It’s becoming harder and harder to watch television. It’s no wonder they called it the “boob tube” in the days of yore. When I was a kid, there was a lot of dumb stuff on television, but it paled in comparison to what passes as acceptable television programming today.

If it was the Boob Tube in the fifties and sixties, it’s the Stupid Tube today. But let’s set aside pro wrestling, reality TV, Mel Gibson, LeBron James, and the Barefoot Bandit for now and focus on what are supposed to be serious news and commentary shows.

In this area, it pretty much gets down to Fox News as a rational person’s only meaningful choice. But even on Fox, one has to put up with a cast of lame characters such as Ellis Henican, Juan Williams, Kirsten Powers, Bob Beckel, and Alan Colmes … to name but a few. It’s a group that would make Howdy Doody proud.

I don’t believe any of these talking heads are evil. Nor are most of them ignorant. I think it’s more a matter of their realizing they have a role to play (as in, defend progressive policies at all costs), so they become adept at keeping themselves in self-delusive trances.

And now that we have the Kenyan Kid in the White House – a Marxist who has set back race relations in the U.S. forty years – today’s Stupid-Tubish topic of choice is racism. Listening to all the make-believe racism silliness is like being in a time machine and going back to the 1960s. It’s enough to make one yawn with excitement.

The latest racism story is downright bizarre. When BHO’s Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack fired Shirley Sherrod for supposedly admitting to prejudice against a white farmer, then offered her another job a day later when he realized he didn’t have his facts straight, it put the spotlight on just how ridiculous the whole racism industry has become.

And, of course, most of the media missed the real story – that Ms. Sherrod’s great epiphany was not just that blacks versus whites is a no-no to talk about, but the real “struggle” is the haves versus the have-nots. How reassuring. Instead of deifying her, Congressional Republicans should be demanding that she be permanently banned from working for the government.

Then there’s Bill O’Reilly’s stimulating discussions with intellectual dwarf Marc LaMont Hill – you know, the kid with the Ph.D. who tries to hide his lack of knowledge by talking at the speed of light. Listening to their recent exchange about the pros and cons of the New Black Panthers was like watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It made Lindsay Lohan’s court breakdown seem like an intellectual step forward.

And, trust me, the “New” Black Panthers are not going to go away. The chairman of the party, all-American boy Malik Shabazz, loves the spotlight too much. Who would have believed that major air time would be given to a handful of thugs who woke up one morning and said, “Hey, man, why don’t we call ourselves the new Black Panther Party and scare the hell of some crackers? It’d be a lot more fun than workin‘ for whitey.”

No big deal, really. After all, there are a lot of bored, unemployed people in this country who engage in meaningless activities every day. But, for crying out loud, we shouldn’t take every unemployed rabble rouser seriously. And the media certainly shouldn’t be giving them air time.

Of course, if they get carried away and start brandishing clubs and trying to intimidate people at voting stations, you simply arrest them, bring them to trial, and put them behind bars for a few years. Not to rehabilitate them; that’s a progressive fantasy. The reason you put them away is to keep them off the streets so they can’t harass civilized people.

But with a died-in-the-wool racist in the White House, that isn’t what happens. Instead, you let them skate by having the Department of Justice drop charges against them. But weren’t they already convicted? Sure, but in a country no longer burdened by a Constitution and with an imperial presidency firmly in place, that’s a minor detail. In case you hadn’t noticed, our current crop of U.S. rulers do whatever they damn well please – no permission needed, thank you, even from Congress.

The message is straightforward: If you’re a black racist, you can pretty much do anything you want. Even the once highly respected NAACP has joined in our new national pastime – Pin the Tail on the Racist. With his jaw-dropping rants, NAACP president Ben Envy (er, Jealous) has become the latest racist to achieve media status.

Everywhere you turn, you see and hear it: Racism is alive and well in America. Alert the media: It’s alive and well in every country on the planet – and always will be. That said, until the Duplicitous Despot ascended the throne in D.C., the U.S. had pretty much reduced its racial problems to the realm of insignificance.

If you’re as bored as I am listening to all this manufactured racial nonsense, I feel obliged to warn you that the worst is yet to come. As November draws ever closer, the angry Progressive Beast is starting to thrash about like a dinosaur trapped in a tar pit. And as the pain increases and reality begins to set in, you can count on it wailing in panic and ratcheting up its desperate attempts to paint everyone to the right of Fidel Castro and Barry the Bull Slinger as angry white racists.

Heck, if you’re a libertarian or conservative, they’ll probably even label your dog or cat as racist. Which you would have to admit would make for great Stupid Tube programming.

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As a common-sense small businessman, I have a front-row seat to a slow-motion economic Armageddon that will be written about, discussed, and debated for decades to come.

But big-shot economists don’t listen to guys like me. They scoff as I keep predicting in commentary after commentary that small business is suffering a catastrophe of epic proportions and leading this nation toward levels of unemployment and economic crisis that will rival or surpass the Great Depression. Barack Obama is literally taxing small business to death.

I do not believe the tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes is a mistake, a coincidence, or due to incompetence. I believe my old college classmate Obama (Columbia University class of ‘83) is a Marxist who is purposefully trying to destroy capitalism by overwhelming the system, thereby creating a distraction that gives him cover to redistribute America’s wealth to his voters (i.e., those who create no jobs, pay few taxes, depend on government handouts for survival, or work for government or unions).

As a bonus, he gets to bankrupt the group (small business) that contributes virtually all the money to his political opposition. This is truly a “Marxist Triple Play.” Consider a few highlights of Obama’s reign of destruction:

1. The biggest income tax increase in America’s history will take effect on January 1. The new tax increase falls almost 100 percent on small business owners and high-income taxpayers (whose contributions happen to fund Obama’s political opposition). As a result, many more jobs will be lost and more businesses will be closed.

2. A dramatic 60 percent capital gains tax increase (from 15 percent to 23.8 percent effective rate, including new universal health-care taxes) will accompany the big income tax increase. More jobs will be lost, more businesses closed.

3. Taxes on dividends will increase from 15 percent to 39.6 percent, and then another 3.8 percent by 2013 for Obama’s new health-care taxes. Stocks will be crushed and older Americans will be devastated (because they live off dividends, investments and bank interest). More lives ruined, more jobs lost.

4. New taxes on income, investments, and even tanning-bed users soon take effect to pay for ObamaCare. Worse,18,000 new IRS agents will be hired to enforce these taxes (at a cost of billions annually in new government employee salaries, pensions, and benefits). More jobs lost.

5. The pending cap-and-trade legislation threatens dramatic new taxes on anyone who owns a business, a home, an auto, or buys products manufactured or delivered through the use of energy. Once again, the more you own, the more you’ll be taxed. More jobs will be lost, more manufacturing jobs sent overseas, more homes foreclosed.

6. The pending financial reform bill threatens onerous new rules, regulations, and taxes on banks and Wall Street. More jobs will be lost and more banking and financial jobs sent overseas.

7. The pending new jobs bill threatens gigantic new taxes on every Sub Chapter S corporation in America. More jobs will be lost and more small businesses ruined.

8. The threat of a gigantic new national sales tax (VAT) on everything manufactured, bought, and sold in America looms large. Fewer jobs, reduced consumer spending, more businesses closed forever.

9. Obama is pushing for the reduction or elimination of tax deductions (such as mortgages and charitable contributions) for high-income earners (mostly small business owners). More jobs lost, reduced charitable contributions, and the real estate industry damaged beyond repair.

10. The threat of bans or restrictions on offshore oil drilling are being put permanently into place. More jobs lost and more jobs sent overseas where drilling is welcomed. As a bonus for Obama, he gets to ruin the Texas economy.

11. All signs indicate that Obama will soon propose to take the income cap off FICA (Social Security) taxes. If this happens, a successful small business owner (if there are any left) could see his or her FICA taxes go from an already bloated and burdensome $15,000 per year to an unimaginable $150,000 or more. In U.S. history, no taxpayer has ever seen a ten-times tax increase in one year. This devastating nightmare will wipe out small business and cause people whom Obama calls “rich” to lose their homes and businesses.

12. A new IRS law (with the passage of ObamaCare) requires business owners to file thousands of new forms each year documenting virtually every expenditures made by their businesses. As a result of this blizzard of new paperwork, small businesses face ruin.

13. Let’s not forget the gigantic tax hikes on the state and local level for income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and new taxes disguised as “user fees.” Local taxes are already at levels that taxpayers and small businesses can no longer afford to pay.

14. Finally, Obama refuses to consider lowering the second highest corporate tax rate (40 percent) in the industrialized world. As a result, more businesses will choose to leave the United States and more jobs will be sent overseas.

Each of these taxes and proposed taxes is a job killer. Taken together, the Obama regime’s policies are the equivalent of General Sherman’s march to the sea – leaving a tragic path of destruction in its wake. Obama has launched an unprecedented, overwhelming, death-by-tax assault on the groups that fund fiscally conservative causes and candidates: taxpayers and business owners.

And you wonder why there are no jobs? You wonder why there is no recovery? This is the “Teleprompter Depression.” Every time Obama steps in front of a teleprompter, another thousand businesses die.

Wayne Allyn Root, the 2008 vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, is the author of The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution With God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts. For more of Wayne’s views and commentaries, and to watch his many media interviews, visit his website at www.ROOTforAmerica.com)

This article is a reprint from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

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There you go again, Lindsey. The most liberal Republican in the Senate (just a shade more so than his pal Mush McCain) seems intent on being the last best hope for an Obama-directed police state. Fortunately, the odds are that he will fail … at least for now.

As the whole world now knows, RINO Lindsey Graham recently told New York Times Magazine, “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.”

Bingo! Without realizing it, Lindsey, you gave yourself away. Tea-party people have no vision for governing because they don’t want to be governed. They want to be left alone! Got that? Probably not, because most of those who live in the Congressional glass bubble are incapable of relating to what goes on in the outside world.

The tea-party people have no vision? Are you kidding me? It’s the clearest vision of government I’ve seen in my lifetime. And the central focus of that vision is an antiquated little concept known as freedom. You’ve heard about freedom, haven’t you? You know … do what you want, when you want, how you want – and it’s none of the government’s business!

Graham’s South Carolina peer, Jim DeMint, responded to Graham’s breathtaking comments with, “The tea party is just the tip of the iceberg of an American awakening.” Double bingo! Senator DeMint has it absolutely right. I’ve been saying for more than a year now that if elections are actually held in 2010 – and even allowing for the standard massive voter fraud on the part of the left – Republicans are going to win more seats than the most optimistic media projections, and win by bigger margins than anyone is now projecting.

Clearly, Graham has absolutely no clue as what the tea-party movement is all about. How is that possible in this day and age of Fox News and the Internet? Easy. He spends all his time in a club called Congress. He’s not evil; he’s not (totally) stupid or ignorant; he’s not (totally) naïve. He’s simply been in the Congressional glass bubble too long.

What’s puzzling to me is that names like Bob McDonnell (Virginia), Chris Christie (New Jersey), and Scott Brown (Massachusetts) seem not to have made any registration at all on the minds of politicians like Graham, McCain, and a majority of those in the Democratic Party. They have totally missed the message: It’s the freedom, stupid.

The crowds at the tea-party gatherings are impressive, but, like DeMint, I doubt they represent much more than a small fraction of the number of people who want the government to get out of their lives – who want politicians to understand that they have no authority to redistribute wealth or engage in social engineering. None. Zip. That’s not what “promoting the general welfare” was intended to mean.

But the Lindsey Graham’s don’t get it because throughout their careers they have operated on the assumption that people actually want to be governed. Psst – they don’t. Even progressives don’t want to be governed. They want to do the governing, of course, but they don’t want to be governed. Which is a nice way of saying they want to call the shots in a police state.

Lindsey Graham absolutely loves governing, which shows up in such statements as, “Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at.” Stupid is as stupid says.

But the coup de grace for Graham’s progressive comments is, “I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.” In other words, he wants the one-party system (Demopublican Party) to continue on undisturbed.

Graham must have gotten his idiotic remark from Mush McCain’s daughter, Meghan, who boldly describes herself as a “progressive Republican” – at the same time that her old man is trying to convince voters he’s a hard-core conservative! Little wonder, though, since father Mush has repeatedly said that the original American progressive, Teddy Roosevelt, is his hero.

If the Republicans want to save their party from extinction, I believe they must stop kidding themselves and put into motion The Final Solution: Encourage Graham, McCain, and other clubby “me-too’s” to join Arlen Specter and exit, stage right, into the waiting arms of the Democratic Party. Don’t try to reason with them; don’t try to humor them; don’t try to cure them. Progressivism is entrenched in their brains.

The tea-party people have made it clear that the treacherous policy of “compromising” (i.e., giving in) is no longer acceptable, but that’s not enough. They must get rid of the stench, once and for all. As a now-forgotten student of human nature once pointed out, you’ll never smell like a rose if you roll in a dunghill.

I hope we survive as a semi-free nation long enough to have elections in 2014, because if we do, loquacious Lindsey will get firsthand evidence that the tea-party people forgot to die out – because he will be out. Mark it down that I said it on this date. I don’t make predictions often, but this one is too easy to pass up.

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The second 5-4 reaffirmation of gun-ownership rights by the Supreme Court over the past two years is yet another reminder that the nation’s highest court is nothing more than a political tool. In the recent McDonald v. Chicago case, the Supreme Court found that individuals have a right to possess a handgun in their home for self-defense.

All well and good, but in both the Chicago and D.C. cases, had there been one more liberal on the court, the Constitutional right and, more important, the natural right to bear arms would have been declared “against the law.”

As I said at the time of the D.C. ruling, “When the U.S. was still the home of the free, the Supreme Court vote would have been 9-0. Actually, there would not have been a vote, because there would not have been a ban in the first place. There was a time in this country when the government would not have dared to tell a person he didn’t have the right to protect his family.

Today, however, the Supreme Court has become a game of musical chairs. Our natural rights are very much dependent on the ideological beliefs of any given president at the time he appoints one or more Supreme Court judges.

If a president believes in the Constitution, he appoints judges who share his belief. If he believes the Constitution is an outdated document that is no longer relevant – as does the current White House occupant – he appoints judges whom he feels confident will bypass the Congressional legislative process and simply create new laws (e.g., Sotomayor and Kagan). The polite word for it is “legislating from the bench.”

To accomplish the latter, judges merely elasticize their Constitutional interpretations to violate Natural Law. For example, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 states, in part: “The Congress shall have the power … to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”

Question to the Founding Fathers: What did you mean by general welfare? Such vagueness is an invitation to both Congress and the Supreme Court to promote anti-liberty legislation.

Another example is to be found in the so-called Commerce Clause (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3), which states: “[The Congress shall have the power] to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”

The problem is that regulating commerce among the several states has come to mean anything the government wants it to mean. As Americans are now discovering, it could very well have been called the Servitude Clause.

Which brings us back to the Second Amendment, which states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” What’s missing here is the word and – i.e., “A well regulated Militia … and the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” As clarity goes, this was not the framers’ best work.

Which is why, even though the Constitution is undoubtedly the best government document ever created, it is no match for Natural Law. Natural Law, which can also be thought of as the “law of nonaggression,” is quite simple: You own your body, you own anything and everything you’ve earned or inherited, and you own the right to do as you please so long as you are not committing aggression against anyone else. Period.

All this leads me to believe that the idea of Supreme Court judges being appointed by the president makes no sense. A left-wing, anti-Constitutional president cons his way into power, then, through the luck of the Grim Reaper, gets to fill enough vacancies to assure that for decades to come there will be a Supreme Court that believes the Constitution is a “living-document”- a court that, in reality, has the power to legislate.

I believe the U.S. needs a Constitutional amendment that would call for Congress to vote for nine new Supreme Court justices every eight years. In other words, eight-year term limits. A liberal Congress could vote in nine liberal members, but when voters got fed up with their anti-Constitutional decisions, it would be all the more reason to replace Congress itself.

And well it should be replaced. If we ever manage to get enough honest politicians elected, they should also pass a Constitutional amendment placing strict term limits on both House and Senate members so we could get back to having government by the people. Limiting the three branches of government to two terms would have the effect of putting the electorate back in control of things.

Having said all this, I may as well throw in one last amendment that I believe would maximize the integrity of our Constitutional system of government: Make all government employees – at the local, state, and federal levels – ineligible to vote. If we can do it with incarcerated felons, who are locked up and unable to continue committing crimes, why not do it with bureaucrats, who are on the loose and able to vote to assure that their neighbors will continue paying for their cushy lives?

Anyone who thinks the views I’ve stated here are extreme needs to go back and read (or reread) the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and everything they can get their hands on about our Founding Fathers.

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By Robert Ringer

In Part III of this series, I quoted 19th century individualist and political philosopher Lysander Spooner, who eloquently argued that the United States Constitution was not binding on future generations since they neither agreed to it nor signed it. This position horrifies many people who believe that the Constitution was needed to protect “the people” by placing limits on the government.

Which sounds fine, except that the Constitution has not protected U.S. citizens from government aggression. On the contrary, such aggression has become worse with each passing year – and exploded under the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Regime.

Alvin Toffler, who started out as a Marxist in his youth but ultimately evolved into an objective, apolitical observer of world events, pointed out the realities of so-called representative government in his book The Third Wave. While conceding that representative government was a “humanizing breakthrough in human history,” Toffler went on to explain:

Yet from the very beginning it [representative government] fell far short of its promise. By no stretch of the imagination was it ever controlled by the people, however defined. Nowhere did it actually change the underlying structure of power in industrial nations – the structure of sub-elites, elites, and super-elites. Indeed, far from weakening control by the managerial elites, the formal machinery of representation became one of the key means by which they maintained themselves in power.

Thus elections, quite apart from who won them, performed a powerful cultural function for the elites. To the degree that everyone had a right to vote, elections fostered the illusion of equality. … Elections symbolically assured citizens that they were still in command – that they could, in theory at least, dis-elect as well as elect leaders. In both capitalist and socialist countries, these ritual assurances often proved more important than the actual outcomes of many elections.

I agree with Toffler’s insights. As I have repeatedly stated, Winston Churchill was right when he said that democracy is a lousy form of government, but it’s the best anyone has been able to come up with thus far. (His actual words were, “[Democracy is] the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”)

Of course, purist libertarians would argue that people don’t need government at all, but that’s an impossible sell in these declining days of the American Empire. Through gradualism and addiction to living beyond their means, most people feel they need government to act as an enforcer to protect their lifestyle – and/or give them an even better lifestyle.

The other night, in moment of morbid curiosity, I clicked on Larry King. Surprise: Celeb-worshipping Larry decided to go upscale for the night with a panel of four “financial experts” – with combined IQs, I would suspect, of about eighty-seven – opining on the economy. I don’t remember their faces, let alone their names, but, by golly, Larry himself referred to them as “experts.”

All of their comments were equally stupid, so I don’t want to play favorites here. But one expert woman did an exceptional job of unwittingly summing up why representative government doesn’t work very well for those who believe in liberty. Said this paragon of financial wisdom, “If the government would just step up to the plate and help people, the economy would be fine.” As idiotic as the woman’s words were, the sad reality is that most politicians see such tripe as a winning message. Which is precisely why we get the government we deserve.

If someone like a Barry Goldwater comes along and says something like “A government strong enough to give you what you want is strong enough to take it all away,” people shout him down as a fascist, heartless, or right-wing extremist (though Goldwater was, contrary to commonly held perceptions of him, quite libertarian-oriented).

Having said all this, I must concede that I agree with Churchill. Until a better form of government is invented (preferably one that makes it impossible to get elected to public office by promising to redistribute wealth and by granting favors to special interests), I opt to support the Constitution. The problem, however, is that elected officials, government bureaucrats, and judges don’t support the Constitution. At best, they ignore it; at worst, they pervert its meaning. And, without question, they hate it.

Would that Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of the white-wigged crowd could return and explain to the populace what they had in mind when they started their unique experiment in representative government. Had they known what it would evolve into, I believe they would have taken a pass on the revolution and stuck with King George III. Which, in the long run, wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because the Brits ultimately opted to follow America down the tyranny-of-the-majority path.

So, until we figure out a better system, your job and mine is to keep pushing back against tyranny. And from this day on into the foreseeable future, it’s going to take a bigger and bigger push just to hold the power mongers to a standoff. Make that a lot bigger push.

Happy Fourth of July!

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By Robert Ringer

Caution: The following article contains graphic insights into reality that may not be suitable for blind patriots. Reader discretion advised.

In Part II of this article, I pointed out that democracy is a far more effective tool for controlling people than brute force. The chains of democracy are commonly referred to as “entitlements,” a hallucination dreamed up by scoundrels who will do anything in exchange for power. The something-for-nothing urge in most people makes them easy prey when it comes to the entitlement addiction.

The chief characteristic and distinguishing feature of a democracy is that it is based on majority rule (also known as “tyranny of the majority”). In a democracy, neither the individual nor a minority has any real protection against the unlimited power of the majority. Scary concept.

A democratic republic, on the other hand, is a form of government with the ostensible purpose of controlling the majority and, in so doing, protecting the unalienable rights of the individual and the minority. Like a democracy, a republic is a representative form of government, but it (in theory) limits the power of the government through a written constitution.

A constitution is (again, in theory) adopted by “the people” and can be changed by them through amendment. The United States is a republic with a constitution that divides its powers between three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial.

On the surface, the U.S. Constitution appears to be of utmost importance when it comes to protecting our liberty. But whether or not it is, perhaps a more important issue is whom the Constitution really has a moral and legal obligation to bind.

While most, if not all, of the Founding Fathers may have acted with the best of intentions, the sobering reality is that by creating the Constitution, then forcing people within a given geographical area to abide by it, was, on its face, an act of aggression. The man most often credited with initially bringing up this seemingly self-evident point is Lysander Spooner, a 19th century apolitical maverick. In his essay No Treason, written in 1869, Spooner said:

The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing.

It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago [in 1789]. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts.

Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years.

AND THE CONSTITUTION, SO FAR AS IT WAS THEIR CONTRACT, DIED WITH THEM. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they COULD bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but “the people” THEN existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves.

While one can challenge Spooner’s position on the grounds of practicality, if he believes in the sanctity of liberty and the sovereignty of the individual, it is morally and legally all but impossible to argue against it.

Still, can’t one argue against Spooner’s “extremism” on the grounds that a constitution was needed to protect “the people”? After all, the U.S. Constitution is purported to limit government, not people. All well and good … but, as Alvin Toffler pointed out in The Third Wave, when it comes to so-called representative government, theory and reality are two very different propositions.

In the final installment of this in Fourth of July series, we’ll take a look at what Toffler had to say about representative government.

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By Robert Ringer

Many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners, most notably George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. So when Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, what in the world was he thinking when he wrote that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness?”

It’s clear from their biographies that Jefferson (with about 200 slaves), Washington (with more than 300 slaves), and other slave-owning Founding Fathers knew that slavery was inherently wrong. But the issue was a hot potato in the colonies – a politically incorrect topic, so to speak.

The Continental Congress debated the matter, but, in the end, its members did what politicians have always done: They simply “kicked the can down the road,” leaving it up to a later generation to handle the problem. Their thinking was, “Let’s put our oxygen masks on first, then worry about saving the slaves later.”

What made all this even more bizarre was that at the time of the American Revolution, Rhode Island was a major slave-trafficking state in the North. George Washington, ever relentless in his search for able-bodied men, struck a deal whereby any slave who agreed to fight for the Continental Army would earn his freedom.

Talk about choosing your poison. If you’re a Rhode Island slave and you don’t sign up for active duty, you remain a slave, presumably for life. If you do sign up to fight on the side of the colonists, the chances of your not living to enjoy your freedom were excellent.

And if you were a southern slave, you and your progeny were destined to live in the new land of the free as slaves for another eighty years or so, just because otherwise brave and moral men were not willing to include you in their freedom manifesto.

It makes you wonder how many times throughout human history generations have suffered just because men in power were not willing, for any one of myriad reasons, to step up to the plate and insist on justice for all. In the case of our Founding Fathers, nearly a century of misery for African-Americans could have been avoided had they been willing to do so.

In the famous words of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And today, nearly two and a half centuries later, evil still prevails in America, and good men (presuming they are out there somewhere) seem unwilling to do anything about it. Of course, slavery in 21st century America is quite different from the 18th century variety – but the number of slaves has grown dramatically.

Chains and whips are no longer used – or needed. Today’s rulers are much smarter than either the British or colonial patriots in the 1700s. Democracy has proven to be a far more effective tool for controlling people than chains and brute force.

Today, we have embraced George Orwell’s “doublethink” as described in his classic novel 1984. As Orwell explained it, doublethink is the ability of a person to maintain two contradictory beliefs in his mind at the same time and accept both of them without conflict. Doublethink does not involve saying the opposite of what one thinks, but thinking the opposite of what is true. (This is precisely what happened to the minds of those who drank too much Obama-Aid during the last presidential campaign.)

Sadly, Americans have bought into the ultimate doublethink described in Orwell’s book: “War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.” Our chains are now called “entitlements,” and they are one of the main reasons we so love our enslavement. And so long as we allow ourselves to remain ignorant, those chains are guaranteed to remain in place.

In the next article in this Fourth of July series: Is the Constitution valid?

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By Robert Ringer

If you’ve ever wondered why that 555-foot monolith on the National Mall in D.C. is named after the first president of the United States, read a good book on George Washington. Let me tell you, the guy was one tough dude. I believe he honestly thought he was invincible … and he was, at least until the end. Ironically, it took what most historians believe was some sort of throat infection to bring him down in 1799.

They don’t make wars like the American War of Independence anymore. No antiseptic missile strikes that allow you to kill without having to see blood and guts flying in every direction. No way. The colonial patriots fought the English up close – real close … in freezing weather … sweltering hot weather … too little food … too few supplies … and a lack of manpower.

And, often, without pay. In fact, after the Battle of Trenton, Washington offered officers whose tour of duty was running out $10 to re-enlist. He was willing to do anything and everything to win – including sleeping on the ground right alongside his troops on more than one occasion. Had another general other than Washington led the revolutionary troops, I seriously doubt that the British would have been defeated.

Almost from the outset, most colonists were skeptical about Washington’s ability to triumph over the most powerful fighting force in the world – the British military. And for most of the eight-year war, it looked like they were right.

Keep in mind that throughout the long war there was a civilian battle of words going on between – you guessed it – the hawks (”patriots”) and the doves (”loyalists,” who stood with Great Britain). And, interestingly, a similar war of words was being fought among the populace in Great Britain. Many Brits did not feel that fighting a war 3,000 miles away – at a cost that was draining the economy – was worth it. Sound familiar? The more things change …

In fact, the British had their own version of 9/11 when John Paul Jones, a former British naval officer who became a colonial patriot, brought the revolution to Great Britain’s doorstep by raiding the west coast of England! Suddenly, what had been an unpopular foreign war was threatening to expand onto British soil. The anti-war crowd howled its disapproval of the American quagmire even more.

And when, in 1779, the British tried a last-ditch strategy to gain a foothold in the South by sending 1,000 ships to the Port of Charleston in South Carolina, all hell broke loose. I doubt many Americans today realize it, but it actually became the country’s first civil war, with family members in South Carolina often split between the loyalists and the patriots. The fighting between the two sides was vicious, and often vindictive.

But if Washington was anything, he was stubborn. Make that tough and stubborn. On one occasion, he handed down a sentence for two officers to face a firing squad for treason. Then, in a move that would have made Saddam proud, he ordered the firing squad to be composed of the twelve men who had been the two officers’ accomplices!

If George Washington had ordered me to eat bugs, I would have asked him how many and how fast. I wouldn’t have even had the nerve to ask him if I could wash them down with water.

Thousands of volumes have been written about the American Revolution, detailing every strategy, every battle, and every side plot. But when all is said and done, for me what stands out most was George Washington’s incredible toughness and tenacity.

He undoubtedly would have been appalled to see what wusses modern Americans have become. Can you imagine today’s presidential candidates – purveyors of never-ending entitlements for Americans addicted to the good life – facing off against Washington? He would have brought them to their knees with his Clint Eastwood stare.

The colonists’ victory over Great Britain – against unfathomable odds – had to be the greatest comeback in the annals of war. It’s enough to make one feel ashamed of himself for stewing over every little obstacle that crosses his path.

In the next article in this Fourth of July series … more reflections on the amazing American Revolution.

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To my surprise, I recently saw child actor Matt Damon reciting the Declaration of Independence as part of a promo for a History Channel documentary he’s co-producing. I was taken aback by this because I had never heard anything but angry, anti-liberty rhetoric come from Damon’s mouth. Nevertheless, I’m glad I happened to catch him in his perplexing performance, because it reminded me of a subject that Americans need to give some long, hard thought to: freedom.

The way the socialist crowd that now controls the power levers in Washington throw around words like freedom and liberty, you’d think they were descendents of the Founding Fathers. And, the truth be known, they’re sincere when they use such words.

Radical revolutionaries like Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Jeff Jones, et al believe it is they who are the true advocates of freedom. Remember, Che, Castro, Mao, and Lenin all saw themselves as “freedom fighters.”

That’s right — virtually all socialists/Marxists/communists sincerely believe they are champions of freedom. Have you ever heard a dictator say he is against freedom? I think we can all agree that just about everyone claims to be in favor of freedom. The problem, however, is that there is much disagreement on the true meaning of the word.

Unfortunately, one individual’s idea of freedom can actually violate another person’s freedom. To one person, liberty means doing what he wants with his own life, while to another person it means doing what he wants with other people’s lives. Therefore, both of these people say that the other person’s concept of freedom is tyranny.

To the laissez-faire businessman, freedom means an end to all government regulation. To the communist, freedom can be achieved only when individual incentive has been crushed and “the people” own everything. Some people (e.g., Judge Sonia Sotomayor) believe that job quotas for minority groups promote freedom. But to a person who is anti-discriminatory in the truest sense of the word, quotas and preferential treatment based on seniority are violations of human freedom.

Based on the evidence, I think we can safely conclude that throughout history people have miscommunicated on the subject of freedom. Since conservatives, liberals, bigots, fascists, communists, environmentalists, and every other group imaginable all claim to be in favor of freedom, they obviously cannot all be talking about the same thing.

The dictionary defines freedom as “being free.” In turn, free is defined as “not under the control or power of another.” How can there be so much confusion over a definition so clearly stated? For one thing, when some people (e.g., progressives) talk about freedom, they think it means they are free to do as they please to others.

Also, throughout recorded history, utopian thinkers have confused freedom with equality. But nothing could be more incorrect. No matter what one’s moral desires, nature has made freedom and equality totally incompatible. “Freedom and equality,” wrote Will and Ariel Durant, “are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.’’

As the government steps up its efforts to defy nature and bring about equality on a global scale, it will find it increasingly necessary to employ force. And when force enters the picture, some people are going to come under the control of others — which is tyranny, not freedom.

Thus, you may be surprised, after a little probing, to find that when people espouse freedom, often they are referring to their freedom, not yours. Worse, you may discover that their freedom necessitates the violation of your freedom.

When freedom is subjectively defined by each individual, it is reduced to a meaningless abstract. The only way freedom can be rationally viewed is in its pure, no compromise form: human freedom — the freedom of each individual to do as he pleases, so long as he does not commit aggression against others.

Politicians love to talk about freedom, even while telling us how they intend to further enslave us. They do this by manufacturing “rights” out of thin air. The problem is that all artificially created rights are anti-freedom, because in order to fulfill one person’s rights (read, desires), another person’s rights must be violated. That is precisely what is meant by the infamous statement, “Someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so someone else can have more.”

The reality is that those who harbor such twisted thinking are actually opposed to liberty. Often, they are individuals who are unable to achieve success in a free society, thus they yearn for an external force (government) to “level the playing field” and equalize results. These are the people whose votes the liberal fascists in Washington continue to vie for.

If you’ve now reached the point where you realize that “change we can believe in” was nothing more than a code phrase for socialism, you hopefully understand that true freedom means freedom for the “poor,” freedom for the “rich,” freedom for the “weak,” and freedom for the “strong.” Human freedom means freedom for everyone.

Think about this as the 2010 candidates begin stepping up their promises to fulfill artificially created rights. Everything in life has a price, and, make no mistake about it, the price of artificially created rights is bondage — the exchange of your natural rights for government-created rights.

Before voting, everyone should look in the mirror and ask himself, “Is that what I really want for me and my children?” Let’s hope that in a majority of cases the answer is a resounding no.

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The Marxmeister in the White House now says he takes full responsibility for ending the oil mess in the Gulf. He also says he wants to “know whose ass to kick,” that he “can’t suck it up with a straw,” and … well, you know … the ongoing narcissistic spiel – “I, me, my … blah, blah, blah” … day after day, week after week, ad nauseam.

Watching his recent performances on the Gulf oil disaster made me think about a monster hit The Platters had in the fifties called “The Great Pretender.” Little did they know that the champion Great Pretender wouldn’t even be born until 1961 – probably in Kenya … but, then, no one is really sure about that because no one is allowed to see his birth certificate.

Everyone but (1) those on the far left, (2) Bill O’Reilly, and (3) the loons (O’Reilly’s word) who have yet to return from lunch realizes that The Great Pretender has had a Marxist agenda since even before his pot-smoking days at Columbia. Names like Wright, Ayers, Lloyd, Dunn, Sunstein, Holdren, and Jones (both Jeff and Van) are well known to those who have taken the trouble to learn about The Great Pretender’s agenda.

As ever more people come to realize that the country has been hijacked by this angry young Marxist, many would argue that a better title for him might be The Great Reactor. Obama listens to the news – especially Fox News – then reacts to his critics by saying or doing whatever they accuse him of not saying or doing, or by changing his tune regarding something he’s said or done that offends too many people. Sort of humorous to watch – if the fate of an entire country were not at stake, that is.

Perhaps I’m getting soft with age, but I almost feel sorry for The Great Pretender. His flipping and flopping and spinning and twisting and contradictions have become downright embarrassing. He’s Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy all rolled into one. I admit it – I’m truly embarrassed for him.

Now, of all people, Mike Huckabee – continuing his swift turnabout in an effort to make voters forget about his slobbering interview of Michelle Obama (who, he tried to convince us, wakes up every morning frantically worrying about childhood obesity) – has succeeded in making The Great Pretender look like an incompetent, arrogant boob.

Hopefully, you saw The Huckster’s show last weekend. He paraded out one guest after another – entrepreneurs, inventors, engineers, and chemists – to present remarkable solutions for cleaning up the oil in the Gulf. It truly was amazing to watch the simplicity of the methods presented, as contrasted with The Great Pretender’s spending his time talking about kicking ass, wagging his finger at everyone, and bending over and picking up a lonely tar ball on the beach in his daily photo ops.

Was the oil spill really just an accident? Probably. BP America Chairman and President Lamar McKay recently said that it was caused by “a failed piece of equipment.” I’ll buy that, at least for now. But it doesn’t matter. Rahm never said that you have to create a crisis. He already knew there are crises popping up all the time. All he said was that you should never allow a good one to go to waste.

In the case of the BP oil accident, it was a slam-dunk. More to the point, it was like unlocking the door to the EPA’s cage. Obviously – surprise, surprise – offshore drilling is now out of the question, right?

So it puts a few hundred thousand people out of work (ripple effect) … so what? The progressive must do what he must do to protect “the people,” even if it means taking away their jobs and giving them higher gas prices to boot. What in the world would we do without government to protect us? (Hmm … I think John Stossel has repeatedly answered that question for us over the years.)

So, yes, the BP crisis will not be wasted if it results in an end to offshore drilling. Nevertheless, I think The Great Pretender is going to have to come up with another crisis – or two – before November to pull off a number of miracles for the Demagogic Party.

The Dems, of course, would have us believe that they can win because so-called moderates will pull away from Republican candidates affiliated with the tea parties. If they really believe that, it would be wonderful. But, frankly, I don’t think they’re that stupid.

So I, for one, I’m still thinking crisis. A manufactured crisis is much better than an unforeseen one, of course, because you can have a prefabricated “solution” prepared in advance. You don’t have to do anything that actually helps make things better for people. All you need are a few talented individuals to put the right words on your teleprompters and be good at pretending you’re making things better.

As I said in my article “The Ghost of FDR,” Obama has been following the dictatorial Roosevelt’s playbook to the T. In his 1937 inaugural address, at a time when unemployment was still rising (15 percent on inauguration day), FDR bodaciously said, “Our progress out of the depression is obvious.”

Sound familiar? It should. With the economy on the verge of total collapse, The Great Pretender continues to look his teleprompters in the eye and tell Americans how he’s saved the country from a depression and that “the worst is now behind us.” He always sounds so darn convincing when he says these things, but I hear through the White House grapevine that on at least one occasion after slinging this kind of B.S., he was overheard singing to himself in the Oval Office:

Oh yes, I’m the great pretender,
Pretending that I’m doing well.
My need is such, I pretend too much,
I’m lonely but no one can tell.

Lacking a really great crisis, The Great Pretender, hopefully, is going to feel a lot lonelier starting next January.

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In my recent interview with Dr. Christopher Metzler of Georgetown University, he repeatedly expressed concern over what it’s going to take to wake up millions of Americans who still appear to be hung over from an excess of Obama-Aid. I share Dr. Metzler’s concern, and have been unimpressed with the constant drumbeat about Barack Obama’s “rapidly declining” poll numbers.

Maybe I’ve been living on different planet, but it seems to me that Der Fuhrbama’s approval ratings have been gently moving back and forth between roughly 43 and 48 percent for as long as I can remember. Nothing he does, no matter how anti-Constitutional, how criminal, or how arrogant, seems to phase 40 percent or so of the population.

I understand the roughly 30 percent who sincerely want the United States to become a hard-core socialist nation. They have a genuine desire to redistribute wealth and live under an all-powerful central government. I get it. They are a visible enemy, and you clearly understand that you have to push back against them day in and day out.

But the other 10-15 percent – those who don’t want to live under a socialist regime, yet still approve of the job BHO is doing – are the ones who have people like Dr. Metzler and myself puzzled. Do they ever watch anything but sports and Ice Road Truckers on television? Do they ever read nonfiction adult books or watch Fox News? Are their legs irreversibly tingled by the idea, of and by itself, of an African-American in the White House? Are they simply not able to get over it?

Yet, if you think about the nonstop illegalities that went on when Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a chokehold on the U.S. economy, Obama’s strong poll numbers should not be that surprising. In rereading Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man, I was again reminded of the eerie similarities between the modi operandi of FDR and Barack Obama. So much so that BHO could pass as the ghost of FDR.

One cannot help but draw the conclusion that Obama must have studied the FDR playbook carefully, because he came out of the starting gate seemingly determined to follow his progressive strategy to the T. Like FDR, Obama is a truly licentious creature, totally devoid of ethics and harboring a complete disregard for the law, the wishes of the electorate, the Constitution, and the natural rights of man.

From his creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) under David Lilienthal to his attempt to pack the Supreme Court with an additional (and more liberal) number of judges, FDR sincerely believed that the Constitution was an outdated document.

There is one section, in particular, in The Forgotten Man that reminded me of the current-day antics (health care, cap and trade, financial regulation, etc.) of Barack Obama. Early on, through the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRI), which was signed into law in 1933, FDR basically threw out the Constitution and engaged in a Herculean effort to force his will and progressive ideas on the American people.

Fortunately, in a landmark case in 1935, Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that Title I of the NIRA was unconstitutional, and the Act was trashed shortly thereafter.

In her book, Shlaes quotes Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes on the unanimous verdict in the Schechter case: “Extraordinary conditions [the Great Depression] may call for extraordinary remedies. But the argument necessarily falls short of an attempt to justify action which lies outside the sphere of constitutional power.” He went on to say that the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which administered and enforced the NIRI, had resorted to “coercive exercise of the law-making power.”

Further, Justice Louis Brandeis told Tommy Corcoran and Ben Cohen, the two attorneys who had been the key legal advisors on FDR’s New Deal, “This is the end of this business of centralization, and I want you to go back and tell the president that we’re not going to let this government centralize everything. It’s come to an end.”

In reference to the Supreme Court decision, Senator William Borah of Idaho spelled it out clearly when he said, “We live under a written Constitution … fortunate or unfortunate, it is a fact.” What a novel thought.

BHO’s own public disdain for the Supreme Court can be traced back to FDR, who gave many a tongue-lashing to members of the highest court in the land. After the court shattered his grandiose plans to have the NRA stalk businesses nationwide under a phony stretch of the Interstate Commerce Clause (the same stretch used to pass Obamacare), FDR stated that by refusing to interpret the Commerce Clause in a way that would give him and his fellow New Dealers the police-state powers they desired, they were taking the country back to “the horse and buggy age.”

