public thinkers and planners have had to think and plan more than ever, but none has lost pay, benefits or pension. Daily there are stories of private incidents of charity and outreach, some quite widespread as people contribute thanks to social media. What Prudence has failed to observe are news reports of large-scale public-employee charitable efforts, whether by bureaucrats or teachers or others, and maybe the reports have just been missed, somehow. Are “we” all in this together or is it just “you,” the private, not yet socialized sector, who are all in this together? God forbid.

Culture, Economics, Foreign Policy, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

RESURRECTION

April 11, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

There has never occurred a crisis for civilization when capitalism failed to function. “Capitalism” is innate, virtually instinctive among humans, and the most powerful of motivators in societies as small as one member. An individual has the same needs for life on a personal level as a family, clan, village or nation has: clothing, food, protection and shelter. At whatever level or intensity of need, humans will attempt to obtain as much as possible of any of them at the lowest “cost” of effort possible.

Once acquired these needed things automatically become property – property on a spectrum of ownership, from the very personal, like clothing, weapons, tools, personal or family shelter. Beyond the immediately personal, family property and then clan or village property, there automatically develops properties that are belief-based, like loyalty and group-safety obligation. It is a short journey to sharing beliefs about events, conditions, weather, waters, animals and childbirth… and death, that are unexplained and ascribed to supernatural influences. These beliefs are as crucial a private property as clothing and self-defense, and as durable a cultural quality as pottery styles or graphic and oral expressions of every sort. And they will be passed on to children nearly infallibly. Behavior by either children or adults that is contrary to those shared beliefs automatically produces negative sanctions.

In groups as small as two, and certainly of 3 or 4, specialties: differences in abilities, are quickly apparent. In a group of families there will be definite skills of higher degrees of excellence in this person or that – better hunting skills, better tool-making, better making of clothing, better hut-building. Someone – an elder – will gain enough knowledge to predict outcomes, or eclipses, or the arrival of herds. His or her wisdom will be sought out for transfer to children. Specialization. Economics is part of and an outgrowth of specialization. Wise men, chiefs, healers and others will be fed in exchange for their unique services. Food is an automatic medium of exchange. Next, perhaps, are weapons and tools. The hunter who unerringly leads the hunting party to the clan’s next moose or buffalo or elk, may be “gifted” with a blanket, better shoes or more food… or a wife.

Rules, mores, or customs guide the relationships within the group. Inevitably there is a shared concept of us and them: people from outside the clan. The desire to protect the clan is just as automatic. Yet the possibility of trade with outsiders may be easily entertained because of the ease of acquisition compared to the work required to obtain the outsider’s goods on their own. The values must be set. How many of this kind of skins or tools or decorations or… whatever, are “worth” the higher quality flint arrowheads the stranger makes? Before long the first group will be trapping extra beavers just to trade for arrowheads: an economy is created.

The big impact on economics, and on the establishment of capitalism as an organizing force in society, came with the introduction of agriculture. As people settled around their fields, the importance of property changed forever. Where crops “belonged” to the village, or “city,” their grains and products were not handed out to every family for free. There were trades or barters required, leading to record-keeping, counting, weights and balances. There appeared the recorded existence of debts to be repaid in the (near) future, between families and the granary (city) and even between cities: a collective capitalism (property rights) and individual capitalism (private property rights.) Automatically new specialties arose: law-enforcement within the city, and border-enforcement against all outside the city – soldiers and general conscription when fields and water sources were threatened.

Treaties were needed: rules to reduce threats from “others,” and to define ownership of certain lands and resources. There always existed nomadic peoples who refined forms of movable dwellings, like those of indigenous peoples in North America. Conflicting interaction between “property-rights” people and nomadic tribes inevitably result in destruction of nomadic uses of lands desired by those who employ fences, borders and ownership-based economic structures. Native Americans had no concept of fences and property lines, and this difference affected why they never developed cities, industries and massive growth. Today, the simplicity of indigenous people’s way of life is attractive to those who wish to tear down our current, sloppy, polluting and more or less capitalist, civilization.

