Amerika's Oligarchy
"The lesson the porcupine teaches is that you don't have to be strong enough to defeat a predator to avoid being that predator's lunch. It suffices to be an expensive meal. Predators tend not to dine on porcupines because a serving of porcupine tends not to be worth the mouthful of quill that it costs." -- John T. Kennedy
# Occupant No-name at The Claire Files - Presentation revolver for Sec. Rumsfeld, Presented by America's citizenry - a fine gift for anyone who draws a paycheck from the gummint. Hehe. [clairefiles]
# Butler Shaffer at LewRockwell.com - The Case for Ebeneezer - Mr. Shaffer defends the "villain" in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. [sunni]
If we are to understand the essence of the case against my client, we must inquire into the nature of the collectivist thinking that produced it. In matters of economics, such people believe that wealth is simply a given, something that has come into existence in very mysterious ways, and in a fixed amount that has somehow managed to get into the hands of a few people through presumed and unspecified acts of dishonesty, exploitation, and unscrupulousness. Dickens expresses the dreary sentiment of "original sin" -- an idea central to all collectivist thinking -- which presumes individual self-interest to be a source of social misery rather than the fount of human well-being. That the pursuit of private selfishness can generate good for others -- even when doing so was not the purpose of the actor -- was far too complicated a concept for Dickens' simplistic, fragmented mind. But to all collectivists, including Dickens, the idea that more wealth could be created never manages to invade their imaginations.
Charles Dickens -- writing at the peak of the industrial revolution -- missed this essential feature of the period. To those who view wealth in such a limited way, the only question becomes "how is this fixed body of wealth to be most 'fairly' redistributed?" The question of "how can more wealth be created?" -- and what conditions would be necessary for accomplishing such ends -- never enters their minds, for the pursuit of such conditions would utterly destroy all socialist systems. The beneficiaries of such redistribution are looked upon as passive and dependent recipients of other people's decision-making...
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You are now able to see the fundamental contrast of characters presented to us by Charles Dickens. Scrooge -- the only person in the novel exhibiting any creative intelligence, and the only one who produces anything -- is the villain because he has not given an unearned portion of his wealth over to Bob Cratchett -- a man presented to us as a victim incapable of producing much of anything! In this brief synopsis, you see the thoroughly dispirited nature of socialism, a philosophy for losers, that feeds upon, and requires the continuing nourishment of, the mindset of victimology.
The morally culpable wrongdoers in this shakedown of my client, though, have to be the spirits, who trespass, at night, upon the quiet enjoyment of my client's premises to terrify him with previews of his own demise should he not succumb to their demands to part with his money. No more blatant act of criminal extortion could be imagined than that visited upon my client by these spirits. If these forces are representative of the denizens of the allegedly heavenly planned community, I can only wonder how more unbearable it could be to spend eternity in warmer climes! At least "Old Scratch's" subdivision has the honesty of not pretending to be an idyllic paradise while peddling guilt and terror! Perhaps it is a tipoff to the diabolic nature of the prosecution in this case that the name "Dickens" has long been a synonym for the devil!
# Jurek Martin at Financial Times - Letter to America - a Brit comments on the despicable sekurity going in to Dulles airport and the lack of transportation options going out. What would you bet that he'll be "selected" for full cavity search next time he goes there. [lrtdiscuss]
The collective agony is compounded because to complain publicly is not allowed any more when the issue is national security, even if its implementation is far from perfect. It is, for example, patently obvious that Dulles does not have enough security gates, but to point this out could mean a one way ticket to Guantánamo.
It would also be unwise to ask if it is always entirely necessary to half undress before passing through screening, frozen-footed, clutching belt-less trousers, boarding passes and government-issued identification clenched between teeth.
# Joe Huffman - The Jews In The Attic Test - a simple test for whether a law is freedom robbing or not, in case it isn't obvious at first blush. "Will this law make it difficult or impossible to protect innocent life from a government intent on their imprisonment or death?" [clairefiles]
# Fred Reed at LewRockwell.com - Read Your Newspaper - why newspapers are increasingly unnecessary. The only paper paper I look at regularly is the Albany Times Union and that only because there's a free copy on the table in the break room at work. I scan the front page, look at the facing editorial and op-ed pages to see if there's something about which I just have to send a letter to the editor, and sometimes do the cryptoquip on the comics page. That's it. Everything else I get on the web. [lew]
# Ron Paul at LewRockwell.com - Ignoring Reality in Iraq - Amerika's intervention in Iraq is not working, as a matter of fact it's accomplishing precisely the opposite of its espoused goals. Dr. Paul doesn't say that the real goal of the war on everything is to increase the power and wealth of Amerika's oligarchy. It's accomplishing that goal very nicely. [lew]
A recent study by the Pentagon's Defense Science Task Force on Strategic Communications concluded that in the struggle for hearts and minds in Iraq, "American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended." This Pentagon report flatly states that our war in Iraq actually has elevated support for radical Islamists. It goes on to conclude that our active intervention in the Middle East as a whole has greatly diminished our reputation in the region, and strengthened support for radical groups. This is similar to what the CIA predicted in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, before the invasion took place.
Then, earlier this month we learned that the CIA station chief in Baghdad sent a cable back to the US warning that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating, and not expected to improve any time soon. Other CIA experts also warn that the security situation in Iraq is likely to get even worse in the future. These reports are utterly ignored by the administration.
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The reality is that current-day Iraq contains three distinct groups of people who have been at odds with each other for generations. Pundits and politicians tell us that a civil war will erupt if the US military departs. Yet our insistence that Iraq remain one indivisible nation actually creates the conditions for civil war. Instead of an artificial, forced, nationalist unity between the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, we should allow each group to seek self-government and choose voluntarily whether they wish to associate with a central government. We cannot impose democracy in Iraq any more than we can erase hundreds of years of Iraqi history.