Now, here’s the scary part when thinking about BHO and his New New Deal: FDR, after a disastrous first term, was reelected anyway! And after four more years of the Great Depression, he was reelected for an unprecedented third term … then, finally, a fourth!

When he mercifully croaked in 1945, he left, as his legacy to the nation, a fraudulent, anti-Constitutional Social Security program, an anti-prosperity tax structure, and a solid foundation for a genuine welfare-state that would grow out of control each year until it finally began to collapse early in the next century.

So, yes, it does give one cause for concern that Barack Obama, master of the silver-tongued lie, could conceivably be reelected by a coalition of true-believing socialists, hard-core false-prosperity addicts, and those with irreversible damage caused by one too many leg-tingling episodes.

Which is why all liberty lovers should be focused on vigilance rather than overconfidence in the upcoming elections. Never underestimate the enemy!

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The other day, one of my son’s friends, who had just come home from college for the summer, stopped over to say hello. We chatted briefly, and I asked him if he was still planning on becoming an entrepreneur/businessman after he graduated from school next spring.

To my surprise, he said that because of the economy, he had changed his mind about pursuing a business career. He told me that he now planned to apply for a job with the CIA. Surprised, I asked, “What in the world made you decide to go to work for the CIA?”

Without pause, he responded, “It’s so tough to get a job nowadays that I figured I’d just go to work for the government, because there’s much more security in a government job.” I immediately thought to myself that standing right in front of me was a new Barack Obama voter!

It’s simple: Get as many people as possible working for the government – which can always meet its payroll by taking money from entrepreneurs and small businesspeople who create private-sector jobs – and thereby assure winning a majority of votes in every election.

It reminded me of a conversation I had many years ago with a brilliant, ultra-pragmatic, narcissistic acquaintance who had a hugely successful economic consulting business. One day we were having a discussion about the United States’ relentless move toward collectivism, and I asked him, “Given how you’re addicted to the material things in life, what would you do if the United States ever became a full-fledged communist country?”

Without so much as a pause, he answered, in a matter-of-fact tone, “That wouldn’t be a problem. I’d just become a member of the Communist Party and work my way into the inner circle.” His response evoked a nervous chuckle from me, but the chuckle quickly faded as I realized he was deadly serious. His answer bothered me then, and it bothers me even more today.

The first thing that went through my mind after that conversation was the movie Dr. Zhivago and Rod Steiger’s character Viktor Komarovsky. Komarovsky was a member of Russia’s elite class that dined on caviar and expensive vodka while the masses lived on the edge of starvation in abject poverty.

But when it became clear that the Bolshevik Revolution would succeed, Viktor Komarovsky simply cozied up to the revolutionary hierarchy and proclaimed himself to be a communist. He was well aware that revolutionary rhetoric was a fantasy, and that in every revolution, it’s the toughest and wiliest thugs who emerge as the new royalty.

For the masses, of course, things stay pretty much the same, though under communism they usually end up even worse off than they were before the revolution (as was certainly the case in Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution).

Today, the Komarovsky mind-set is a serious problem in the United States. I keep saying that Obama and Co. know they are going down to massive defeats if there are elections in 2010, but maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps I’ve underestimated their determination to get enough people on the government dole and government payroll to mathematically assure victory.

I continue to say that most of the big stories in the news are nothing more than distractions – distractions that take people’s focus off the biggest problem Americans are facing: an irreversible loss of their liberty. That includes the BP oil spill, illegal immigration, and even Obama’s attempt to buy off Joe Sestak to get him out of the race so he could pay back Arlen Specter for his open conversion to the progressive cause.

It’s not that some of these issues aren’t important; they are. But they are not as important as Americans unthinkingly submitting to servitude. And that is what the Obamaviks don’t want the masses to think about.

When it comes to the mid-term elections in 2010, Republicans are running a race against the clock, because it’s only a matter of time until the government has a large enough percentage of voters on its payroll and on the dole to assure a permanent majority in the House and Senate, not to mention permanent control of the White House.

Worst of all, the Republican Party itself has a whole army of Viktor Komarovskys in its ranks, ready to support the Obamaviks at the drop of a vote. Names like Mitt Romney (the de facto architect of Obamacare), John McCain (“I was in favor of illegal immigration before I was against it.”), Lindsey Graham (an unabashed hard-core progressive), Mike Huckabee (the slickest – and possibly most dangerous – man in America), Orrin Hatch (a deeply entrenched member of the go-along-to-get-along club), and Mitch McConnell (another deeply entrenched member of the same club) come quickly to mind.

These men have conclusively demonstrated that they are more than willing to support the progressive’s notion of “social justice” if that’s what it takes to get elected and reelected. Their greatest threat comes from names like Bachmann, Ryan, DeMint, Rubio, and Paul & Paul.

Over the next five months, you can be sure that much Republican blood will be spilled in the war between the Viktor Komarovskys of the Republican Party and those who refuse to go along with the business-as-usual Dr. Zhivago Option. And you can guess which side the socialists in the Democratic People’s Party will be cheering for.

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The main reason I’m against giving handouts to countries like Greece is that it sends the wrong message. We should not lie to Europe’s socialist misfits about capitalism. The greatest gift we can offer is to help them understand that freedom is not about security or equality; it’s about insecurity and inequality.

We should teach them that the price of freedom is self-responsibility, and self-responsibility means that no one has a right to a house, a car, a job – no, not even healthcare. What everyone does have a right to is exactly what others are willing to pay him, free of government interference.

We should also teach them that those who think otherwise are responsible for our $12 trillion national debt and a federal budget deficit that is projected to be in the area of $2 trillion as far as the eye can see. Economic security is not a right, but it sure is a formula for disaster.

If we help to bail out bankrupt European countries, we will be encouraging them to believe that capitalism is about security and equality, and they will become disillusioned when they find out the hard way it is not. If instead we focus our efforts on explaining to them that capitalism is about freedom of choice, self-responsibility, and risk, we will be doing them a great favor.

Unfortunately, progressives right here in our own country do not seem to understand this. This is especially true of so-called limousine liberals. I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago when a casual acquaintance invited me to a social gathering at his home. After being assured that no members of the Weather Underground, the Communist Party USA, or the White House would be in attendance, I agreed to drop by.

I tend to be a target at limousine-liberal gatherings, and, sure enough, a middle-aged gentleman of means came up to me and, from out of the blue, blurted, “Capitalism is the most evil system ever invented.”

Displaying my finest George Will deadpan expression, I asked how an intelligent, successful gentleman like him had managed to arrive at such a fascinating conclusion. To which he groused, “Under capitalism, the poor are exploited by the rich.” Yikes – it was the ghost of Vladimir Lenin!

Masochist that I am, I asked him to define the terms rich and poor for me, but he simply waived aside my question as though it were frivolous. My acquaintance’s wife then intervened and admonished us that political discussions were forbidden in her house, thus preventing a Sunday afternoon homicide.

Darn. I didn’t even get a chance to see the expression on his face had I been able to lay this one on him: The gap between the rich and the poor is supposed to increase under capitalism! It’s built into the system.

But also built into the system is the fact that almost everyone is better off under capitalism. Why? Because trickle-down economics really does work.

The U.S. government’s own Census Bureau’s statistics confirm this truth. Average-income figures clearly show that during the Reagan years, almost everyone’s income rose significantly, while during the Carter years, most people got poorer. Does anyone seriously believe that voters kicked Carter out of office and gave Reagan two landslide victories because they were better off under Carter and worse off under Reagan?

In the Reagan years, what was in play was the so-called invisible hand of the marketplace. When people realize they can reap financial rewards by providing better goods and services to others, they work harder and longer hours to do so. As a result, the economy prospers and everyone is better off.

On the other hand, the more government interferes with this natural process, the worse off everyone is. How far mankind has advanced is not a reflection of his true potential; it is his true potential minus government interference. Those who believe that a strong central government is needed to manage a nation’s economy simply do not understand the awesome power of the invisible hand of the marketplace.

Which takes me back to the growing disparity between the rich and the poor (setting aside, for now, the important question of who has the omniscience and moral authority to decide who should be slotted into these two categories in the first place).

In a mythical, totally free society, if everyone were to start with nothing, some people would become “rich” while others would become “poor.” Now, stop and think about that fact for a moment. Wouldn’t natural forces assure that the most successful people would become even more successful over time and thus increase the gap between themselves and those who have not been as successful? After all, they would be using the same talents, efforts, and self-discipline that made them more successful in the first place.

Please, let’s set aside childish notions. Of course the gap between the rich and the poor will always increase under capitalism. But that, of and by itself, does not harm anyone. The only problem is the one caused by envious progressive thinkers who have unilaterally decided that such a gap isn’t “fair.” Which, of course, is merely their subjective opinion.

Personally, I don’t think of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor as fair or unfair. It’s simply reality. However, I do believe the fact that successful people tend to become even more successful is fair, provided they achieve their success on a non-coercive basis. Why shouldn’t a person be allowed to become as successful as his talents and hard work will take him?

If we are to return to the roots of our once-cherished freedom, progressive subjectivism must be defeated. Go-along-to-get-along conservatives must come to grips with the reality that compromise does not work. The reason for this is that it encourages a lie, and everyone knows that lies don’t work.

The progressive is, of course, free to think whatever suits him. But he must not be allowed to force others to give up their freedom to accommodate his twisted notion regarding one of the most abstract ideas known to man: fairness – which is right up there with “social justice.”

Right now, it is that twisted notion that has the United States about a furlong away from joining Greece as a third-world country on the verge of collapse. The only social justice that makes any sense is for everyone to keep what he earns in a free market.

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In Part I of this article, I expressed my concern that Glenn Beck might not be around for the long term at Fox News. As I watch him strip BHO and other members of Crime Inc. down to their dirty underwear every day at 5:00 pm, I ponder what the Obamaviks will do to try to stop him from destroying their full-speed-ahead efforts to transform the U.S. into a collectivist paradise.

I see four possibilities for Beck’s exit from Fox News:

Assassination. On more than one occasion, Beck has alluded to cement boots and his ending up at the bottom of the East River. He has also assured his audience that he has no inclination to jump off a tall building, and if something like that were to ever happen to him, it would not be accidental.

Even more ominous is that Beck continually tells his audience that this isn’t about him, that each and every one of them must stand up and carry on the fight. When he says this, it sparks memories of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous words at a rally in Memphis the night before he was murdered:

”We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop … and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”

Anyone who has read even a nominal amount of political history knows that those on the far left unabashedly believe that their morally superior objectives justify the use of violence. The problem they have with Beck is that using violence to eliminate him is dangerous, given that he has already warned the public to be on the lookout for his sudden demise. Plus, a martyred Glenn Beck could be as powerful for the liberty movement as a martyred Barack Obama would be for the movement to turn America into a socialist police state.

So, let’s assume – and hope – that no harm befalls Glenn Beck. What else, then, might cause him to leave Fox News?

Roger Ailes retires or passes on. Roger Ailes has almost single-handedly propped up the free press in this country, being so good at his job that Fox News has been able to render its left-wing media competition almost irrelevant. When Ailes, who recently turned seventy, leaves Fox, there is no assurance that Rupert Murdoch will pick a replacement with equally strong conservative beliefs.

If Roger Ailes is replaced by a “moderate,” the new president of Fox News would undoubtedly either terminate Beck or place restrictions on what he could and could not say. And if the latter occurred, you can be sure Beck would depart Fox – with his honor intact, as promised.

Rupert Murdoch passes on. Rupert Murdoch is still going strong, but the reality is that he’s seventy-nine years old. And, as I’ve written about in the past
(Fox News’s Liberal Future), Murdoch’s children and son-in-law are liberals who have long complained that Fox News is too conservative. With Murdoch gone, there would surely be a major shakeup, and both Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck – perhaps along with a few others – would quickly be out the door. It would be the end of Fox News as we have come to know it.

The Godfather option. Barack Obama knows that time is against him. With liberal Democrats dropping like flies in primaries and special elections, he can’t afford to wait too long for Roger Ailes to retire or Rupert Murdoch to pass on.

Solution? Just send “the boys” over to have a little chat with Rupert Murdoch and make him “an offer he can’t refuse.” In keeping with Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd’s clearly stated objective to force “some people to step down to make room for others,” the offer might be as straightforward as: (1) If you get rid of Glenn Beck, Fox News can stay on the air; (2) if you choose to keep him, Fox News will be shut down.

Kind of the Obamafia’s version of putting a bloody horse’s head in someone’s bed to improve his perception of reality.

And let us not forget that Cass Sunstein – whom Beck refers to as “the most dangerous man in America” – says he wants to use government power to stop “conspiracy theories.” (Translation: Repress the truth by using whatever means necessary to silence the opposition.)

So where does Beck go if he departs Fox News? On at last one occasion, he said that even if the bad guys succeed in forcing him off radio and television, he will come back with a louder voice and larger platform than ever. I found that to be a tantalizing statement, one that caused me to speculate on what such a platform might be.

Of course, the biggest platform of all would be president of the United States. Beck says he would never run for president, because he wouldn’t want to risk losing his soul. The implication is that a person can’t run for president, and certainly can’t hold the office of the presidency, and keep his honor intact.

I thought about this recently when Beck did an in-depth show on one of his heroes, George Washington. He emphasized a number times that what made Washington unique was that he did not want to be president. He accepted the office only out of a sense of duty, and refused to stay in office longer than two terms.

I believe – and it is strictly a personal belief based only on watching and listening to him – that Beck sees himself in much the same way. I think he feels a sense of duty to do whatever he can to help save America. He knows that George Washington did not want to be president, yet he served out of a sense of duty. Even more interesting, Beck has said that “Americans are looking for someone like George Washington.”

Clearly, he has a vivid sense that he has been put in his current high-profile station in life for a purpose. Which means he may not have a choice but to throw his hat into the political ring – if not in 2012, perhaps in 2016.

Much like the Founding Fathers, I believe Beck has committed himself to using his fame, his fortune, and his enormous talents to help defeat the poisonous progressive movement that is fundamentally transforming the United States into a destitute socialist nation.

So, the $64 question is: Will Glenn Beck ultimately conclude that he has no choice but to run for president?

And the $128 question is: Would enough Americans be willing to open their minds to the truths he would expose to elect him president?

If Beck did become president, I believe he would go down as one of the greatest – and most unpopular – patriots in American history. Unpopular because, like George Washington, he would not be willing to trade his honor for popularity.

In any event, if the presidency is not in Beck’s future, it will be interesting to see what his platform will be three to five years down the road. Right now, at Fox News, he’s a ticking time bomb for the progressive movement in this country.

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On rare occasions, a unique figure bursts onto the national stage and has a dramatic impact on politics, culture, or both. Glenn Beck is one of those figures. He is surely the biggest, fastest, most controversial star in the political commentary business in my lifetime.

Beck is a real-life version of Howard Beale, the fictional television commentator in the 1976 film classic Network. Beale whipped his cultish TV audience into a frenzy, exhorting them to stick their heads out the window and chant, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Much to the chagrin of the oligarchy in Washington, however, Glenn Beck is not a fictional character. He’s real, and he has succeeded in enlightening his audience far beyond Beale’s simple rants about the unfairness of life. Beck is much more knowledgeable, much more factual, much more rational, and much more focused on the key issue: America’s loss of liberty.

I find it more than just a bit ironic that ultra-liberal CNN Headline News gave Beck his first forum on television. There, he created a huge stir with his “rodeo-clown” antics and his willingness to talk openly about his drug- and alcohol-addicted past. But as he increasingly added his political views to the mix, people started asking, “Why isn’t this guy on Fox News?”

Of course, Roger Ailes was closely observing Beck all along, and, in January 2009, he brought him to Fox and fit him into the 5:00 p.m. time slot. While Beck had been moving more and more toward political commentary at CNN Headline News, from the moment he came to Fox his transition to near-total politics was swift.

Combining his incredible talents with the work of his equally incredible research staff, Beck became a household name seemingly overnight. In truth, of course, he had been in media for thirty years, but he had never before had a forum like Fox News.

Beck’s show is so good I’m convinced that if a person doesn’t watch it on a regular basis, it’s almost impossible for him to understand the true causes of the moral and economic collapse of the United States – or even that it is collapsing – because no one else on TV covers most of the stories he dissects in impeccable detail. His modus operandi has been to expose the bad guys through their own words by playing audios and videos of them shooting off their mouths and by quoting their writings.

For quite some time now, I have believed that Beck has become so good at exposing the truth, so well respected, and so powerful that the Forces of Darkness in the White House and Congress view him as a major threat to their aspirations to eliminate the Constitution, the rule of law, and individual sovereignty in the United States. (In fact, they now refer to him as “the Beck problem.”)

But, as I have written in the past, the Obamafia is in a no-win situation with Beck. If its leaders ignore him, he will continue to disrobe Chairman Obama and his malevolent progressive pals through their own spoken and written words.

On the other hand, as they have already discovered, the more they try to discredit Beck, the more attention they draw to him – and the more people will learn about the details of how they plan to fundamentally transform America. Worse, their childish mudslinging is no match for Beck’s sixty minutes of hard-core truth five days a week (not to mention his three-hour daily radio show).

So Beck keeps raising the ante, and there is no question in my mind that the oligarchy in Washington sees him as a major obstacle between where they are today and their ultimate goal: a firmly entrenched, all-powerful federal government that controls every aspect of people’s lives.

Listening to Beck this past year has convinced me that he senses he has been chosen by a Higher Power to lead the charge against the evildoers in government. If so, it’s not the first time God has surprised the world with his choice of a messenger.

In laying down the gauntlet, Beck has pointed out that as a recovering alcoholic, he’s already been at the bottom, so nothing scares him. “The worst thing that can happen in my life,” Beck has said, “is to lose my honor and to return to my Heavenly Father without honor - without doing what I was supposed to do.” When people talk like this, it represents a very big problem for those in power.

Beck has made it clear that he is not afraid of losing everything if that’s what it takes to convey the truth to as many people as possible. And, as the far left knows all too well, a man who is willing to lose everything can be a huge obstacle to its achieving its socialist objectives.

The willingness to lose everything is, in fact, a key to being a successful revolutionary, or, in Beck’s case, a counter-revolutionary. How many people do you know who are prepared to lose everything to fight for what they believe in?

Not long ago, Beck came right out and said, “I’m going out swinging.” That statement carried with it some very strong implications. Clearly, something has to give.

My best guess? I hope I’m wrong, but I have long had the feeling that Glenn Beck will be leaving Fox News other than through old-age retirement.

How might his departure come about? The way I see it, there are four possible avenues of exit, which I will discuss in detail in Part II of this article.

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Wouldn’t you know it? I thought I had the minority-of-one issue behind me, and along comes Rand Paul. Of course, I was pleased to find that I really wasn’t a minority of one for expressing my views on unionization, but today’s article will be far more difficult for even the most ardent liberty advocate to swallow.

When MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked Rand Paul if he believed that a private business should have the right to refuse to serve African-Americans, he correctly answered, “Yes.” But he went on to say, “I’m not in favor of discrimination of any form.”

To a person who has progressive pudding jammed between his ears, Rand Paul’s one-word answer and his follow-up comment contradict one another. You see, a pudding-filled brain cavity makes life simple. If someone believes a business owner has a right to refuse service to an African-American, that means he (the person who harbors such a belief) favors discrimination.

For the person addicted to a life of nonstop sports, junk TV, and Outback Steakhouse, there is little time to intellectualize a serious issue like this. After all, that would require him to reject knee-jerk statements and think through the moral ramifications of the issue.

The real problem is that Maddow asked Paul the wrong question. It was what is commonly referred to as a loaded question. If you’re going to be a serious supporter of liberty, you cannot allow yourself to be intimidated into answering loaded questions – i.e., questions based on a false premise or an implied false premise.

Here, the false premise was implied: If a business owner has the right to refuse service to someone, it automatically follows that that someone would be an African-American. It is, of course, an absurd assumption.

What if the owner of the business is an African-American? Like a white owner, a black owner has a right to do whatever he wishes with his business. As I said in my article about the right to fire someone for attempting to unionize a business, the reason he possesses such a right is that it’s his business. The same is true when it comes to deciding whom he does and does not wish to service.

Skin color is irrelevant to those who believe in liberty. But to the far left, the so-called race card is like oxygen. For decades, progressives have suffered withdrawal symptoms as race has become less and less of an issue in the U.S. (Ironically, it is a brown man in the White House who has managed to rekindle racial tensions in America through his shameful, nonstop, racially charged rhetoric.)

If you want to discuss the subject of black progress in America, fine. We have millions of blacks who are doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, professors, military officers, politicians – even the president of the United States is African-American! So let’s all give ourselves – both whites and blacks – a big pat on the back for living in a post-racial era. End of discussion on that topic.

But if you want to discuss another topic – the sanctity of private property – I repeat what I said about unionization. If one believes in the concept of private property – which all sane people of goodwill do – he is obliged to concede that an owner has a right to do anything he wishes with his own property.

As Thomas Sowell has so often pointed out, if an employer refuses to hire or serve people purely on a discriminatory basis, he does so at his own peril, because the marketplace will punish him. For example, speaking for myself, I would never give my business to a company or restaurant that refused to serve people of any specific race or ethnicity, and I think I can safely say that I’m in the majority on that one.

Thus, the free market would sort things out by penalizing the company that practiced discrimination. Legislating morals does not work. What is there about this self-evident truth that the progressive does not understand?

As Sowell has written about for years, blacks made greater progress in escaping poverty before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than after it was passed. In a 2003 article in Jewish World Review, Sowell stated that more blacks rose into professional ranks in the five years preceding passage of the Civil Rights Act than in the five years after its passage. What a stunning indictment on government social engineering!

While you’ve got me worked up, I’ll add one other thing that caused me a bit of concern when Rand Paul was being interviewed by George Stephanopoulos. After trying to make Paul look bad on the issue of a business owner’s right not to serve blacks, Stephanopoulos moved in for the kill and asked him if he would repeal the minimum wage.

Paul fumbled around a bit and tried to explain how a higher a minimum wage causes unemployment. Of course, everything he said was correct, but, even so, his answer should have been a resounding, “Yes!”

I have great empathy for Rand Paul in this situation, because I know how difficult it can be when you’re put on the spot on national television. But my concern is that too many conservatives and libertarian-centered conservatives are still allowing the left to intimidate them into backing off their true beliefs.

This is what concerns me if Republicans do actually take control of the House and Senate in 2010. What the tea parties signify more than anything else is that half or more of Americans are finally ready to hear the truth. And if Republicans are still not ready to give it to them, with boldness and without fear, they will be reviled long after our final liberties are lost.

Let me simplify things with my favorite litmus-test question: “Do you believe that Barack Obama is a radical?”

Wrong answer: “Well, I think he’s surrounded himself with a lot of people who are radical.”

Right answer: “Yes!”

But I digress. The question is, am I a minority of one for believing that a business owner has a natural right to refuse service to whomever he pleases?

I hope not. I’d especially love to hear from libertarian-centered conservative African-Americans. After all, Walter Williams, Herman Cain, Star Parker, Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Alan Keyes, et al seem like pretty smart people to me, and I’ll bet you can guess where they stand on this issue.

Bottom line: This is not a race issue; it’s a liberty issue. Libertarian-centered conservatism and racism are mutually exclusive beliefs.

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As BHO continues to transform the United States into a socialist hell, the latest poke in the eye is the National Mediation Board’s proposal to make it easier for airline and railroad workers to unionize.

For seventy-five years, the rule has been that in order for any class of workers (e.g., pilots) employed by an airline or railroad to unionize, a majority of all employees in that class have to vote for unionization. But the proposed new rule would require only that a majority of employees who actually vote on the question of unionization would be needed to unionize.

All Democrats love unions; Republican progressives love unions; and even many conservatives believe that a worker should be allowed to join a union voluntarily, so long as those who do not want to join the union are not forced to do so.

Which probably makes me a minority of one. Why? Because not only do I believe that workers do not have a right to unionize a company through tyranny of the majority, I don’t believe that any worker has a right to join a union without the consent of his employer.

It is a basic tenet of libertarian-centered conservatism that without property rights, no other rights are possible. Unfortunately, most people do not understand this fundamental concept. They view property only as inanimate matter, separate and apart from a person’s life. They cannot seem to make the connection between the two.

In actual fact, they are so connected that one is virtually an extension of the other. How can one separate a person’s life from his property? If you took everything that an individual owned, the fact is that he would not own his own life, because whenever he attempted to create something for his personal gain, the fruits of his labor could again be confiscated.

The same is true of purchasing property. The money used to make a purchase presumably was earned through the purchaser’s efforts. That makes the money an extension of his life, and, therefore, the same would be true of anything purchased with that money. No matter what the circumstances, when a person’s property rights are violated, his freedom is violated.

A libertarian-centered conservative (i.e., a true conservative) believes that no one has a right to any other person’s property, which includes both his body and everything he owns. Once this concept is understood, it would be proper to say that, in reality, all crime is based on trespassing on the property of an owner.

When people make “humanitarian” statements about human rights being more important than property rights, they are, in a sense, correct. That’s because human rights include property rights, as well as all other rights of man.

A man has the right to dispose of his life and his property in any way he chooses, without interference from anyone else. By the same token, he has no right to dispose of any other person’s life or property, no matter what his personal rationalizations may be.

As explained in Fundamentals of Liberty, there are only three possible ways to view property:

1. Anyone may take anyone else’s property whenever he pleases.

2. Some people may take the property of other people whenever they please.

3. No one may ever take anyone else’s property without his permission.

It is self-evident to anyone who believes in individual liberty that the only morally valid way of viewing property is No. 3. Likewise, no one has a right to tell a property owner (property being land, buildings, a business, or anything else that a person may own) what he can or cannot do with his property.

Take a business, for example. It belongs to the owner, whether he started the business himself or bought it from someone else. No one has a right to take any part of someone else’s business, nor do they have a right to tell him what he can and cannot do with his business.

If a business grows large and has millions of shareholders, the business is the property of many people – the shareholders. Thus, size is irrelevant when it comes to property rights. When property rights are violated against a multinational corporation as opposed to a “mom-and-pop” business, it simply means that far more people become victims of government aggression. It is a moral absurdity to believe that bigness validates aggression.

Therefore, as a minority of one, I am compelled to say that regardless of the size of a business, the only way unionization is morally valid is if the owner of that business voluntarily agrees to it. Why? Because it’s his business! It’s his property! And it is his human right to set the rules for his own property!

In a truly free society, a worker has one inalienable, overpowering right with regard to his job: He can quit at any time. He is not a slave, so his employer cannot chain him to his work. If wants to belong to a union, he is free to search for employment with a company that allows workers to unionize.

The fact that so many people reading this article will find my comments to be extreme speaks only to how far down the road toward socialism we have traveled. We no longer respect property rights, especially when the property is a business. Generations have been brainwashed into believing that abstract notions such as “the good of society” and “social justice” are more important than private ownership.

The proposed new ruling by the National Mediation Board opens a debate over the issue of whether 75 percent of the overall majority of workers in a given class should be required to unionize an airline or railroad, or just 75 percent of those who actually participate in voting on the question. But, in reality, the debate is nothing more than a distraction. The real debate should be over whether or not employees should be allowed to unionize at all without the consent of the owner.

This is precisely the kind of issue that has caused conservatives to lose their way over the years. Until politicians have the courage to confront an issue such as unionization head on and stop buying into debates about whether to move further to the left or stick to what has become the status-quo left, America will continue its acceleration toward total collapse – both morally and economically.

It will be interesting to see if anyone reading this article has a strong enough belief in the absolute sanctity of property rights to agree with what I’ve said here. That would be nice, because it would instantly elevate me to the status of being part of a minority of two.

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The gangster government now in control in our nation’s capitol is a grim and repugnant reminder that freedom, at best, is ephemeral. At worst, it’s a myth. In fact, true freedom – like true capitalism – has never existed anywhere on this planet. Rest assured that those with an insatiable lust for power will never allow either to occur.

The boldest experiment in doing away with dictatorial government was the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and perhaps the most important words in that document are:

… whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

…
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This was the way that the Colonialists chose to tell their English rulers: “Enough! We hereby declare ourselves to be free.” Unfortunately, from that point forward, the apparently uncontrollable urge of some of the revolutionists to govern their fellow Colonists led to the creation of another document – the Constitution – that, in turn, created that most dreaded of all human inventions: the nation-state.

Never mind that only a handful of men signed the Constitution. This was a new declaration, but not a declaration of independence. Rather, is was a declaration that proclaimed that all persons living within a certain geographical area were, in fact, not free … a declaration that proclaimed them to be bound by The United States Constitution.

Keep in mind that those who were bound by this new document were not asked if they agreed to it, let alone asked to sign it. They were simply told that they would have new rules to abide by – and new rulers to enforce those rules.

Don’t get me wrong. The Constitution is a brilliant document and, I believe, well-intended. With the exception of black slaves and Native Americans, it seems clear that most of the signers saw it as a document that would protect the rights and freedom of the inhabitants of the Colonies.

But human nature being what it is, a democracy or democratic republic is destined – through an “excess of democracy” – to move toward an all-powerful central government that tyrannizes its citizens. In their writing of the Constitution, the Founders worked hard to protect against such an eventuality, but no document can be a foolproof deterrent to tyranny.

That quickly became evident when, after the Constitution went into effect in the summer of 1788, it took only a decade for Congress, under John Adams, to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which made it a crime for anyone to criticize the government “through writing or any other shape, form, or fashion.”

Specifically, criticizing the president, Congress, the military, or the flag was made illegal. This by a group of men who themselves had escaped bondage only twenty-two years earlier!

It was an audacious move by the Federalist-controlled Congress to silence the Republicans, particularly regarding their support of the French Revolution. It was, of course, in direct violation of the Bill of Rights, which clearly states, in the First Amendment, that “Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of speech, or of the press.”

A little more than a hundred years after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Congress, at the urging of Scoundrel in Chief Woodrow Wilson, acted again and passed the U.S. Sedition Act of 1918. Among other things, the act made it a crime to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.”

Segue to 2010. Led by the ultra-statist Cass Sunstein, the Criminal Corps in Washington is heating up talk about infiltrating “conspiracy groups” (read, tea parties) in an effort to undermine them. A conspiracy group is, of course, any group of people that consists of individuals who disagree with the socialist policies of the current administration.

Power has a corrupting influence on those who achieve it, which is why many honorable individuals refuse to run for office. The very nature of a democratic republic makes it virtually impossible for a politician to adhere to the principles of true liberty and still manage to stay in office.

I believe that some people come to Washington with sincere intentions to roll back big government, eliminate federal handout programs, and abolish anti-freedom laws and regulations. But once in power, they become convinced of the need to buy votes, lest they find themselves out of the club and having to – gasp! – seek employment in the private sector.

Which means it’s up to you and me to do the job. We should not allow ourselves to become emotionally engrossed in oil spills, riots in Greece, and foiled terrorist plots. Instead, we should relentlessly focus on our loss of liberty. Any of these and a thousand-and-one other “crises” could be used as an excuse for BHO to invoke an Obomination Sedition Act that, in turn, could be used as excuse to “postpone” elections in 2010 or 2012 for “security reasons.”

Don’t allow yourself to become distracted.  Stay focused on the real issue:  our loss of freedom!

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I recall when I was a teenager asking the question, in a civics class, “What’s to stop the president or Congress from ignoring the Constitution and doing whatever they please?” Predictably, the class laughed and the teacher patronizingly explained to me that our system of “checks and balances” made such a scenario impossible. I was too intimidated to press the matter any further, but I do remember that I was totally unconvinced by his dismissive answer.

Segue to 2010, and, by golly, we have a president and a Congress that ignores the Constitution – even laughs about its relevance – and does whatever they please! Darn it – where’s your high school civics teacher when you need him most?

How can this be happening in America? Let’s back up a few steps and get some background on the matter. For years, the clueless media loved to refer to Fidel Castro as “the last communist.” This perplexed me no end, because history has made it clear that communism has always existed and will continue to exist until “life after people.”

A belief in communism is an envy-based flaw that is programmed into the human psyche. Fortunately, through education, logic, and a sound moral structure, a majority of people in modern, civilized societies are able to overcome the serpent-like temptation of “to each according to his need.”

But early man had no formal education, and, one would assume, had no time to reflect on philosophical – and certainly not ideological – issues. The evidence suggests that savages lived communal lives where the individual was sacrificed to the “collective good.” Often, this even resulted in cannibalism. Satisfying one’s appetite by munching on a fellow tribe member’s arm must have seemed quite natural to men who, like animals, spent most of their time hunting for food.

With the advent of the Agrarian Revolution in the Neolithic Age, however, civilization advanced and the individual gradually gained in importance. The culmination of this evolution was the great American experiment that began with the Declaration of Independence and ended with victory in the American Revolutionary War.

Even so, communism has never been eradicated, because a significant percentage of any country’s population simply cannot resist the motor of communism: envy. Thus, throughout the 20th century, communism reared its ugly head in such disparate places such as Russia, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Mozambique, and, in our own hemisphere, Chile.

Now, in the 21st century, it’s pretty much taken hold in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, with the U.S clearly the next big target of those who yearn for “social justice” (read, covet their neighbors’ wealth).

Even so, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, communism became kind of passe to the average person. As the economy boomed in the U.S. and other Western countries, many of those who were most susceptible to the allure of the communist fantasy of wealth without work became distracted by the good life handed to them by their thriving semi-capitalistic systems.

So what, exactly, is communism? Communism is technically defined as “a theory advocating elimination of private property; a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed; a totalitarian system in which a single authoritarian party controls state owned means of production with the professed aim of establishing a stateless society; a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equally.” Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it?

But what about socialism? Well, if you take the trouble to look it up, you’ll find that the only significant difference between the definitions of socialism and communism is that socialism is referred to as “a transitional stage of society between capitalism and communism.” Which means, according to Newsweek (”We Are All Socialists Now”), that the U.S. must be on its way to communism.

But many countries, particularly in Europe, try to stop at socialism and not finish the journey to pure communism. The reason they do this is because they realize that under socialism, politicians can still rely on the remnants of capitalism to prop up their redistribution schemes.

So, is Chairman Obama a communist or a mere socialist? No one can say with certainty what’s in his heart, but my own feeling is that he would quite enjoy establishing a totalitarian government where the state owns all means of production with the aim of establishing a stateless society.

I believe that one of the mistakes well-meaning but naïve folks unwittingly make is buying into “the last communist” myth, which causes them to become lax. It’s so comforting to simply waive aside unpleasant thoughts and insist that “It could never happen here.”

The truth is that there will never be a “last communist.” Why? Because Reille Hunter’s lover boy was right: There really are two Americas! One America believes in self-responsibility, hard work, and the primacy of the individual. The other – probably close to one-third of the population – believes in the primacy of “the common good” and the fantasy of living off the efforts of others.

To all those who are still living in a kumbaya dream world, hear this: There is no comprise between these two positions!

Which means that even if true libertarian-centered conservatives were to take control of both houses of Congress and the White House, eternal vigilance would be required to stave off the misguided (and, in some cases, “evil”) people who cling to their Little Red Books and their guns. Remember, these are the individuals who get their inspiration from M.M.M. (Mass Murderer Mao), and the barrel of a gun as the final arbiter is ingrained in their twisted minds.

Don’t allow you’re your logic to get sidetracked by oil spills, union-inspired riots in Arizona, or BHO’s wisecracks at elegant media functions about his birth certificate and his socialist policies. What is happening in Washington is not just another little shift to the left. It’s a prelude to the coming insurrection.

If you don’t believe me, by all means feel free to join the walking dead and cheer on BHO and his comrades as they continue with their plan to collapse the U.S. economy through deficit spending and bring major companies and whole industries under government control.

Make no mistake about it, criminal government is on a roll and moving forward at full throttle – and its momentum can be stopped only by a defiant and vigilant populace, a populace that clearly understands there is no last communist.

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Why have the combined mudslinging voices of the media (so called), Congressional Democrats, and the thin-skinned boy wonder who occupies the Oval Office not been able to turn the tide against the tea partiers? If you look at the poll numbers, the answer is obvious: Most Americans are tea partiers.

However, most of them are not yet in enough pain to skip a day at the ball park and stand in a crowd of thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) and listen to tea-party speakers. That’s a shame, but it doesn’t change the fact that they identify with the tea-party movement.

So, what is the common bond with which they identify? Taxes? Healthcare? Financial regulation? I thought about this question as I was rereading Amity Shlaes’ landmark book, The Forgotten Man. In it, she quotes Yale philosopher William Graham Sumner, who, clear back in 1883, explained the crux of the moral problem with progressivism as follows:

”As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine … what A, B, and C shall do for X.”

Shlaes goes on to add: “But what about C? There was nothing wrong with A and B helping X. What was wrong was the law, and the indenturing of C to the cause. C was the forgotten man, the man who paid, ‘the man who never is thought of.”’

In other words, C is the guy who isn’t bothering anyone, but is forced to supply the funds to help the X’s of the world, those whom power holders unilaterally decide have been treated unfairly and must be compensated.

FDR, however, did a switcheroo on Sumner’s point by removing the moniker of “the forgotten man” from C and giving it to X – “the poor man, the old man, labor, or any other recipient of government help.” Very clever … very Obamanistic. As I recall, FDR originally used the phrase the forgotten man to refer to the victims of the dust bowl in the 1930s. Zap! Just like that, Sumner’s forgotten man was transformed into the opposite of what he was meant to be.

Today, I believe it is the tea-party people who represent Sumner’s Forgotten Man. They are taxed and told what they must do and what they must give up in the way of freedom and personal wealth every time a new law is passed. I believe it is this reality that bonds the tea-party people together.

Put another way, it is not healthcare or any other single issue the tea-party people are most angry about. It is all of the issues combined that have to do with impinging on their individual liberty. Above all, they are outraged by the fact that immoral politicians and bureaucrats not only violate their God-given right to live their lives as they please, they dismiss them as “extremists.” Collectively, the tea-party people are today’s Forgotten Man.

In his essay (http://mises.org/books/forgottenman.pdf), Sumner went on to say:

”All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow-men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others. It is true that, until this time, the proletariat, the mass of mankind, have rarely had the power and they have not made such a record as kings and nobles and priests have made of the abuses they would perpetrate against their fellow-men when they could and dared.

”But what folly it is to think that vice and passion are limited by classes, that liberty consists only in taking power away from nobles and priests and giving it to artisans and peasants and that these latter will never abuse it! They will abuse it just as all others have done unless they are put under checks and guarantees, and there can be no civil liberty anywhere unless rights are guaranteed against all abuses, as well from proletarians as from generals, aristocrats, and ecclesiastics.”

Sumner was a man of great insight. He saw the absurdity of assuming that the poor man is morally superior to the rich man. This is where I believe that sincere revolutionaries go wrong. While their initial intentions (to help “the poor”) may, at least in their own minds, be well-meant, they begin with a false premise (that the misfortunes of those at the bottom of the economic ladder are a result of the evil actions of those who are more successful) and, from there, leap from one false conclusion to another.

Which is why politicians who pose as conservatives to get elected so often take the Mush McCain-Lindsey Graham-Charlie Crist route and continually rush to the aid of their progressive Democratic pals. I believe that these philosophically lost souls do the bidding of the intimidating left because they have never given any serious thought to the possibility that the very premise of progressivism is morally wrong.

As a result, they have no feeling for the (perceived) rich man. In plotting their do-gooder schemes, he is easy to forget. They see nothing whatsoever wrong with society’s sacrificing his liberty for the “public good.” Bring out the guillotine! As Montaigne said, “Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.”

What gave birth to the tea parties is that the Forgotten Man syndrome is like a metastasizing disease. As politicians long ago realized, there aren’t enough rich people to support all of the X’s. As the number of X’s (i.e., those who live off the surpluses of others) increases, a lot of A’s and B’s must, by necessity, be reclassified as C’s. And that is when they become candidates for joining the tea-party movement.

Put simply: When A’s and B’s are transformed into C’s, they mysteriously lose their enthusiasm for new laws to help out X. Put even more simply, they suddenly realize that they are now the Forgotten Man. And that realization is what automatically qualifies them as tea-party people. No recruitment necessary, thank you.

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On April 15, I attended my third tea-party rally, this one at the Washington Monument. While I applaud those who put in the time and effort to organize the event, as well as those who took the time to participate, I was a bit disappointed.

First, I was hopeful that an overwhelmingly large crowd would turn out, given the significance of the date. It didn’t happen. It looked to me to be about 10,000 people, which must have warmed the hearts of the Obama-loving left that so desperately wants to believe that voter anger will fade away by November.

Second, unlike the previous two tea-party rallies at the Capitol Building, the atmosphere was more like a social gathering than a serious protest. In fact, because of the lack of excitement and intensity, I left in less than an hour.