Capitalism and all of its moving parts: private property, profit, risk, debt/investment, accumulation of wealth and inheritance and the freedom to fail and learn, is the prime driver of the global economy and amazing invention and innovation that supports more than 7 Billion humans. But it does all of this at great cost, not least of which is the expansion of the number of possible “sins” and multiplication of the number of temptations (frauds, scams, legal deceptions, global banking). On the other hand, and comprising the basic defense of capitalism as an organizing principle, capitalist economics and politics have spurred the greatest wealth and health in history. More people are well-fed and comforted in hundreds of ways, educated and made relatively “free” thanks to capitalism than under any of the more or less tyrannical systems employed, ever.

Capitalist politics depend on democracy and, judged by the success of the United States, upon republicanism: the democratic election of ostensibly more capable, perhaps wiser, representatives. Evidently, as well, Constitutional republicanism is crucial to the explosive growth of wealth and a “middle class” of upwardly mobile individuals and families who could, realistically, work their way higher up the economic ladder. It is worth analysis and reformation, both political and economic, to return the U. S. system to its successful ways. This means reformation of economic institutions, and of political institutions, both of which, today, conspire to concentrate power – and share it – to the detriment of freedom, upward mobility and essential Constitutionalism.

The strongest voices raised against “America,” are firmly on the left, socialist and worse. Their prescription is virtual destruction of “capitalism” and honest conservatives / constitutionalists must recognize their logic in the presence of an extremely unbalanced, oligarchy of global bankers who largely have brought the financial system to a point of dictating to even the United States, what its future will be: indebtedness to that cabal, and therefore limited as to the extent of our independent action internationally.

Capitalism requires limits and institutions that prevent its (people’s) essential tendencies toward 1) monopoly and, 2) political / governmental advantage. We can see the damages that concentrations of wealth will cause, not least of which is empowering socialism and anti-constitutionalism. But it also creates severe stratification in a society formed without “castes” or “classes.” Perhaps worst of all, super wealth transcends nationhood; when profits can be earned around the globe, the need to adhere to a single country’s norms and laws, tends to evaporate. Most particularly, the impact of market presence in the nations of our rivals / enemies, sees corporations or syndicates of corporations, bending to not offend those who mean the U. S. the most harm.

Is it possible to restore a sense of nationalism for industries key to the defense and independence of the United States? What would such a policy look like? What could possibly be the enforcing agency? Can current political hatreds and ignorance permit the formation of a national-interest industrial policy that serves the country, rather than one that serves a party?

When the two – or three – political “sides” in the U. S. don’t agree on what the national interest is, or even if there IS a national interest, it appears that a national industrial policy is rather remote. Yet it must manifest if the United States is to control its own destiny. What forces must come together to make this happen… and within two years?

A “fusion” government. A… what the Hell? Never happen.

It has to. Until Bush beat Gore, technically, the two-party system functioned as a modified “fusion” government system. Overall, both parties were mainly interested in doing what was best for the country and managed to cooperate on major issues and trends. Sloppy, corrupt and self-serving, and able to cooperate as much as we did thanks only to the unlimited creation of stultifying debt, both parties managed to avoid the corrosive hatreds of the past twenty years. How we’ve operated since, say, the Kennedy administration, is NOT the model to strive for, now.

Thirty Congresses and eleven Presidents have brought America to the edge of insolvency and at risk of subservience to China and others. The abrupt re-set due to coronavirus is an opportunity and a test. For the faithful, a test like this is not an accident, it is a loud vibrant message from God that we are far along a wrong path. But, those certain that they do not believe can get the message, too. The United States cannot continue to waste its wonderful gifts bestowed at our founding and many times since. Here are a few changes that must manifest if we are to maintain our independence:

New leadership. Without trying to parse all the forces that pushed on the psyche’s of numerous political leaders, we – and they – must recognize that the Democrat party has shifted distinctly leftward… and that leftist policies – virtual socialism – are incompatible with Constitutional republicanism. Some leaders are so committed to this relatively new political stance that they must be replaced by younger, more pragmatic and, dare it be suggested, more conservative leaders.