My feelings were confirmed by a column in The Wall Street Journal, which said that “The Thursday night crowd was more subdued than tea party activists at town hall meetings last summer; they waved more flags and displayed fewer angry posters.” Sounds good for the progressives who now rule the country, but bad for American serfs.

I go to these tea-party rallies with two objectives in mind. First, I want to get a grasp of the overall mood of the event. Second, I closely study as many people as possible, observing their approximate age, dress, demeanor, body language, and anything else about them that is noteworthy.

I would use the word docile to describe the overall mood at the April 15 event as compared to previous rallies. I got the uncomfortable feeling that the tea-party people might be consciously – or perhaps unconsciously – toning down their anger because they’re feeling intimidated by the wild accusations of the ruling oligarchy in D.C., the government-manipulated media, and true-believing citizens who yearn to live in a socialist utopia.

While observing the lack of enthusiasm I had seen in previous rallies, the dreaded phrase “compassionate conservatism” came to mind. Yes, I’m talking about the “I’m really a nice guy at heart” mantra that brought George Bush from wildly high popularity numbers to being the most unpopular president of our time.

Worse, compassionate conservatism – which implies, wrongly, that true conservatism is not compassionate – has virtually destroyed the Republican Party. After ultra-progressive John McMush was upstaged by a wet-behind-the-ears socialist community organizer, it didn’t take progressives like Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham, and Orrin Hatch long to get right back in the heat of things, trying to convince people that they can be just as compassionate as their comrades in arms on the other side of the aisle.

Forget the fact that the Democrats learned nothing from the recent election results in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. What’s worse is that Republicans seem to have learned nothing from those results. Whether it’s a result of ignorance or cowardice is subject to debate – or perhaps it’s simply a matter of insanity.

The reach-across-the-aisle stuff has worked out really well for Charlie Crist, hasn’t it? After all, any compassionate conservative worth his salt knows that you have a moral obligation to support an $800 billion dollar transfer-of-wealth program (commonly referred to as a “stimulus package”) and top it off with a romantic hugfest with the Obamessiah himself.

Crist expected a big payoff for his dumber-than-dumb strategy of showing how willing he was to “work” with liberal Democrats. And he got it – a fifty-three point swing, from thirty points ahead of once unknown Marco Rubio to twenty-three points behind! Of course, opportunists Huckabee and Romney have both jumped on the Rubio bandwagon now that the outcome is predictable, but have they learned anything? Let me take a wild guess: No!

The tea-party people must not make the same mistake as the Republican Party and allow themselves to be intimidated by the lies and baseless innuendos of the White House and its media outlets – ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, The New York Times, etc.

But it’s not just the over-the-top stuff like the lies and idiotic distortions about the tea-party movement that America’s premiere socialist organ, Newsweek, recently printed. Now, even Fox News has joined in the ruse. Last Saturday Geraldo did a segment that was outrageous even for him, pondering aloud whether the tea-party movement is awash in racism, hate speech, and dangerous paramilitary groups. He then interviewed Tea Party Express Chairman Mark Williams, and began by asking:

”Is there, or should there be, anxiety in the tea parties about extremists?” He went on to say that “There are some anecdotal stories like in the big Washington rally how some militia dressed guys were walking around armed, looking for liberals. There are some in the extreme right – some of these patriot party [sic] – that are claiming to have affiliations with the tea party. Do you fear that they will sully an otherwise legitimate grass-roots movement and paint you, at least in the mainstream media, so-called, as something other than what you are?”

I was super impressed to hear Williams respond quickly and boldly with, “Well, as long as you keep helping them with hit pieces like the one you just ran. The tea-party movement is a political movement based on the Constitution.” With eloquent clarity, he went on to explain what the tea-party rallies were all about, while Geraldo was more interested in focusing on why Williams was “personally attacking” him – as though he had never mentioned the name Timothy McVeigh or the words “right-wing extremists” in connection with the tea parties.

Let me help you out a bit Geraldo: After three tea-parties, where I spent a majority of my time closely observing the people in attendance, I can once again say, unequivocally, that I have never seen the slightest hint of violence or hateful speech. (BTW, referring to BHO as a socialist – which is simply stating a truth based on incontrovertible evidence – is not hate speech.)

I repeat what I said earlier: If anything, I believe the tea-party rally on tax day was far too docile. It once again demonstrated just how intimidating the far left can be. Not only intimidating, but clever.

How so? The BHO oligarchy has managed to change the Big Question from “Is Obama a socialist?” to “Is the tea-party movement dangerously immersed in racism, hate speech, and violence-prone affiliations with paramilitary groups?” Never sell the Saul Alinsky crowd short when it comes to turning every negative around and pointing it in the direction of its accusers.

I honestly believe that Der Fuhrbama believes his verbal skills are so powerful that he can embarrass the tea-party people into submission. He may be a lightweight in most respects, but he’s a lightweight with an abundance of (over)confidence. The tea-party people had better take a page from Rules from Radicals and press down twice as hard on the accelerator, lest they lose their momentum long before November 2.

Docile simply doesn’t cut it. Just ask the compassionate conservatives who are now in the process of going down in flames.

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Jon Voight is a true champion of liberty. When he appeared on Huckabee last Saturday, it was a refreshing change from the usual cast of progressives and radicals whom Huckabee welcomes on board each week.

Voight is one of those rare celebrities who is not afraid to be specific in his criticisms of Barack Obama and his Congressional allies. In his Huckabee appearance, he was clear and adamant in assuring the audience that the charges of hatred and racism against the tea-party people are completely without merit. He then read a letter he had written to “the people of America.”

In one year, the American people are witnessing the greatest lie that is cleverly orchestrated by Barack Obama and his whole administration. The lie is a potent aggression that feeds the needs of people who either have not educated themselves enough to understand the assault upon us all, or the very poor and needy who live to be taken care of.

President Obama feeds these people poison, giving them the idea that they’re entitled to take from the wealthier, who have lived and worked in a democracy that understands that capitalism is the only truth that keeps the nation healthy and fed.

Now, the lie goes very deep, and President Obama has been cleverly trained in the Alinsky method. And it would be very important that every American knows what that method is. It is a socialistic, Marxist teaching, and with it, little by little, he rapes this nation, taking down our defenses, making new language for the Islamic extremists. …

President Obama uses his aggression and arrogance for his own agenda against the will of the American people, when he should be using his will and aggression against our enemies.

(Entire interview available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUg2fMcoi0&feature=youtube_gdata)

In keeping with his ongoing efforts to stake claim to the title of the Progressives’ Favorite Republican, Huckabee was quick to point out that where he disagrees with Voight is that he believes Barack Obama sincerely wants to do what is best for America. And, in a perverse sort of way, he’s right. Obama sincerely believes that socialism – more likely, communism – is what is best for America.

But what else would you expect of a man who doesn’t believe that the new healthcare bill should be repealed, and recently welcomed Michelle Obama as his featured guest, gushing all over her while the two of them pretended as though her passion in life is to fight childhood obesity. The only passion that Michelle Obama has with children is to indoctrinate them into thinking like good little socialists who will look to an all-powerful central government to take care of them.

So much for Huckabee … now let’s segue to Monday and The O’Reilly Factor, which is always a good bet if you’re in a masochistic mood. With great interest, I watched O’Reilly’s interview of Mitt Romney. Once again, Romney tried to defend Romneycare in Massachusetts, the forerunner of the totalitarian-implemented, economy-crushing Obamacare. I was truly embarrassed for the man.

Don’t get me wrong. Romney is not Mike Huckabee, who dreams of pulling together a coalition of evangelicals, disenchanted Democrats, and liberal-leaning independents as a way to sneak into the White House. Romney is basically a good man with a great deal of business acumen. And, by today’s standards, I guess you could call him a capitalist – meaning that he is a philosophically confused capitalist.

From whence came Romneycare. If the man would just came right out and say, as he kind of did with his change of heart on abortion, that he now understands why his disastrous healthcare creation was a mistake – and that’s why he is now committed to repealing Obamacare – many would forgive him. After all, everyone makes mistakes.

But Barackobitis – inflammation of that part of the brain that makes it possible for a person to admit to his mistakes – has clearly attacked Romney’s gray matter. One of his chief arguments in defending his indefensible Romneycare – that the federal government’s payment of 50 percent of Massachusetts’s healthcare program is just a matter of “redirecting funds” – was beyond the pale. It was the same old Republican mistake – an establishment blue suit saying that he’s proud that he prevented an increase in spending. An actual reduction in spending, of course, is never on the table.

After watching Huckabee and Romney, I’ve decided, in my typical thoughtful manner, to warn Republicans that in the event a presidential election takes place in 2012, they had better start looking for some new blood. Huckabee and Romney are more of the same – big-spending politicians who have dominated the Republican Party for decades.

One of the great features of capitalism is that it weeds out inefficient, outdated businesses, which makes room for efficient, modern enterprises. Ditto with politics. It’s time for the old-guard, business-as-usual Republicans to be weeded out by small-government advocates who have no interest in reaching out to progressives who want to continue the suicidal strategy of increasing the size and scope of government.

From where I sit at this point in time, the Republicans to whom the majority of Americans (read, tea-party people) can most relate to are Senator Jim DeMint, Michelle Bachman, and, of course, Ron Paul. But don’t be surprised if some fresh new faces appear on the scene between now and 2012. (Marco Rubio, Sarah Palin, and Bobby Jindal may or may not be serious contenders in 2016.)

And if the Republican establishment rejects those new faces, maybe the tea party will have no choice but to become the Tea Party – in which case the Republican Party will join the Whigs in the scrapheap of political history.

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As the attacks on the tea-party people by left-wing politicians, BHO’s inner circle of hatchet artists, and the cheerleading media continue unabated, it always catches my attention that very few people are willing to come right out and say that it is Der Fuhrbama himself who is calling the shots on all this.

Whenever something outrageous happens, everyone seems to go into a humoring mode as though BHO, of course, had nothing to do with it. We are supposed to believe that it’s just his overzealous supporters acting on their own.

You know, kind of like in the early stages of Watergate, when most people assumed that Richard Nixon wasn’t aware of the break-in at the Watergate Hotel. Ultimately, of course, everyone came to realize that not only was he aware of the break-in, he was the one who ordered it.

In BHO’s case, I am also reminded of how millions of people in the old Soviet Union believed that the atrocities carried out against them by the government were being done without Stalin’s consent or knowledge. On the contrary, many looked upon him as a saint, as was evidenced by pictures showing people weeping in the streets like children upon hearing of his death.

Have you ever noticed how the media loves to use terms like “the White House” or “the administration” when speaking of something that has negative overtones? Why don’t they just come out and say the words: Barack Hussein Obama? Nope, you can’t do that for fear of being labeled a hatemonger. Terms like White House and the administration are a way of tip-toeing around the truth.

Does anyone really believe that Eric Holder made the decision to try KSM and his cohorts in a civilian court on his own? Or that Rahm Emanuel’s threats to members of Congress to vote for Obama’s health-care bill were done without his knowledge? Let’s give BHO some credit here. He’s the man – the born-and-bred socialist chosen to carry out the Saul Alinsky plan from start to communism.

Above all, BHO is the driving force behind the plan to discredit and marginalize the tea-party people. I caught a few seconds of his nauseating interview with CBS lapdog Harry Smith, and I have to admit that it was a remarkable performance, even for him. It reminded me once again that BHO is not a pathological liar. He is a purposeful, well-thought-out liar.

The Clintons were extremely good at their craft, but even their own people (George Stephanopoulos, James Carville, Dick Morris, et al.) knew when they were lying. From all accounts, Clinton’s inner circle did a lot of chuckling, winking, and elbowing each other when the Clintons were performing.

As the late Don Hewitt, creator and long-time producer of 60 Minutes, once put it when the Clintons were on 60 Minutes during Bubba’s first run for the presidency: “We knew they were lying, they knew they were lying, and the public knew they were lying.”

I would say ditto with Barack Obama. When he does Harry Smith-type interviews (you know, the ones where he looks totally sincere and softly suggests that the tea-party movement is being egged on by a small group of radical conservatives), you and I know he’s lying, he knows he’s lying, and most of the public knows he’s lying. Is he as good as the Clintons at pulling it off? No. He’s much better. Make that much better. Sort of like comparing a major league superstar to a minor league all-star.

If you hadn’t already caught him in hundreds of lies, you’d swear that BHO is totally sincere and truthful when he speaks. And, as I have previously pointed out, what makes him so convincing is that he is soulless. From Stalin to Mao, from Castro to Ho Chi Minh, from Chavez to Obama, I believe that the reason left-wing fascists are able to do whatever it takes to achieve their objectives – from lying to genocide – is that they are devoid of souls. That’s because soullessness is a prerequisite to being a ruthless dictator.

After all, a soul can be a nuisance. It gets in the way of revolutions. It gets in the way of eliminating your perceived enemies. It gets in the way of remaking the world in one’s own egotistical image. It gets in the way of establishing one’s moral superiority in deciding who should get how much of the fruits of someone else’s labor.

That said, you can expect BHO ramp up his tea-party dismissal interviews with left-wing media lackeys as we move toward the scheduled elections in 2010. His belief that his powers of persuasion can win the day for Democrats who are on the verge of going down in flames is the one thing that could head off a phony state of emergency to postpone elections.

If so, he may just end up inheriting the title of Master of Miscalculation from our late friend Saddam, as I pointed out in my article ”Will BHO’s Secret Weapon Emerge?” It may sound a bit perverse, but this guy is actually fun to watch. We will never again see anyone with size XXXXXL cojones in the White House, so sit back and enjoy the show.

Of course, whether the final outcome is funny remains to be seen.

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Last week, I caught the tail end of a television interview with Obama supporter Annabel Park, founder of the Coffee Party USA. What little I heard of the interview sounded like it was the progressives’ answer to the tea-party movement. The party’s mission statement, as posted on its Web site, is as follows:

The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

The above is clearly a not-so-subtle attack on the tea-party people. While it is vague, it’s easy to spot its progressive tone when you break it down into its component parts.

• ”The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government.”
  

  This is code for “conservatives and libertarians should go along with Obama’s socialist agenda.” Personally, I don’t want to see “cooperation” in Washington. Like most Americans, I want to see government gridlock. Giving these scoundrels our money is one thing; having them use it to impose more laws on us is another.

• ”We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans.”

  Sorry, coffee people, but I’m not buying it. Government is the enemy of the people, because it violates the natural rights of its citizens. The Founding Fathers repeatedly warned us to distrust government. It is the very attitude of the Coffee Party people that has brought the U.S. to the verge of collapse and dictatorship.

  Regarding the expression of our “collective will,” as with the “common good,” there is no such thing. The government is an expression of a criminal class that increasingly violates our liberty. With some notable exceptions, politicians lie, steal, cheat, and deceive the public while enriching themselves at our expense.

  As to “participating in the democratic process,” the tea-party people have been doing just that, and the result has been nonstop verbal abuse from the president, progressives in Congress, and, above all, the cheer-leading media. Those in power are most decidedly
  against the democratic process, the essence of which is public demonstration and the expression of discontent with those in power.

• ”As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.”

  Hmm … I just can’t imagine which leaders they might be referring to when they allude to “work toward positive solutions.” (Hint: government takeover of health care.)

  As to “holding accountable those who obstruct them,” didn’t one of those “leaders who work toward positive solutions” once yell out to members of the opposing party, “If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.” Gosh, what a coincidence. Epithets such as “hold you accountable” and “call you out” are nothing more than threats from those who don’t like to hear opposing opinions.

In her television interview, Annabel Park said that she wants to see cooperation in government to “get things done for the common good.” Once someone uses an abstract phrase such as “the common good,” it automatically puts them in one of two categories: ignoramus or Marxist.

There is no such thing as the common good, because what is good for me may be bad for you, and vice versa. Civilized people work to improve their own well-being, and they do so while respecting the rights of others to do the same.

I don’t know whether BHO’s henchmen are behind the Coffee “movement” or not, but one thing is certain: The progressive power holders will give it their full support, as will their media pawns (ABC, CBS, NBC,
The New York Times, etc.).

The bottom line to the Coffee Party’s mission statement is this: Paint the tea-party people to be terrorists, fascists, racists, obstructionists … all the things BHO and his surrogates having been trying, unsuccessfully, to do for the past year.

My advice to the tea-party people is to ignore the Coffee Party phonies. They are not a real movement, thus they will always lack the one thing that the tea-party people have in abundance: passion. The tea-party movement is a true grass-roots movement whose only agenda is to remove the criminal class in Washington and work to elect some semi-honest politicians to office – then hold them accountable for defending the Constitution of the United States.

Isn’t it interesting that the Coffee Party does not so much as mention the Constitution in its mission statement? That’s because the chief purpose of the Constitution is to put restraints on government.

The Coffee Party people sound like Powellists (as in Colin Powell) to me. You know, “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”

Beware the Coffee Party, and don’t be surprised if you hear the Obamiosa continually referring to it in positive ways. After all, these are reasonable people who want to see “cooperation in government” and who threaten to “hold accountable those who obstruct leaders who work toward positive solutions.”

One final dead giveaway: On its Web site, the Coffee Party refers to “our Founding Fathers and Mothers.” Now that’s what you call politically correct, even if it rewrites history. No wonder they don’t mention the Constitution.

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In my article “Saying Yes to the Party of No,” I commented on how pleased I’ve been to see Glenn Beck talking about a subject I’ve been writing about since the late seventies: a government-declared state of emergency leading to a “temporary” dictatorship.

I have long believed that the mathematics of an insatiable entitlement society in the U.S. guarantees a runaway inflation, which likely would be followed by anarchy and chaos – a perfect excuse for government to resort to strong-armed totalitarian measures to “restore order.” My model has always been Germany’s Weimar Republic in the 1920s, where runaway inflation brought Adolf Hitler to power.

I originally believed that the runaway-inflation scenario in the U.S. would play out in the early 1980s, but a combination of Ronald Reagan and an explosion in computers and electronic technology made possible by the remnants of our capitalist system headed it off.

Nevertheless, the threat of a runaway inflation has continued to increase over the years, even while our false-prosperity economy was booming. That’s because the underlying causes (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, insane union and government-employee wages and benefits, Social Security, Medicare, etc.) of our sick economy have never been addressed.

Unemployment is just a symptom; the disease is entitlements. Throughout the false-prosperity years, Social Security did not go away. It got bigger. Medicare did not go away. It got bigger. Virtually no other benefits went away. They only got bigger. So the underlying problem of entitlements not only has remained, but continued to grow.

The big news now is that Social Security may “go broke” this year instead of in 2017, which was originally projected. Really? And here I thought it’s been broke for decades. Ditto with Medicare. These programs were long ago Madoffized. Almost from the start, government has simply taken in new money from “investors” (read, taxpayers) and handed it over to those on the entitlements side of the fence – with a large chunk of the largesse being skimmed off the top for government employees who administer these programs (and vote for those whom they believe are most likely to safeguard their jobs).

All it took to bring things to a head was a shameful spending spree by a progressive Republican president and a Republican Congress, followed by the ascent of a committed Marxist to the presidency (along with a cooperative majority in Congress).

Now, throw on top of all that a huge new tax-and-spending bill (euphemistically referred to as “health-care legislation”), and the end result seems assured. However, with the government’s power to tax, print, and borrow, no one knows how long it will be before the inevitable runaway inflation sets in.

But if BHO truly has his mind set on establishing a dictatorship – and it is my personal belief that he does – it’s too risky for him to wait for a runaway inflation as an excuse to call a state of emergency. He knows that as long as there is a semblance of a free market in place, producers will continue to push back against the economy-killing effects of his policies.

Thus, he needs another excuse to declare a state of emergency, and over the past year I’ve given a lot of thought to what that excuse might be. In previous articles, I’ve mentioned a nuke exchange between Iran and Israel as one possibility. Another is civil unrest due to unemployment rates that could reach 25 percent or more in the not-too-distant future.

These and others still remain possibilities, but last week Glenn Beck came up with one that may be even more likely. Beck believes that Obama will continue to keep the accelerator pressed to the floor – amnesty for illegal immigrants, a cap-and-trade bill that will eliminate the U.S. as a global business competitor, and more – thus enraging an already angry public to the point of revolution.

In other words, purposely foment “civil unrest” rather than wait for something like unemployment or runaway inflation to make it happen. As Beck puts it, just continue to poke people in the eye, then use their predictable and justifiable backlash as an excuse to establish dictatorial powers.

I thought about this issue while attending the recent tea party outside the Capitol Building in Washington. As I crossed Independence Avenue, I noted a somber-looking guard holding a Rambo-style weapon in his hands. I have no idea what it was, but there’s no question in my mind that just one pull of the trigger could have rearranged the body parts of a large number of tea-party people.

The totally peaceful gathering – repeat, totally peaceful – was infested with heavily armed police, but one, in particular, was especially ominous. As the tea partiers chanted “Kill the Bill” on the east side of the Capitol Building, a uniformed, lone figure stood at the top of the steep flight of stairs on the House side of the structure, automatic weapon at the ready, gazing down over the crowd. Sun glasses and all, he reminded me of the “boss man” of Cool Hand Luke’s chain gang.

It gave me the eerie feeling that I was in a banana republic. Had anyone dared to take things beyond mere chanting, there’s no doubt in my mind that it would have become a scene right out of Caracas. All that was missing was Sean Penn.

Yep, I believe Glenn Beck might be on to something. But if the American public refuses to take the bait and doesn’t resort to violence, BHO will have to go to Plan B to have an excuse to declare a state of emergency.

Having said all this, don’t despair. No one, including myself, can predict the future with certainty. In a rapidly changing world, nothing is certain. Which is why I don’t make predictions; I just lay odds. And here’s my odds based on what I know and see today:

• The chances of a declared state of emergency and ensuing dictatorship prior to the 2010 elections: 25%

• The chances of a declared state of emergency and ensuing dictatorship prior to the 2012 elections: 50%

• The chances of the U.S. dollar becoming worthless within three years: 25%

• The chances of the U.S. dollar becoming worthless within ten years: 90%

• The chances of the Republicans cutting back on major entitlements if they regain power in the 2010 elections: Zero

• The chances of the Republicans cutting back on major entitlements if they win the presidency and an overwhelming majority in Congress in 2012: 5%

• The chances of the so-called tea-party people (i.e., everyday Americans who believe in liberty) winning out over the long haul: Hmm … let me procrastinate on that one a bit before I lay odds.

Of course, I could be wrong about all this … but what if I’m right?

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Millions of people are convinced that the implementation of Congress’s new People-Control Bill (a.k.a. as Obamacare) is, of and by itself, the death of liberty in the United States. There’s no question that this draconian measure is the most anti-freedom, unconstitutional, immoral piece of legislation ever “passed” by Congress, but it would be a mistake to focus on it to the exclusion of everything else.

In truth, Obamacare is just one part of the tyranny wrecking ball that clobbers Americans on a daily basis. What I am referring to is the “progressive” notion that elected politicians – not to mention non-elected bureaucrats – have the authority to grant, as well as take away, individual rights.

Two of Ron Paul’s “Six Forgotten Principles of Freedom” spell it out clearly:

1. The justification for the existence of government is to protect the liberty of individuals, not to redistribute wealth or pass out special privileges.

2. People’s lives and actions are their own responsibility, not the government’s.

In plain terms, people have a natural right to be free to make personal choices about their own lives, their own bodies, and their own property. This simple truth is commonly referred to as “Natural Law.” It can also be thought of as the Law of Nonaggression.

If one believes that it is a violation of an individual’s natural right to force him to do something that he does not want to do (e.g., give up any part of his wealth or property to others) or prevent him from doing something that he does want to do (so long his actions do not harm anyone else), then government aggression can never be morally justified. In a society of moral people, the Law of Nonaggression would be the only law that would be needed.

Where confusion comes about – and trouble sets in – is in the progressive’s perversion of a trait known as compassion. Compassion is a unique human trait. Contrary to what some animal lovers would like to believe, animals, in the strictest sense of the word, do not have the capacity to be compassionate. Only human beings can feel compassion, and they can feel it for both people and animals.

Which, of course, is a good thing. It’s why private charity thrives in America, notwithstanding the fact that the government forces individuals to hand over a substantial portion of their earnings to fund immoral government activities. Compassion is about charity, and charity is about each individual giving not according to his ability, but according to his desire – to those whom he deems to be in need and worthy of his charity. CC = compassion and charity. Got it?

The progressive, however, does not get it. He severs the relationship between compassion and charity and instead links compassion with aggression – i.e., the use of force. And while it may seem self-evident that compassion and aggression contradict one another, thanks to the emotion of guilt, this combo is an easy sell even to those who possess a basic belief in individual sovereignty.

After all, how can a person not be in favor of taking wealth by force when millions are unemployed … homeless … in need of medical treatment … lacking money for education … the list is endless, because human desires/needs are endless. But a person would have to be omniscient, not to mention divinely moral, to know which needs of which people are superior to the rights of other individuals to keep what is theirs.

The fact that 35 percent of Americans favor government-run health care is irrelevant. Lots of people want lots of free stuff. That’s a given. But to take money by force in order to give them the free stuff they desire is unconstitutional – and, more important, immoral.

Since the government does not create wealth of its own, the only way it can “help” people – whether it be to give them unemployment benefits, health care, or any other commodity – is to commit aggression against others and simply use force to take the resources it needs.

If we are to steer the U.S.A. Titanic away from the gigantic financial iceberg that lies just ahead, the entire concept of entitlements - of any and all kinds – must be rejected by a majority of Americans. The notion that anyone has a right to anything – other that what others are willing to pay him in a free market – is progressive nonsense.

That includes such sacred cows as Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits. Liberty-minded folks must not allow themselves to fall into the compassion trap that results in a tied tongue. I have observed a number of conservatives squirming for an answer when asked if they are not concerned about people with pre-existing conditions that have no health care. Of course they are concerned, as am I and most other people. But the solution is not to destroy our current health-care system and make everyone equally miserable.

If insurance companies are forced to insure people with pre-existing conditions, they will have to raise everyone else’s rates dramatically, which is the equivalent of a transfer-of-wealth program. If people refuse to pay those increased rates, their insurance companies will go out of business. Presto: Government achieves full control of health care.

On the other hand, if the government prevents insurance companies from raising their rates so they can afford to cover people with pre-existing conditions, those companies will go out of business because they will quickly incur unsustainable losses. Presto: Government achieves full control of health care.

Get the picture?

The solution to medical care for people with pre-existing medical conditions – and people who, for one reason or another, can’t afford medical insurance - is private charity. Private charity always works; government coercion never works (except for the politicians who increase their power as a result of it).

The irony is that people who are against Obamacare have argued that one of its worst features is that it cuts Medicare by $500 billion. Yet, Medicare is government-run health care, thus it is both unconstitutional and immoral in itself and outside of government’s restricted powers. (As always, I must add that Medicare should be phased out over a period of decades in order to avoid undue pain to elderly folks who have come to depend on it.)

As time goes on, progressives will increasingly argue that If government is forced out of the health-care business, those who can’t afford medical insurance will be left to die. No one wants to see anyone die unnecessarily. But if progressives are as concerned about such people as they claim to be, there should be no problem. After all, in a free society they would be free to lead the way when it comes to contributing time and money to set up and fund private charities to provide for those whom they believe are in need of free health care.

Only a Marxist/communist/progressive would even attempt to concoct a justifiable reason why the use of force is morally superior to charity. The idea that compassion justifies aggression is a perversity that must be exposed for what it is: an excuse for government to increase its power over people. Compassion, on the other hand, leads quite naturally to charity, without government involvement. Nothing whatsoever to get tongue-tied about.

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When you’re in a seemingly impossible situation, one of the most important but least understood tools you can employ to turn things around is detachment. There are many things from which you can detach yourself, and one of the most important is the habit of judging people, actions, and circumstances as being right or wrong, good or bad.

As Deepak Chopra says in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, when you are constantly classifying, labeling, and evaluating, you “create a lot of turbulence in your internal dialogue.” The more internal bickering that takes place, the less time and room (in your mind) you have for constructive thinking.

Worry, irrelevant thoughts, and fears only add to this internal bickering. All of these are abstracts from which you should make a conscious effort to detach yourself. Even more important is the necessity to detach yourself from needing the approval of others. When you are attached to peer approval, you tend to make bad decisions.

Then there is the pain and discomfort of your present situation. The more you struggle against the unpleasant circumstances of the moment, the more time and energy you waste. It’s okay to want things to get better down the road, but don’t waste time and energy wishing things were different than they are right now.

Accepting your present situation means detaching yourself from the pain it is causing you. Philosophically, you should learn to accept pain as a normal part of life. Which means, paradoxically, that the best way to eliminate pain is to not try to eliminate it. The more you fight pain, the more it is likely to persist.

Above all, learn to detach yourself from specific results. Practice the art of being flexible. Understand that circumstances constantly change and that things rarely work out precisely as planned. The results you end up with may be much different from the results you were after, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be less satisfying. If you are too attached to a specific result, it shuts down your creativity.

Your mind-set should be: “I won’t die if things don’t work out as planned, so I’ll just step back and let the Cosmic Ether work things out.” As with peer approval, when you are too attached to a specific result, you have a tendency to force decisions, and forced decisions are most often bad decisions.

All this doesn’t mean you should permanently resign yourself to the circumstances of your currently bad situation. Nor does it mean that you should give up your desire or intention for a specific result. What you should give up is your attachment to that result. Or, as Chopra puts it, you should “accept the present and intend the future.”

When you become adept at detachment – from pain, from evaluating and classifying everything that crosses your path, from precise results – it gives you the time, energy, and mental clarity to focus on the single most important activity for overcoming an impossibly bad situation: exploiting opportunities.

What opportunities? The opportunities that are part and parcel of every “impossible” situation. Based on personal experience, I am convinced that the greatest opportunities lie in the eye of the storm – at the very center of your worst problems.

Use your will to detach yourself from your impossible situation and, instead, spend your time cultivating the opportunities it has brought into your life – keeping in mind that such opportunities may be heavily camouflaged.

Thus, achieving sainthood is not the motivation for becoming detached. The only sound motivation for becoming detached is rational self-interest – the realization that if you keep your mind as clear as possible, you will have more time and clarity to concentrate on exploiting new opportunities.

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Lindsey is at it again. Some people enjoy golfing. Others find their greatest pleasure in reading. And, of course, millions of people are content just to anesthetize themselves with junk TV. To each his own — so long as a person doesn’t violate anyone’s rights in doing his thing.

Unfortunately for Americans, Lindsey Graham’s thing is to reach across the aisle to his progressive friends and promote legislation that violates the rights of his employers (i.e., you and me). To parody Ursula the witch in the Disney classic The Little Mermaid, it’s what he lives for.

So, what kind of mischief is Left-Leaning Lindsey up to this time? No biggie. He and pal Chucky Schumer just want to make law-abiding citizens carry a national ID card. Of course, the government always has a seemingly legitimate excuse for every act of aggression it commits against its citizens. In this case, the purported purpose is to make it harder for employers to hire illegal aliens.

I’ll tell you what, Lindsey. If you really want to stop illegal immigration, just fine employers $25,000 for every illegal alien they knowingly hire. With such a policy in place, illegal-alien jobs would dry up, say … oh … in a couple of weeks — and it wouldn’t violate our rights.

Graham argues that we already have Social Security cards and that the new ID card would be the same thing, only better, because it would be tamperproof. Glad you mentioned that, Lindsey, because it’s an old left-wing trick that should be exposed: “We’ve already got this or that law in place, so there’s no reason not to take it a step further.”

This kind of progressive persuasion is precisely how the ball keeps getting moved to the left, regardless of which party is in power. I have a better idea: Let’s do away with Social Security cards instead — and phase out Social Security (over about 40 years, to keep the pain on older folks to a minimum) along with it.

It’s a scary day when Robert Ringer agrees with the ACLU, but the liberal lawyers are right on this one. A national ID card is a good idea only for a government that is intent on increasing its power over its civilian herd. But for the herd, it’s a blatant invasion of privacy.

It’s somewhat analogous to “gun control.” It’s a phony argument to use criminals as an excuse to take guns away from non-criminals. Ditto with government-run health care. If you must use force to get X millions of people covered who don’t have health insurance, then steal enough money from us just to cover them. But, for crying out loud, don’t touch our health insurance.

As a public service, I will continue to warn weak-kneed Republicans: If free elections are held in 2010, you will probably regain the House and Senate. And if you still don’t understand what the tea-party movement is all about — if you continue to vote for more government intrusion and more government spending — you will cease to exist as a party by 2012. Which will allow Chairman Obama to finish the job he started without opposition.

A couple of tea-party-sounding candidates had better come to the fore in the Republican Party very soon, because right now the presidential choices don’t look much better than Mush McCain. Only a few Republicans seem to fit the tea-party mold – e.g., Ron Paul and Jim DeMint, and neither of them have confirmed that they’re going to run.

The litmus test for would-be candidates remains the same: Do you promise to vote to repeal all unconstitutional legislation that is now on the books, starting with health care and cap and trade, should those two monstrosities become law? If not, look for a Tea Party (upper case T and P) to come into existence as America’s last hope.

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After more than a year of lies, deception, corruption, heavy-handed tactics, bribes, threats, bailouts for privileged corporations, government takeover of two of the three largest automakers, and nonstop attempts to force government-controlled health care on people who don’t want it - among other abominable actions – The Big Question about the Duplicitous Despot has become: “Do you believe Barack Obama is a socialist?”

Gosh, that’s a real toughie. You’ll have to give me a couple of seconds to think about it. Whenever I hear this question posed on television, I wonder to myself, “Are you asking if the person thinks he’s a socialist as opposed to a communist? You certainly couldn’t be asking whether he’s a socialist or just a misguided moderate.” Please, let’s get real here.

I would say that the squirming in response to this absurd question would be humorous if it did not have such far-reaching implications. When confronted with The Big Question, it’s fascinating to watch people become tongue-tied and incapable of uttering a straightforward response.

As is only fitting, Mush McCain’s recent reaction The Big Question reinforces his claim to the title of Liberal Democrats’ Favorite Republican. With that sly little grin and “Aw shucks” chuckle of his, McCain coyly muttered : “That’s for others to decide.”

Huh? You wanted to be president of the United States, and you want to leave it up to others to decide? Have you no thoughts of your own? Your hero, Teddy Roosevelt, would be very disappointed in your lack of courage. As one of the elder statesmen of the Republican Party, when someone asks for your opinion, for goodness sakes, man, speak up and tell them what you think.

The phenomenon of conservative politicians and media types becoming tongue-tied over an easy-pitch question like this has broader implications than most people might suspect. What it demonstrates is (1) how intimidating the far-left has become over the years and (2) how lacking in courage and candor so-called conservative politicians and media pundits are.

If a conservative politician doesn’t have the courage and honesty to define what his opponent stands for, how can anyone possibly believe that he’ll fight to overturn that opponent’s socialist policies? It’s not surprising, then, that so many conservative politicians repeatedly say things like, “We all agree that health-care reform is needed” or, worse, “Let’s slow down and work on fixing health care one step at a time.”

Once and for all, let’s get this straight: Everyone doesn’t agree that health-care reform is needed – unless by reform one means getting the government totally out of the health-care business. Which, of course, would include the removal of state borders as a barrier to free competition.

The only crisis in health care is government’s current involvement. Instead of giving government more power, we need to take away the unconstitutional powers it has already grabbed for itself.

When conservative politicians talk about solving a nonexistent problem one step at a time, it’s code for, “We’ll continue to move the marker to the left. We just want to do it more slowly than the progressives.”

Hey, if your intention is to continue to aid the progressives’ hundred-year march to fundamentally change the face of America, why drag things out? If socialism is a good thing, let’s bring it on quickly. I can’t wait to enjoy the benefits.

I rarely compliment BHO, but I’m obliged to say that I respect him for his unwavering Marxist beliefs. His nonstop lying about those beliefs should not be held against him. It’s just part of the Marx-Lenin-Alinsky “ends-justifies-the-means” philosophy of bringing about the loss of liberty that all of them sincerely believed was a moral objective.

I know, I know … it sounds crazy. But that’s what they truly believed, and, giving BHO his due credit, I have no doubts that he, too, sincerely believes this stuff. Even with his college papers sealed, the man’s public statements (and his own books) make it clear that he has been consistent in his Marxist beliefs. You don’t hang out with Marxist professors in college if you’re a believer in freedom and free markets and love the American way of life.

So, yes, I’m sticking up for the Duplicitous Despot: He is consistent. When he told Joe the Plumber that he thought the wealth should be “spread around” more, he was merely echoing his on-record complaints that the Constitution doesn’t provide for “redistributive change.”

I mean, how dumb could the Founding Fathers have been not to have thought about redistribution of the wealth? Isn’t that what liberty is all about? Where’s the “social justice?” Where’s the “shared prosperity?” And how about “the common good.” Don’t these phrases just make your leg want to tingle?

If you’re perplexed as to how BHO can still have a 44 percent approval rating after the most cataclysmic one year in office for a president, the answer lies in the same mind-set that causes media pundits to ask, “Do you believe Barack Obama is a socialist?” Both items underscore the reality that people do not love truth; instead, they try to make true that which they love.

My estimate is that about 30 percent of the population wants the U.S to be completely transformed into a socialist country, and that’s fine. They’re honest about it, so they’re easy to identify as the enemy. In the words of John Stossel, they like free stuff! I get it. I get it.

But the other 15 percent or so who still view BHO favorably are simply self-delusive folks who refuse to let go of their fairy tale that a black family in the White House is, of and by itself, a great thing for America. That kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Geraldine Ferraro had it right when she opined that BHO never would have been in a position to run for president had he not been black. More than anything else, white guilt is what landed him in the White House.

No, of and by itself, a black family in the White House is not a great thing. What would be great is to have a family – black … or white … or Asian … or Latino – in the White House that believes in freedom, free enterprise, and Western values. And that is not the family that now resides there.

It’s really not that hard to answer The Big Question once you get the hang of it. All together now … one, two, three: SOCIALIST!

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I had a long visit a few days ago with a Republican Congressman, who assured me that even if the Republicans win back both the House and Senate in 2010, government spending will continue unabated. He agreed with me that, with few exceptions, Republicans are as lacking in courage as Democrats.

But he also made one other point that I thought was significant. While BHO and a handful of far-left Congresspersons are driven by ideology and really do want to see the U.S. transformed into a socialist (if not communist) state (apologies to Bill O’Reilly, who “doesn’t believe for a second that Barack Obama doesn’t have the best of intentions for his country”), most are simply ignorant.

That’s right, even though they are involved in government and economic issues every day, they simply do not have an in-depth understanding of what they are doing. It’s so easy to keep saying yes … Yes … YES to spending programs without worrying about how the bill will ultimately be paid.

What does this all mean? That the runaway inflation scenario I’ve been predicting for more than thirty years is now a certainty. The game is over. Our unfunded liabilities and debt now total twice the amount of wealth of all individuals and corporations in the U.S. And BHO and his socialist allies in Congress are just getting started!

The days of being able to borrow limitless sums of money will soon be behind us. And even the most ardent socialist knows that there’s a limit to how much you can raise taxes. If you raise taxes too much, the economy ultimately shuts down completely.

Thus, printing worthless dollars is the only “solution.” The practice of indiscriminately increasing the supply of money gives politicians the ability to have their cake and eat it too. They know that the surest way to be kicked out of office is to vote for cutting back on sacred-cow government handouts like Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits.

To the rescue: Inflation! Inflation provides politicians with a way out. As most everyone serious enough to be reading this article knows, inflation is a hidden tax. By printing up enough “money” to cover the remainder of each year’s deficit, politicians get off the hook, because they don’t have to vote for tax increases.

Once rampant inflation hits the U.S., people will see prices rising rapidly as a result of fiat-money creation, but most will have no understanding as to the cause. As a result, they will be all too willing to take up the government’s battle cry to “fight inflation.”

And how do you fight inflation? By pointing a guilty finger at all the wrong parties, of course. Which brings about proletariat reactions like, “Gol’ darn it, Maude. Them thar big corporate guys is stealin’ us blind. That O’Reilly feller’s been right all along about them oil dudes makin’ obscene profits.”

When Congress accuses others of causing inflation, it’s tantamount to a bank robber shouting to a bunch of depositors, “The culprits went thataway! Let’s catch ‘em and string ‘em up!”

The truth of the matter is that for many years we have been experiencing what I would call an “invisible depression,” a depression camouflaged by easy credit. But it’s becoming harder and harder to hide the truth. As I said at the outset of this article, even if Republicans take back both houses of Congress in 2010, out-of-control spending is almost certain to continue.

Few if any politicians have the courage to allow market forces to prevail, because they know it would cause a deflationary depression much worse than that of the 1930s. Prices would plummet, and the living standards of most people would dramatically decrease. Which leaves an inflationary depression as the only option.

The problem is that in a runaway inflation scenario, commercial transactions become almost impossible to engage in, because people will not accept paper money in exchange for their goods and services. And because very few people understand the real cause of their personal financial problems, the move toward a dictatorship begins to look appealing to them. (Adolf Hitler’s rise to power is a charming little example of this.)

Someday, I might be tempted to write about some really depressing realities of our suicidal nation-state. Today, however, I’m on a high, so I think I’ll just leave it at that and end on a positive note: Isn’t it great that you and I are alive? Hmmm … actually, let me think about that one. I don’t want to be accused of jumping to conclusions.

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You will recall that in my article “Will BHO’s Secret Weapon Emerge?”, I warned that as the Duplicitous Despot’s popularity continues to sink, his frantic PR crew might try to push his wife front and center because of her high poll numbers.

I also said that she would be given strict instructions to suppress the Angela Davis rhetoric and play the Hillary Makeover Card … no more talk about stealing pie from producers, about America’s being a downright mean country, or about never having been proud of her country before it elected her socialist husband to office.

Sure enough, leave it to “conservative” Mike Huckabee to give her her first opportunity to come into (what the White House considers to be) enemy territory and put on a performance to behold. Of course, there had to be an excuse for the interview, so, how about childhood obesity? The problem of childhood obesity is an important one, to be sure, but if you believe that it was Michelle Obama’s real reason for doing the Huckabee interview … well, no comment.

Not only did Huckabee interview the extreme makeover version of Michelle Obama, he lobbed her fluffy set-up questions specifically aimed at giving her the opportunity to override just about every angry, anti-American statement she’s made in the past.

One of Michelle Obama’s more infamous past statements was that America is a country that is “just downright mean.” A mere slip of the tongue, right? Enter Mike Huckabee, who lobbed her a warm-and-fuzzy pitch that gave her the opportunity to say that America is “a really cool country with some really great people all over the place.” (Particularly the ones who cling to their guns and bibles, right?)

Angela … er, Michelle … then went on to say, “It’s decent, it’s kind. I love my country.” You could just hear Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky in their graves: “Heh … heh … heh.”

Arrgh! It was enough to make a refined person lose his lobster and caviar. Interesting how the White House attack team has made it clear they don’t consider Fox News to be a legitimate news source – even trying to bar Fox reporters from a recent press gathering at the White House – yet Michelle Obama appears for a forty-five-minute interview on the very same “non-news” channel!

Thanks to Mike Huckabee, you can consider the newer, slicker, even more shameless BHO public relations strategy to now be officially underway. Huckabee is just the first in line to be used as a dupe to implement the Obama’s “We love America” PR campaign.

As the Obamapression worsens – and it will – you can expect to see Mike Huckabee interview the Master of Misdireciton himself … you now, the guy who’s practically made a career out of badmouthing Fox News. It will be a love fest to behold.

But this article isn’t about Michelle or Barack Obama. All but the terminally anesthetized know full well what they really believe in. And in Michelle Makeover’s case, unlike hubby, her college papers aren’t sealed. No, this article is about Mike Huckabee, who, whether or not he knows it, dropped out of the running last  weekend for the Republican presidential nomination.

I’ve been trying to get a handle on Huckabee for a long time, and now I think I’m just about there. His Slick Willie cleverness makes him hard to pin down, but his interview with Michelle Obama connected a lot of the dots for me.

In my August 14, 2009 article “The Huckabee Theory” I speculated that Mike Huckabee could possibly get the Republican nomination, and even win the presidency, without the support of the Republican Party’s conservative base, if he could put together a coalition of evangelicals and disenfranchised independents and liberal Democrats.

Today, I’m here to tell you to forget about that theory. It won’t happen. By interviewing Michelle Obama on his show – apparently without concern for Rush Limbaugh’s recent chest pains – he lost any chance he may have had for gaining the Republican nomination.

Huckabee, who has thrived on having hard-left guests on his show, may have had a clever plan. But, to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, the problem with clever people is that there is a tendency to try to continue to be clever long past the point where what they have to lose is much greater than what they have to gain.

What is especially irritating to conservatives is the juxtaposition of Huckabee’s lovey-dovey interview with Michelle Obama and the ambush he pulled on Ann Coulter when she, too, was a guest on his show. The latter interview brought out into the open an underlying mean streak in the man. The trap he set for Coulter was childish and petty, to put it mildly. Mike Huckabee does not like to be challenged, and Ann, rightly so, has pointed out his liberal tendencies on more than one occasion.

The Huckabee mean streak also came through unpolished in his book Do the Right Thing, when he made it clear that he hated two things, in particular: Mitt Romney and libertarians. He also showed his populist underpinnings by constantly alluding to his preference for “the Walmart crowd,” as though shopping at Walmart somehow made one morally superior.

But even after reading his book, I was willing to give Mike Huckabee the benefit of the doubt. However, since he got his own TV show, something just didn’t seem right. His conservative positions sounded good, but his endless stream of left-wing guests – not to mention his attack on Ann Coulter – didn’t match up with his conservative proclamations. And, of course, his  populism continues to permeate the air on each show.

After watching most of the outrageous Michelle Obama interview, I have concluded that only one of three things could have prompted Mike Huckabee to play the role of lackey for the White House. (1) He’s either stupid, (2) he suffers from Obama Arrogance Inflammation (meaning that he believes he is so loved that he can get away with anything), or (3) he has decided to settle for being rich and famous and not run for president.

Since I see him as a man with a trip-hammer mind, number one is not likely. But if he does still believe he has a chance to win the nomination, then I have to assume that Obama Arrogance Inflammation has caused him to be delusional. No, my guess is that he has decided to enjoy his newfound fame and fortune and forget about running for president.

Conservatives will never forgive Mike Huckabee for last week’s slobbering interview with someone who has wanted to remake America into a socialist country since since she was a very young woman. And to rub insult into injury, Huckabee turned right around on Geraldo’s show and attacked CPAC, of all things, as being too extreme for him (which, he said, is why he didn’t attend the CPAC convention). That certainly had to be his death knell with the Republican Party.

But maybe Mike Huckabee really does believe that the Republican Party is still the party of John McCain and Lindsay Graham progressives. I hope so, because if he enters the race and participates in the 2012 primary debates (if there actually are debates), it will make for great theater – perhaps the entertainment treat of the decade. With the Huckster and Mitt on the same stage, it could even surpass the Thrilla in Manilla.

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There is much speculation that if the Republicans meet with BHO and his comrades to discuss health care, they will be walking into a trap. They are concerned that if they don’t go along with his idea to force socialized medicine on Americans that the Dems will pound away at the theme that the Republicans are “the party of no.”

And they’re right, they will. But rather than fearing the label, the Republicans should embrace it. If the Republican Party intends to get back to its pro-Constitution, free-market, small-government, low-spending roots, it should be proud to be called the party of no.

The White House says that its main problem during BHO’s first year in office is that it has not been good enough at getting its message across. Really? Trust me, White House, you’ve been quite good at getting your message across. So good that a majority of the populace now clearly understands that you want to transform America into a socialist – perhaps even a communist – nation.

The people who have to do better at getting their message across are the Republicans. They should have the courage to say boldly and unequivocally, “That’s correct. We are the party of no, and we’re proud of it. No to socialized medicine … no to more bailouts … no to government taking over private companies … no to radicals being appointed to high positions by the president … no to more government spending … no to government involvement in the Internet … no to government snooping on private citizens … no, no, no.”

In addition, they should invite the progressives in their own party to become Democrats. Republicans need to clear their tent in order to make room for the tea-party people, who are far more popular than either of the major parties. Free political advice: If you want to get elected, listen to what the tea-party people are saying. And what they’re saying is: No!

Republicans do not need to come up with another version of “health-care reform.” What they need is to insist that the government get completely out of the health-care business. And they can start that process by proposing that all regulations preventing the purchase of health care across state lines be abolished. The majority of Americans don’t want new laws; they want most of the laws that are now on the books rescinded or repealed.

Since BHO’s favorability rating still hovers close to 50 percent, one has to assume that those who give him a favorable rating are either totally uninformed or are hard-core socialists. My guess is that the latter group comprises somewhere between 25 to 30 percent of Americans. Admittedly, that’s a rather depressing figure, but, thankfully, it’s still a minority.

The good news is that all hell is breaking loose around the media-perpetrated lie known as “Barack Hussein Obama”: Appointees who are communists, who look to Mao for inspiration, and who want to sterilize people against their will … so-called stimulus bills that succeed only in stimulating unemployment … terrorists being Mirandized and afforded the same rights as U.S. citizens … an in-your-face determination to foist some form of government-controlled health care and cap and trade legislation on the American people against their will … nonstop threats and ridicule aimed at detractors … the list is endless.

On top of all this, Democrats are dropping out of their upcoming Congressional races, including the mother of all dropouts, Evan Bayh (the fifth Democratic senator to make such an announcement). Though he tried to sugarcoat his decision, Bayh’s comments made it clear that he believes BHO and his progressive allies in Congress are not kosher, to say the least.

I cannot tell you how pleased I’ve been to see Glenn Beck’s progression over the past year. He’s finally talking about a subject I have been writing about since before the Duplicitous Despot even took office: state of emergency. He’s even starting to utter the dreaded “D” word – dictatorship.

I’m not a conspiracy type guy, but I do know that far-left radicals have made it clear since at least the days of Vladimir Lenin that anything – including, and especially, lying – is justified in the pursuit of ends that they deem to be desirable. Which is why I keep warning readers to be on the lookout for an event that would justify a phony state of emergency.

There’s no way to predict what that event might be, because the possibilities are endless. Remember, the government used a hurricane – Katrina – to justify taking guns away from law-abiding citizens. What in the name of hell does a hurricane have to do with a law-abiding citizen owning a gun, other than the fact that his need to protect himself and his family is greater if thugs are roaming the streets, looting and pillaging?

The Katrina excuse was phony, as will be the excuse for a national state of emergency, should it ever happen. For example, if Iran nukes Israel, and Israel nukes Iran in return, that could easily be used as a justification for declaring a state of emergency in the U.S. and suspending the 2010 elections. It would, of course, be a totally unjustifiable excuse, but Der Fuhrbama and his fascists cohorts would not hesitate to use it – as always, accompanied by an endless stream of lies (told with a straight face, of course) – to avoid becoming the minority in the House and Senate.

Numerous e-mails from Voice of Sanity readers make it clear that neither Beck nor I are the only ones who are concerned about a state of emergency being declared. One such e-mail, from Suzanne P., reads:

”I’m sorry to say that only deep economic pain will convince America that the socialists in the Democratic party have no concern for the people but are only out to get and keep power for themselves. Their disdain for the Constitution is terrifying. I fear that another civil war is the only way to reclaim our liberty.”

Suzanne expressed my sentiments precisely. I am becoming more and more concerned that another civil war is on the horizon for the United States of America. It’s time for those who believe in freedom to come to grips with the reality that the divide between liberty and tyranny is irreconcilable.

The good guys have the numbers (~70-30), but the bad guys have the military. Which means that our freedom may boil down to whether or not the military will move against American citizens when ordered to do so or turn on their socialist commander in chief.

In a nutshell: Don’t be among the hopelessly naïve. Stay alert and be prepared – for anything. Make that anything.

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I recently read a fascinating book about chaos theory — Chaos, by James Gleick. Oversimplified, chaos theory is about the underlying chaos that exists in seemingly orderly systems.

The so-called butterfly effect comes into play here, because a small change in initial conditions can dramatically change the long-term behavior of a “system.” A system, of course, can be just about anything — the weather, a mathematical formula, a sporting event, even a student’s school career.

Of course, the ultimate chaos-versus-order showcase is the universe itself. A majority of scientists believe that the universe began about 14 billion years ago with the unleashing of the so-called Big Bang. That’s serious chaos. But what’s puzzling to many of them is that the formation of the substantive universe may not be as random as once thought. For example, there appear to be precise patterns (i.e., order) to the galaxies.

Perhaps the rings of Saturn are the best cosmic example for us Earthlings to study when it comes to chaos versus order. When you look at a photo of Saturn, its rings are so smooth they appear to have been painted by an artist.

Yet at the local level, randomness and disorder prevail in the rings, with billions of small particles of ice, mixed with dust and other chemicals, circling the planet in their own orbits. They range in size from microns to meters. In fact, on closer inspection, gaps can be found in the rings, and there are even two moons embedded in them.

So, in the case of the rings of Saturn, what appears to be perfect order from a distance is actually quite chaotic. What we see at a distance are patterns in the form of smooth, concentric rings, but this is a deception caused by distance.

The same is true here on Earth. No matter how orderly something may appear to be, there is always chaos at the local level. For example, a brick wall looks calm and steady, but on a micro level, there is disorder. Neutrons and protons are circling the nucleus of every atom in every brick, and the atoms themselves are vibrating wildly.

On a macro level, man has harnessed the energy of those atoms by rearranging them first into bricks and then into a brick wall. And now that I think about it, that’s pretty much what man does for a living; i.e., he brings order from chaos by rearranging atoms. Will Durant defined human progress as “increasing control of the environment by life … the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form or will.”

So, it appears that man’s purpose — at least his nonspiritual purpose — is to bring order from chaos. We’ve done a pretty good job of this over the past 8,000 years or so, but we should never forget that underlying our best-laid plans is utter chaos.

Seismic turmoil abounds below our orderly skyscrapers. The next Katrina lies quietly in wait ready to wreak havoc on some unsuspecting city. Transmutating killer viruses, invisible to the naked eye, are ready to thrust the next HIV into our lives.

We organize governments to bring order to society, but, underneath it all, what we really want is to be free of government. Human beings are anarchists at heart. They don’t like to be told what to do and when to do it. Chaos is always roiling beneath society’s surface.

In reality, what seems to be chaos is also order … and vice versa. The truth be known, what we think of as order … as perfection … as absolute … is really just patterns. We look for patterns in sports, in the stock market, in business cycles.

Where we invite problems into our lives is by believing that patterns are the permanent order of things. The United States of today bears little resemblance to the country I grew up in, and I’d be willing to wager that, the way things are now going, the United States of the next five to ten years will bear even less resemblance to the country we are living in today.

Be alert. Be nimble. And don’t confuse the way you wish things to be with the way they actually are. Dramatic changes are coming. And, yes, they will be chaotic.

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Even though Social Security and Medicare guarantee to bankrupt America, we should not lose sight of the fact that there are scores of other government programs that are both immoral and costly — and that need to be abolished.

Take unemployment benefits, for example. If Obama and progressives on both sides of the aisle continue with their never-ending extensions of unemployment benefits, we will look back on 2009 as the good old days, a time when we had only a 10-20 percent unemployment rate (depending on how one wants to calculate it). That’s right, unemployment benefits make the average worker worse off, not better, because, like minimum-wage laws, they cause unemployment.

The fact is that when many people say they can’t find a job, what they really mean is they can’t find the job they want, at the wage they want, under the working conditions they want. Which means that high unemployment is, to a great extent, a result of workers simply refusing to accept low-paying jobs, preferring instead to live off government largesse.

Worse, when the government “creates a job,” it simply overpays someone to do work for which there is little or no demand in the marketplace. And since the government has no resources of its own, the money to pay the person who performs the job must come from newly printed dollars, borrowing, or taxing productive workers.

Which is why it is impossible for government jobs programs to “stimulate the economy.” It doesn’t matter whether you call a new program a “stimulus package,” a “jobs bill,” or an Obama Scam, the result is the same — a negative impact on the economy.

I thought about the high unemployment rate a great deal over the past several weeks as snowstorms blasted the Middle Atlantic States and East Coast, because it gave me the opportunity to observe the free market at work on a micro scale. One of the things that many people don’t grasp is that the marketplace consists not only of goods and services, but labor as well. The free market is, in fact, a big hodgepodge of these three commodities mixed in with the unique wants, needs, desires, personalities, and financial situations of each consumer.

When the first big snowfall hit, my wife spotted a fellow with a snow blower removing the snow from our neighbor’s driveway. I was picturing being socked in for a week or more, so I represented a strong demand for someone willing to do the hard labor of removing snow from my driveway.

I asked the guy if he would shovel our driveway and, if so, how much he would charge. He quoted us $100, which seemed kind of high, but I wasn’t about to let him slip away. He had the supply, and the demand on my end was high. So, a hundred bucks it was. No government involvement, no regulations, no price controls, and, best of all, I think it’s safe to assume that no taxes will be paid on the money I paid him. I made sure to get his telephone number, figuring I would call him the next time we had a major snowfall.

Sure enough, a few days later, an even bigger snowstorm hit. I called the fellow who had shoveled our driveway for $100, but got no answer, so I left word to have him call me. He never returned my call, which I suspected was because the snowstorms had created a high demand for his services.

Then, lo and behold, a kid came to our door and said that his dad had a snow blower and would remove the snow from our driveway for $20. I couldn’t believe it. Without government regulation to thwart him, here was a man who was undercutting the first snow-removal guy by 80 percent. Can anything be more beautiful than watching the free market in action? Again, I got his telephone number after he finished shoveling our driveway.

Enter snowstorm number three. After two days of nonstop snow, I called my $20 guy again, figuring that because of the depth of the snow, he might decide to raise his price to $40 or $50. But I never found out, because his voice mail answered. I left word, but, again, no return call.

Staring at two feet of snow in my driveway, I was getting a bit concerned. Then, out of the blue, a lady came to my door and said that her husband had a snow plow and she wanted to know if I would like him to remove the snow from our driveway. Price: $65.

I quickly wondered to myself if I should I take a pass on this opportunity and try again to connect with my $20 guy. But then the thought occurred to me that he might be too busy with other customers to ever get back to me. Or what if he’s discovered that his price was way under the market and has raised it to $75?

Like any consumer, I pieced all of these factors together in my mind, then added in the biggest factor of all — that the solution to my problem was right in front of me. No delay, no gamble, no stress – $65 it was.

The free-market aspect of my snow-shoveling experiences is obvious. But what I found even more interesting is that a handful of men (and women) chose to go out in the snow and cold, freeze their butts off, and work themselves to the point of exhaustion for a couple thousand dollars a day, while 99.99 percent of those who say they can’t find a job chose to sit home and do … whatever.

If compassionate politicians are really serious about lowering unemployment, good first and second steps would be to eliminate unemployment benefits and abolish minimum-wage laws. Follow that with slashing the corporate tax rate to 10 percent (for starters), and unemployment would very quickly become an anachronism. The free market really does work. It’s just not the way progressives would like it to work.

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As the U.S. edges ever closer to coming face to face with the consequences of its $100+ trillion of debt and “unfunded liabilities,” the cries from the never-give-up-the-fight progressives over “unfettered” capitalism are becoming increasingly louder. The coalition of communists, Marxists, socialists, progressives (a.k.a. “liberals”) — along with those who are simply envious, ignorant, or angry — are calling for capitalist scalps.

They say that the worsening depression (euphemistically referred to by politicians and media pundits as “recession” — and one that is on the verge of a rebound, at that) is a result of capitalism run amok. More regulation and more redistribution of wealth is the only thing that can save America, right? Not quite.

If you want to give a true-believing progressive apoplexy, just tell him the unvarnished truth: The overriding reason that the United States has devolved into a financial basket case is too much regulation, too much taxation, too much printing of fiat currency, too much borrowing, too much government interference in the marketplace, too much nannyism.

You can go right down the list — Social Security, Medicare, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — all of these programs drain capital from the productive free market, which makes everyone worse off. Another unvarnished truth, one that very few people want to hear, is: The government has no Constitutional — or moral — authority to operate any wealth-transfer program, no matter how worthy some people may believe it to be. Unfortunately, the idea that a politician’s self-proclaimed compassion gives him the right to take the property of law-abiding citizens and give it to others is a perversity that has come to be accepted by a large percentage of the population.

A few politicians dance around the edges of this issue, but none seem to be willing to speak out on it unequivocally, which is why the tea party movement is so refreshing. Many politicians have finally said that they’ve heard the message of the tea party people loud and clear. But, in truth, they haven’t.

Even Sarah Palin, whose basic ideology seems to be pretty much on target, avoided being specific in her keynote address at the tea party convention in Nashville. Like all other conservatives, Governor Palin said that government has to cut spending, which is fine. But, also like all other conservatives, she did not specifically mention Social Security and Medicare, the two programs that, all by themselves, are 100 percent guaranteed to bankrupt America — no matter what other spending rollbacks government implements.

I’ll cut the governor some slack here, because it probably wasn’t a good time for her to get specific and take on the sacred cows. But hear me on this, Washington: Sooner or later, someone is going to have to get serious with a public that is addicted to nanny statism — a public that doesn’t want to hear about economic reality, much less morality.

So I end this article with the same question (borrowed from an article by Thomas Friedman, no less) I’ve asked many times before: Who will tell the people the truth? Right now, no politician has the courage to advocate the phasing out of all wealth-redistribution programs, because they do not believe there is a constituency for cutting entitlements. (Note that I used the term phasing out, because to pull the rug out from under Social Security and Medicare recipients cold turkey would cause too much pain and suffering.)

Which is why the tea party people are probably America’s last hope. What I believe most of the tea party people are saying is “No!” — no to any kind of wealth redistribution … no to any kind of government involvement in health care … no to any kind of tax increases … no to any kind of “green” legislation … no to any kind of new regulations. No! No! No!

If so, strong voices in the tea party movement must speak up and deliver that message loud and clear to both politicians and voters. If they do not, or if a majority of voters will not accept it, then the question will be not if, but when, the U.S. will experience a complete financial collapse — and Americans will lose what is left of their freedom.

Admittedly, it’s a tough message to deliver to everyday Americans, but someone must be willing not only to step forward and do it, but explain, in clear, easy-to-understand terms, why it is not in their best interest to continue to receive government benefits of any kind. Put simply, the public has to be taught that the price of unsustainable wealth-redistribution programs is servitude. And, like it or not, that’s the unvarnished truth.

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In this, the final installment of “Saul, Barack, and Me,” I’d like to discuss Saul Alinsky’s views on self-interest, which he summed up in Rules for Radicals as follows:

Self-interest, like power, wears the black shroud of negativism and suspicion. To many the synonym for self-interest is selfishness. The word is associated with a repugnant conglomeration of vices such as narrowness, self-seeking, and self-centeredness, everything that is opposite to the virtues of altruism and selflessness.

This common definition is contrary, of course, to our everyday experiences, as well as to the observations of all great students of politics and life.

The myth of altruism as a motivating factor in our behavior could arise and survive only in a society bundled in the sterile gauze of New England Puritanism and Protestant morality and tied together with the ribbon of Madison Avenue public relations. It is one of the classic American fairy tales.

From the great teachers of Judaeo-Christian morality and the philosophers, to
the economists, and to the wise observers of the politics of man, there has
always been universal agreement on the part that self-interest plays as a prime
moving force in man’s behavior. The importance of self-interest has never been
challenged; it has been accepted as an inevitable fact of life. …

To question the force of self-interest that pervades all areas of political life is to refuse to see man as he is, to see him only as we would like him to be.

Again, I agree, at least in part, with Alinsky’s assessment. Self-interest (even when it appears to be altruism) is, indeed, an inevitable fact of life. Man is genetically programmed to survive. But Alinsky then went on to say, in a somewhat jumbled and contradictory, if not convoluted, way that man has the capacity to rise above his self-interest.

Thus, one can become altruistic and do the “right” thing if only he becomes enlightened. And what is the right thing? It’s back to Alinsky’s rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends. If you aid in the fight to take power and wealth from those whom Alinsky and his followers would deem to be unworthy and hand it over to those whom he and his followers would deem to be worthy — bingo! — you are acting altruistically.

I wish I could have debated this point with him, because he was dead wrong. In fact, it’s where his street-smart philosophy falls apart. The truth of the matter is that the millions of people who have engaged in class warfare over the centuries have most decidedly acted in what they believed to be their own self-interest.

I should also add that most such people have been true believers who, because of their own lack of achievement, embraced the immoral and perverse notion that they could find purpose in their lives by playing the role of Robin Hood. Could any purpose be more shallow — or egocentric?

There is nothing unique about Saul Alinsky’s message other than the fact that he went to the trouble to devise a very specific set of rules, however morally flawed they may have been, for achieving power. And perhaps one of those “tactical” rules is a good note on which to end this series:

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon,” said Alinksy. He further stated that “It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule” and that “it infuriates the opposition, who then reacts to your advantage.” Sound familiar? It is no coincidence that BHO and others in the progressive camp are masters of the ridicule. In BHO’s eyes, everyone who disagrees with his socialist policies is an obstructionist.

Those on the left ridicule Congressional conservatives. They ridicule Fox News, even though it is by far the most popular cable network. They ridicule tea-party protestors. They ridicule town hall protestors. They ridicule those who “cling to their bibles and guns.” Ridicule is their weapon of choice, but, thanks to BHO’s overuse of this clever Alinsky tactic, it has become less and less effective.

In summation, Saul Alinsky was simply a slick, narcissistic, self-absorbed little man who found “meaning” to his life by becoming a professional agitator. Put more candidly, like those who carry on his methods today, he found “community organizing” to be more fulfilling — especially from an ego standpoint — than a real job.

I end this series here, because, for me, the last third of Rules for Radicals falls apart, and one can barely make sense out of Saul Alinsky’s muddled mixture of ramblings and contradictions. One gets the impression that he was simply trying too hard to bulk up his skimpy book.

I am forced to conclude that his work would not be worth reading were it not for the rise of Barack Obama and his fellow progressives in Congress. So, yes, Rules for Radicals is a book that should be read by everyone who values his liberty enough to want to understand who the enemies are who want to take it from him — and how they are, at this very moment, going about doing it.

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To justify his anti-liberty pursuits, Saul Alinsky came up with “a series of rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends.” Most of them are rambling, convoluted meanderings that are based on the age-old progressive habit of anointing oneself judge of right and wrong, but I think it will be instructive if I touch on a couple of them here.

Alinsky’s “second rule of ethics” is worth dissecting, because it gives such a clear picture of how a professional agitator’s thought processes work. His second rule of ethics says that “the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.”

And he was absolutely right! In the real world, anyone is free to judge whether the ends justifies the means. Thus, I believe Alinsky was just being cynically honest in his statement. Hitler judged whether his actions were right or wrong. Mao judged whether his actions were right or wrong. Saddam judged whether his whether his actions were right or wrong.

But in the judgment of any halfway civilized human being, the means used by all of these men were inhumane. Of course, some intellectuals might argue that it’s really just proof that relativism is a fact of life. Which may also be true, but it doesn’t mean that those who believe in liberty have to accept relativism as a way of life.

I am free to decide what I believe to be right and wrong, but if I choose to use means that involve the violation of someone else’s liberty, I’m stepping over the line. That’s not relativism; it’s aggression. Alinsky, like all progressives, believed that the means necessary to redistribute wealth and power are always justified — at least if they were means that he approved of.

So, in the end, Alinsky’s community-organizing “cause” was a fraud in that it did not promote liberty, but, rather, it promoted one person’s gain at the expense of another person’s liberty. But Barack Obama, along with Hillary Clinton and thousands of other elitists from our most prestigious universities, bought into Alinsky’s fraud hook, line, and sinker. The progressive believes that virtually any means justifies whatever he deems to be ends that are moral.

It gets worse. In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky stated, “To me ethics is doing what is the best for the most.” Really? And who, may I ask, has the omniscience, let alone the moral authority, to decide what is “best for the most?” Alinsky, of course. Or whomever happens to be in power at any given time.

In theory, our Constitution was supposed to prevent this kind of arrogant thinking from being put into practice. But, as we’ve seen more than ever during the past year, the Constitution can be usurped. If those in power choose to ignore what the Constitution says, who can stop them?

The voters — like those in Massachusetts — you say? Let’s just chalk that one up to luck. Remember, if the old lion of socialism hadn’t passed away, the most anti-liberty piece of legislation in history — posing as a “healthcare bill” — would have been passed into law.

The progressives have already decided what is “best for the most,” even if most don’t want it! Which is why “universal healthcare” will reappear, again and again, until the Alinskyites are either successful in implementing it or are stifled by being relegated to a minority position.

Alinksy’s seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is also worth mentioning here. It states: “Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinate of ethics.” Again, true in the sense that those in power have the luxury of mandating what is right and wrong.

But just because government mandates something to be right or wrong doesn’t mean that it is right or wrong. If a government mandate calls for the violation of even one individual’s sovereignty, it is wrong in the eyes of Natural Law — or what can also be referred to as the Law of Non-aggression. Aggression is always the sacred measuring stick of right and wrong — period.

When BHO brilliantly deceived Americans into voting him into power, he believed that his success gave him a mandate to throw out the Constitution and make up his own rules — rewarding those he deemed to be worthy of his largesse and punishing those he viewed to be his enemies. He truly believed — and still believes — that he was given a mandate to be the arbiter of right and wrong.

Now that a majority of the public realizes that he is serious about fundamentally changing the United States into a socialist “paradise,” his power base is crumbling. But I’m confident that BHO will follow Saul Alinsky’s advice on what do to do when your plans hit a bump in the road: Be twice as bold, twice as outrageous, and continue to bulldoze your way forward regardless of how hard the other side pushes back. It’s going to get very, very ugly in 2010 — and beyond.

Next: Saul Alinsky on self-interest.

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Major earthquakes near heavily populated areas always produce destruction and mass casualties, but I’ve never seen anything quite like the carnage and suffering that Haiti has been experiencing. As I watch the aftermath of this tragedy, a number of thoughts go through my mind.

First is the question, “Why?” Why is the fallout from this earthquake so much more horrific than that seen in natural disasters in, say, the United States? How can such a cataclysm happen in the Western Hemisphere in the twenty-first century?

You can’t attribute it to the magnitude of the earthquake, which, though considerable, could have been much worse. Nor is the problem that Haiti is an island, separated from its nearest neighbors — with the exception of the Dominican Republic — by hundreds, or even thousands, of miles of ocean.

No, the real reason that the earthquake in Haiti has created such a nightmare of death and destruction is because it is such an impoverished country. And the reason it’s an impoverished country is the same reason that any country is poor: tyrannical government.

From François Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) to his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier (“Baby Doc”) to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, president until 2004, to Haiti’s current president, René Préval, Haitians have been ruled in a dictatorial fashion that has made it all but impossible for the vast majority of citizens to achieve any semblance of financial success.

In simpler terms, Haiti’s rulers — euphemistically referred to as “presidents” in more recent times — have oppressed the majority of Haitian citizens (most of whom are descendants of African slaves) and lived opulently off of their labor. The result has been unimaginable poverty for the average Haitian, a government-induced poverty so overwhelming that it made it impossible for Haiti to withstand any kind of major natural disaster.

Wealth, on the other hand, is what makes it possible for people to build homes and buildings that have a good chance of surviving an earthquake. Wealth is what makes it possible for a society to have emergency food, water, earth-moving equipment, first responders, doctors, and more to keep the fallout from a natural disaster to a minimum. Wealth is what makes it possible for a society to have a power grid and other infrastructure that allows it to function, at least minimally, after a natural disaster.

In the midst of all the news stories about Haiti, I am concerned that the most important point is being lost on a compassionate public: Poverty is the real problem, and government is the real cause of poverty. It is a problem and a cause that haunts countries throughout the world that are vulnerable to devastating aftermaths from natural disasters.

A second thought that occurred to me about the earthquake in Haiti is the nightmarish question: What if the United States of America did not exist? Just imagine, no U.S. troops, no U.S. charitable donations, no U.S. reporters on the scene to tell the world what is happening. James Cameron (Avatar) could have a field day making a movie based on such an imaginary world.

In a world without America, one would have to assume that there would be millions — not hundreds of thousands — of corpses lying under the ruins of collapsed buildings in Haiti indefinitely, with millions more dying of malaria, starvation, dysentery, and other diseases. The island would be cut off from civilization, with only an occasional airplane from Venezuela, Brazil, or Cuba dropping sparse quantities of food and supplies via parachute.

Ever seen Life After People on The History Channel? How about life after America — which could very well be coming sometime during this century? Who would save the world as it faces one crisis after another? From Darfur to Sri Lanka … from Haiti to the Balkans, what would happen to a world without America? Read Mark Steyn’s America Alone and think about it.

Which brings me to my third thought about the Haitian disaster. In the coming years, as the U.S. pours billions of dollars into rebuilding a Haiti that was never built in the first place, as it provides aid and comfort to its citizens while other countries send gratuitous planeloads of food now and then, will the rest of the world continue to see the U.S. as an evil capitalist society (a society whose capitalist system is precisely what made it possible for it to save millions of Haitian lives!) or will it have a change of heart and come to view America with newfound respect and admiration?

More specifically, will future generations of Haitians themselves view the U.S. as the savior of their country or as an imperialistic devil? I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that question, but, like it or not, it will be forthcoming in the not-too-distant future.

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As the angry, arrogant — and now severely wounded — “leader” of our nation revs up to fight back against mounting public opposition to his progressive policies, one is beginning to wonder if he might deserve to inherit Saddam’s title of the Master of Miscalculation.

Brit Hume says that Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts could be the best thing
that could ever happen to Obama and his fascists cohorts in Congress if it
causes them to open their eyes and move toward the center. He’s right, but it’s not likely to happen. Here’s why …

BHO is a true believer. By his own admission, when he was in college, he hung out with radicals, Chicanos, and Marxist professors because he didn’t want to be seen as a sellout. Thus, left-wing poison is deeply imbedded in his psyche, which is why you can count on him to follow, to the bitter end, the Saul Alinsky model for taking control of America. He will double-down, triple-down, quadruple-down … and continue the pattern until he either succeeds, is impeached, put on trial for treason, assassinated, or voted out of office.

Which brings me back to a subject I’ve been raising since BHO got elected by running a Slick-Willie-like campaign posing as a patriotic American. Millions of us knew from the start that BHO was a transparent fraud and that, once in office, he would open the throttle on the Saul Alinsky Express.

But probably none of us imagined that, once in office, he would be so arrogant as to constantly thumb his nose at the American electorate. Indeed, BHO has great difficulty hiding his disdain for everyday folks. This is obvious in his continual attacks on the tea party people (who have a much higher favorable rating than he does!), Congressional members who oppose his policies, and the cable television network that the majority of Americans choose to watch. Oh, and you can now add to that list anyone who drives a pickup truck.

I don’t know how many members of his own party will have the courage — or character — to stand up to BHO, but you can be sure that he will threaten and punish those who do not fall into line. In his eyes, he was not elected president of the U.S.; he was anointed monarch. He has absolutely no interest in what anyone thinks outside of his little socialist group of win-at-any-cost thugs.

BHO and his progressive cronies have come too far … waited too long for this moment … to let the transformation of America slip from their grasp. Which is why I will continue to warn Americans to be on the alert for a “state of emergency” whose only real purpose would be to stop the elections — and thus a Republican landslide — in 2010.

Now, there is talk that Michelle Obama may become more involved in her husband’s political affairs. Golly, I never would have seen that one coming. Like Hillary before her, Mad Michelle has been standing in the wings, waiting impatiently for BHO’s caretakers to allow her to speak out. It was inevitable, even if the anti-Obama revolution, most recently punctuated by Scott Brown’s stunning victory in Massachusetts, had not happened.

So, why would BHO’s “handlers” allow Madame Obama to step into the political arena now, knowing that her ability to upset the masses makes the “original” Hillary almost seem like a normal first lady? Because they are well aware that the Democratic Party is going down in flames in less than ten months, and panic is starting to set in.

The Master of Miscalculation actually believed that the American public that chose him over the weakest Republican candidate in decades gave him a mandate to collapse the economy, get more than half the country on welfare, and transform America into a full-fledged socialist nation. But over and over again, his arrogant beliefs have been proven wrong.

He was wrong in believing that his campaigning for R. Creigh Deeds in the governor’s race in Virginia would turn the tide in favor of the Democrats.

He was wrong in believing that his campaigning for Jon Corzine in the governor’s race in New Jersey would turn the tide in favor of the Democrats.

He was wrong in believing that his coming to Massachusetts at the eleventh hour to support Martha Coakley would turn the tide in favor of the Democrats.

And he is wrong — and perhaps psychotically delusional — if he seriously believes that voters in Massachusetts voted for a Republican to take “Ted Kennedy’s seat” because they were mad at his predecessor, a Republican president!

Further, BHO was wrong in thinking that his silver tongue would be able to win over Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, the climate-change crowd in Copenhagen, and the head honchos in the EU.

The truth of the matter is that the Master of Miscalculation has lost his credibility, both at home and abroad, faster than (gasp!) Jimmy Carter. Now, in another display of ignorance of the arrogant, he might just bring his secret weapon — “the first lady we’ve always wanted” — out of the closet. If so, it will prove be his biggest miscalculation to date.

He and his desperate minions would like to believe that wife’s high poll ratings could save the day, but they couldn’t be more wrong. I know, I know … you’re probably thinking, “But she’ll fake it, just as Hillary has learned to do so superbly. She’ll suppress the Angela Davis rhetoric … no more talk about stealing pie from producers, about America’s being a downright mean country, or about never having been proud of America before it elected her socialist husband to office.”

And you’re right, she will try to fake it — but she will fail. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that people can only fake their true identity so long. And some people have more of a problem with faking than others. Unfortunately, Michelle Obama is one of those people. Her hatred for America, capitalism, libertarians, conservatives, success, and non-progressive white people simply runs too deep.

No matter how hard she tries to hide it, her scowl is always there — even if it’s sometimes hidden behind a fake smile — and it gives her away. As Michele Malkin wrote in her book Culture of Corruption, the law partner who recruited Michelle Obama to work at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin later referred to her as “perennially dissatisfied.”

My best guess is that if Michelle Obama starts speaking out, she initially will give the Master of Miscalculation a slight boost in his ratings. But she, along with her angry, wounded hubby, will misread the reaction of the public, and, once again, arrogantly believe that they have a mandate — this time to feel free to say all kinds of bad things about America, wealth redistribution, and progressivism — things that most Americans don’t want to hear.

If Michelle Obama’s repressed anger resurfaces, it could be the final death knell for BHO and his progressive policies. And if that glorious ending should actually take place, you can expect to hear her angrily, and often, accusing the American public of racism for turning on her and her once invincible spouse, Barack Hussein Obama.

Having said all this, don’t for a second think that they and their progressive allies will not fight to the bitter end to fundamentally transform the United States of America into a progressive police state. Those of us who believe that liberty is a commodity worth saving need to be on twenty-four-hour alert for a trumped-up state of emergency intended to head off elections in 2010.

As Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction.”

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I have long considered Rupert Murdoch — a transplanted Australian, of all things — to be one of the greatest American heroes of our time. Like millions of other Americans, he saw the liberal bias in the media, but what made him different is that he had the financial wherewithal to do something about it.

In 1996, Murdoch, through his flagship company News Corporation, started Fox News as an alternative to CNN’s addictive liberal coating of the news. And, in what has proven to be a stroke of genius, he hired Roger Ailes as the man to run his new enterprise. Ailes is staunchly conservative, daring, and one of those guys who seems to have been born with the Midas touch. While you’re at it, you can add him to my list of the greatest American living heroes.

Once Fox News was launched, it didn’t take the world long to realize a heretofore well-hidden fact: Most Americans have conservative values! A dagger in the hearts of left-wing anchormen who had long ago become used to creating their own news stories by leaving out pertinent facts and adding in knowingly false information — and, often, simply ignoring news items altogether that didn’t fit in with their liberal agenda.

The CNN-Fox News war was over within a couple of years, and today it’s become a virtual bloodbath. Without government intervention — like that proposed by FCC “Chief Diversity Officer” Mark Lloyd — it’s hard to imagine how CNN, CNBC, and MSNBC can continue in business indefinitely. Even the three major networks are getting financially clobbered, yet they stubbornly cling to their left-wing agendas, choosing — like Congress and Obama — to ignore the desires of a majority of American viewers and voters.

So far, so good. But a few years ago, I dared to ask the question, “What happens when Rupert Murdoch (who will be seventy-nine in March) dies?” Ditto when Roger Ailes passes on or retires. “Could it be,” I wondered, “that progressivism, one of the most highly contagious diseases known to mankind, will find a way to creep into Fox News and metastasize?” As it is, Fox already has its share of in-house liberals (Shepherd Smith, Geraldo, Bob Beckel, et al.) to assure the balance in its “fair and balanced” promise.

A disturbing recent article in The New York Times may have given me my answer. According to the article, Murdoch wanted The New York Post (another News Corporation holding) to endorse Barack Obama for president. Purportedly, he backed off only when Roger Ailes voiced strong objections. Close call … way too close for comfort.