The same is true for Republicans. Republicans have been pulled leftward by the most crass and aggrandizing consideration: re-election. Appealing to the (leftist) attractiveness of “free” advantages for voters, Republicans learned to win re-election along the same paths as more left-leaning Democrats. Those who have built political careers (another problem) by hewing closer to Democrat principles, should be retired so that conservative principles can again define Republicans.

The ability of a “party” to be defined by, and to defend, an articulable philosophy of government, of legal code, of education and of help for the poor, is fundamental for representatives of that party to deserve enough votes to gain governing authority under the Constitution. Subsequently, the two parties should be able to agree on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution. These essentials seem simple to some of us, but are not agreed-to by about half of the voting public. It is time for both parties to lead America onto a stronger, Constitutionally purer path.

Destruction of debt. None of our agreed Constitutional principles will protect us if we sacrifice the independence of the United States, and nothing risks that independence more, or more directly, than our ballooning debt, owed in large fraction to non-Americans, including other countries. An industrial policy that both parties can agree to is part and parcel of controlling our national debt burden and the ultimate value of our currency and labors.

Total annual expenditures must reverse direction. Contrary to the unsustainable trends of the past half-century, the federal “budget-in-name-only” must shrink by fully 25% – a prospect surely deemed impractical, if not impossible, by most in both parties, Republicans included. While Republicans have always preached “smaller” government, since Johnson’s “Great Society,” indeed, since F.D.R.’s “New Deal,” the ostensible conservatives have succumbed to the enrichening advantages of staying in office, and have diverted their efforts to re-election rather than statesmanship. For many now in office their personal advantages of office are shameful and distinctly off the mark.

Electoral honesty. Democrats have raised the art of pandering to ephemeral, personal issue-driven groups to an art-form, even as they have learned – codified – numerous ways to expand “voter participation” so as to steal elections. Vote-harvesting, early voting, same-day registration, automatic registration when interacting with state governments for unrelated matters, non-verification of citizenship status during such interactions, “Rank” voting and organized surrogate voting, and other schemes honest people can’t imagine, all contribute to the erosion of democracy. Matched with these illicit garnerings of “votes,” is the opening of borders to waves of illegal entrants who, it is hoped by their advocates, will vote for Democrats and some misguided municipalities are granting illegal entrants voting privileges in “local” elections – a virtually unmanageable distinction. To form a more unified national political structure, these tactics must be renounced and abandoned. One voter – one vote… per citizen.

Republicans are no purer when opportunities are present to take advantage of election management dominance. For shame. Both parties must commit to, and back legislation that strengthens enforcement of election laws, including “clean” voting rolls.

Deconstruction of the labyrinthine administrative “state.” Both parties have colluded to slough off responsibility for the laws that are passed, by installing more and more agencies, offices, titles and programs among the 15 executive departments. Within virtually all of them are powers to regulate citizen behaviors, each with the force of law despite no specific authorization from Congress. This threatens personal freedom. Both parties should be able to agree on the restoration and future preservation of freedom.

What there is no agreement on is what constitutes that freedom. To socialists, freedom means freedom from personal responsibility… in the dozens of forms that can take. To originalists freedom means freedom to make as much of one’s abilities and situation as can legally be done and according to individual initiative and enterprise. To make the opportunity to succeed manifest for the largest number of citizens and legal residents, government must be a trusted partner in life, and not an opponent. Repeatedly, this immense gulf separates the parties to the degree that cooperation appears unreachable. There must arrive a more cooperative, constitutional understanding of individual sovereignty and responsibility.

The re-establishment of honest budgeting. Both parties must agree to annually cleanse the federal complex of agencies and programs, of wasteful overlap of purposes and missions and personnel. The budget line-items for each should be justified or eliminated at least bi-annually.