So, what’s on the horizon beyond the days of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes? Possibly a potential catastrophe. Murdoch’s eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, left the company in 2004, purportedly because he was at odds with Ailes. And, according to an article in The New York Times, “Two other Murdoch children, Elisabeth, a television producer in London, and James, the only Murdoch employed at the company, are sympathetic to Democratic causes and frequently voiced concerns to their father during last year’s presidential campaign about Fox News’s coverage of Mr. Obama.”

The article also quoted Matthew Freud, who is married to Murdoch’s daughter, Elisabeth, as saying, “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”

It gets worse. According to another recent article, this one in WorldNetDaily, billionaire Saudi prince Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal owns 5 percent of the voting shares of Fox News’s parent company, News Corporation, and is said to be willing to raise his stake, if necessary, to protect Murdoch against hostile takeover bids. Further, the article reports, Rupert Murdoch is an investor in some of Talil’s ventures.

All of which could add up to a world without Fox News as we know it. Can you imagine an America where every network and cable station delivers the news from a left-wing perspective, an America where people have no way of knowing simple facts like one of Obama’s appointees being a self-avowed communist, one of Obama’s appointees looking to Mao Zedong for inspiration, or one of Obama’s appointees proposing that animals be given attorneys to represent their interests?

Unfortunately, it’s not that hard to imagine. It’s the direction in which America was already headed long before Rupert Murdoch made it a whole new game by starting Fox News and handing the ball off to Roger Ailes to win the ratings game.

Conclusion: Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and Fox News have given libertarians and conservatives the greatest boost in the history of television, but freedom lovers would be foolish to sit back and rely on them alone to do the job. Better to hope for the best for Fox News, but be prepared for the worst — and take it upon ourselves to continue to educate the American public, one person at a time, on the evils of progressivism and the sanctity of libertarian-centered conservatism and free markets.

Go tea parties!

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Everyone — including the far left — is well aware of the hypocrisy of the Democrats as it relates to their treatment of Harry Reid versus their reaction to Trent Lott’s comment to Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday party.

Reid, with his perpetual scowl firmly in place, was predictably pathetic in his reaction to questions concerning his remarks about BHO’s racial qualities. In a press conference that followed the “light-skinned-with-no-Negro-dialect” bombshell, instead of answering the questions asked of him, Reid used each question to launch into a self-serving speech about what a swell guy he’s always been when it comes to the African-American community.

He even refused to answer a question about whether he thought he owes voters an apology. Nothing new here. He simply used the standard modus operandi of the far left: When confronted with the truth, ignore and filibuster.

The kindest thing I can say about Hapless Harry’s performance is that it was pathetic. Among his more eye-opening remarks, he noted that both Julian Bond and The Huffington Post had given him their full support. Can you imagine bragging about being supported by Julian Bond and The Huffington Post? Sort of like being proud that Stalin and Pravda once gave you a thumbs up.

Forget about the fact that it was a Republican president who ended slavery, which is why it was weird, to say the least, that Reid recently said that the Republicans were the same types of people who opposed ending slavery.

Forget about the fact that Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving member of that body, was for many years a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Forget about the fact that southern Democrats were the inventors and staunchest defenders of the Jim Crow laws that kept southern blacks on “Uncle Sam’s Plantation” for decades after they were declared free by a Republican president.

That’s right, forget about all the minor stuff and concentrate on the real issue: Republicans will continue to aid and abet their Democratic colleagues’ drive to socialize America until, and unless, they develop a spine. For most of the past 100 years, whenever they have managed to gain any meaningful power, Republicans have allowed Democrats to intimidate and shame them into doing their bidding.

Meaning that, when push comes to shove, enough Republicans vote for legislation that keeps moving the country further to the left. Which is why, had Mush McCain won the presidency, the only thing that would have been different is that America’s nonstop drive toward socialism would have continued at a slower pace. You know the drill — boil the frog slowly.

Give the Democrats credit for one thing, they stood up for their socialist Senate leader, even though his remarks were indefensible (by their standards). But when Trent Lott made his now infamous off-handed comment at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party (a remark so innocuous that, to this day, it’s impossible for anyone to say with certainty what, if anything, he meant by it), many spineless Republicans went into their lapdog act and joined the Democrats in calling for his resignation.

If all this is a sign of things to come, the Democrats have nothing to fear if Republicans should succeed in taking back the House and Senate in 2010. If the past is prologue to the future, Republicans will continue to do cartwheels to assure their pals across the aisle that they are fully prepared to go along with the Democrats’ socialist agenda — political correctness, transfer-of-wealth programs, cap and trade, healthcare, and more.

Personally, I don’t believe that Harry Reid should be pressured into stepping
down for making racially insensitive, politically incorrect remarks. What should
be done, however, is that the day-in, day-out unconstitutional activities of
Reid — along with those of his pals Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer,
Charlie Rangel, et al. — should be fully investigated and, if the facts so
warrant, he and his cohorts should be put on trial for treason. Trying to get him kicked out of his job for making a few dumb remarks is just a distraction from the real issue.

By the way, in case you’re wondering why Democrats keep getting caught saying degrading things about blacks, it should be self-evident through their policies. Since the implementation of Lyndon Johnson’s insidious Great Society programs, the Democrats have created a perpetual cycle of poverty that has entrapped millions of blacks in a life of despair. The unspoken truth is that liberals, by and large, tend to look down on blacks as less than human. (After all, most of them do have that embarrassing “Negro dialect.”)

Strange, but when I heard about Reid’s remarks, my mind shifted back to my younger days when I had a girlfriend who was an archetypal liberal hippie right out of Forrest Gump. I know you’re chuckling trying to picture Robert Ringer with a hippie girlfriend, but it’s true. What can I say other than I was a sucker for a pretty face?

Funny how you remember certain little moments in your life, but I can clearly recall her saying to me one day, “I heard a great joke this morning. Want to hear it?” “Sure,” I said. She then proceeded to tell me a very funny — but extremely degrading — joke about three black girls. I never heard her laugh so hard. I admit to laughing a little, but I vividly recall how uncomfortable I felt about the whole thing.

I never forgot that moment, because it made me realize how disingenuous liberals are when they pound their chests in support of blacks. As the years went by and I became much more knowledgeable, I began to realize that the pro-black rhetoric of liberals stems from the progressive mentality that most of them harbor.

Many liberals believe that blacks are simply not smart enough to figure out how to take care of themselves, let alone get ahead in the world. Elite, intellectual whites, educated at our most prestigious universities, must take care of them and make their decisions for them.

What is bizarre about today’s America is that it is a “light-skinned” African-American president without a “Negro dialect” who is carrying the elitist, progressive banner and pressing the socialist pedal to the floor. It’s a sad perversity, and enough to make the great Frederick Douglass roll over in his grave.

In closing, I offer this humble message to the Republican wing of the Demopublican Party: (1) Talk and act like the libertarian-centered conservatives you are supposed to be, and (2) support your fellow party members when they are attacked by the opposition — especially when it involves the passe subject of “racism.”

Forget the timidity, and do both of these things with boldness. Otherwise, prepare to climb even higher on the endangered species list.

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In Part III of this article, I said that, unlike BHO, Saul Alinsky had a soul, as evidenced by his saying, “I salute the present generation. Hang onto one of your most precious parts of youth, laughter. Don’t lose it as many of you seem to have done. You need it. Together we may find some of what we’re looking for — laughter, beauty, love, and the chance to create.”

What I meant by that statement was that Alinsky had feelings. Nonetheless, as I have previously stated, he was a complex man who was full of contradictions. Anyone who spends his life in a meaningless pursuit such as “community organizing” has to be plagued by contradictions, because without them, he would be forced to come face to face with the reality that his life has no worthwhile purpose.

So, while there was a friendly, deep-feeling, humorous side to Alinsky, he was also a man of steeped in self-absorption, narcissism, and amorality. Of course, he was incapable of seeing the truth about his life, because he had invested far too much ego in his childish pursuit to take from “the rich” and give to “the poor.”

Which brings me to Saul Alinsky’s remarkable explanation of “the low road to morality”:

The fact is that it is not man’s “better nature” but his self-interest that demands that he be his brother’s keeper. We now live in a world where no man can have a loaf of bread while his neighbor has none. If he does not share his bread, he dare not sleep, for his neighbor will kill him. To eat and sleep in safety man must do the right thing, if for seemingly the wrong reasons, and be in practice his brother’s keeper.

I believe that man is about to learn that the most practical life is the moral life and that the moral life is the only road to survival. He is beginning to learn that he will either share part of his material wealth or lose it all; that he will respect and learn to live with other political ideologies if he wants civilization to go on. This is the kind of argument that man’s actual experience equips him to understand and accept. This is the low road to morality. There is no other.

As I said, Alinsky was full of contradictions. On the one hand, he warned of the dangers of dogma, yet flatly stated that not only was his view of morality correct, but that the only road to morality was to recognize that you had to share your wealth or risk having it taken from you by force — or even be killed!

His words remind me of something the late and liberal Bennett Cerf, one-time president of Random House Inc., is purported to have said, as told by Nathaniel Branden in his book Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand: “You have to throw welfare programs at people — like throwing meat to a pack of wolves — even if the programs don’t accomplish their alleged purpose and even if they’re morally wrong.”

When Branden asked Cerf why, he purportedly whispered, “Because otherwise they’ll kill you. The masses. They hate intelligence. They’re envious of ability. They resent wealth. You’ve got to throw them something, so they’ll let us live.”

There’s no question in my mind that both Alinsky and Cerf were right in their assessments of why you have no choice but to “share” some of your possessions. But to refer to it as the “low road to morality” is preposterous. It is, in fact, a no-road to morality. Giving up any part of one’s wealth out of fear is immoral.

When a thief has a gun pointed at your head, you give him your wallet out of fear. This is not a low road to morality for you. The only morality involved is the immorality of the thief. Brilliant, contradictory, dogmatic, convoluted — that was the Saul Alinsky who made such a dramatic impact on millions of people, and is better known today than he was at the peak of his career.

The young and angry BHO bought the convoluted view that giving out of fear was the only way to arrive at a “moral” outcome, and, in fact, was so enamored of it that he taught Alinsky’s philosophy and methods for twelve years at the University of Chicago Law School. Coupled with his community organizing experience and close ties to SEIU (Andy Stern: “Workers of the world, unite!”) and a host of left-wing radicals, BHO came to the White House well prepared to “fundamentally transform America.”

It is hardly a coincidence that the vast majority of his appointees and associates are socialists — even communists — and that he prefers Christmas ornaments adorned with the smiling face of mass murderer Mao Zedong to that of dear old Santa.

In Part VII: Saul Alinsky’s view of “means and end.”

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The Saul Alinsky who helped lay the foundation for the amorality of the soulless young lad who would one day lie and scheme his way into the most powerful office in the world comes through loud and clear in Rules for Radicals when he said, “We live in a world where ‘good’ is a value dependent on whether we want it.”

This is an important statement by Alinsky, because it opens the floodgates to interpret the term general welfare in any way one chooses. In other words, simply wanting something makes it right. If your desire is to play God and steal from those you deem to be rich and give the stolen loot to those you deem to be poor, so be it. If that’s what you want, it’s moral. Nice and simple.

This explains Alinsky’s willingness to anoint himself arbiter of right and wrong. Apparently borrowing from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Alinsky said:

Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.

On top are the Haves with power, money, food, security, and luxury. They suffocate in their surpluses while the Have-Nots starve. Numerically the Haves have always been the fewest. The Haves want to keep things as they are and are opposed to change. …

On the bottom are the world’s Have-Nots. On the world scene they are by far the greatest in numbers. They are chained together by the common misery of poverty, rotten housing, disease, ignorance, political impotence, and despair; when they are employed their jobs pay the least and they are deprived in all areas basic to human growth. Caged by color, physical or political, they are barred from an opportunity to represent themselves in the politics of life. The Haves want to keep; the Have-Nots want to get. …

Between the Haves and Have-Nots are the Have-a-Little, Want Mores — the middle class. Torn between upholding the status quo to protect the little they have, yet wanting change so they can get more, they become split personalities. … Generally, they seek the safe way, where they can profit by change and not risk losing the little they have. … Today in Western society and particularly in the United States they comprise the majority of our population.

In general, Alinsky was correct in his assessment, but he didn’t live to see a middle class that lives in half-million-dollar homes, eats out three nights a week, and vacations at luxury resorts. He died in 1972, long before the hippie movement had died out — a time when Bob Dylan’s mutterings were still taken seriously by pot-smoking longhairs desperately in search of a cause.

Deficits, a tidal wave of credit cards, cheap goodies from China, the dramatic expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and, above all, the technology explosion of the eighties and nineties gave the middle class a lifestyle that only the rich had enjoyed in the past. It’s pretty hard to get people excited about a revolution when they’re relaxing in the backyards of their suburban homes, grilling steaks on the barbecue, and watching the kids splash around in their ten-by-twenty-foot swimming pools.

Convincing these folks that they’re being exploited by “the rich” is a very tough sell. Other than the unhinged Muslim extremists — who had, and have, a whole different agenda — there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for revolution over the past twenty-five years.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to indefinitely hide what was, in reality, an invisible depression. Those pesky universal laws have a way of showing up when you least expect them, and when they finally did, false-prosperity addicts were ill prepared to deal with them.

In 2008, as economic reality began to set in and unravel the false-prosperity that the middle class had come to view as a right, it opened the door for the perfect Saul Alinsky disciple to rise from the down-and-dirty community organizing business on the mean streets of Chicago to the halls of power in the nation’s capitol.

To tens of millions of people who were witnessing the house-of-cards good life collapse before their very eyes, the word “change” was like a life preserver being thrown to a drowning man. No time to think about the kind of change this inexperienced, arrogant, silver-tongued young man was talking about. To the Have-a-Little, Want Mores, any kind of change was better than watching their addictive lifestyle slip away.

To paraphrase a longstanding Chicago Political Mafioso, Dirty Dick Durbin, BHO was the right man in the right place at the right time. And if you like redistribution-of-wealth revolutions, you’d be hard pressed to disagree with him.

Next: Saul Alinsky’s remarkable explanation of “the low road to morality.”

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In Part III of this article, I said that the Saul Alinsky-like idea of playing musical chairs with the reins of power is a yawner, because history has clearly taught us that what happens in a successful revolution is that a new upper class emerges (Castro and his thug associates, Mao and his thug associates, Quadaffi and his thug associates, etc.).

In all revolutions, the doors of elitism swing open and a small number of populist leaders (as opposed to the duped masses — euphemistically referred to as “the people”) rush to take their places inside. As Alvin Toffler describes vividly in
The Third Wave:

Time and again during the past three hundred years, in one country after another, rebels and reformers have attempted to storm the walls of power, to build a new society based on social justice and political equality. Temporarily, such movements have seized the emotions of millions with promises of freedom. Revolutionists have even managed, now and then, to topple a regime. Yet each time the ultimate outcome was the same. Each time the rebels recreated, under their own flag, a similar structure of sub-elites, elites, and super elites.

In Animal Farm, George Orwell wrote about this phenomenon in similar terms:

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. … The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low … is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.

And, finally, Will and Ariel Durant put it this way:

Violent revolutions do not so much redistribute wealth as destroy it. There may be a redivision of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon recreates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as in the old.

Alinsky was absolutely right when he said, “History is a relay of revolutions; the torch of idealism is carried by the revolutionary group until this group becomes an establishment, and then quietly the torch is put down to wait until a new revolutionary group picks it up for the next leg of the run. Thus the revolutionary cycle goes on.” (Examples: Iran, Russia, and most of Eastern Europe.)

To lead a revolution, one has to assume the role of arbiter of right and wrong, which Saul Alinksky was more than happy to do. But he was a complex man who was full of contradictions and mismatches between his words and his actions. For example, in Rules for Radicals, he warned his followers of the danger of dogmatic arrogance.

I detest and fear dogma. … Dogma is the enemy of human freedom. Dogma must be watched for and apprehended at every turn and twist of the revolutionary movement. The human spirit grows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world with cruelty, pain, and injustice. Those who enshrine the poor or Have-Nots are as guilty as other dogmatists and just as dangerous.

Based on the above, I believe that Alinsky would have been distrustful of BHO. I find it ironic that Alinsky, who never knew BHO, clearly explained, decades before he came on the political scene, why he is such a dangerous individual. Just as Lenin saw Stalin as a threat to the purist ideals of the Bolshevik cause, I believe Alinsky would have seen the super-arrogant BHO as a danger to the community-organizing cause.

Nevertheless, BHO learned his lessons well from Alinsky, who said that “no ideology should be more specific than that of America’s founding fathers: ‘For the general welfare.’” These are perhaps the most dangerous words in the Constitution, because they leave the door open for power mongers to do just about anything to anyone under the banner of “the general welfare.”

To a soulless relativist like Barack Obama, the fact that the Constitution gives the government the right to “provide for the general welfare” is a dream come true. It is the perfect cover for his focus on “redistributive change” and forcing through legislation that is not authorized by the Constitution.

In Part V: Saul Alinsky’s harsh view of the world as it is.

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Saul Alinsky was well aware of the advantages of living in a reasonably free society like the U.S. In Rules for Radicals, he said:

“Let us in the name of radical pragmatism not forget that in our system, with all its repressions, we can still speak out and denounce the administration, attack its policies, work to build an opposition political base. True, there is government harassment, but there still is that relative freedom to fight. I can attack my government, try to organize to change it. That’s more than I can do in Moscow, Peking, or Havana. Remember the reaction of the Red Guard to the ‘cultural revolution’ and the fate of the Chinese college students. Just a few of the violent episodes of bombings or a courtroom shootout that we have experienced here would have resulted in a sweeping purge and mass executions in Russia, China, or Cuba. Let’s keep some perspective.”

This is the Saul Alinsky I respect. He was not a wild-eyed, flag-burning, firebombing Bill Ayers type at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. As I have previously pointed out, he was pragmatic to the core.

But at this juncture, my question to brother Saul would have been, “If we already have the freedom to speak out and denounce those in power, if we are allowed to politically oppose them, why would you want to change the current system?”

Based on his words in Rules for Radicals, I believe that Alinsky’s answer to that question would have been that there are still injustices in America that need to be corrected. But his idea of “injustice” was kind of fuzzy. Like all crusade leaders, he clearly had a huge ego – an ego that made him comfortable in the role of arbiter of right and wrong.

Universal health care, environmentalism, and all redistribution of wealth schemes are examples of crusades that cry out to self-anointed moralists to take charge and make things “right.” This is the Saul Alinsky I do not respect – the man who constantly spoke about righting wrongs. On the surface, “righting wrongs” seems like a noble objective. The problem lies in people’s differing definitions of right and wrong.

In this vein, I find the following words from Rules for Radicals to be helpful in psychoanalyzing Saul Alinsky:

“Men don’t like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives – agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.”

My question is: If people’s lives are so miserable, why the need to “create disenchantment and discontent?” It is at this point that I began to see the fuzzy, not-so-intellectual side of Alinsky. Like true believers throughout history, he seemed to be a man in search of a cause. He wasn’t in search of a cure for cancer or for some kind of spiritual awakening. He was in search of a following to carry on an ill-defined campaign against the power elite.

To be a community organizer is to be a non-productive citizen – an “agitator,” to use Alinsky’s own word. His future student, BHO, succeeded at becoming a master agitator who emphasized “change,” which ultimately led to the empty slogan “Change you can believe in.”

But there was one huge difference between Alinsky and Obama. In his book, Alinsky clearly comes across as a warm, deep-feeling, albeit misguided person, whereas Obama comes across as a man without a soul. To speak of him as simply “misguided,” as so many conservatives naively continue to do, is to believe that his intentions are well-meaning. Let me assure you that he is not misguided; he is, in fact, soulless.

It is ironic that a soulless individual like Obama would be handed the Alinsky torch to carry on the fight against “injustice.” Clearly, Alinsky did have a soul, and showed it when he said, “I salute the present generation. Hang onto one of your most precious parts of youth, laughter. Don’t lose it as many of you seem to have done. You need it. Together we may find some of what we’re looking for – laughter, beauty, love, and the chance to create.”

In Obama, I see no laughter, no beauty, no love, and no creativity. But I do see an understanding of Alinsky’s views on power. Though naïve and, to a great extent, passé – Alinsky summed up the central philosophy of Rules for Radicals and the subject of power thusly:

“What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

The whole notion of playing musical chairs with the reins of power is, of course, a yawner, because the result is always the emergence of a new power elite. Since Alinsky was clearly aware of this reality, the fact that he spent his life playing this nonproductive game could only have been driven by ego.

I say it’s a yawner, because George Orwell, Alvin Toffler, and many other great writers and thinkers have written about this never-ending game of role reversals between the Haves and Have-Nots, which I’ll get into in more detail in Part IV of this article.

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When Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad recently appeared on Chris Wallace’s Fox News Sunday, Wallace said to Senator Klobuchar:

“According to the latest Rasmussen poll — and let’s put it up on the screen — 57 percent of voters given a choice between do nothing … or pass this bill … say it would be better to pass no health-care reform bill. Only 34 percent say it would be better to pass the bill. Senator, don’t Democrats run a considerable political risk when you’re going to pass major legislation with no bipartisan support over what seems to be almost a 2-1 opposition from the American people?”

To which Senator Klobuchar responded, “Do you know what the poll numbers were on Medicare when they voted for Medicare decades and decades ago? Like 28 percent of the people favored it. Now, 96 percent do.”

Her comment was intended to be a spin of the hard fact that a majority of Americans do not want government to pass a health-care bill. But, without realizing it, she made a very important point that we should all be concerned about: Government programs that give lots of people lots of free stuff are always popular.

The hooligans in D.C. know that all they need to do is get their foot in the door with a new bill, then, through their own arbitrary interpretation, have it evolve into what they want it to be. Further, once enough people are benefiting (or think they are) from the largesse that flows from the new program, it will, of course, become popular.

As my friend Judge Andrew Napolitano would say, it’s the wrong debate. The debate should not be over whether a program is or is not popular. Having the top 1 percent of income earners hand over 100 percent of their earnings to the bottom 50 percent of income earners would be popular, too. But that doesn’t mean it would be legal — and certainly not moral.

The real debate that should have been taking place in Congress these past months is whether or not government has a Constitutional right to be involved in health care in any way.

It’s another reminder of how important it is to always check your premises. Most of the Congressional debates that go on in the Capitol Building are based on the false premise that the government has a right to do things that are not called for in the Constitution. As BHO himself has admitted, to his dismay, the Constitution “doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.” The question of Constitutional authority should always be first on the debate list, which, in the vast majority of cases, would eliminate the need for further debate.

If you start with a false premise, you will always arrive at a false conclusion. That government has a right to impose “cap and trade” rules (and taxes) on individuals or companies is a false premise. That government has a right to force people to buy health insurance is a false premise. That government has a right to redistribute wealth is a false premise.

Howard Dean and other socialists who are angry about the Senate health-care bill not being generous enough are getting upset over nothing. The fact is that it doesn’t matter what’s in the final bill. As so many radicals have said over the years, all Congress needs to do is just get involved in a targeted area in a small way, then, over a period of time, it can change the rules and up the ante as it pleases.

The truth hurts, but, sadly, Senator Klobuchar is actually right: As more and more people — especially new generations — get in on the receiving end of a wealth-transfer program like health care, it will become more and more popular with the passage of time. Which is why, as the 2010 elections draw near, repeal should become the laser focus of those of us who truly believe in liberty.

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Note: Click Here for ‘The Year of Reckoning Part I’

Those who talk about the U.S. now coming of the “recession” are either fools or propagandists. Via health care, cap and trade, and other wildly unconstitutional measures, BHO and the criminal Congress will assure that the economy is many times worse off by next November’s elections than it is now. The objective, of course, is to bring people to their knees so they will have “no other choice” but to look to benevolent government for help.

I believe that 20-25 percent unemployment is coming … more massive bailouts of companies “too big to fail” are coming … higher taxes are coming … government
controlled health care is coming … cap and trade is coming … and, yes, jail time for those who do not obey the unconstitutional edicts of the criminal class in Washington is coming.

Could I be wrong? Sure. I thought we’d have runaway inflation and a solidly entrenched police state by the mid eighties, but I underestimated the sheer power of Ronald Reagan’s personality — not to mention the government’s capacity to print fiat currency and borrow money from China & Friends LLC.

Having said this, the only way that a “fundamentally transformed America” can be avoided is if:

1. Free elections are held in 2010.

2. Conservative Republicans sweep into power.

3. Said conservative Republicans immediately began to repeal ALL unconstitutional legislation — including ALL government involvement in health care, ALL forms of government welfare (including unemployment benefits), ALL government regulation of the environment, ALL government involvement in education … and so on.

   In short, get rid of ALL government functions other than providing a legal system for arbitrating disputes, protecting the lives and property of citizens, and providing for a national defense. (That’s defense, not offense.)

4. While all this is going on, those of us who are on the moral high road should be prepared to spend enormous amounts of time and energy educating the anesthetized, sports-crazy, entertainment-crazy, vacation-crazy masses about the wonders of the free market. We must demonstrate our allegiance to truth and non-aggression by putting forth the effort to explain to them why liberty is the most valuable commodity they can ever possess. We must have enough love in our hearts to help them understand that liberty, not government handouts, gives them the best opportunity to achieve economic freedom.

These ideas are wildly unpopular right now, not just with socialist Democrats but with their Republican comrades as well. But let us not forget that there also are true freedom advocates who operate within their inter sanctum — e.g., Ron Paul, Jim DeMint, and Michele Bachmann. We just need to add to their ranks.

The year 2010 will be like no other in American history. It is not just another Carter era of sheer stupidity and incompetence. This is the real thing. This is what progressives have been working toward since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. I guess the one consolation is that if you like excitement, this is going to be the mother of all thrill rides. We are living through a major historical time that may very well shape the destiny of the human race for centuries to come — or bring about its final demise.

With regard to the latter, you may want to watch Life After People the next time it runs on the History Channel if you’d like to get an idea of how Mother Earth will swallow up our human toys and edifices after we are gone. Just remember, you read it here first.

Hmm … maybe I’ll change my byline to “The Good Humor Man.” Nice ring to it.

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In a 2008 radio interview, Barack Obama said:

“ … the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties.”

I tell you, life isn’t fair. Why hasn’t the Supreme Court ever ventured into the matter of “redistributive wealth?” And what in the world were the Founding Fathers thinking about when they failed to broach the subject?

Surely it was an oversight that they never addressed the issue of taking your assets and giving them to your neighbor. Or perhaps it’s just an indication that George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison were cold, calloused individuals who enjoyed watching people suffer.

In the same interview, Chairman Obama went on to say that the Constitution “[says] what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted … and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was … um … because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”

Excuse me? Do on your behalf? Those stupid Founding Fathers again. They didn’t even think to put in the Constitution what the government must do on your behalf (code words for what it can do to you). What were those mentally challenged guys thinking?

And what a tragedy it was that the civil rights movement didn’t put together the coalition of powers that could bring about “redistributive change.” Forget the fact that the Constitution never mentions the redistribution of anything. After all, as with global warming, the debate is over: We all know that redistribution of wealth is the only moral way to operate a country, right?

If we are caught alluding to the Constitution, Queen Nancy herself simply laughs us off with, “Are you serious?” To quote one of my favorite communists, car czar/manufacturing czar Ron “Butthead” Bloom, we get the joke. We know that the whole point is to game the political system, and the vast majority of politicians do that quite well.

America will go through a fundamental change in 2010 — guaranteed. Either it will be fundamentally transformed into a full-fledged socialist police state, then, ultimately, a communist police state, or those who still believe in freedom will do
whatever it takes to overthrow the oligarchy that now rules over us.

If the Republicans, after winning back the House and Senate — or even coming close — continue to act like a branch of the Demopublican Party and ignore the Constitution, it most likely will bring into existence a third party (How about the Tea Party?) that would be the first such animal of the modern era that would have a legitimate shot at of winning the presidency in 2012.

But, as I have so often pointed out, the caveat is that the fascist president and Congress may very well find a Chavezian reason to declare a state of emergency and “postpone” the 2012 presidential election. Regardless of whether that emergency is a total collapse of the U.S. economy (via the Cloward-Piven Strategy) or a terrorist attack, don’t be fooled. If it happens, it will be a planned event by those who are now in power.

Can the U.S. apocalypse be avoided? I’ll address that question in Part II of this article.

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In the Prologue to Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky expressed his contempt for “the Weathermen and their like,” pointing out that there are no rules for revolution, but there are “rules for radicals who want to change the world.”

He believed in “a pragmatic attack on the system,” and pointed out that the rules one follows make “the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one who uses tired old words and slogans” — e.g., “pig” (for police), “white fascist racist,” and “motherf_____.” He felt that by acting in such a stereotypical fashion, young radicals only succeeded in turning people off.

Alinsky then went on to explain that it was of critical importance for a young activist to “communicate within the experience of his audience” — which, he said, specifically ruled out attacks on the American flag. Clearly, Alinsky would have seen Obama as a model radical — smooth talking, non-threatening, even wearing an American flag pin on his lapel during the presidential campaign after people became upset with him for refusing to do so.

Alinsky made a special point of saying that if the real radical finds that having long hair sets up psychological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair. Again, a picture of clean-cut Obama comes to mind — nary a dreadlock to be found on his smooth, radical head.

Perhaps one of the most important clues Alinsky gave us to the coming of BHO and the modern progressives was when he said:

“As an organizer, I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be — it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in [my emphasis] the system.”

Again, Alinksy pragmatism at its best — and I certainly agree with him. I have long emphasized the importance of maintaining an accurate perception of reality. Reality isn’t the way you wish things to be; it’s the way they actually are. The way you wish things to be can be your goal, but to reach that goal you have to start by dealing with today’s reality.

Obama dutifully followed the Alinksy model as a community organizer, working his way up through the system, ultimately leading him into the stench of politics. Politics is what brought the enemy inside the gates, eventually leading to his being briefed on the most high-level U.S. security secrets. Was I the only U.S. citizen to cringe when the gracious George Bush showed him around the White House and handed him the keys to the country?

Sadly, a large percentage of Americans still have no clue, and simply see Obama’s radical agenda to fundamentally transform the U.S. as “not being up to the task” or simply “lacking experience.” These include the many supposedly conservative commentators who continue to say things like, “I just can’t understand why he would do something like that if he knows the American public is against it.” These are the ghosts of people past — people who, throughout history, have insisted, “It could never happen here.”

Clearly, Alinsky had the right rules. It’s just that they were intended and used for the wrong agenda. But there is no questioning that the guy was good at his craft. Even iconic conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. described Alinsky as “very close to being an organizational genius.” Never confuse genius or stupidity with good or evil. As history has repeatedly shown, a brilliant person can have immoral objectives.

Rules for Radicals:

“Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.”

Millions of people are in so much financial pain as a result of the government’s corruption, illegal spending programs, and regulation of the economy that they are willing to “chance the future” (read, “change you can believe in”). Again, Obama is not the Antichrist. He is simply the right community organizer in the right place at the right time.

He possesses the ideal qualities for a community organizer with a large, hidden agenda. He is slick; he is shameless; he is soulless. It is his mission to take the ball over the capitalist’s goal line and score the winning touchdown for socialism.

Now, with more than half the country against him, he must resort to bribery, threats, and any other means necessary to get the ball across the goal line before a massive number of his Congressional partners in crime are thrown out of office in less than a year.

Rules for Radicals:

“To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 percent of American families … whose incomes range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year. [Remember, this was 1971.] … If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right.”

You simply can’t gain and maintain power without the support of the middle and lower classes — particularly without the so-called independent voters (i.e., those who do not harbor any hard and fast philosophical beliefs). The socialists lost this group under Reagan, then again under George W. Bush.

What Alinsky’s well-groomed Chicago disciple managed to do to regain the White House for the left was anesthetize enough middle-class and lower-class voters to ignore his track record in government, his radical associations, and his constant contradictions of his previously recorded statements. And, above all, buy into The Great Obama Lie: that he is a patriotic, middle-of-the-road American. Hmm … something about getting the government we deserve comes to mind here.

Next: Saul Alinsky pays a sincere tribute to the openness of U.S. society and acknowledges it as a big advantage that the radical would not have in places such as Russia, China, or Cuba.

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Most readers have probably not noticed it, but in all the articles I’ve written about BHO, I have never referred to him as “President Obama” except when quoting someone else. As you might have assumed, this has not been by accident.

I’ll never forget the time I was standing in line at a bookstore, chatting with someone about BHO. A stranger standing a couple of people away from me overheard my comments and abruptly admonished me, “Whether you like it or not, he’s our president.”

To which I responded, “He may be your president, but he’s not mine. That was the end of any thought I may have had about conceding and accepting the fact that BHO had been elected to the highest office in the land. The reason I have never seen BHO as the president of the United States is because he swore to uphold the Constitution, but from the day he took an oath to that effect, he immediately began violating it.

I concede that all of our presidents have violated the Constitution, but even the worst of them have at least made a gratuitous attempt to honor it to some degree. BHO’s actions make it clear that he does not even acknowledge its existence.

But enough of my intransigence. My humble objective is to get a handle on what makes this self-defensive, arrogant young socialist so angry and so anxious to take away the rights of American citizens. Call it my personal contribution to the noble cause of preventing him from making good on his promise to fundamentally transform America.

BHO’s actions have been deceitful to such an extreme that some have gone so far as to suggest that he is the Antichrist. Others stop short of that label, but see him as the epitome of evil.

Well, this may surprise you, but I don’t see Chairman Obama as evil. I really don’t. After a good deal of study and observation, my take on him is that he is a man without a soul. And, as a soulless individual, his actions are not hampered by trivial moral considerations.

If you read his autobiographies (two in print before he even made it to the White House!), along with some of the other books written about him, you see a very troubled young man. I, for one, have a great deal of compassion for anyone who has experienced a difficult childhood.

And, clearly, Obama had a dysfunctional life growing up — a white Marxist mother, a black African Muslim father who was a drunk and a philanderer, then, of all things, an Indonesian Muslim stepfather. And, of course, there were the years he spent in a Wahabbi Muslim school in Indonesia (Wahabbi schools being most famous for teaching students hatred for Western countries).

Given all this, it’s not hard to understand why a youngster would become vulnerable to a “down–with-the-rich” proselytizer. And in BHO’s life, it seems clear that that proselytizer came in the form of American communist Frank Marshall Davis, whom he refers to in his memoirs simply as “Frank.”

Ironically, BHO attended Punahou High School in Honolulu, which is the most upper-crust school in Hawaii. Like so many other things about BHO’s life, where he got the money to attend such an expensive school, not to mention Columbia and Harvard, has never been revealed.

In this series of articles, I’m going to try to get inside BHO’s head by dissecting the man and the book that perhaps had more influence on his anti-capitalist, anti-American attitude than anyone or anything else in his life. I’m talking, of course, about the infamous Saul Alinsky, founder of modern community organizing, and his equally infamous book, Rules for Radicals.

Alinksy, who died in 1972, was the son of Russian immigrants. He grew up in Chicago and was a street-smart kid whose early community organizing efforts were focused on the downtrodden Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago (made famous years earlier by Upton Sinclair in his classic novel The Jungle).

Because I always keep in mind that it is critically important to know your enemies, I recently reread Rules for Radicals, and was surprised by how certain parts of it struck me. For example, would you believe that there was much about Saul Alinsky that I actually liked? He was a fascinating character with a great sense of humor.

In fact, Alinksy was a witty, congenial, intellectual man with whom I probably would have enjoyed having lunch once a month. As I reread Rules for Radicals, I pictured what it would have been like to have engaged in friendly philosophical debates with my fantasy friend at the other end of the political spectrum.

I think my attitude toward him would have been, “Saul, I love ya, pal, but I feel obliged to tell you that you’re full of crap.” And with that, we’d have another friendly debate over human nature, philosophy, politics, and life. Alinksy was no Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers. He was a serious thinker.

In Part II of this article, I’ll tell you some of the things in the early part of Rules for Radicals that make me believe that I would have liked Saul Alinsky. Before concluding that I’ve lost my mind, be sure to read what I have to say.

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I caught a lot of heat for my recent article “One Person at a Time,” so much so that I felt compelled to respond. The paragraph that sent a lot of readers into outer space was this one:

“I don’t think we ever should have gone into Vietnam, but, once there, we could have ended the affair in one day by dropping a nuke on Hanoi — and saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars in the process. Now, President Wuss is timidly keeping a minimum of American troops in Afghanistan, where thousands more are sure to get maimed and killed. But that quagmire, too, could be ended in one day by dropping a nice, neat string of nuclear bombs on the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

In retrospect, I think I was a bit too flip here when it came to mentioning the N word. Most civilized people (including myself) are against decimating whole populations with nuclear weapons. The point I was trying to make was that the U.S. should do everything possible to avoid going to war, but if politicians find a way to get us into one, they should do everything possible to win and get us out — quickly.

In the real world — a world where there are no perfect solutions — I don’t see my view as inhumane. On the contrary, I see it as the most humane thing a country can do once it has gotten itself into a war.

Having said this, I decided to do something I have never done before — revise an article that is already on my blog. I didn’t compromise my principles or beliefs, but I did manage to remove the flip tone that seemed to offend a number of readers.

As the late and legendary sportswriter Red Smith once said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

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In response to two of my recent articles — “The Beckoning of the Serpents” and “The Dismissal Strategy” – reader johnwolfe53 wrote the following blog post:

Several days ago you published a letter from a reader decrying professional sports as a subversive influence in society. Your comments following the reader’s note seemed to agree with him on many of the points he raised. The tone of the letter and, sadly, of your comments was borderline offensive.

The implication that those who follow sports are sheep being led off a cliff was insulting, and frankly beneath you. I, for one, follow sports as an enjoyable diversion. But that does not make me an unthinking automaton incapable of understanding the gravity of the situation we face. Nor do I whistle past the graveyard on my way to purchasing overpriced tickets and team-logo gear.

I’m active in local affairs. I participate in the political process on a variety of levels. I’m vocal on the issues of the day, communicating regularly with my Congressional representatives, the media and even the White House. And, yes, from time to time, I root, root, root for the home team. I find it energizing and, God forbid, enjoyable.

Perhaps your correspondent, and the other criminally strident among your subscribers, would be well served to take a break from their misery occasionally and watch a ball game, drink a beer or have a catch. Spend some time interacting with those outside their circle of sycophants, and get a little perspective. Stop the Chicken Littling and focus on having a positive, measurable effect on their communities, their workplaces, their families.

And if they – or you – are going to attack sports, professional or otherwise, how about showing some creativity – or at least some consistency? One of your correspondent’s comments was the tired old screed that professional athletes get paid too much for playing “a kid’s game,” that what they do – at the top skill levels in their chosen fields by the way – is somehow not “worth” what they earn.

Yet today you write, regarding the Chris Wallace interview with Rush Limbaugh, that “perhaps the best of Rush came out when Wallace asked him, with regard to his purported $400 million radio contract, how anyone could possibly be worth that much money. Said Limbaugh, “Because that’s what people are willing to pay me.”

Is it possible that some people might think Limbaugh is overpaid? Personally, I agree with much that Limbaugh says, but I don’t care much for the way he presents himself. I think he’s an arrogant blowhard. That doesn’t mean he isn’t “worth” his fat paycheck. As he told Wallace, “That’s what people are willing to pay.”

You went on to mention the “moral superiority of capitalism,” adding that “Capitalism is not something to be embarrassed about. I’m proud to say that I believe in economic freedom.” Just not for athletes? Seems to me, you can’t have it both ways. If capitalism is good, and it is, it is good for all involved in it, not just those you think are worthy.

Dear johnwolfe53, you need to read my articles more closely. I never said that those who follow sports are sheep being led off a cliff, nor did I say that anyone who goes to sporting events is an unthinking automaton incapable of understanding the gravity of America’s dire situation.

I agree with you that going to an occasional game is a good way to relax and unwind, but I stay my ground on those lost souls whose lives are totally consumed by rooting for the “hometown team.” This kind of obsession keeps their minds off subjects that are somewhat more important than painting one’s body in his team’s colors and screaming at the top of his lungs for three hours for his heroes to win one for Mudville.

When I say subjects that are somewhat more important, I’m referring to pesky little issues such as the loss of our liberty, America’s march toward bankruptcy, and government-run healthcare and cap-and-trade legislation that is guaranteed to drown working people with new, draconian taxes.

I also stand my ground on the idea of a hometown team being nonsense. As I said, most professional athletes have little attachment for the towns in which they ply their trade from year to year. Theirs is a nomadic profession.

In the days of yore, things were different. I am told that when you played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, you really were like a hometown guy. On any given day, you might see Duke Snider walking into your neighborhood delicatessen. Roy Campanella owned a liquor store in Brooklyn, and many Dodger fans were also his customers. The Dodgers, the Yankees, et al really were hometown teams. But those days are long gone.

I was really into sports in my youth, but I slowly lost interest as cities became nothing more than way stations for players looking for ever higher salaries. And who can blame them? But for anyone to take seriously the notion of a “hometown team” in this day and age of free agency is lunacy.

Finally, you say, “Seems to me, you can’t have it both ways. If capitalism is good, and it is, it is good for all involved in it, not just those you think are worthy.” I don’t want it both ways. As I said, I don’t blame athletes for making all the money they can. I believe in the free market.

My concern is with the mindless folks who provide the money to pay astronomical salaries to those who happen to be good at playing games of one kind or another. The fact that people place such a high premium on athletic talent is just one of a long list of signs that Western civilization is now standing on its head.

So-called rap “music” … abortion on demand … reality TV shows … plotless movies offering nonstop violence and explicit sex from start to finish … gang-infested cities … the list is as long as you want to make it. So, insanity over sports doesn’t get all the credit for the decay of our once proud civilization.

But the athletes, they’re just giving people what they want at prices they are willing to pay. No problem there. More power to them. It’s the meatheads who work themselves into a frenzy of blind adoration — who have no purpose in their lives — who are the problem.

Of course, in a free country, they have every right to medicate themselves with sports, junk TV, sexual excess, or anything else that does the trick for them. But the more they do so at the expense of learning a bit about what is happening to our once noble civilization, the less free our country is likely to become.

I guess you might say that in a free country you are free to lose your freedom by becoming totally absorbed in things that don’t require you to engage in that oh so painful activity known as thinking.

Better?

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I’m old enough to remember when America was guided by certitudes, pride, and resolve. The old-fashioned America didn’t go to war very often, but when it did, the aggressor on the other side soon found it had made a terrible mistake.

Unfortunately, today’s America is driven by an insatiable desire for oil and an arrogant desire to save other countries from themselves. Even more unfortunately, these two desires require vast amounts of money, wasted lives, and frequent wars.

Meanwhile, diseases in the U.S. go uncured, potholes adorn the streets of our nation’s capital, and diversity and multiculturalism reign supreme. But it’s okay, so long as we keep pounding our chests and bragging that we are “the world’s only superpower.”

No one seems to think about the wisdom contained in the Rule of Holes: If you’ve dug a deep hole for yourself, the first step toward getting out is to stop digging. Then, once the digging has stopped, maybe we should rethink who we have become and what we would like to be.

• Do we really want to allow judges to rewrite the laws of the land?

• Do we really want our children to grow up in a country where the ACLU rather than certitudes dictates our way of life?

• Do we really want the government, which has proven to be inept at everything it touches, to control all aspects of our lives — including our health care?

• Do we really want to bestow upon our enemy combatants the same rights that we give to U.S. citizens?

• Above all, do we really want to try to save starving and tyrannized people around the globe, while at the same time lacking the resolve to use overwhelming force against their murderous rulers?

A guy by the name of George once spoke to this last issue with great clarity:

“I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation had a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that everyone had a right to form and adopt whatever government they liked best to live under themselves; and that, if this country could, consistently with its engagements, maintain a strict neutrality and thereby preserve peace, it was bound to do so by motives of policy, interest, and every other considerations.”

Which one of our Georges spoke these words? George Clooney? George Soros? George Foreman? George Orwell? George Bush? Not even close. It was, in fact, none other than Big George himself — George Washington.

If Big George has been looking down on us from that Special Place in the Sky, what must he be thinking about the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan Wars? Not to mention whatever the new mess is going to be just around the next oil derrick? It’s enough to make his wig spin.

Flags waving, bands playing, and self-declarations of our being the world’s only superpower are feel-good, subconscious diversionary tactics that only succeed in shielding us from the truth. And the truth is that, compared to George’s rag-tag bunch at Valley Forge, we are an incomparable collection of relativist wusses whose feelings get hurt at the drop of a PC word. We are so civilized that we’ve become uncivilized.

I don’t think we ever should have gone into Vietnam, but, once there, we could have ended the affair in one day by dropping a nuke on Hanoi — and saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars in the process. Now, President Wuss is timidly keeping a minimum of American troops in Afghanistan, where thousands more are sure to get maimed and killed.

But that quagmire, too, could be ended pretty quickly with the use of overwhelming force. Perhaps by employing the Dresden carpet-bombing approach? Look, I don’t like war. I don’t believe in war. And, above all, I don’t believe in getting into a war and dragging it out. But if politicians insist that this or that war is a “war of necessity,” I say get it over with quickly or just forget the whole thing and get out.

What’s that you say? People around the world would hate us if we did that? News flash: People around the world already hate us. And they always will, so long as we are free and prosperous. Of course, if President Wuss has his way, free and prosperous will soon be a thing of the past, and ultimately he may get the uncivilized folks on Planet Earth just to dislike us rather than hate us.

And while I’m in a grumpy mood, let me tell you another frustrating truth that most people are unwilling to face up to: You can’t do much to bring about positive macro changes in the United States of Decadence, because, to the extent you try, the secular progressives will frustrate you at every turn.

But the good news is that each of us can work hard at straightening out our own thoughts, our own actions, and our own lives. With that in mind, a good thing for each of us to think about as we head into the Christmas season is to look in the mirror and make a vow to get straight with ourselves.

It may take a hundred years or more, but the only way we can ever straighten out America — meaning, return it to a sane, moral, and just land guided by civilized certitudes — is for the populace to straighten itself out, one person at a time.

I’m game. Are you?

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Kudos to Dick Morris for the great job he’s doing to help raise money for the League of American Voters in an effort to stop Obamacare from passing the Senate. Voters under thirty have been the strongest supporters of BHO’s attempt to put a stranglehold on the nation’s economy and gain ever more control over people’s lives.

After the League of American Voters ran ads in Arkansas, North Dakota, and Maine, however, the under-thirty crowd changed its tune and now opposes the Democrats’ Orwellian legislation by an eye-opening 65-25. Which proves again that what I first wrote about in 1979 in Restoring the American Dream is true: Short of a violent counter-revolution, education of the masses is the key to defeating the progressive movement to socialize America.

Informed people know that government-run healthcare has nothing to do with helping those who are uninsured … that global warming is a scam … that most members of Congress are totally corrupt and that a large number of them are guilty of treason … to name but a few of the more egregious items. Yet the government keeps inundating us with its trickle-down lies.

But the times they are a changin‘. The progressives are now getting it from all sides, thanks to Fox News, conservative talk radio, conservative and libertarian bloggers, and, above all, a strange humanoid by the name of Glenn Beck to whom God handed a divine mission.

Though the Republican establishment (that’s right, Republican) is up in arms over Beck, they’re too late. The only thing that can stop him is an assassin’s bullet, and let’s hope that doesn’t happen. And if it did, it might just trigger an acceleration in the citizen revolt that is now well under way.

Much like the Founding Fathers, I believe that Beck has committed himself to using his fame, his fortune, and his enormous talents to defeating the poisonous progressive movement in this country.

Beck is the guy I’ve been waiting for since 1982, when I wrote:

When soliciting others to help in a mass education program, be prepared for a great deal of frustration. Not only are most people apathetic, but even those who most fervently believe in freedom and free enterprise are rarely willing to back their beliefs with either time or money. Frank Chodorov, in his wonderful book, The Income Tax, poignantly noted this unfortunate truth when he wrote:

“If, for instance, those who prate about ‘free enterprise’ were willing to risk bankruptcy for it, even as the men of the Declaration risked their necks for independence, the present drive for the collectivization of capital would not have such easy going. Assuming that they are fully aware of the implications of the phrase they mouth, and are sincere in their protestations, the fact that they are unwilling to suffer mortification of the flesh disqualifies them for leadership, and the case for ‘free enterprise’ is hopeless.”

In simple terms, what Chodorov was saying was: If capitalists are unwilling to put their money where their mouths are, then the case for freedom and free enterprise is lost by default. And that, in the final analysis, is where the issue really will be decided.

Glenn Beck, who was fifteen years old when I wrote this, is the first person I have seen with the talent, money, drive, and, most important, willingness to “risk mortification of the flesh.” As I’ve said in previous articles, he has dragged the evildoers in Washington into a war with him that they cannot win.

The more they try to belittle Beck, the more attention they will draw to him — and to the facts he exposes on a daily basis. On the other hand, the more they try to ignore him, the more free rein he has to shed light on their dastardly deeds.

Beck has announced a massive rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, which gives the socialist oligarchy in Washington nine months to think about it. Unless they do something to stop him, that massive gathering of anti-government-corruption folks — I’m guessing it will be at least 1-2 million strong — will overwhelm the lies and treasonous acts of Obama and his progressive allies in Congress.

In the meantime, you can’t afford not to contribute to your own freedom. I urge you to go the League of American Voters Web site and make a down payment on saving your children and grandchildren from a lifetime of enslavement. Click here
to watch their eye-opening 30-minute video.

The repression of truth by the progressive fascists is becoming shakier by the day. Let’s make sure it spreads throughout the land before they resort to iron-fist tactics and establish an outright dictatorship in place of the shadow dictatorship that is now in place.

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I love Sarah Palin! That’s the good news. The bad news is that I, and millions of others who love the ex-governor of Alaska, have been greatly disappointed by her recent interviews.

In my previous article, I pointed out how Palin missed many golden opportunities to put her libertarian-centered conservative principles on display in her interview with Sean Hannity. Then, shortly into the first segment of her interview with Bill O’Reilly, it was obvious that she was going to offer more make-nice filibustering.

I received a lot of feedback from readers who share my concern about Palin’s unwillingness to speak out boldly. Two examples:

“I am a very hopeful advocate for Sarah Palin. Your article was spot on. Sarah must take the gloves off and bear her fangs. If she does not do this she will follow the hapless John McCain into oblivion. How can this message reach Sarah Palin? It must happen.” — Patrick A.

“Great article! I love Sarah, and I hope she reads this! I really believed she’d be a lot gutsier. We need a FEARLESS firebrand! — Susan N.

It appears that Sarah Palin has presidential aspirations. But it also appears that she learned little from her experience with John McMush and his “handlers.”

The Be-Careful-What-You-Say Strategy apparently is contagious. Why else would Palin be so cautious when she has the opportunity to show the world who she really is? Just as BHO can no longer blame the depression on George Bush, neither can Sarah Palin continue to blame her lack of interview effectiveness on McMush’s handlers.

When O’Reilly asked her what she would do about Putin and Russia, Palin mumbled something about “working with our allies.” Say what? How about, “I would immediately install an antiballistic missile-shield system in Eastern Europe — without discussing it with Putin.”

O’Reilly then asked her what she would do about Iran’s drive to build a nuclear bomb. Palin mumbled something about “imposing sanctions.” Gosh, I never heard that one before. Alert the media: Sanctions don’t work! Russia, China, et al don’t cooperate when it comes to sanctions, and the rulers of sanctioned countries don’t give a hoot if their own people suffer. “Imposing sanctions” is right out of the Politico Babble Bible — right along with “Mideast Peace Process,” “eliminate fraud and abuse,” and “get the economy moving.”

I’ve given the Palin matter a lot of thought, and can come up with only three possibilities for her disappointing play-it-down-the-middle approach in the interviews she’s done thus far on her book tour:

Possibility Number 1: Finally free of the constraints that were placed on her during the presidential campaign, she may have fallen into the hands of a new group of Inside-the–Beltway handlers who are taking her down the same losing road — a road that, until the advent of the tea parties, gave a power seeker the best chance of getting into Washington’s elite Political Criminal Club.

Possibility Number 2: The second possibility is that Palin is making her own decisions, which is scary to think about, because it would mean that her judgment is lousy. The only way she could so badly misjudge the mood of a majority of Americans is if she is either ignorant or woefully lacking when it comes to accurately perceiving the world around her. As I said, scary to think about.

Possibility Number 3: Lastly is the possibility that I hate to even consider: What if Sarah Palin is not a fearless, gun-toting, corruption-fighting, in-your-face libertarian-centered conservative? What if she’s just another politician? Let us not forget that last March she appointed former Planned Parenthood board member Morgan Christen to the Alaska State Supreme Court, which assured that the Court would lean left on issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

The first two possibilities are correctible mistakes, so let’s focus on number three. When I was young and single, I dated one particular girl (“Cathy”) for about three years. I liked almost everything about her — physically attractive, intelligent, and kind. But she had one other trait that I tried to ignore: She was an emotional train wreck.

Put another way, she wasn’t who I wanted to believe she was. She was not a gal who was physically attractive, intelligent, and kind. She was a gal who was physically attractive, intelligent, kind — and a nutcase. I finally realized that I was deluding myself into trying to make her into something she was not, and I got out of the relationship.

Which brings me back to America’s love affair with Sarah Palin. Is it possible that she’s just another Cathy and that we’re all trying desperately to make her into something she is not? Let’s hope that isn’t the case. After all, it hasn’t been that long ago that she called the Democratic healthcare bill “evil.” That is the fresh voice that Americans hunger for.

More likely, some establishment types got to her and convinced her that moderation was the road to the White House. Sure worked well for John McMush, didn’t it?

As I said in my previous article, if Sarah Palin has presidential ambitions, she should do the exact same thing she would do if she were focusing only on money: Speak out boldly and without fear.

If Palin wants to learn how to do that, she might study some ultra-knowledgeable females who aren’t shy about speaking the truth — say, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, and Monica Crowley, for starters. Even Congresswoman Michele Bachmann doesn’t worry about offending people when she speaks out — which is often.

Here’s today’s free message to Sarah Palin: If you’re really serious about running for high office, I suggest you step back and reassess the playing field. Americans are mad! And the last thing in the world they want to hear are long-winded verbal meanderings filled with clichés like “the average, everyday, hard-working American.” We already have the world’s biggest B.S. artist in the White House, and he gives us all the verbal fluff we can handle.

Governor Palin, like millions of other Americans, I want to believe that you’re for real. But if you’re not willing to step up to the plate like the heavy-hitting gals I named above, I, along with millions of others, are eventually going to give up on you. If you’re trying to play to the so-called moderate crowd (read, moderate liberals), your political career is over.

Wouldn’t it be sad to watch the prim and proper Peggy Noonan clique gloating and saying, “I told you so?”

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I always thought that when Sarah Palin finally resurfaced, she would quickly show whether she was going for the money or planning to run for president. If she’s decided to spend her life pursuing riches, I felt she would speak out boldly and truthfully in an unvarnished way that would whip liberal miscreants into a hysterical frenzy.

On the other hand, I was concerned that if she had presidential ambitions, she might make the mistake of spinning, tip-toeing, and dancing around tough questions in an effort to appear mainstream.

I’m happy for Sarah Palin that she’s going to make millions on her book. In fact, I’ve long believed that if she could get herself financially set for life, she would be much more effective in leading the fight against the socialist policies that are bringing down America.

I assumed that the Oprah interview would be much ado about nothing, given that the Queen of Yawn Television not only supported Chairman Obama, she also had a huge television audience to think about — an audience that no doubt includes millions of conservative women.

Everyone is pretty much tired of questions about Bristol’s pregnancy, how Governor Palin feels about Levi the Loser, moose hunting with dad, how she met Todd, and the infighting she endured with the McCain people. We all overdosed on those topics long ago. So my hope was that in her interview with Sean Hannity, Palin would let it all hang out. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

Hannity gave Palin two chances to agree with him that BHO is a socialist. The platter was silver, and he handed it to her in front of millions of fed-up Americans. Sadly, Governor Palin sidestepped the question with the same kind of political slight of tongue that we’ve grown accustomed to with most of our politicians.

Hannity then asked her if she thought the president was a radical — a soft pitch if there ever was one. Answer: “I think his associates are radical.” What the hell kind of answer is that? Governor Palin: Please, answer the question!

Sadly, it was at that point that I knew my concerns about her spinning, tip-toeing, and dancing around tough questions in an effort to appear mainstream as a way to get elected were right. But, thanks to the Master of the Forked Tongue in the White House, times have changed since the million-dollar-smile Alaska governor joined forces with the hapless John McCain and his reach-across-the-aisle pabulum.

A majority of Americans now realize that Chairman Obama is the least transparent president in history … that he rewards his cronies and punishes those who speak out against him … that he coddles terrorists and goes after those who pursue them … that he apologizes to the world for America’s moral inferiority and allows rogue nations to run wild … that Marxists and others who wish to destroy what’s left of capitalism in this country are welcome in his White House … and that, above all, he lies to the American people day in and day out.

Today, if Sarah Palin has presidential ambitions, she should do the exact same thing she would do if she were focusing only on money: Speak out boldly and truthfully in an unvarnished way that would whip liberal miscreants into a hysterical frenzy.

If all Sarah Palin is going to offer the public is a beautiful face and an electric smile, I can just buy her calendar and hang it on my office wall. You know, kind of like Marilyn Monroe’s picture hanging on the inside of GI Joe’s locker during World War II.

Let’s hope Palin’s ho-hum stories keep people interested long enough for her to sell a ton of books and get herself financial comfortable. But then, if she’s serious about a future run for the presidency, it’s time to go to war — because this country is at war. To borrow from the title of Mark Levin’s book, the war is between liberty and tyranny — nothing more and nothing less.

Governor Palin, I’m sorry to say that I don’t have time to be your chief advisor, but I’m more than willing to give you a few free tips. If you want angry Americans — those who are now in the majority! — to take you seriously, here are some cheat notes for you to use in future interviews and speeches:

Barack Obama is a socialist (or, more properly, a Marxist). Say it!

Barack Obama, it obviously follows, is a radical. Say it!

Barack Obama has surrounded himself with Marxists and other radicals who want to fundamentally change America. Say it!

Barack Obama is a liar. Say it!

Barack Obama is trying to collapse the U.S. economy in an effort to get the majority of the voters to elect and reelect socialists to office in 2010 — and get himself reelected in 2012. Say it!

Barack Obama is the least transparent president in U.S. history. Say it!

Barack Obama wants to get a government-controlled healthcare plan and a cap-and-trade bill passed for one reason and one reason only: to gain total control over people’s lives. Say it!

To your credit, you did say that you believe in racial profiling in cases involving potential terrorism, but you nervously alluded to the fact that your comment would probably “make liberal heads explode.” Tip: Don’t worry about liberal heads exploding. The more you make liberal heads explode, the more popular you are going to be with a majority of Americans.

Forget what your current handlers are telling you and take my advice: Whether you’re going for the money or going for the highest office in the land, speak the truth — and speak it with boldness. As I said, the game has changed since you ran for office with the Democrats’ favorite liberal, Mumbles McCain.

We’re now living in the age of the tea-party people. The average American knows the truth about the Duplicitous Despot in the White House and his arrogant criminal cohorts in Congress. They’re mad as hell and ready to throw out anyone and everyone who continues to ignore them.

So mad, in fact, that I believe for the first time in our modern era, a newly organized third party — founded on libertarian-based conservative principles — has a chance to succeed either in 2012 or 2016.

I’m talking about a party with candidates who are willing to talk about rescinding most government programs now in effect, willing to talk about getting government out of private business and corporate America, willing to talk about putting on trial those in high office who are guilty of treason, and, yes, willing to talk about secession.

Please, Sarah, say it ain’t so. Say you’re not just another pretty face. I like Jim DeMint, but hanging his picture on my office wall just doesn’t cut it.

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Any civilized person dislikes the thought of minorities being oppressed, and I would argue that the most oppressed minority in the U.S. is the small businessperson. But he is not without his supporters. By and large, his employees think highly of him. Why not? After all, he gives them the opportunity to earn a living.

So, who is it that doesn’t like small business owners? The government! Why? Because small businesspeople are stubbornly independent. They don’t need or want government help. They make their own way in the world. Profitability is the name of the game for them, but it’s not an easy task.

In a truly free society, it would be difficult enough for a small business to make a profit. A small-business owner is like an orchestra conductor. He has to be on top of every aspect of his enterprise. He has to make sure that every employee is doing his job correctly.

And when he goes broke — as millions of small businesspeople have done — he often feels like all he has to show for his work is that he gave his employees a good lifestyle for an extended period of time. They go on to the next job, and he goes on to face his creditors.

Ironically, the small businessperson’s biggest threat is also his biggest employee — the government. I say biggest employee, because the government is supposed to work for him. It says so in that antiquated little piece of work called the Constitution. But those who hold the reins of power don’t much care about the Constitution.

As a result, the government taxes the small businessperson at every turn, regulates him to death, and harasses him in an almost sadistic fashion. Rather than being his humble servant, the government has transformed itself into the natural predator of the small businessperson.

Without government, it is breathtaking to imagine what the average small businessperson could accomplish. In a true laissez-faire economy — which, by the way, has never existed on this planet — the small businessperson would be able to create wealth on a scale that is impossible for a socialist thinker to comprehend.

Now, along comes government’s next big roadblock for small business — government-run healthcare. In one form or another, sooner or later, a bill will be passed — over the objections of a majority of American serfs. And when it passes, the one thing of which we can be certain is that it will mean higher taxes for everyone — particularly small businesspeople.

Having said this, I thought it would be a good time to disrobe an economic myth that even most libertarians and conservatives buy into. For as long as I can remember, conventional wisdom has insisted that companies don’t pay taxes, only consumers do. The idea is that any increase in a company’s taxes are merely passed along to its customers.

While this is true, to a great extent, in some industries (utilities being the most obvious example), it is not true in most. A government-enforced monopoly like a gas or electric company can, for the most part, pass along higher taxes to its customers. Even with utilities, however, there is, at least in theory, some degree of choice.

But in most industries, especially those that sell discretionary products and services, customers always have a choice. Whether it’s parallel competition (alternatives to a product or service), dollar competition (people making decisions to purchase some products and do without others), or invisible competition (entrepreneurs always being ready to enter into an overpriced industry and compete at lower prices), companies can’t treat their customers as though they are cows waiting to be milked at the whim of corporate executives.

Which brings me back to taxes. No matter what kind of healthcare bill finally emerges from the Criminal Crowd in Washington, you can bet the farm that small businesses will get hit the hardest. Small businesspeople stand for everything that politicians hate. Small businesses provide jobs. Small businesses produce products and services that people are willing to purchase, without the threat of government coercion. Small businesses create wealth and thereby grow the economy.

All of the above conflict with the current administration’s desire to collapse the economy and get as many people as possible on the dole (the Cloward-Piven Strategy). That’s why the government’s omnibenevolence never finds its way to small business. Small business is the enemy, because it eliminates the need for people to look to the government for benefits.

Healthcare legislation — in whatever grotesque form it ends up taking — will surely increase operating costs for small businesses across the board, starting with taxes and/or fines. And, as I said, a business cannot automatically pass along an increase in expenses to its customers. This is even more true in a bad economy, when people are not willing, or able, to pay higher prices.

Instead, they will find alternatives — often government-subsidized alternatives — or do without. Either way, the higher cost of doing business will cause small businesses to lay off employees, which will increase unemployment, increase jobless benefits, and further depress the economy.

And, of course, many small businesses will shut their doors — either through voluntarily or involuntary liquidation. Some of the more fortunate ones will go the Atlas Shrugged route and simply stop producing and walk away. Any way you slice it, the biggest cost of government-run healthcare to all of us will be the devastation that it will do to the engine of our economy — America’s 27 million small businesses.

But it’s okay, because Baltimore-bred, airhead Nancy — with her glued-on, toothy smile — has already congratulated herself and her Congressional partners in crime for “delivering affordable healthcare to every American.” Doesn’t her upbeat nature make you feel warm and fuzzy all over? Arrgh!

Now let’s sit back, reminisce about the golden days of Western civilization, and see what kind of Trojan horse the Senate Mob comes up with. Perhaps they’ll pleasantly surprise us, but don’t hold your breath.

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I caught the last part of Chris Wallace’s interview with Rush Limbaugh last Sunday and was pleased to have it confirmed as being a huge success. That confirmation came from David Axelrod on CBS’ Face the Nation when he dismissed Limbaugh as an entertainer.

Said Axelrod, “He does it every day on radio. He’s marketing the outrageous. And he does very well with it. But, as I said, he’s an entertainer. We’ve got bigger responsibilities.”

Funny, and here all this time I thought it was BHO who was marketing the outrageous, with government-run healthcare being his latest ShamWow. But there’s no question that BHO and The Boys have bigger responsibilities — like, for example, fundamentally changing a democratic republic into a socialist police state.

One thing kids should be taught at a young age is that when someone belittles another person’s words and dismisses him as a kook, an entertainer, or “not a serious person,” it’s usually a sign of fear, jealousy, or both. Intelligent, mature adults of goodwill do not dismiss opposing viewpoints. They listen, weigh what the other person has to say, then, if warranted, express their disagreement in a civilized manner.

The far left is almost embarrassingly childish in using the same old, not-so-clever tactic against everyone who opposes its views, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck being two other prominent targets that come to mind.

What is obvious to anyone who doesn’t wear a Marxist pacemaker is that, in reality, the White House and the progressive Congress are terrified of folks like Limbaugh, Palin, and Beck … not to mention John Stossel, Sean Hannity, and a long list of conservative talk-radio hosts … and, of course, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Senator Jim DeMint, and a number of other libertarian-centered conservatives operating in the belly of the beast.

Some of the points Rush Limbaugh made that I particularly liked include:

• “It is unconstitutional to force people to have health insurance.” Finally, someone said it! Obamacare is not a healthcare issue. It’s a freedom issue. Where in the world did anyone get the idea that the government has a Constitutional right to force supposedly free citizens to purchase anything?

  Too many people — particularly television commentators — are missing the point on this one. The ongoing babble about everyone agreeing that healthcare needs to be “reformed” should be rejected out of hand, because the Constitutional reality is that healthcare is none of the government’s business.

• When Wallace asked Limbaugh whether he sees the Republican Party as a big-tent party or a small-tent party, he unhesitatingly answered, “Big tent.” He then went on to explain that the big tent is the country.

  It’s amazing to me how many people — particularly Republicans — seem to ignore poll after poll that shows that Americans are overwhelmingly conservative. If Republicans want to avoid extinction, they do need to make their tent bigger — much bigger.

  But the way to accomplish that is not by inviting more No-Brain-McCain people into the party. It’s by sticking to their core principles and selling voters on the incredible benefits of
  less government and more individual sovereignty. They might also think long and hard about the results of last Tuesday’s elections.

• As to BHO’s being “immature, inexperienced, in over his head,” while I agree with Rush on his assessment, I give BHO a bit more credit than he does. I believe the Duplicitous Despot knows exactly what he’s doing: relentlessly carrying out an agenda to, as he himself put it, “fundamentally change America.”

  Does anyone seriously believe that appointments like John Holdren, Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd, and Anita Dunn are simply a string of coincidences? The King of Narcissism didn’t just skim-read Rules for Radicals. Saul Alinsky’s childish, fuzzy ideas are deeply ingrained in his gray matter.

• Perhaps the best of Rush came out when Wallace asked him, with regard to his purported $400 million radio contract, how anyone could possibly be worth that much money. Said Limbaugh, “Because that’s what people are willing to pay me.”

  Try explaining that to the President of Community Organizers and his capitalism-is-evil flock of thugs. More prominent conservatives and libertarians need to have the courage to make bold, honest statements in defense of capitalism.

  Capitalism is not something to be embarrassed about. I’m proud to say that I believe in economic freedom. Aside from the moral superiority of capitalism, a nice bonus is that economic freedom gives people at the bottom of the economic ladder the greatest opportunity to better their existence.

Like most people who have finally stopped celebrating the election of America’s first “black” president, Limbaugh sees a landslide for Republicans in 2010. But the one thing he did not say — something that I’ve been warning about since BHO was elected — is that there may not be elections in 2010.

As I’ve said before, I don’t want to be on record as predicting it, because I don’t want to believe it will actually happen. But I do think it’s wise to be prepared if something catastrophic should occur before November 2010 that would give Chairman Obama an excuse to declare a “state of emergency” and “postpone” the elections.

Barring that, yes, Republicans — and perhaps a number of independents — will sweep out much of the trash in the halls of Congress in 2010. Then we can all sit back, arms folded, and say to the new power holders, “Okay, folks, now prove to us that you understand the Constitution.”

What their response will be remains to be seen.

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Following is a recent blog post by “deusimplicitus” (slightly edited for clarity):

In America, we’ve been encouraged and taught to make accumulating materialistic tokens, along with hedonism, the norm underlying our national pastime. We have lost sight of all other rational and reasonable characteristics that make a more complete human being.

Too many Americans have become unthinking and non-objective automatons, unable to disengage from their societal programming and actually think in terms of a larger, more rational perspective, along with a longer view in the process of problem solving, both individually and as a group (nation). This will be the true underlying cause of the continuing decline of our country.

From the major corporations exporting American jobs and then importing almost everything sold in our stores, to the petty and narcissistic programming that everyone has rights (that they in fact do not have) and that everyone is somehow a victim of someone else, the foundations of what once made America great and prosperous have been undermined.

Grown adults play what amounts to what is nothing more than children’s games, and are paid obscene amounts of money for doing so. This is made possible because other grown adults find enchantment in the distractions of false hero worship and the need to align with the ridiculous abstract concept of a “hometown team.” It all illustrates the overall immaturity of the average modern American and the blaring emptiness of the American soul, as well as the modern sports businesses that prey upon these people.

Reader deusimplicitus has said a mouthful here. What he has not explained, however, is why we are encouraged and taught to make accumulating materialistic tokens the norm.

Why have we become unthinking and non-objective automatons, unable to disengage from our societal programming?

Why do we believe we have rights that we do not have?

Why do grown adults among us get paid obscene amounts of money to play children’s games?

Most important, why do grown adults find enchantment in the distractions of false hero worship and the need to align themselves with the ridiculous abstract concept of a “hometown team.”

All of these questions were answered by Aldous Huxley in his classic novel Brave New World. The “somas” Huxley wrote about were the perfect drug for controlling the masses, used by the government not only to keep people in line, but to make them docile and happy in the process. Hero worship and the absurd attachment to the self-delusive concept of a “hometown team” is the new millennium’s version of Huxley’s somas.

This hero worship of athletes — many of whom are common thugs or even convicted felons — whose contributions to the world include the ability to slam a ball through a metal rim at a distance of zero feet … run like an antelope for fifty yards with a sphere-shaped ball under their arms … or hit a little white ball 400 feet (with or without the use of “performance enhancing drugs”) is an integral part of the disintegration of American culture.

As I was flipping through the channels the other night, I happened upon an NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings. Just as I tuned in, a Steeler was in the midst of returning a Bret Favre pass for a touchdown. As the camera scanned the crowd, you would have thought someone had just announced a cure for world hunger. The fans were going bananas, waving their “terrible towels,” high-fiving one another, and screaming like asylum inmates for their “hometown” heroes.

It’s easy to chuckle and wave aside these Homer Simpson-like antics as harmless nonsense, but such an idiotic attachment to athletes for whom Pittsburgh is but a stopping off point in their careers actually serves a purpose: It takes the minds of adults who have no meaningful purpose in life off their own misery.

So long as they are mesmerized by their imaginary cause (that a bunch of temporary residents of their city somehow make them a more worthy people than their counterparts in, say, Cincinnati or Baltimore), it makes it easy for Nancy, Harry, Barney, and Co. to continue robbing them blind without fear of backlash.

I have often been asked if I believe that professional sports will crumble right along with the demise of the U.S. economy. My guess is that it won’t. In fact, if it comes down to it, I would not be surprised to see the government use your money to subsidize professional (and even college) sports in an effort to keep millions of knowledge-free minds perpetually distracted.

But what about the $40 million or so that a LeBron James is paid for not working? Surely, when unemployment hits 15-20 percent (and it will if government-run healthcare is passed), won’t the government step in? I don’t think so, for three reasons:

First, because it is important to the government that people continue to believe that wealth without work is possible.

Second, LeBron James and his playmates are the engine of today’s somas. By being the gladiators in our modern-day colosseums, they play a key role in taking people’s minds off their hopelessness.

Third, people are so addicted to the mind-numbing effects of sports idolatry that they will wipe out what’s left of their dwindling savings in order to pay a few hundred bucks for one more pair of tickets. The last thing an addicted sports fan will give up are his tickets to his favorite college or pro team’s games — his family’s hunger be damned.

Yes, indeed, deusimplicitus, you have said a mouthful. The first challenge is to help people understand that the way to fill their empty souls is not through false hero worship and wild cheering for a team that they imagine is somehow connected to them.

The second challenge, as Viktor Frankl pointed out, is for each individual to find a meaningful purpose in his life. And that’s hard to do when a White House and Capitol Building filled with hissing serpents are continually urging him to gorge on their poisonous apples.

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Chairman Obama’s latest appointee to create a media stir is Ron Bloom (affectionately known to his detractors as “Butthead Bloom,” or just “BB” for short). BB is a rather nasty little weasel who sounds pretty much like every other communist czar BHO has appointed. You’ve probably seen the video of his 2008 speech to the sixth annual Distressed Investing Conference in which he said, among other things:

“Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market, or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money because they’re convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power, that it’s an adults only, no-limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend, you should get a dog.”

Whether BB says incoherent things like this out of ignorance (lack of knowledge), stupidity (lack of intelligence), guilt, or perhaps because his mother took his pacifier away from him prematurely is an unknown. Personally, I’ve grown tired of trying to figure out the psychological problems of every member of the angry, anti-liberty crowd.

But whatever the causes of their mental disorder, we must never forget that their goal is to control our lives — a.k.a. servitude. Which is more than enough reason to pay attention to what they say — no matter how crazy or irrational their statements may be — and be prepared to explain the fallacies of their arguments by employing facts and logic. That said, let’s take a closer look at some of BB’s angry comments.

For starters, he says that “the free market is nonsense.” Sorry, but the reality is that the free market is as pure as new-fallen cash. It is so pure, in fact, that if left to its own devices, it will never fail to mete out just rewards and punishments. The free market can never be wrong, because it is nothing more than a global arena where untold numbers of transactions between consenting adults occur around the clock.

BB makes the same mistake as all Marxist thinkers — confusing the free market with the colluded marketplace where government and big business work together to feather each others’ nests. Herbert Hoover is purported to have said that the only thing wrong with capitalism is capitalists. And he was right. Capitalism is freedom in its purist form. Problems arise only when some capitalists use that freedom to defraud or cheat others.

If BB wants to go after all the politicians and businessmen who intervene in the pure workings of the marketplace, I’m in lockstep with him on that. But, please BB, don’t confuse the free market with the soiled, artificial market brought about by politicians intervening on behalf of companies and special interest groups who repay them with votes and hidden treasure.

Honest entrepreneurs don’t try to “game” the system. Only crooked people do that, and they deserve to be — and often are — criminally prosecuted. Water boarding is too good for those who participate in marketplace aggression and fraud.

But when BB talks about gaming the system, he is not talking about how government and big business are in collusion with one another. He’s talking about people and companies that he believes make too much money — even if they make their money simply by providing people with products and services they actually want.

An even more amazing statement is BB’s assertion that the free market is about free lunches. Huh? Methinks BB has been hitting the Mao-Aid too hard. The free market is about companies earning as much money as possible by providing customers with the best possible products and services. Are companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.com wildly successful because they’ve received “free lunches” — or led anyone to believe that there is such a thing as a free lunch?

The free lunch that most of us are familiar with is the one that results from our perverse tax system. It’s a system that has the top 20 percent of earners paying 91 percent of the income tax, while the bottom half of earners pays less than 3 percent. It is the people who are in this bottom half who are recipients of the free lunch.

Finally, I’m not surprised that BB agrees with Mao that political power comes from the barrel of a gun, given that the use of force is what progressivism/Marxism/communism/statism always get down to. That’s because the use of force is the only way to get people to conform to what those in power deem to be “the common good.”

In a spirit of goodwill, I will go to the trouble of explaining one last thing to comrade BB: Capitalism is not a system. Capitalism is nothing more, and nothing less, than a subcategory of freedom — economic freedom. True capitalism (of the laissez-faire variety) is unfettered and unregulated. People are free to buy and sell what they want to anyone who, without being coerced, is willing to deal with them.

Does that mean that in laissez-faire capitalism anything goes? No. The law of nonaggression always prevails, regardless of what aspect of life is involved. Again, politicians and businessmen who “game” the marketplace should be vigorously prosecuted.

Having said this, the purpose of every business is to make as much money as possible — not by dealing with others “fairly” (which is an abstract word trap), but, rather, without resorting to coercion, fraud, or aggression. Unfortunately, much of the coercion, fraud, and aggression that infests the marketplace — and thus makes it unfree — has its roots in government involvement.

By the way, I agree with BB that if want a friend, you should get a dog. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea what his comment has to do with free-market capitalism. But be patient with me; maybe I’ll eventually figure it out.

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Those commentators on Fox News who like to play it down the middle keep saying that they believe BHO’s strategy of trying to marginalize the most successful TV network in the country is unwise. Unwise? They’ve been inside the Beltway too long.

The Duplicitous Despot and his criminal minions — most notably David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Anita Dunn, and Mark Lloyd — are out to shut down Fox News. No subtlety about it. They take seriously Mao’s belief that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. After all, Anita Bandita looks to Chairman Mao when it comes to her philosophical inspiration.

When you watch certain commentators (whom I shall purposely leave unnamed) on Fox, it’s not hard to understand why there are still millions of people sleepwalking down the road to servitude. I just shake my head in amazement when I hear them — after more than nine months of nonstop treason by the White House and Congress — talk about BHO as though he’s just another one of those naive, misguided, liberal presidents.

As Bill O’Reilly (oops … slipped) often says, “If Obama does (this or that), he’s toast. It will be the end of his presidency.” The thought of a dictatorship being established before 2012 would be a comical idea to the host of such intellectual fare as “body language expert” Tonya Reiman, Miller Time, and the Great American Culture Quiz.

Worse, when Glenn Beck appears as a guest on The O’Reilly Factor, fair-and-balanced Bill loves to chuckle and refer to him (jocularly, of course) as a “troublemaker.” Beck is in an awkward position. Either by design or by accident, O’Reilly embraced him even before he came to Fox News, which makes Beck beholden to him. He’s walking a tightrope, and I don’t blame him for not wanting to upstage O’Reilly, who already is regularly outbrained by the likes of Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley, and Megyn Kelly.

But you have to wonder what Beck is thinking when O’Reilly makes light of his impeccable research and the factual evidence he presents each day on his show. The irony is that even though Beck insists that he’s not a journalist, he has broken a majority of the most damning stories that have been aired about Sinbama and the Forty Thieves. After Beck and his staff do the research and air the evidence, all the other Fox News shows simply rerun their material.

The establishment guys, such as Chris Wallace, Brit Hume, and Bret Baier — all first-rate journalist, to be sure — don’t see what Glenn Beck and millions of everyday Americans see: Sinbama and the Forty Thieves are deadly serious about “fundamentally changing America.” And they are prepared to do so through the use of force, if necessary.

When the reincarnation of Al Capone, David Axelrod, says of Fox that “It’s really not news — it’s pushing a point of view,” it would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high. But as Tucker Carlson said, it’s outrageous for a liar like Axelrod to say that Fox News commentators aren’t being truthful.

It’s like the schoolyard bully claiming that it was really his victim who bullied him. The bullies at the Kremlin House in Washington, of course, are all too aware that Fox is really the only station that is actually reporting the news, while the fringe media (ABC, CBS and NBC), along with CNBC and MSNBC, are going to great lengths to keep their viewers in the dark about what is really happening — particularly in Washington.

In my article “Wile E. Obama vs Road Runner Beck,” I said that the administration will soon figure out that a battle with Fox News is not winnable, which could open the door to a challenge from Hillary. You can be sure that she still spends her evenings throwing darts at BHO’s picture on her bedroom wall. But a declaration of a “state of emergency,” which I have repeatedly warned about, would render Hillary even more irrelevant than she already is.

If I ever believe that we’re getting close to that point, you’ll read about it here first. In the meantime, let’s be thankful that our illustrious president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, because I have heard from a reliable, high-level source that he barely beat out three other worthy opponents for this great honor: Bernie Madoff, Charles Manson, and Michael Vick.

It makes me feel good all over to know that Osama Obama won the big prize — following in the noble footsteps of Yasser Arafat, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, and the world’s richest global-warming hero, Al Gore — and reminds once again that it’s not about what my president can do for me, but what I can do for my president.

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The talk about gold reaching unprecedented of levels has been ratcheting up right along with the continued demise of the dollar. The highest figure I’ve heard to date is Peter Schiff’s prediction of $5,000 an ounce in the next couple of years. Do I believe $5,000 an ounce is possible? Yes, but even that price could be but a fleeting milestone along the road to runaway inflation.