Beyond congressional oversight of each component of the total budget, an agreement is needed to cut federal spending by every Congress for five Congresses (10 years) until total outlays are equal to inflows during the period of the previous budget cycle. Can that much discipline be found among current and future members? And, in current and future presidents? A president can begin the process with a half-hour address to the nation. Bring back “Ross Perot’s charts” and ask the questions needed and issue the challenge. Let those who are opposed to balancing the budget make their case. There isn’t one. On this challenge the construction of a fusion government can – and must – move forward.

Ultimately, Americans and their representatives will agree on the unifying principle that fuels the exceptional American, Constitutional experiment: Our success as a free people and nation is measured not by how large our governments are, but by how small.

Economics, Governance, Health Care, Representation, Responsibility, Taxation

1-2-3 ALL TOGETHER NOW…

April 6, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

If you live in a “progressive” state or commonwealth with an equally soft governor, you may have heard a proclamation concerning deadly coronavirus, that ended something like this: “We can get through this. When times have been tough in the past Americans have pulled together and that is what will get us through this today… together. We are all in this, together.”

Governor Baker, in crisis mode, looks either deeply concerned or very disappointed.

What was being meant, in fact, was everything including the next-to-the-last “together.” The last sentence really wasn’t “we” are all in this together – it was “YOU are all in this together.” You know what you thought you heard, but that’s because you haven’t recognized until right now, that when a state official, or even a minor state functionary, says “we,” he or she means “YOU,” the person with the target on your back. So it is with coronavirus and the ‘stay at home’ and business-cessation directives. There’s an “us” and “them” equation at work. If you’re a state official, or a political hack who works for the state, or a unionized state employee, or the otherwise unemployable cousin of a judge or court clerk, “us” means yourself and every other person on the state payroll or receiving a generous state pension, and includes every welfare recipient and illegal entrant. That’s who “us” is.

“Them” is you, me and every other tax-paying zhlub who actually, in reality, DOES work for the state, supporting every paycheck that “us” cashes. See how it works? Only people in the dreaded private sector are hurt – possibly destroyed financially – due to the absolutely essential shutdowns and lay-offs. We are “them,” vis a’ vis the state. We are not the people who don’t lose a penny of pay, benefits or pension; we are the ONLY people in all this togetherness who DO lose a lot, if not everything. “You are all in this together, you saps.” (Okay, okay, I added the “saps” part.)

Massachusetts is one of those squishy, “progressive” states with a soft, “progressive” Governor. These kinds of states are typically one-party ruled, not Republican, although that line is blurry. An observer can spot the squishiness thanks to a few shared qualities of how those states are governed. Payroll is a big one. State employees are comparatively highly paid compared to private-sector employees, sometimes egregiously so. Massachusetts, an obvious example, has 930 or more employees making over $200,000 per year, a large number making $200K to $900K, and two who make over $1 Million per year. Despite being on salary, many earn overtime which gets paid at a much higher rate, especially for state police officers, for whom total pay can easily exceed $300,000. Of course, unlike the dreaded private sector (DPS), there are automatic raises for “public” employees. All one need do is avoid murdering someone to see steady increases.

Recently a host of state police officers were “convicted” (admin slap on the wrist) of defrauding the state and its taxpayers, by claiming overtime hours not worked. The amounts were in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, and the fraudulent activities extended to supervisors with higher ranks. All of those found out were making a lot more than the average income of the citizens they are “sworn” to protect. They lost their jobs but – and here you’ll want to hang on to the arms of your chair – they didn’t lose their pensions! Our beneficent, democratically elected governors, and THE governor, who purports to be a Republican, and the shadowy boards and commissions they have placed between justice and state-employed criminals over many years, decided to not actually punish the criminals who have stolen from their ostensible bosses (pesky private sector taxpayers), unlike what the consequences would be if any of those civilian citizens had similarly defrauded the state or other citizens.

“You’re all in this together,” the Governor meant to say. “You have to stay home; you can’t gather in groups, even with family; you can’t go to the movies, to a barber, or to the gym; you’ll have to stop working in most industries and occupations; you’ll have to file for unemployment. Even though your customers will stop buying from you or mailing you checks for past work performed or products delivered, you will just have to suffer economic ruin even though you committed no crime except to be susceptible to a disease you only recently heard of. Have a nice day. Hunker down and we’ll (you’ll) get through this together. We in state government will, at the same time, look very concerned while sacrificing none of our pay or benefits and enforcing the statewide shutdown on you, our beloved supporters.”

“(You’re) all in this together.”

Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

THE BIG ENVELOPE

March 22, 2020 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

North Carolina Senator Richard Burr coincidentally sold most of his stock portfolio after a closed hearing on COVID-19.

The big envelope arrived the other day, from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is not a committee that tries to solve problems for the Prudent and concerned citizenry, but a campaign committee that tries to solve problems for politicians. And, while it certainly has that right, Prudence dictates that recipients are just as permitted to scoff at it and withhold requested funding… or send in the funding to the degree that the needs of politicians may, momentarily, coincide with one’s own.

The questions were off-putting. Did the carefully chosen recipient think that the Democrats would work with President Trump to improve things for the American people? The options were Yes, No, and Not Sure. At the very end of the over-sized questionnaire the committee provided a space for “Comments.” Except, they didn’t really want very many of those. Prudence tried to compose two sentences that could impart the folly of the questions and the implied policies they hinted at, to no avail. It could fill a whole blog post.

Unfortunately, in this recipient’s view, even President Trump, ostensible leader of the organization that spawned the aforementioned Committee, is barely trying – or able – to shift the course of Socialism that has infected our Constitutional system of individual liberty. None of the questions even hinted at the underlying, fundamental corrosion of our potential and promise, so it didn’t seem Prudent to answer any of them. Most Americans are inured to the essential Socialism we live with, even as it washes out our national foundations, nor do we recognize the socialist nature of hundreds of federal and state programs. The Left has dragged the debate firmly onto its spongy, swampy, turf, yet we still appear befuddled in the few debates there actually are. Where is all this socialism?

The federal and state budgets are replete with it. “How can that be?” you ask. “We don’t like socialism in this country!” That’s what WE think.

Since 1946 the federal government has provided subsidized free and reduced-cost lunches to school-age children… millions of them. Most recent statistics indicate that some 30 Million children receive breakfast AND lunch in public schools. Here and there late-afternoon meals are also served. Where are the parents? Obviously so tied up with important tasks that they are unable to feed their own children.

Obviously, no one can bear the thought of hungry children trying to learn on empty stomachs; we must feed them. At the risk of sounding cruel, one is prompted to ask what the SNAP program is accomplishing if it fails to make sure that children receive nutrition from its benefits? Are there no sanctions on parents who fail the test of the most basic parental responsibilities? Feeding your own child? Apparently not, and not needed. The federal government has provided much of that function so that parents need not be bothered. Everyone is happy. Socialism: identity linked to a certain group spurs unique attentions from a central governing body, frequently economic attentions – positive or negative.

What about the most basic socialist program: Social Security? Begun as a simple, partial support for those too old to work, Social Security has become an ostensible retirement program as well as a source of “off-budget” revenues for our erstwhile budget-masters in the Congress. Indeed, there they were: some dollars they couldn’t obtain cheaply enough on the open bond markets, and they didn’t actually steal them. They placed bona fide I. O. U.’s in the form of United States bonds in the imaginary “lock box” of which existence taxpayers were repeatedly assured. In a way, the moneys collected on behalf of future retirees WERE stolen, another of the inevitable actions of socialists for whom ANY source of revenue may be justified for the good of all.