What no one seems to take into account when predicting the price of gold, oil, or any other commodity is the Zimbabwe Factor. In other words, what happens if the dollar ultimately becomes worthless — as in zero? Not possible? To quote Thomas Friedman (a liberal, of all things!), “We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes.”

If a whole bunch of fresh faces don’t take control of Congress in 2010 — folks whose mantra is repeal, rescind, and revoke — runaway inflation may be inevitable. Under the Obama-Pelosi-Reid axis, we’re moving toward such a scenario at mach speed. Under a Hatch-McCain-Graham controlled Congress, we’d still get there, albeit a bit more slowly — and most Americans wouldn’t even feel the progressive’s water heating up as the end grew near.

If voters don’t get serious about revolting against the tyrannical politicians who are putting them in chains and stealing not just from them, but from their children and grandchildren as well, the total and complete collapse of the U.S. dollar is inevitable. Clear back in 2002. David Walker, former Comptroller General of the United States, warned the House Ways and Means Committee that a Medicare prescription drug benefit would be an unmanageable burden to the already unmanageable U.S. debt and unfunded liabilities.

Ignoring Walker’s warnings, the Bush Administration went right ahead anyway and pushed a new Medicare prescription drug benefit through the Congress. Now, under BHO, that commitment is starting to look like pocket change. If some form — any form — of healthcare bill that includes government involvement is passed, the result may be irreversible.

That’s when gold at $5,000 an ounce will be but a fond memory, because if the U.S. currency dies, the price of gold in U.S. dollars will be infinity. More to the point, no one in his right mind is going to accept any amount of dollars in exchange for any amount of gold — thus gold would not even be quoted in dollars.

Of course, if such a scenario comes to pass, the non-dollar price of gold will be the least of our problems.

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America’s national pastime is no longer baseball. It’s Pin the Tail on the Racist. The latest example is the media’s outrageous attacks on Rush Limbaugh regarding rumors — that’s right, rumors — that he has made racial remarks in the past. And the NFL, like most big-money operations, quickly jumped on the bandwagon and let it be known that Limbaugh’s desire to be included in a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams would be rejected.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, a classic corporate empty suit, simply referred to Limbaugh’s “divisive comments” as the reason for his being viewed as an unwelcome applicant for a franchise. Translation: Free speech in America is dead — unless, of course, you’re a liberal.

Since rumor is all that the shrieking PC crowd has to go on, they have dragged out of the closet the infamous hubbub back in 2003 when Rush Limbaugh was hired to give his opinions on ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown pregame show. Right out of the starting gate, Limbaugh made the mistake of giving his opinion — exactly what he had been hired to do!

What got him into hot water was when he opined that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated. In a refreshingly straightforward manner, he went on to say, “I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team.”

I happen to have seen that little segment, and I vividly recall two things about it. First, immediately after Limbaugh made his comments, Hall of Famer Michael Irvin, an African-American and former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver, said, “Good point, Rush.” I take Irvin at his word that he meant what he said.

Second, I recall thinking that Limbaugh’s comments were positive in that they spotlighted the fact that most white Americans do want to see African-Americans succeed. And that’s a good thing. I felt at the time that he should have been applauded for being sensitive rather than reviled for being insensitive. Nevertheless, the Race Police came flying out of the woodwork, and Limbaugh resigned under pressure the very next day.

So, here we are again, bringing up memories of all the “racial” comments made by famous persons who were fired and vilified for being “insensitive.” Two of the more well-known examples that come to mind are Al Campanis, who was general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Jimmy the Greek Snyder, a one-time mainstay on CBS’s NFL Today.

In an appearance on ABC’s Nightline in 1987, Campanis said, “[Blacks] may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager.” The left immediately went berserk, and the Dodgers quickly hustled Campanis off their payroll.

Campanis later explained what he had meant by his remark by saying, “When I said blacks lack the ‘necessities’ to be managers or general managers, what I meant was the lack of necessary experience, not things like inherent intelligence or ability. I was dead-tired after traveling when I went on the show. I got confused. It was like a telegram — you try to say it in a few words, and it’s implied differently.”

By all accounts, Campanis was not even close to being a racist. In fact, he was one of Jackie Robinson’s biggest defenders when he played for the Dodgers, and once challenged an opposing player to a fight when Robinson was being bullied.

As to Jimmy the Greek, his famous faux pas was when he was purported to have said to a reporter, in a restaurant, “The black is a better athlete to begin with because he’s been bred to be that way — because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. This goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trading, the owner — the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid.”

PC and historical accuracy are sworn and everlasting enemies. The interesting thing is that some years later I read a long, detailed article in the newspaper, based on scientific studies, that confirmed that blacks tend to be superior athletes because of their genetic propensity toward large and powerful thigh and buttocks muscles. It was a fascinating, well-researched article that provided scientific answers to a question that has long been of interest to both blacks and whites.

Whites are as much at fault as blacks for the absurd overreaction to both speech and facts regarding race because they are the enablers in a relationship that began as master and slave. As Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Shelby Steele, an African-American, points out in his book White Guilt, Americans are hopelessly trapped by the need to feel guilty over the sins of their fathers. Any people of color — including Arabs, Africans, and Latinos — must be coddled and treated with an excess of TLC.

I guess it’s okay to a point, but it’s also demeaning and irritating to people of color who just want to be treated like everyone else. As one African-American acquaintance of mine recently said, “The constant whining and cries of insult only succeed in attracting negative attention and get in the way of those of us who are trying to get ahead in life.”

Fortunately, most people, both black and white, are becoming immune to the constant drumbeat of the racist-gotcha game. Plain and simple, we are suffering from race-compassion fatigue. To borrow from the title of Juan Williams’ book: Enough!

P.S. Rush: For the sake of all Americans, please sue the butts off the NFL and every blogger and member of the media who attributed false quotes to you.

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I just returned from a five-day trip to New Orleans where I addressed the New Orleans Investment Conference. Following in the late and legendary Jim Blanchard’s footsteps, President/Producer Brien Lundin succeeded in putting together yet another first-class event for attendees.

In addition to my speech to the general assembly, I served as a panelist on the “Summit on America’s Future” discussion along with Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, and Rick Santelli. It’s always an exhilarating experience to interact with people who are knowledgeable, well spoken, and agree that smaller government is the solution to most of our nation’s ills.

As always, the roster of impressive speakers provided attendees with a plethora of technical, as well as practical, information. Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher, and other superstars who have spoken at the New Orleans Investment Conference in years past would have been proud to know that so many high-quality thinkers are carrying on the generational battle to defend freedom and free markets.

Howard Dean was the token liberal at the event, and, to my surprise, he came across as reasonable and civil in defending his progressive view of the world. I had two brief chats with Dean, and found him to be quite cordial and relaxed — not at all like the Howard Dean I’ve seen on television. Maybe the moral is that if you want liberals to be civil, always be sure to have them vastly outnumbered.

Though there were many excellent speakers sharing invaluable knowledge with attendees, Brien Lundin demonstrated a flair for the dramatic by having Congressman Ron Paul give the closing speech on Sunday evening. The reception Paul received from the audience was remarkable — a long, standing ovation before he began to speak! He truly has achieved rock star status at an age when most people spend their time playing golf and hanging around the Metamucil section of their neighborhood pharmacy.

Whether you love Ron Paul or strongly disagree with some of his more controversial stances, you have to respect him for remaining true to his beliefs for decades. Rarely looking at his notes during his speech, his message was delightfully familiar: Most politicians (1) have no interest in the Constitution and (2) are robbing the average taxpayer blind. And, like William Simon before him, he says these things from the perspective of someone who works inside the inter sanctum.

I’ve known Ron Paul for thirty years, and I can tell you that he is one of the few individuals I can think of who comes across exactly the same on television, at the podium, or when having a private chat with someone. He is the ultimate unassuming, unpretentious human being. What you see is truly what you get.

About two weeks before the New Orleans event, I met with Ron Paul at his office. After an hour or so, he had to go across the street to the Capitol Building to vote on a bill, so we concluded our meeting and walked out of the Cannon Building together.

As we were saying our goodbyes outside, I caught a glimpse of a nice looking young man whose facial expression might have led one to believe that he had just seen a ghost. He quickly approached us and said, “Congressman Paul, I can’t believe it’s you. You’re my idol.”

Though he was in a hurry, Ron Paul shook hands with the excited young man, and the three of us chatted for a few minutes. He said that his name was Lafayette Newsome, and that he was a student at Arizona State University. He told us that his major was political science and that he was planning on attending law school.

But what really took me aback was when this young college student began talking about the details of various Congressional bills and expressed his frustration over the left-wing bias of many of his professors. Congressman Paul’s eyes lit up with excitement as he listened, and before departing for the Capitol Building he told Lafayette that it’s young people like him who keep him motivated.

It’s especially uplifting when the young person is African-American, because it’s the young blacks who understand and believe in liberty and the capitalist system who provide the best hope for putting an end to what Star Parker has referred to as “Uncle Sam’s Plantation” — the servitude that millions of blacks have suffered through as a courtesy of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

Segue back to New Orleans …

As I walked around the French Quarter on Sunday and watched some of the great street acts, I thought about Lafayette Newsome. Why? Because the people who put on those street acts, much like ticket scalpers at sporting events, are engaged in unfettered capitalism — and most of them are black.

On one street corner we came to a somewhat rotund, middle-aged woman by the name of Doreen Ketchens, who was alternately playing the clarinet and singing. Her talent at both skills was as good as any I have ever seen either on stage or television. Her rendition of “Stormy Weather” sent chills up my spine.

When listeners were so inclined, they put money in her basket to show their appreciation. As I watched cash flowing into the basket, it occurred to me that the sick mind of a liberal might be inclined to see it as a degrading way to make a living. But I saw it as very dignified work, and I viewed her demeanor as proud and individualistic. Plain and simple, Doreen engages in free-market transactions with consenting adults. No government bureaucrats need intervene, thank you.

It boggles the imagination to think about how the marketplace would explode with economic activity if the government would stop regulating, taxing, and giving people incentives not to work — in short, if government would just get out of the way!

The irony to all this, of course, is that ACORN is headquartered in New Orleans. Do you really believe that Doreen would be happier and better off financially if she were a community organizer rather than a street singer and musician who answers to no one? Ditto for the many other remarkably talented acrobats, comedians, singers, and musicians — most of them black — who prefer entrepreneurship in the French Quarter to government handouts as a way to get what they want in life.

I could write twenty pages on all of the fascinating street acts I saw in the French Quarter, but if you’ve ever been to New Orleans, you know precisely what I’m talking about. My advice to you is that if you missed this year’s New Orleans Investment Conference, you should start saving up and make plans to attend the granddaddy of all investment conferences in 2010.

And be sure to give yourself at least one extra day to enjoy the street acts in the French Quarter and witness capitalism in its purist form.

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Lysander Spooner, 19th century individualist and political philosopher, eloquently argued that the United Sates Constitution was not binding on future generations since they neither agreed to it nor signed it. This position horrifies those who believe that the Constitution was needed to protect “the people” by placing limits on government.

Which sounds fine, except that the Constitution has not protected U.S. citizens from government aggression. On the contrary, such aggression has become worse with each passing year — especially since the Chicago Mob took control of things in Washington.

Alvin Toffler, who started out as a Marxist in his youth but ultimately evolved into an objective, apolitical observer of world events, pointed out the realities of so-called representative government in his book The Third Wave. While conceding that representative government was a “humanizing breakthrough in human history,” Toffler went on to explain:

Yet from the very beginning it [representative government] fell far short of its promise. By no stretch of the imagination was it ever controlled by the people, however defined. Nowhere did it actually change the underlying structure of power in industrial nations — the structure of sub-elites, elites, and super-elites. Indeed, far from weakening control by the managerial elites, the formal machinery of representation became one of the key means by which they maintained themselves in power.

Thus elections, quite apart from who won them, performed a powerful cultural function for the elites. To the degree that everyone had a right to vote, elections fostered the illusion of equality. … Elections symbolically assured citizens that they were still in command — that they could, in theory at least, dis-elect as well as elect leaders. In both capitalist and socialist countries, these ritual assurances often proved more important than the actual outcomes of many elections.

In other words, nothing changes regardless of who ascends to the throne in the Oval Office, though the rate in the decline of liberty varies depending upon who’s in control. For decades, we’ve witnessed increasing redistribution of wealth, increasing invasion of privacy and civil liberties, increasing foreign military adventures, and an increasing debasement of our currency.

I agree with Toffler’s insights. I also agree with Winston Churchill’s view that democracy is a lousy form of government, but it’s the best anyone has been able to come up with thus far. (His actual words were, “[Democracy is] the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”)

Of course, purist anarcho-libertarians would argue that people don’t need government at all, but that’s an impossible sell in these declining days of the American Empire. Through gradualism and addiction to living beyond their means, most people feel they need government to act as an enforcer to protect their lifestyles — or give them even better lifestyles.

The other night, in a fit of boredom, I checked out Larry King. Celeb-worshipping Larry had decided to go upscale for the night with a panel of four “financial experts.” I would estimate that their combined IQs were about eighty-seven — yet there they were, opining on the state of the economy. I don’t remember their faces, let alone their names, but, by golly, King himself referred to them as “experts.”

All of their comments were equally idiotic, so I don’t want to play favorites here. But one expert woman did an exceptional job of unwittingly summing up why representative government doesn’t work very well for those who believe in liberty. Said this paragon of financial wisdom, “If the government would just step up to the plate and help people, the economy would be fine.”

I cannot deny that hers is a winning message. If someone like a Barry Goldwater comes along and says something like “A government strong enough to give you what you want is strong enough to take it all away,” people shout him down as a fascist, heartless, or right-wing extremist (though Goldwater was, contrary to commonly held perceptions of him, quite libertarian in his views).

Even so, Churchill was right. Until a better form of government is created (preferably one that makes it impossible to get elected to public office by promising to redistribute wealth and granting favors to special interests), I opt to support the Constitution. The problem, however, is that elected officials, government bureaucrats, and judges do not support the Constitution. At best, they ignore it; at worst, they pervert its meaning. And, without question, they detest it.

Would that Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of the white-wigged crowd could return and explain to the populace what they had in mind when they started their strange experiment in representative government. Had they known what it would evolve into, they may have decided to take a pass on the revolution and stay loyal to King George III. Which, in the long run, would not have mattered anyway, because the Brits ultimately opted to follow America down the tyranny-of-the-majority path.

So, until we figure out a better system, the job of those of us who believe in liberty is to keep pushing back against the forces of tyranny. And as things continue to become unhinged under the rule of the Chicago Mob, it’s going to take a bigger push just to hold the power mongers to a standoff. Make that a lot bigger push.

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If you’ve ever wondered how the Republican Party lost its way, some of Senator Lindsey Graham’s recent comments should help you to understand. Graham is part of a clique of progressive Republicans who for decades have been pressuring party members to become Democratic look-alikes.

When I say clique, I am referring to political lifers like John McCain, Orrin Hatch, and Arlen Specter (who finally had the decency to bolt to the Democratic side of the aisle when he admitted that his Republican constituency was likely to throw him out of office in 2010). All were bosom buddies of Teddy the Lion — and remain pals with hard-left Democrats who are still among the living.

From an intellectual standpoint, about the only difference between Lindsey Graham and Lindsay Lohan is the way they spell their first names, as evidenced by some of Graham’s recent comments. Of Glenn Beck, who today is the single most powerful force representing the tyrannized majority in America, he said, “Only in America can you make that much money crying.”

You would think that a purported conservative like Graham (you have my permission to chuckle on that one) would be cheering Glenn Beck on, but the truth is that Beck is a huge threat to the cozy partnership that many closet progressives in the Republican Party have with their buddies across the aisle. When they dine together in their plush congressional dining rooms, there is a corruptive stench that permeates the air. Having become accustomed to such a luxurious lifestyle over the decades, many Republicans view anyone to the right of Hugo Chavez as a threat.

Graham went on to say that Beck is “not aligned with any party as far as I can tell. He’s aligned with cynicism. And there’s always been a market for cynicism. But we became a great nation not because we are a nation of cynics. We became a great nation because we are a nation of believers.”

Beck should be flattered, because cynicism is a good thing — especially when it comes to government. I like to refer to myself as a “positive cynic.” Experience has taught me that a bit of skepticism is healthy, but once I know the facts, I always believe that I can work things out.

Belief in coworkers who have proven themselves to be competent and trustworthy is a good thing. Belief in your family is a good thing. Belief in your own abilities is a good thing. There’s no question about it, when you have factual or experience evidence to back it up, belief is a positive attribute.

But believing in verbal gibberish and cheerleading that is camouflaged as news, believing in empty slogans, and, above all, believing in politicians is precisely what has gotten our nation into trouble. Graham is right — we are a nation of believers. Unfortunately, we believe so easily that we take seriously scoundrels and charlatans who continually tell us the tallest of tales. It’s a habit we must break if we are to win the liberty revolution that is now heating up.

Now, please don’t get the idea that Senator Graham is critical of everybody. No sir, not this super-civil Republican mainstay. In the same interview, he praised BHO for energizing young people and reaching out to Hispanic voters, and made it a point to chastise Republicans whom he believes alienated voters with anti-immigration “rhetoric” in the last election.

But Graham saved the best for last when he said that BHO had passed the “ready to be commander-in-chief test” during the debates. No question about it, the Duplicitous Despot has certainly been a great commander-in-chief — not quite as good as Jimmy Carter, but, hey, what do you expect of a Marxist who’s main experience is that of a community organizer?

Never one to quit on a winning note, Senator Graham added that he believes “There [are] people in this country that [sic] are having a hard time reconciling the fact that we have a black president,” he acknowledged.” Really? And here I thought that a majority of white voters actually voted for BHO. Hmm … is it possible that their discontent could have something to do with his performance?

Finally, said Graham, “Do I want some of his policies to fail? You better believe it. Do I want him to fail? No. Because he’s my commander-in-chief.” Touching … really touching. Earth to Lindsey: If BHO’s policies fail, he fails. Have you ever heard of a successful president whose policies failed?

If you still wonder why the Republican Party is on the verge of extinction, it’s because the progressive element is so deeply entrenched in its ranks that it no longer appeals to the majority of Americans — whose values are conservative! If Republicans ever regain power and the progressives among them get their way, a new liberty-based party had better be prepared to step in and challenge the Dems, or all may be lost.

Put another way, the marketplace for freedom is now wide open for anyone with the creativity and tenacity to create a new political party that the majority of Americans can call home.

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I rarely publish e-mails from readers, but I felt compelled to pass along the one below because it says so much about the mind-set of millions of Americans today. It’s from a retired, disabled Marine in response to my article “Wile E. Obama vs Road Runner Beck.” [Slightly edited for clarity.]

Dear Mr. Ringer,

The scenario you describe is the only one which I believe will prevent … the last straw from breaking and a new declaration of independence, with an armed march on Washington, clearing out the entire government and reestablishing the Constitution as the foundation of our country.

[This would happen] through a war of the millions of self-identified “sovereign citizens” who will not surrender their guns and will not accept a government healthcare bill or a cap and trade takeover of the private energy sector of our economy.

I am not part of any conspiracy and not a member of a militia — nor do I know anyone who is. However, I am a retired Marine, still bound by oath to support and defend the Constitution, and I have known this was coming for more than a decade — and have been preparing for it that long.

I will gladly be among the first casualties of a needed War of Independence, but I will not go down easily. I am prepared. I have two decades of experience with war, and I have led Marines and taught them how to plan, how to survive, and how to wage war for a win rather than a body count.

I also am not alone. There are more like me every day, as Marines and soldiers come home from Iraq and Afghanistan and are outraged by what has been done to them over there. (I know this outrage, because I was the sergeant who did the safety inspection of the unfinished hotel in Beirut that the Marines used as a barracks. A year after I left, it was destroyed at the cost of 243 Marine lives.)

If the government is not stopped, I will lose everything I have. I am disabled, and thus a government dependent, and they will eagerly take all my private property to pay for my healthcare. And when that is gone, they will let me die “gracefully,” as established in the new healthcare bill.

I already have nothing to lose and everything to gain, so I don’t much care if we regain control of the federal government peacefully, without war, and return it to its rightful limitations under the Constitution, or if it takes an armed uprising with a new declaration of independence and war to accomplish the same thing. Neither do thousands of other disabled veterans who are in the same boat.

There is no point in doing anything if we stop short of a complete reinstatement of the Constitution, meaning that we abolish two-thirds of the federal government, return all those usurped powers back to the states, and the states become sovereign again, as they were when the Constitution was ratified and the confederated republic was established.

No nation has ever lost its form and nature and returned to them through peaceful means, but peace has always been the end result of a successful war. I hope for a peaceful return, but I think little of its likelihood and truly expect a full blown war of independence.

It is not enough to return to the form and place that the Bushes and the Clintons left us, which is just the stepping off point for a socialist takeover. We must either return to our foundations or accept that we shall never be a free people again.

I hope the scenario you described can motivate enough people to assume the role of sovereign citizens and hold to the belief that all authority comes from the consent of the governed, and thus return to a Constitutionally limited government.

However, I suspect that all the confrontation in the world could only take us back to the time when the communists had achieved 80 percent of their objective, and we would once again be fighting an uphill battle over the last 20 percent.

You must remember that most Americans have not read the Constitution and do not know what it says, thus they would need classes to understand the full ramifications of its tidy set of simple articles. They would also need lessons in self-reliance, self-motivation, and independent thinking.

I don’t believe that anything short of war teaches all those things to the depth necessary for a people to assume sovereignty over themselves and their nation. I hope I am wrong, but I am willing to be right.

Sincerely,

J. M.
GySgt, USMC, ret.

There is no question that the citizenry has been stirred to the point of near revolution. The only question is: Will it be a peaceful revolution, based on educating everyday Americans on the morality and efficacy of freedom and free enterprise, or will it be a violent revolution that could tear the country apart?

If the progressive fascist in power continue to thumb their noses at citizens who are adamant about not having the government involved in healthcare — if they push through a government-run healthcare bill in spite of the protests of a majority of voters — we may get a quick answer to that question. Mr. and Mrs. America are on the verge of something that this country has never before seen. What, exactly, that is, we shall soon find out.

I believe that what people like the retired sergeant who wrote the above e-mail are saying to the corrupt Obamaviks in Washington is: Bring it on. To quote from a famous song of yesteryear, something’s got to give.

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In response to my ongoing discussion of a deflationary depression versus an inflationary depression, some readers have asked if a “soft landing” might still be possible. I guess the answer to that question depends upon how you define soft landing.

If by soft landing you mean that we will somehow muddle through, things will calm down on their own, and we will not experience a great deal of pain, the answer is no. But if your definition of soft landing is an economy that declines slowly, without a great deal of anarchy and violence, I would say that such a scenario is still possible.

There are a number of complex factors at play here, but let’s begin with the most obvious one: human nature. Was it Groucho Marx who first told that old joke about a man standing on the street corner, hitting himself over the head with a hammer? When asked why in the world he would inflict such pain on himself, the guy answered, “Because it feels so good when I stop.”

Yes, it’s silly, but it reminds me of just how adaptable human beings are. Metaphorically speaking, we, as a people, hit ourselves over the head with a hammer so often that we have become immune to the pain. We seem to have an uncanny ability to get used to bad circumstances.

Which is why, in the past, most producers continued to create wealth even when their taxes rose to draconian levels. During World War II, the top tax rate reached 94 percent, and it remained at 91 percent until 1964. With such astronomical tax rates in effect, it’s amazing that we even survived. However, I believe that the fact that we were involved in three wars during that time (WW II, Korea, and Vietnam) had a lot to do with producers staying their course.

But even without having war as a rationale, I believe people would get used to a lower standard of living once resignation set in — provided the drop wasn’t too fast. Unfortunately, what we’ve had recently is a very big drop in many areas of our economy in a very short period of time.

Many are talking about postponing retirement — or not retiring at all; cutting back on, or completely eliminating, vacations will follow; then, their entertainment and dining out four nights a week will go by the wayside; finally — horror of all horrors — they won’t be able to afford to buy those high-priced tickets to sporting events that fill sports stadiums and arenas from coast to coast.

It all depends on how fast Obama and his Congressional partners in crime push the socialist envelope. Every new bailout, every new regulation, every new tax — and especially government-run healthcare — will cause tectonic downward shifts in the marketplace, and, in turn, the standard of living of most Americans.

The Obamacrats may have made a mistake when they decided to move ahead with their progressive agenda full throttle, because to the extent government infringements on individual rights are spread over a longer period of time, Americans will adapt to a progressively lower standard of living. It’s not really muddling through; it’s muddling downward — in stages — one step at a time, and giving people a chance to catch their collective breath and adapt to the next lowest level.

If you’re thinking gradualism, you’re right. It’s worked like magic for the U.S. Government for at least a hundred years, and it could once again protect politicians against outright rebellion. By contrast, a quick and total deflationary collapse would not be peaceful, because, unlike 1929, a huge percentage of today’s population has a deeply ingrained entitlement mind-set.

But what about producers? Won’t they stop producing? Not at first. I believe that, at least for awhile, producers will keep producing even as they have to share ever-larger pieces of their pie with non-producers.

At some point, however — and no one knows exactly what that point is — producers will escape to Galt’s Gulch. It may not be a physical place, as in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, but, one by one, they will simply stop producing. And if things get too bad, many will simply expatriate.

The truth be known, Americans have adjusted to a gradual shift toward Marxism for decades … arguably since at least 1913. But we have been oblivious to it, because the rest of the world has been subsidizing our false standard of living (through cheap labor). And here at home, Barney Fraud & Pals got most of the public to indulge in the fantasy that everyone should own a home — even if they couldn’t afford one.

In any event, as perverse as it may sound, a gradual lowering of the living standards of most Americans over a long period of time would be more harmful than a rapid and complete collapse of the U.S. economy. As an analogy, remember that immediately after 9/11, a vast majority of Americans were fighting mad and the general tone was patriotic.

The radical Islamic threat is far greater today than it was after 9/11, but because there have been no further major attacks on U.S. soil, “the war on terrorism” is no longer a high priority. Americans have gotten used to the idea that terrorists are spread throughout the country, pretending to be everyday citizens.

The point is that everything, no matter how damaging it may be to our well-being, becomes normal to us over time. An abused woman comes to believe her situation is normal. A kid who is bullied in school comes to believe his situation is normal.

I’m afraid that if we keep hitting ourselves over the head with the hammer of a gradual deterioration of our economy, Americans will get used to a step-by-step lower standard of living, the result being that they will come to believe that each new level is normal. Which is why, if it’s important to you that your children and grandchildren enjoy a higher standard of living than yours, you should pray for things to continue to unravel quickly — followed by a successful counter-revolution in the form of educating the public about both the morality and practicality of freedom and free enterprise.

Short of this, the final curtain will come down on America’s Grand Experiment in Freedom. I’m not prepared to accept that outcome, and I hope you aren’t, either.

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Last week I received a heart-warming e-mail from a reader that said, in part: “You are among the most insane voices in this insane world. … You should be crushed like the bug that you are … along with your cohorts, Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh — all reptilian bugs who will soon become obsolete as their silly, screaming, obnoxious voices become a whimper and die out while the wise, compassionate, and coherent voices of the left finally own their power. [RR note: If you like run-on sentences, try topping that one.] Please keep your poison to yourself!”

Hmm … no one’s ever called me a “reptilian bug” before, but it does have a nice ring to it. I’ve become somewhat immune to those who extol the virtues of progressivism but want to “crush” dissenting voices — preferably through the barrel of a gun.

I was at the 9/12 rally in Washington, and I can tell you that, trite as it may sound, the men and women there really were everyday folks — people you see at the supermarket, at work, or at ball games. They were angry, to be sure, but polite and civil almost to a fault. And an awful lot of them had signs indicating that they watch or listen to the likes of Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh — those “silly, screaming, obnoxious voices.”

By contrast, what never ceases to amaze me is the anger and violence that are the stock and trade of progressives. We saw it on display again at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh. It was like the 1968 Democratic National Convention all over again. Wonder what happened to all those “wise, compassionate, and coherent voices” on the left?

You may have seen Sean Hannity’s interview with a couple of radical college girls who were protesting outside the G-20 Conference. They explained that they were with “Free the Planet,” a University of Pittsburgh organization that wants to “make environmental change to help the planet.” How do you even begin to have a rational discussion with young people who talk as though they have tapioca jammed between their ears?

At one point, Hannity asked, “Why are you against capitalism?” To which one of the girls replied, “Because it puts profit as the number-one goal and not people’s well-being.” Ah, yes, I remember how determined Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Ho Chi Minh were when it came to looking after people’s well-being. I’m sure everyone in those countries misses the good old days.

Alert the media: The sole objective of a business is to make a profit. Charity is a wonderful activity, and most human beings are charitable. But a business has nothing to with charity. It has to do with producing products and services that people buy for one reason, and one reason only: because they want them.

If a business is successful, then the owner is free to give as much of his earnings as he wants to others — others of his choosing. Bill Gates has already given $29 billion to his charitable foundation, and his pal Warren Buffet plans to donate most of his multibillion-dollar fortune to charity. Such philanthropy is, of course, devastating to the mind-set of the progressive, for it is he who is the self-anointed decider of what is and is not fair.

Finally, Hannity asked one of the girls, “Do you support government-run redistribution of wealth?” to which she answered, “I support people-run redistribution of wealth.” “How do you have people-run redistribution of wealth?” asked Hannity, pointing out that people will not give up their wealth unless government forces them to do so.

“You tax them,” answered his self-assured, youthful guest. She then went on to say that if you divide the wealth up equally, every person in the country could receive $44,000 per year. Hannity showed a lot of restraint by sparing her the embarrassment of asking where the $44,000 per person would come from if Atlas decided to shrug.

The capper, though, was when she said angrily, “Tell me why someone ever would need to make more than $500,000 a year.” Sounded like she was lobbying for the job of Wealth-Redistribution Czar.

All this sixties gibberish brought to mind something Rose Wilder Lane, the famous communist-turned-libertarian, once said in describing the precise moment when the incongruity of communism first struck her: “When the capitalist is gone, who will manage production? The state. And what is the state? The state will be the mass of toiling workers. It was at this point that the first doubt pierced my communist faith.”

The truth is all-powerful, and it bugs the progressive mind no end. I believe that much of the anger the far left harbors is a result of not having legitimate moral or rational arguments for their points of view. Whether the anger be guilt-based or envy-based, it’s always there … always advocating the use of force against individuals with dissenting views.

To actually give rational thought to an issue is frightful to progressives, because they are focused on their own utopian view of the world and can never explain why anyone has a right to take the fruits of someone’s labor and give it to others. Lacking factual arguments, they instead speak in abstract terms such as “the good of society,” “the common good,” and “shared prosperity.”

Bertrand Russell summed it up well when he said:

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought … is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is … indifferent to authority, careless of the well tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.”

Brace yourself. As the progressives in D.C. continue to evade thought and become ever more cornered by the facts, the name-calling, dismissals, and threats are sure to accelerate. After all, when the uncovering of lies and corruption make it impossible to debate with a straight face, what other choice does one have?

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When Congressman Joe Wilson screamed “You Lie!” at President Obama, many liberal critics, political commentators, and media experts responded by criticizing the lack of manners and civility in modern-day politics. But I believe the opposite is true. The truth is that we’ve all been too nice, too well-mannered, and too civil.

For far too long, we’ve stood by as politicians destroyed our country, wrecked our economy, spent us into bankruptcy, and indebted our children and grandchildren for generations to come. The current situation doesn’t demand civility; it demands
rage. Why should we show respect and civility to the corrupt thieves who are lying to our faces and robbing us blind? Why should we show respect and civility to the very people who are stealing our children’s future?

The problem isn’t civility; it’s stupidity. We’ve been far too civil and docile for far too long. We’ve been intimidated and blinded by the power and fancy titles of our political leaders. We’ve accepted their lies without flinching. We’ve given the benefit of the doubt to the people in charge — even though most of them are criminals.

We’ve reelected the very people who have been lying to us and robbing us. In reality, we should have been throwing all of them out — from both parties. We should have been limiting our politicians to two terms — one in office, one in prison!

We stuck our heads in the sand. We wanted to believe they were telling us the truth. We might have cursed Congress, but we each praised, thanked, and reelected our own congressperson. We showed respect for Congress’s authority. It’s like a political Groundhog Day: Each day we keep doing the same illogical things (supporting the same incumbents who are bankrupting the country) and waking up the next morning hoping the outcome will be different. But it never is.

A half century of manners and civility has led to the worst depression since 1929, an unimaginable annual deficit of almost $2 trillion, and over $100 trillion in national debt. Our country is on the brink of economic ruin, bankruptcy, and insolvency, because we’ve been so civil, so naïve, and so trusting. We should have been screaming “You Lie” a long time ago.

Off Track Betting (government-run gambling) recently filed for bankruptcy in New York. The government can’t make a profit in the gambling business, but Obama wants us to believe that it will run national healthcare profitably? That’s a lie. Obama wants us to believe that we’re going to add 50 million uninsured people to the healthcare rolls and it won’t cost us a thing? That’s a lie. The government will save us money by spending trillions on a new program? That’s a lie.

The trillion dollars Obama wants to spend on government-run healthcare won’t add to the ballooning deficit? That’s a lie. Adding 50 million new patients, while losing doctors, won’t result in rationing? That’s a lie.

We can forever keep our present health insurance and doctors at no added cost? That’s a lie. Illegal immigrants won’t soon be included in universal healthcare? That’s a lie. (Even if illegal immigrants are removed from the new healthcare bill, soon thereafter they will be granted legal citizenship, thereby allowing all of their healthcare bills to be added to the government’s tab.)

Or how about cap and trade? Obama wants us to believe that a massive
multi-trillion dollar cap-and-trade program won’t hurt business? That’s a lie.
That cap and trade won’t put us at a competitive disadvantage with China and India (who won’t agree to the same rules and standards)? That’s a lie. That cap and trade won’t double or triple our energy bills? That’s a lie. That this massive increase in our utility bills is not a tax increase on the middle class? That’s a lie. That cap and trade isn’t an excuse for a government takeover of business? That’s a lie. That cap and trade is necessary to fight global warming (even though the last decade has actually seen global cooling)? That’s a lie.

Do you remember the original fairytales told to us by Obama? He said that his $800 billion stimulus bill was necessary to “save” the economy. That was a lie. Instead, it was an almost trillion dollar handout to his campaign contributors and supporters that did nothing for the economy.

Obama said we had to spend trillions to create 3 million new jobs. That was a lie. Instead, we wasted trillions and lost 3 million jobs. Obama said we had to spend billions to save U.S. automakers. That was a lie. Instead, Obama fleeced taxpayers, stockholders, lien holders, banks, and hedge funds to hand control of the U.S. automakers to the auto unions — his highly valued campaign contributors.

Now, GM and Chrysler are $100 billion government-funded welfare programs that just happen to make cars (that no one wants). Obama said that corporate bailouts would be paid back. That was a lie. Now, it turns out that we may never get back tens of billions loaned to AIG, GM, and Chrysler. How many more lies are we willing to accept while still being civil and well-mannered?

But Obama is far from being the only politician to lie to us. They all lie. Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, and Frank have lied about virtually every spending bill that Congress has passed. Bush lied about the war in Iraq and wasted a trillion dollars (or more) on his military misadventures, all while allowing Congress to break the bank on spending, earmarks, and waste. The leaders of the Republican Congress lied about virtually every bill they passed. It’s what politicians do.

Just don’t tell me to accept it anymore. Don’t tell me to respond to lies with civility. It’s well past the time for civility. It’s time for rage. It’s time to throw the bums out. It’s time to veto the entire Congress. It’s time to send a message to the spoiled, corrupt, overpaid D.C. political class. It’s time to vote all of them out.

It’s time for a political revolution. It’s time to increase unemployment — by at least 435 members of Congress (and every senator up for reelection). It’s time to say to every incumbent politician in America: YOU’RE FIRED!

In 2010, let’s forget civility and get loud and angry. Let’s fight with tenacity and passion. Because this is the battle of our lives — our country, our economy, and capitalism itself. Our children’s futures are at stake. It’s time to take back our country from the liars and thieves who are currently in control. It’s time to admit it to ourselves: THEY ALL LIE!

Wayne Allyn Root was the 2008 Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate. His new book (highly recommended) is titled The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts. For more of Wayne’s views and commentaries, or to watch his many national media appearances, please visit his web site at: www.ROOTforAmerica.com

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Remember how BHO got down in the mud with Sarah Palin almost immediately after she was announced as John McCain’s running mate? It took a good week before his handlers got him to settle down and realize that he was running against McCain, not Palin.

Slow learner as he may be, to his credit, BHO finally demonstrated the self-discipline to ignore the dynamic and magnetic governor of Alaska and refocus on his hapless presidential opponent, John McCain.

Nevertheless, his childish bickering with a beautiful, charismatic woman whose political experience dwarfed the darling of community organizers reminded me of Wile E. Coyote and his eternal nemesis, Road Runner. And after eight months in office, it’s clear that BHO is still susceptible to falling into the Palin Trap — not necessarily with Sarah Palin, but with anyone who annoys him.

Nary a day goes by when he does not lash out at his enemies in his trademark crybaby style. And when it results in a drop in his poll numbers, you can almost hear the words “Beep! Beep!” in the air. Now, BHO is caught in the Palin Trap once again, fighting a war he cannot win — a war with Fox News, the most influential media outlet on the planet.

My guess is that, sooner or later, BHO’s handlers will convince him that he has no choice but to appear on Fox, because he’s insulting an election-losing percentage of independents who are Fox viewers. Likely, he’ll consent to being interviewed again by the ever-fair Chris Wallace and, perhaps, Bill O’Reilly. Greta is an outside possibility, but she doesn’t tolerate B.S., which is BHO’s stock in trade.

In any event, all three would give him fair but tough interviews, and one would hope they would hold his feet to the fire with serious questions about meaningful topics such as ACORN, SEIU, communist Van Hall, Mark Lloyd (who refers to Hugo Chavez’s dictatorship as the result of “an incredible revolution”), BHO’s public statements about favoring single-payer healthcare, etc., etc., etc.

Would BHO survive a Chris Wallace or Bill O’Reilly interview? It depends on how intent they would be on insisting that he answer their questions in a no-spin manner. But, either way, it would not spare BHO from the biggest Palin Trap of all — the progressives’ worst nightmare — an ex-alcoholic, ex-drug addict, ex-financial failure, ex-rodeo clown, and current Road Runner Supreme, Glenn Beck.

As Beck continues to disrobe the corruption surrounding Wile E. Obama’s presidency, the strategy from the left, as expected, is to try to discredit him. To put it mildly, it’s not working. In fact, it’s making him more popular by the day.

Beck is on a mission, and he and his excellent research staff are relentless. To his enormous credit, he has made it clear that he isn’t afraid of losing everything, if that’s what it takes to get to the truth. And, as the left knows more than any other segment of our society, a man who is willing to lose everything can be very dangerous.

So, whether he likes it or not, and whether or not he will even admit it, Wile E. Obama is getting sucked into the Palin Trap with a real, live version of Road Runner — in the body and brain of Glenn Beck (“Road Runner Beck”). And, as with Fox News in general, Wile E. Obama is once again in a battle he can’t win.

If he tries to ignore Road Runner Beck, Beck will continue to disrobe Wile E. Obama through his own written and spoken words. Beck has become a one-man poll-wrecking crew for BHO. He continually shows one video clip after another of BHO blatantly contradicting himself (or, in less delicate terms, lying).

But if Wile E. Obama chooses to go after Road Runner Beck, he will get sucked even deeper into the Palin Trap — bringing himself “down” to the level of a mere television personality whom the left is trying ever so hard to dismiss as a right-wing kook. Could you imagine how a teleprompterless Wile E. Obama would fare in an interview with Road Runner Beck — being confronted with real questions and an aggressive insistence that he answer them in a serious way?

So, what’s a community organizer to do? The more the fringe media asks BHO about his opinions on the BCS college playoffs or the chances of the Chicago White Sox making it to the World Series, the more viewers will continue to flee to Fox News — and, in particular, to Road Runner Beck — to find out what is really going on in the world.

Now, Time magazine has (obviously, inadvertently) made Beck even bigger by featuring him in a cover story in its September 28 edition. Road Runner Beck now poses the single biggest threat to the establishment of a progressive dictatorship in Washington. Which in turn means that, whether or not Wile E. Obama likes it, this is going to increasingly become an Obama vs Beck battle.