Social Security, long in surplus, was too sweet a piggy-bank when the “need” to provide for the mentally “disabled,” especially children, and for a host of others deemed disabled under the ADA, including alcoholics and other addicts. Now, in answer to another prayer to who knows who, for more revenue for the common weal, we have THC emporiums springing up from coast to coast, often enriching former socialist office-holders, and which can allay the disabling anxiety of the developmentally coddled. There will be less crime, now, and happier sheeple, ahhmmn… voters. Gambling wasn’t expanding its contributions to the common good quite rapidly enough. Prostitution is always waiting in the sheets, as it were, with added revenues needed for “education” and “infrastructure.”

Another clue to our socialist underpinnings is the $23 Trillion-dollar debt hanging over us, all. The centuries-old result of socialism is running out of other people’s money. Socialism is based on collectivist action, governing by group identity rather than having power derived from individual rights and actions… and responsibilities, the source of business-generated productive surplus and innovation. Socialism is a system of diffusing responsibility, and once in that mindset it is a small step to borrow today’s comforts, ahh… crucial needs, from future taxpayers. Politicians are especially comforted by the prospect of buying votes with the greatest “other people’s money” ever conceived: “borrowing” from 3 generations in the future. Talk about diffusing responsibility.

Into this dishonest mess has dropped Covid-19, facilitating the wet dreams of socialists everywhere: “universal” health… ahh, well, not care, exactly, but universal RULES that are backed not by law but by police – best of all. And these aren’t rules for hygiene; these rules are destroying the economy, individual businesses of every size, jobs, household economies, availability of goods, including food, paper goods and all the cleaning and disinfecting products that are needed to render every body antiseptically pristine. All it costs are hundreds of billions of lost business and tax revenue, plus a few inalienable rights, like the entire Bill of Rights. In one swell foop our governments have rendered virtually EVERYONE dependent on government, and otherwise rational and independent men and women are willing to argue angrily for following every new restriction on rights and commerce, out of fear.

Meanwhile, the largest bailout/stimulus/stock-buyback program in the world is being polished up by the 535 people on Capitol Hill who can benefit the most from it. Don’t you sometimes wonder how Representatives and Senators become multi-millionaires while sacrificing for us in “public service?” Insider trading is a good way. Let’s hope that what they finally shove down Pennsylvania Avenue is actually the right prescription for our suddenly sick economy. Could happen.

The third person in line of succession to the presidency, Nancy Pelosi, doing her level best to help Americans in this time of shared stress and fear, tried to slip a loophole into the emergency “stimulus” legislation that would have enabled federal funds to pay for abortions, which is currently illegal. She has her priorities; most of the rest of the people in the United States have theirs. One could look back to 1973 when a shadowy “law” was discovered in the fog and abortion became “constitutionally” protected, and wonder if the termination of 61,000,000 Americans was simply not enough to have prevented COVID-19. Maybe speeding up and expanding the death of our future will have a net positive effect.

Fortunately, every college graduate over the past 40 years has NOT been a communications, marketing or art major, and the latest iteration of “coronavirus” will be solved and resolved by very smart and accomplished people. The problems of the hog-tied economy will not be so readily set aright. It was shaky prior to the flood of unprecedented federal and state dictates, becoming, both because of and in spite of the booming financial markets, more and more unbalanced. The ultra-rich were becoming ultra RICHER; a smaller middle-class of small and medium businesses were doing better; the vast majority of small businesses were struggling against the globalization of contracts and ownerships that remove thousands of previously independent enterprises from the competitive, free-enterprise marketplace. A large fraction of the population were simply watching the growth of the rest of the economy, while experiencing little of the new wealth. This model is common as socialism matures in the societies that have suffered under it. A small group becomes very much more comfortable – and powerful – than everyone else, the middle class is reduced to homogeneity, the helpless low-producers are eventually eliminated or relegated.

Right now we are required, under stronger and stronger sanctions, to place our trust in a pyramid of government strata, populated by smiling politicians who have made careers out of deceiving Americans. Let’s hope this crisis has shocked them into utter veracity, now. That could happen, too; we’ll ignore the deceptive insider trading. It’s nothing new.

The Civil Right