The truth of the matter is that the progressive movement no longer needs BHO. Give the man credit, he moved the ball all the way to the five yard line in just a matter of months. But at this point, he may actually be a liability because he is becoming more and more entrapped by his own written and spoken words.

As Wile E. Obama increasingly gets sucked into Road Runner Beck’s Palin Trap, it will become ever more clear to White House hacks that a battle with Beck is not winnable. Which is why no one should rule out the possibility of the ever-lecherous, always ready to pounce, two-for-the-price-of-one Clintons challenging BHO in 2012 if his comrades in arms go down in flames in 2010.

I would suspect that the HillBillys think often of how Bobby Kennedy challenged Lyndon Johnson in 1968, causing Johnson to resign before Kennedy himself was assassinated.

Stay tuned … this is going to be better than Dynasty and Dallas at their best.

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I can’t watch Geraldo too often … too much important stuff going on in the world to listen to nonsense. But now that he has boldly taken on Ann Coulter as a regular contributor, I try to tune in to catch her comments. It goes without saying that Geraldo isn’t going to make the same mistake with Coulter that he made with Michelle Malkin — assuming he doesn’t want to end up crouched over on the floor.

When Geraldo insisted that there is a Constitutional problem with Congress’s “defunding” of ACORN, Coulter responded with the obvious: There is nothing in the Constitution that gave Congress the right to fund ACORN in the first place!

Pointing out this self-evident fact may not sound like a big deal in our post-Constitutional era, but it is. I say that because it’s a reminder of the gradual desecration of the Constitution, along with the moral foundations of American culture, that has occurred over the past hundred years or so. Gross violations of the Constitution are now taken in stride by a population that has adopted the attitude of “That’s just the way things are today.”

Take healthcare, for example. I hope I’m wrong, but I believe we’re going to get government-run healthcare — in one form or another — even though a majority of Americans don’t want it. Sadly, conservatives seem to agree that we need “some kind of healthcare reform,” but no one is willing to define what they mean by “reform.”

The only reform that is necessary, or — at the risk of being passé — legal, is for the government to obey the Constitution and get completely out of the healthcare business. People should be able to buy whatever medical insurance they want from any insurer they choose — no state boundaries.

Constitutionally and morally speaking:

The government has no legal or moral right to be involved in healthcare.

The government has no legal or moral right to be involved in banking.

The government has no legal or moral right to be involved in the automobile business.

The government has no legal or moral right to be involved in education.

The government has no legal or moral right to be involved in funding “community organizers” — or any other groups — whether they do or don’t promote prostitution, tax evasion, or election fraud.

And the government certainly has no legal or moral right to be involved in redistributing wealth.

The 100-plus-year war to throw out the Constitution and repress the last vestiges of natural rights for all citizens is almost over. The journey has been a long and difficult one for American progressives, but from Theodore Roosevelt to BHO, the transition from a relatively free society to one in which an elite group of people rule over obedient serfs is almost complete.

As I have said so often, the only thing that can stop it is for conservatives and libertarians to take control of the House and Senate (assuming elections are still being held in 2010) and have the courage think and act in terms of repeal, rescind, revoke, and abolish — as opposed to merely moving to the left more slowly than the progressives who are now in power.

Which brings me back to ACORN. BHO outdid himself when he said, “Frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.”

I doubt if even his media cheerleaders took him seriously. Trust me, BHO and his White House cronies are VERY nervous about the whole ACORN mess, and rest assured that they are talking about it night and day. After all, a real investigation would lead straight to BHO and the important role ACORN played in his rise to the top.

It will be interesting to see just how serious Congress is about investigating ACORN, and what ACORN does to reinvent itself in order to obfuscate the truth. In any event, it can always hire one of Cass Sunstein’s canine attorneys to argue its case: that it is unconstitutional not to give it another $8.5 billion of our tax dollars. Huh?

Hmm … now that I think about it, maybe it’s unconstitutional for the government not to fund e-letters. I’ll have to do some research on that one.

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Democrats are famous for finding a way to shoot themselves in the foot once they gain power. Since a majority of Americans perceived Bill Clinton’s presidency to be successful, it took a bit of sexual pervasion and blatant lying to destroy his own presidential legacy.

Now, the new progressive power holders in Washington, including and especially those in BHO’s inner circle of mischief, continue to increase their determination to provide freedom-loving Americans with more and better ammunition than they could ever come up with on their own. BHO’s strategy to overwhelm the system with one (illegal) socialist proposal after another has turned out to be an embarrassing, self-destructive strategy.

Having said this, fairness compels me to admit that had BHO enacted his agenda slowly, it would have given people more time to catch on and fight back against his implementation of socialism. From day one, BHO’s plan has been to push as much “stuff” through — legally or illegally — before the 2010 elections — at which time a whole lot of Democrats are going to feel like Marie Antoinette on her worst (and last) day.

Which brings us to the Dems’ latest foot-shooting episode. Last Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Presidential Senior Adviser David Axelrod said of the rally in D.C., “I don’t think it’s indicative of the nation’s mood.” Say what? It was yet another 180-degree switcheroo by the panicked Administration. Whatever you do that’s bad, accuse the other side of doing it. Whatever the other side does that’s good, just claim it’s bad — or that it didn’t happen.

But even better than Axelrod’s self-delusive remarks was what Obama said in yet another 60 Minutes interview: “The loudest, shrillest voices get the most attention.” Again, projection — flip what progressives say and do and claim that the right is guilty of it.

I was at the D.C. rally, and I can tell you that the voices were not shrill, though some of them were at times loud — as well they should have been. But take a cue from Che Prez, because he comes from the ranks of the enemy — the enemy who invented loud and shrill.

You may not be old enough to remember the antics of the hippies in the sixties, but they mastered the art of loud and shrill to move the country irreversibly to the left. Loud and shrill ended the Vietnam War. Loud and shrill kicked the deadly “green movement” into high gear. Loud and shrill reduced God’s role to that of a bench player. And loud and shrill brought Barack Hussein Obama out of the manger into your wallet.

I’m not sure what Saul, King of Radicals, would say about how badly the progressives have botched things up since BHO left the Chicago mob for greener pastures in Washington, but my guess is that he’d be furious at their ineptitude. Alinsky had little patience for radicals who acted like fools. I don’t for a second believe that David Axelrod believes anything he said in his Face the Nation interview, and neither would brother Saul.

BHO and his partners in crime should reread Rules for Radicals. It’s not cool to high-tale it out of town and speak to your own followers while hundreds of thousands of voters are protesting in the town where you live and work (well, leave it at live … BHO is not known for doing a lot of heavy lifting). It’s not cool to dismiss folks who are furious about your policies. It’s not cool to wave aside dissenters as not representing the mainstream view when clearly they do. And it’s certainly not cool to threaten them (as well as Congressmen and women) for challenging you on the facts.

My writings about what would happen if a born-and-bred communist became president go back at least a year and a half, and they easily could have been written today. Though I wish I had been wrong, it’s at least a small consolation to be able to say, “I told you so.” Nor was I alone. A significant number of columnists and radio and TV commentators saw The Obama Socialist Express coming almost from the day he announced his candidacy.

What’s puzzling to me are those remaining “conservatives” on TV who still don’t see it! (You know, “I don’t doubt for a second that Barack Obama has good intentions for America. I just believe that the man is inexperienced.”) For crying out loud, read his books! Watch his video clips! Listen to his speeches! It’s all there — the promise to fundamentally change America, telling ACORN and SEIU that they will help shape White House policy with him, czars that want to sterilize you and give your dog the right to sue you, and other assorted chutzpah that would have bought about the wrath of Saul, King of Radicals, for its lack of subtlety.

BHO is right: Loud and shrill get the most attention. Those who are not members of that shrinking progressive minority that still wants to “fundamentally change America” should take his advice. It’s time to ramp it up and make the new fringe media (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.) apoplectic.

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As the racism drumbeat of the far left accelerates, an awful lot of Americans who have never felt a twinge of racism in their hearts are backlashing. And an unknown percentage of them are simply tuning it out as a result of racism fatigue.

Isn’t it interesting that BHO was touted to be the first “post-racial” president, yet, through his arrogance and socialist agenda, he continues to deal the “race card” from the cobweb-covered Political Dirty Tricks Deck? But to BHO’s dismay (and visual frustration), the increasing number of Americans who oppose his plans to turn their country into another communist paradise are not focused on race.

The fact is that it’s Obama’s White House pals and the (now) fringe media who find it necessary to make racism accusations. Why? Because they can’t explain away his endless stream of lies; they can’t explain away his threats to “call out” anyone who disagrees with his healthcare plan; they can’t explain away his ties to ACORN and SEIU; they can’t explain away his selection of Van Hall, John Holdren, Cass Sustein, and other radicals he has chosen to be in his inner circle of advisors; they can’t explain away the drastic and continuing drop in his once high approval ratings; in fact, last time I checked, they can’t seem to explain away anything.

Having said this, there is one major point that conservative commentators are missing when they argue against the ludicrous claims of racism: If people who are losing confidence in BHO and his policies, how can it be a result of racism when (1) a majority of white voters voted him into office in the first place and (2) at the outset of his presidency, he had a record-setting approval rating? Tingly-legged star gazers had better come up with a better distraction than racism if they want to win back the Obama-Aid drinkers who are now on the wagon.

The truth be known, Geraldine Ferraro had it exactly right when she said, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Does anyone really believe that a white man whose total government experience was a year and a half as a senator, who compiled the most liberal voting record in the Senate, and who had well-documented, close ties to a hate-mongering minister, a communist, and numerous other radicals would have been considered as a serious presidential candidate?

What put BHO into the presidential race was the “white guilt” phenomenon that Shelby Steele wrote about so eloquently in his book of the same name — a sort of guilt-driven form of affirmative action. BHO got elected not in spite of his race, but because of it. And everyone reading this article – whether far left, far right, or middle of the road – knows it’s true.

So, let’s put the nonsense aside and get serious about the issue of racism. While overt racism is pretty much a thing of the past in this country, racism does exist — and always will. Racism is simply a form of prejudice, and everyone has prejudices.

For example, I have a prejudice against many kinds of people. It doesn’t mean that I want to see them stripped of their freedom. And it certainly doesn’t mean that I want to see any harm come to them. What it does mean is that there is something about them that I don’t particularly like or don’t feel comfortable with, and that I would prefer to avoid being in their presence.

For example, I’m prejudiced against people who believe that my dog should be able to sue me. It doesn’t make me a bad person, but I think it’s safe to say that it makes them insane — regardless of the color of their skin. (To be fair to these goofballs, I should also point out that I’m prejudiced against litigious dogs as well.)

Another example: I admit that I’m prejudiced against blacks who preach the gospel of socialism. But, then, I’m also prejudiced against whites who preach the gospel of socialism. I can’t deny it — I’m prejudiced against people of any race, religion, or culture who preach the gospel of socialism. Sorry, that’s just me.

It doesn’t make me a bad person, and it doesn’t make everyone who preaches the gospel of socialism a bad person. It could be that such a person is just misinformed … or stupid … or naïve … or that he never got over some deep-seated childhood problem.

The point is that prejudice is a part of life. A non-prejudicial society exists only in the utopian world created in the minds of progressives. To paraphrase my old pal Saul Alinsky, learn to deal with the world as it is, not the way you wish it to be.

So, feel free to go on with your prejudices, and I’ll continue with mine. The color of someone’s skin just doesn’t happen to be one of my prejudices, and I doubt that it’s one of yours, either. Crying racism to avoid a discussion of the facts is no longer taken serious by anyone this side of Jimmy Carter.

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Never say never. What’s this world coming to when Robert Ringer shows up at a protest rally? I’ve always believed that most, if not all, crusades are a waste of time. But Saturday’s cozy little get together in Washington, D.C. wasn’t a crusade. It was a revolution.

What’s the difference? A crusade attempts to mold people’s thinking. A revolution pushes back against the forces of tyranny.

I don’t care much for crowds or inconvenience, but I knew for a long time that I had to go to the 9/12 protest rally. I can’t explain it … it was like a calling … an invisible voice telling me that I had to be there. Rain was expected, and it’s not like me to willingly subject myself to a physically uncomfortable situation. But I went anyway.

And guess what? The weather turned out to be perfect — mid seventies, overcast, and no rain. I’m tempted to say that the weather was ordered to perfection from above.

My urge to attend the rally was only heightened by BHO’s arrogant, belligerent, totally dishonest speech to Congress Wednesday night. His tone and body language was like that of a trapped villain in a bad B movie. He appeared to be a man who was losing control — angry, threatening, tossing out one factually incorrect statement after another. It was as though he didn’t know how to cope with the fact that more and more people who were McCained into voting for him were now saying, “Whoa, pal! Enough is enough!”

What I wanted most out of Saturday’s rally was to be able to mingle among the people and get an idea of who they were and what was on their minds. I hate to sound trite, but they really were everyday folks — people you see at shopping malls, PTA meetings, or just walking down the street — young, old, and in between. They were angry, to be sure, but polite and civil almost to a fault.

I was amazed at how many great speeches were given by individuals who were blue-collar workers, house moms, and small businesspeople. A coal miner, in fact, gave a speech from the heart that would have put the King of Teleprompters to shame, taking umbrage with the president’s threat to bankrupt coal-mining plants. It was a real high to see a guy wearing a hard hat espousing the merits of capitalism.

Three of the best speeches came from blacks — you know, those despicable sell-outs who have dared to, in the (paraphrased) words of Star Parker, escape from Uncle Sam’s welfare plantation. One black woman (whose name I did not catch) said she was “outraged at black politicians’ affinity for socialism.” She suggested that people “look at the black ghettos and see what government has done.”

It reminded me of the words of the famous former slave Frederick Douglass, an advisor to President Lincoln, who said, “Everybody has asked the question … ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! … All I ask is, give [the Negro] a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”

Had he lived in our time, Douglass undoubtedly would have been reviled by today’s progressives. There’s nothing that upsets a progressive more than an uppity black conservative who believes that blacks should be left alone to succeed or fail on their own merits.

How many people were at the rally? It’s hard to say, but I can tell you this: Standing near the front of the crowd on the west lawn of the Capitol Building, I turned around a number of times and looked back. As far as my eye could see, the streets were jammed with people. At a minimum, the figure would certainly be in the hundreds of thousands.

And where was BHO? Conveniently, he had high-tailed it out of town and was in Minnesota giving another belligerent speech to a crowd of his supporters. If he was the Obama whom people thought he was when they voted for him, he would have been on the west lawn of the Capitol Building, listening to the concerns of citizens who don’t want his deathcare program — or anything else that he is intent on giving them — which would be paid for with their children’s and grandchildren’s money.

Now, the big question is, how many people will show up at the next rally — after several more months of in-your-face Obama speeches? This is a test of wills. BHO’s words and actions make it clear that he intends to succeed at forcing Americans to look to him for all their needs. It remains to be seen if Americans will have the will to resist — in ever-increasing numbers.

Bottom line: 9/12 was a great and historic day for America … but, unfortunately, far more needs to be done. The next time around, I would like to see millions of people jamming every street in downtown D.C. and throwing fear into the hearts of the BHO-Axelrod-Emanuel-Pelosi-Reid-SEIU-ACORN criminal co-op. Rest assured that their feigned indifference to these rallies masks a deep concern that time is running out for them.

P.S. A special tribute to one of our great American heroes — former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, chairman of www.FreedomWorks.com — who played such a major role in making the 9/12 Washington event happen. Would that all Republicans had his knowledge and wisdom — and, even more important, his character. Leader Armey and FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe don’t just talk about freedom. They demonstrate their commitment to it through their actions.

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BHO’s umpteenth campaign speech (since he’s been in office!) Wednesday night — this time about government-run healthcare (disguised as everything but government-run) was encouraging. I say encouraging, because I still have a concern that he is such a skilled dispenser of falsehoods that he will always find the words to pull yet another deceitful rabbit out of his duplicitous hat.

On top of BHO’s remarkable skill for transforming fiction into fact, one can easily become paranoid not only by the media’s incessantly cheering him on, but by their refusal to report on negative  news about him. It’s scary to think about, but if a person got his news solely from ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and/or The Washington Post, he would have no idea that BHO had appointed a self-avowed communist to rule over green-related issues. (“Green-related issues” meaning just about every aspect of American life.)

So, before Wednesday night’s performance, I kept worrying that BHO would come up with a clever surprise to win back some of the independents who have come to realize that they were duped into voting for him. As it turned out, however, my fears were without merit. In a show of stunning arrogance, BHO apparently believed that he could once again spew out hollow hyperbole and bedazzle us ordinary folk. And when he did say anything even remotely specific, it was … well … as Orrin Hatch might delicately put it, “disingenuous.”

Just a few of the many items that caught my (and most everyone else’s) attention:

• “I don’t want to put insurance companies out of business. I just want to hold them accountable.” Question: What, exactly, do you mean by “accountable?” Second question: Who are you to hold anyone or any company accountable for anything? Sorry, BHO, but the Constitution says that you are accountable to us.

• His bold but embarrassing statement that his plan won’t increase the deficit. He’s going to pay for all the additional healthcare simply by eliminating fraud and waste. You do know how good government is at controlling fraud and waste, don’t you? How does it feel to know that the president of the United States thinks you’re an ignoramus?

• His claim that government health insurance won’t cover abortions or illegal aliens. Sounds nice, but why, then, does he refuse to ask Congress to add an amendment to its bill that makes this claim crystal clear? Kind of analogous to refusing to make the original of your birth certificate available to the whole world while your minions are insisting that it’s absurd to insinuate that the prez is not a legal citizen of the U.S. I never did quite understand that one, but it’s probably just me.

• His gratuitous mention of tort reform was vintage BHO – no details, no plan, no promise. If anyone wants to wager on this one, I’m available to cover your bet.

• Finally, the nasty (real) side of the Duplicitous Despot came out. After numerous admonishments to Republicans for daring to question his plans, he threatened them with: “If you misrepresent what is in this plan, we will call you out.” In other words, keep your mouths shut unless you want to be labeled an uncooperative troublemaker.

In short, my worries were for naught, because BHO’s speech was an embarrassing bust. I believe it’s now safe to say that the emperor has no clothes. BHO is, in fact, losing his touch. I think it’s called “overexposure.”

In any event, the healthcare debate is nothing more than a distraction. Some form of healthcare will probably get finagled through the House and Senate, with Democratic favorites such as Richard Lugar, Orrin Hatch, John McCain, and Lindsay Graham all voting for it. I will say it yet again: Weak-kneed, philosophically confused Republicans are the real problem.

The single biggest threat to Americans is not healthcare. What we should be worrying about is a well-planned progressive “crisis” that will leave BHO “no choice” but to declare a state of emergency. As I have previously written, the Dems know they are going down in flames in 2010, so the only way they can prevent that from happening is to suspend elections.

I won’t make a flat-out prediction that it’s going to happen, because I’m hoping it won’t. But it’s something that all Americans should be prepared for, so if and when it does happen, they won’t be fooled into welcoming a newer, slimmer version of Mussolini establishing a “temporary” dictatorship.

Most Americans do not realize that just ten years after the Constitution went into effect, Congress, under President John Adams, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which made it a crime for anyone to criticize the government “through writing or any other shape, form, or fashion.”

The “crisis” that brought about this tyranny was the Republicans voicing their disapproval of the Federalists’ support for the French Revolution. It was, of course, in direct violation of the Bill of Rights, which clearly states, in the First Amendment, that “Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of speech, or of the press.”

More than a hundred years later, at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918, which was an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917. The act made it a crime for Americans to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.”

Today, there are many more excuses for Congress or the president to declare a “state of emergency” — ranging from an H1N1 virus epidemic to a suicide bomber blowing himself up at a shopping mall in St. Louis.

Or it could simply stem from a crisis in the Middle East. (Never mind the fact that the Middle East is in a perpetual state of crisis!) Israel is likely to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities in the next six months, which could give those brave Hamas fighters another reason to fire rockets into Israel and hide in civilian homes.

Regardless of its nature, should a perceived crisis occur, people will be urged to “come together and support the president.” Which is why the healthcare debate is but a distraction from the real issue: our loss of liberty. Little by little, those reach-across-the-aisle Republicans will allow government-controlled healthcare to become the nightmare that progressives will use to reduce liberty to the status of an anachronism.

I said that the real issue is a loss of liberty, but what I should have said was that the real crisis is a loss of liberty. If the focus were on liberty, sleepwalking voters would realize that the government has no right to be involved in healthcare in any way whatsoever, just as it has no right to be involved in anything that is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution.

Keep your eye on the liberty ball, not on the results of our loss of liberty. Liberty trumps all of the progressives’ phony unconstitutional arguments. When educating others, stay focused on liberty — because all other objectives are secondary.

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In my August 29 article titled “Do the Walls Really Have Ears?” I made the point that BHO and his comrades in arms fully realize that the Democrats are going to lose a huge number of House and Senate seats in 2010, most of them by a landslide.

I’m mentioning it here again in case you were puzzled by BHO’s audacity in anointing communists and other radicals to posts that bypass the congressional vetting process. He knows that he has to get as much as possible in place – people, programs, and laws – before he is faced with an unfriendly Congress.

Unfortunately for him, in his haste to install the most extreme anti-freedom radicals he can find in unvetted posts, he risks awakening the shrinking percentage of independents who still seem determined not to believe that an African-American president is an old-school radical. It’s known as “white guilt,” and there are some who will simply never get over it. Fortunately, conservative and libertarian African-Americans are not among them.

In the case of Van Jones, everything would have been just fine had his ego not gotten the best of him. After all, his credentials were no problem. With timid Republicans not about to appear too harsh, no one seemed to have an issue with Jones being a self-avowed communist who refers to the political opposition with all the tactfulness of a street thug.

The truth be known, Jones’ number-one credential is that he is what is known in street parlance as a smart ass. (Sorry about not being more tactful.) Once admitted into the culture of corruption, Jones began to see himself as the next Jay Leno. When I was a teenager, we called it “showing off.”

You could just hear the Duplicitous Despot saying to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, “What the hell is this guy doing? Didn’t he ever read Saul Alinsky? He’s scaring all those Americans who are clinging to their bibles and guns — and scared people are more likely to resist servitude.”

So, out came the BHO bus — the same one he used for his white grandmother and the good Rev. Wright. “Sorry, pal. I appreciate the fact that you want to be a comedic star, but this revolution is bigger than you.” Poor Van. Now he insists that he was the victim of a “vicious smear campaign” (read, telling people the truth about his radical views). He was so mesmerized by his audiences’ laughter that he didn’t even notice the BHO bus pulling into the White House parking lot.

So now Mr. Showboat is back out on the street, forced to look for employment. But not so fast. Americans have a bad habit of falling into the comfort zone after the smallest of victories. Now hear this Americans: Van Jones was just one of many cogs in the progressives’ Wheel of Servitude. Instead of congratulating ourselves on a job well done, we should be thinking “one down, thirty-something to go.”

From Cass Sunstein (“regulation czar” who wants to reverse current law so that a dead person’s organs can automatically be used for transplantation unless he or she has explicitly stated otherwise in writing) … to John Holdren (“science czar” who advocates, among other things, forced abortions and sterilization of the general population by putting infertility drugs in the water supply) … to Mark Lloyd (FCC “Chief Diversity Officer” who speaks with glowing admiration of Hugo Chavez’s “incredible revolution” and wants to eliminate conservative talk radio and Fox News by forcing them to subsidize their competition) … these guys are off-the-chart fascists.

Conservatives, libertarians, and independents have to fight the tendency to prematurely celebrate a victory like forcing BHO to give a commi-clown like Van Jones the boot. Instead, they need to focus on stoking the protest fires in an effort to eliminate all czars and force BHO to get the “advice and consent” of the House and Senate before bringing anyone new on board. Further, the aim should be to reduce their powers to carrying out laws that have actually been passed by the Congress.

The good news is that progressives are just as inclined to prematurely celebrate as conservatives, libertarians, and independents. From the day they took control of all three branches of the government, they have been outwardly giddy and bold.

Remember, Jones was adored by Valerie Jarrett, whom Michelle Malkin has exposed as the main benefactor of, and most powerful advisor to, both Obamas. But Ms. Jarrett let one slip when she said about Jones, “We were watching him … for as long as he’s been active out in Oakland”. So much for BHO not knowing about Van Jones’ background.

Even the normally calm, cool, and collected Emanuel slipped early on when he spoke his infamous line, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

As a result of all these arrogant slips of the tongue, you can bet your life (actually, this is all about betting your life) that Che Prez and his political guerillas will be very careful about what they say between now and November 2010. They’ll probably all go back and reread Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals and be reminded that old Saul had no use for big mouths and showboaters. In fact, he scornfully looked upon flag burners like Bill Ayers as “fools.”

So look for a slicker, less threatening version of the power-holding progressives until, and if, they are in a position to slam the door shut on dissent. In the meantime, don’t be fooled by their good behavior and allow yourself to get lulled back to sleep.

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Long-time readers know that I have an aversion to television fare that is known in finer circles as “crap TV.” This includes everything from brain-numbing sports shows to “let’s pretend it’s true” stuff like The
Bachelor, Survivor, pro wrestling, etc. It’s heresy to say, but I can’t even bring myself to watch Oprah. I like a little entertainment now and then, but crap TV gives me IBS (Irritable Brain Syndrome).

That said, I’m going to come out of the closet on this one: Embarrassing as it may be to admit, I happened across a crap TV show that I actually enjoyed. It’s on The History Channel, and it’s called Pawn Stars. It’s about a real, live place in Las Vegas called the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop.

I guess boob-tube addicts would call it a reality TV show, which is all the more embarrassing for me because I’m convinced that reality TV shows are phony. If you believe that people act normal when there are cameras following them around the house, then you probably believe that in twenty years of attending the Trinity United Church of Christ, BHO never heard Jeremiah Wright say anything inflammatory.

Having said this, it’s time for me to rationalize in order to save my reputation. Pawn Stars is different. Honest engine, it really is. Naïve as it may sound, I get the feeling that what you see on Pawn Stars is pretty much the way these guys act day in and day out — without cameras around.

The main characters are:

“The Old Man” (legal name Richard Harrison). He’s a crusty old guy who went into the pawnshop business after going broke in real estate. He’s old — very old — calm, cool, collected, and doesn’t see much about life that’s funny. Central casting could not have come up with a more perfect character for this show.

Rick is The Old Man’s son and partner. He looks to be fiftyish — totally bald, congenial, and an expert at spotting things that are fake. He’s a high school dropout who’s been working in the pawn business since he was thirteen. The Old Man thinks he’s got a big head, and constantly jabs him with putdowns.

Corey (“Big Hoss”) is Rick’s son. He weighs 330 pounds and is constantly trying to prove how smart he is. His dad, Rick, thinks he’s an idiot.

Chumlee (legal name Austin Russell) is Corey’s life-long friend, and has been working at the pawn shop since he was a kid. He’s at least as overweight as Corey, if not more so. He’s a likable character who always wants to give the customer the best possible deal — not a good mind-set for someone in the pawnshop business.

As I watched the show for the first time, what I was trying to figure out was why in the world I liked it. I was worried that perhaps I was going the way of most Americans and simply losing my mind. But after the show was over, I figured out why I enjoyed it so much: It’s a comedic representation of the free market!

Pawnshops have been around for thousands of years, and for most of that time they were the main source of consumer credit. The reason they’ve lasted so long is that they are truth personified. A pawnshop is a forum for non-coercive transactions between consenting adults.

If a pawnbroker buys an item for ten cents on the dollar, a progressive would see it as exploitation. But, in truth, such a transaction is victimless, because the seller only sells his item if he is satisfied with what the pawnbroker offers him. Whether he would like to get more for his gizmo is beside the point. All that matters is whether or not, in the end, he voluntarily accepts what the pawnbroker is willing to pay.

It’s quite humorous to watch how each person who comes through the door — with items ranging from totem poles to Civil War swords — has a story to tell. In Pawn Stars, they go to great lengths to assure Rick that whatever it is they are selling is genuine. You can just feel how badly they need the money.

A guy may ask $3,000 for an item, only to have Rick counter him with a $200 offer. Almost without fail, the seller then goes into a long and sad tale about how badly he needs the money — which, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with what Rick can afford to pay him and still make a profit.

In the end, Rick and the seller may compromise at $350 or so, and guess what? The seller always appears to be happy. When interviewed, a seller would often say something to the effect of, “When I walked in, all I had was a piece of junk that was taking up space in my home. But when I walked out, I had cash in my hand.” He may have wanted more, but he was happy to get what he was paid. If not, he would not have accepted it!

The free-market story here is one that politicians and civilian progressives don’t understand — and don’t want to understand: Transactions between consenting adults are always fair. What some third party (e.g., a politician) might believe is unfair is nothing more than his personal opinion. A transaction that doesn’t involve him, and that is devoid of coercion or aggression, is simply none of his business.

Now that I’ve come out of the closet and admitted that there is room for at least some crap TV in my mind — good crap, I would argue defensively — I recommend that you catch an episode of Pawn Stars. It will get your mind off the little issues, such as communists being hired as presidential advisors.

I think it airs at 10:00 pm (EST) on Sundays, but check it out in your local area. It will remind you again how simple and pure the free market works, and it will give you some laughs in the process.

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Glenn Beck’s show last Friday may have been the most riveting one-hour of television I have ever witnessed. In essence, Beck took the gloves off and declared war on all criminal politicians residing in Washington — regardless of party affiliation. No more “I could be wrong” qualifying statements, just the unvarnished truth.

He then went on to say that even if the forces of darkness succeed in throwing him off radio and television, he will come back with a louder voice and a larger platform than ever. If Beck continues to ramp up his attempts to gather support in fighting the rapidly emerging dictatorship in our nation’s capitol, he might very well go down as one of the greatest heroes in American history.

The reason he is now so dangerous to those who are trying to finish the job of enslaving the artificial-prosperity addicts in this country — and most everyone else along with them! — is that he says he is willing to lose everything in the pursuit of liberty. That is the key to being a successful revolutionary or, in Beck’s case, a counter-revolutionary: the willingness to lose everything. How many people do you know who are prepared to lose everything to fight for what they believe in?

In laying down the gauntlet, he pointed out that as a recovering alcoholic, he’s already been at the bottom, so nothing scares him. In fact, as recent as 2001, he was dead broke. Beck is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon — the fastest, biggest star in the history of television broadcasting. He is simply a freak of nature. Hidden behind all the drugs and booze was one of the most natural talents the TV world has ever seen.

Glenn Beck could have been a mainstream, patriotic funny guy, playing it down the middle and being loved by all. But, unlike 99.99 percent of the population, he refused to sell out for fame and fortune. Of course, he now has fame and fortune, but he says that losing them is not the most important thing to him.

“The worst thing that can happen in my life,” said Beck, “is to lose my honor and to return to my Heavenly Father without honor — without doing what I was supposed to do.” When people talk like this, they represent a very big problem for those in power.

Enter guest Keith Ablow, a renowned psychiatrist whom I have come to greatly admire since I interviewed him many months ago. Ablow has a lot on the line himself, not only with a glowing professional reputation, but as a well-known television analyst.

With Ablow sitting across from him, Beck reviewed some of the names he had been called in just the past week, which included “freak show,” “religious nut job,” “cult leader,” “shameless opportunist,” “political operative,” “full of crap,” “delusional,” “hard right,” “idiotic,” “thick-headed,” “spineless coward,” “cry baby,” and “fear-mongering (whatever).” He then asked Dr. Ablow how he thought he should handle such nastiness.

In a brilliant analogy, Ablow compared such name-calling to people who are addicted to drugs, saying that those who spew out such hatred are in a state of denial. They will do anything to deflect from the facts. Drug users want to keep using drugs, so the person who tries to take away their drugs is the devil. And Glenn Beck is the loudest of all voices yelling “Americans, stop taking drugs! Drugs are bad for you!” Thus, he has become an easy devil for artificial-prosperity addicts.

Ablow then pointed out that if you say “the emperor has no clothes and you want to stop the party, you’re going to be vilified.” He advised Beck to simply expect such drivel, which is the first step toward not being intimidated and thus being able to deal with it.

Then came one of the most poignant moments I have ever witnessed on television. At the end of his second segment with Ablow, Beck said something about losing friends. (I don’t remember his exact words, and I can’t find the segment on YouTube). Like a climactic moment in an epic film, Ablow looked straight at Beck and said softly, “Glenn, I’m your friend.” It was a heavy moment, and you realized that something big — perhaps even historic — may have just occurred.

With that comment, Dr. Keith Ablow himself crossed over the line. At the risk of his career, he made it clear, on national television, that, like Glenn Beck, he does not fear those who threaten to silence their enemies — enemies being those who are willing to stand up for the cause of liberty.

How about you? Are you willing to stand with these brave men and defend the cause of liberty rather than be anesthetized by another college football game a week from Saturday? If so, whatever you’re doing on September 12, you should think seriously about canceling it and making it a point to be at the all-important Tea Party in Washington. History beckons.

Check it out here: http://912dc.org/

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Both Hitler’s infamous Gestapo and Mussolini’s OVRA (Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism) were secret-police organizations that had as their aim the control and prevention of political dissent.

Though Heinrich Himmler modeled his Gestapo force after OVRA, it became much more violent than its Italian counterpart. A German law, passed in 1936, exempted the Gestapo from judicial oversight, which in turn exempted its henchmen from answering to administrative courts.

All this, of course, is enough to give most Americans concern, given that the increasingly red administration in Washington has been moving daily toward installing radicals in newly created positions of vast authority — radicals who answer to no one but the president.

The two men who have raised the most eyebrows recently are “green czar” Van Jones (a self-avowed communist) and FCC “Chief Diversity Officer” Mark Lloyd. Lloyd is the man BHO has put in charge of, in essence, eliminating conservative talk radio and Fox News by forcing them to subsidize their competition. This may be where Americans will have to make their last stand or go quietly to the gulag mumbling, “I thought it could never happen here.”

The rapidly emerging dictatorship in Washington fully realizes that socialist Democrats are going to lose a huge number of House and Senate seats in 2010, most of them by a landslide. But they also know that a convenient “state of emergency” (as in, Hugo Chavez) is all it would take to “postpone” the elections.

Further, they realize that even if Republicans took control of the House or Senate, or both, there’s nothing they could do about the czars, because they answer only to Der Fuhrbama. And if most of the Republican winners fall into the same old Hatch-McCain-Graham mold (you know, the guys who praised Ted Kennedy for decades while he moved the U.S. ever more rapidly down the road to socialism), there will be no calls for repeal, rescind, revoke, and abolish.

Which leaves the job of taking back America to everyday Americans. Unfortunately, most Americans are understandably timid because they believe that the Obama thugs have now infiltrated all aspects of American life and that if they speak out they will be harshly silenced.

Which brings me back to Hitler’s Gestapo and Mussolini’s OVRA. There is a little-known fact about these two secret-police organizations that is worth pondering. Both of them purposely created the impression that their thugs were everywhere, which paralyzed the masses with fear. And in Germany, that fear led millions of people to the gas chambers.

What made it so easy for these mass murderers was that their victims did not know about one of the best-kept secrets of the Gestapo, a secret that did not come out until well after World War II: The Gestapo was able to instill fear into the hearts and minds of the German people by making them believe that its agents were hiding around every street corner. But the truth is that their omnipresence was purposely exaggerated.

The strategy of making people believe that you are everywhere, at all times, is an effective one — so long as they do not discover that it’s nothing more than an intimidation tactic. This is something that all Americans should ponder as the ranks of the U.S. version of a newer, slicker Gestapo continue to grow.

Ponder away … think about it long and hard … but not too long. Time is running short.

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If you watch Glenn Beck regularly, you probably find yourself shaking your head in amazement and wondering why a vast majority of Americans aren’t demanding that the president, most of his cabinet, all of his czars, and a significant percentage of House and Senate members be criminally investigated.

Beck is overly generous when he insists that he’s not a journalist, that most of what he says is simply his opinion. There’s no question that he offers strong (and courageous) opinions, but I would argue that most of what he says is fact. I know, because I check out a lot of the information he serves up, and, almost without fail, his words are backed up by legitimate sources.

Beck keeps pleading with viewers to wake up before it’s too late. Good advice. But he seems bewildered by the fact that no one is talking about the government criminal behavior that he continually uncovers. The reason, of course, is that the Culture of Corruption (Michelle Malkin’s scathing indictment of most of the Obama criminalweb) in Washington, at a minimum, goes unreported by most of the major newspapers and magazines, as well as the major TV networks.

And the reason for this is that Obama and his cronies have proven to be masters at implementing the strategy of one of the greatest propagandists of the 20th century, Joseph Goebbels. (For more on Goebbels, see “Way to Go, Greta!”) Said Hitler’s infamous propaganda minister: “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”

None of the criminality of the Obama administration would be possible without the explicit (or, at the very least, implicit) approval of the media. Can you imagine a presidential press conference where, instead of asking Der Fuhrbama about his dogs or his latest beer summit, they asked him questions such as:

“You told Joe the Plumber that you believe in spreading the wealth around. Since the Constitution doesn’t allow you to do that, from whom did you acquire the moral authority to take people’s earnings by force and arbitrarily hand them to others?”

“You are on video in 2003 saying that you believe in a single-payer healthcare system. Why are you now telling the American public that you merely want a ‘government option’ added to our existing system? Were you lying in 2003, or are you lying now?”

“How do you reconcile the fact that, within a short space of time, you said that the Medicare system is a perfect example of how well government programs can work, then turned right around and said that Medicare is broke?”

“Why would you appoint an avowed communist, Van Jones, as “green czar?” Did you know that he was a communist before you appointed him? Was he properly vetted? Since communism seeks to destroy capitalism, isn’t his appointment a clear indication that you would like to destroy capitalism?”

“Throughout your life, you have, by your own admission, associated most closely with people like Frank Marshall Davis (another communist), Reverend Jeremiah Wright (an advocate of “black liberation theology”), Bill Ayers (a convicted terrorist who stills says that he wished his group, the Weather Underground, would have done more), and Marxist professors (in college). Given these associations and your extreme liberal voting record in the Senate, weren’t you being disingenuous with the American public when you tried to position yourself as a mainstream American in the last presidential election campaign?”

“Who, exactly, writes these thousand-page bills that keep getting rammed through Congress on short notice, and why do you not insist that all congressmen and women read them before voting on them?”

“Most of what you have done since you gained office is in violation of the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment specifically states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” In other words, the federal government has no powers other than those specifically granted to it by the seven Articles of the Constitution. Knowing this to be so, how do you justify violating the Constitution on a daily basis?”

“Since thousands of creditable scientists throughout the world say that global warming either does not exist or, if it does exist, it is not manmade, why are you determined to push through a cap and trade bill that will kill American businesses and jobs, dramatically raise taxes, and increase the cost of energy?”

“Why is Tom Daschle, whose tax problems were apparently so severe that he withdrew his nomination for Secretary for Health and Human Services, still coming to the White House and giving you advice on a regular basis while at the same time working for the law and lobbying firm of Alston & Bird and giving advice to UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest health insurance company?”

From the $410 billion omnibus bill (with 9,000 earmarks) to the $800 billion “stimulus package” … from Cash for Clunkers to insulting and dismissing American taxpayers who disagree with his policies … from appointing a total of thirty six “czars” who do not answer to either the Congress or American taxpayers to bringing criminally infested ACORN into the White House to take over the census … the stench of government corruption can be smelled throughout the land.

Being the clever devil that he is, to avoid ever having to answer such questions, BHO apparently made a strategic decision to put a great deal of his creative energy into playing the great keyboard called “the press.” Goebbels would have loved it.

But perhaps I’m giving him too much credit. Maybe it’s the press, on its own, that made a conscious decision, early on, to ignore any wrongdoing on the part of this galling young truth-twister because they have waited so long for an unapologetic progressive to slip into the White House with a super majority in Congress to back up his dastardly deeds.

If the media did make a conscious decision to become a government keyboard, they should think about that old maxim: Be careful what you wish for, or you may get it. If people get the government they deserve, the press surely is not immune to the same fate.

When wrongdoings evolve into atrocities, don’t be surprised if many left-wing media pawns turn to the black market to buy up copies of F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom in an effort to figure out how they were duped into participating in their own enslavement.

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After all these years, I’m throwing in the towel and complimenting Greta. When it comes to actions that I believe to be unconscionable, I’m not one who easily forgets. I didn’t mind Greta being a philosophical liberal — that’s her right. But her nightly defenses of the 21st century’s most infamous murderer, O.J., were hard to swallow.

Now that I’ve finally put aside the O.J. stuff (well, almost), I’m able to view Greta more objectively. When she finally broke free from CNN and made the transition to Fox News back in 2002, it took her a few years, but she began moving ever so slowly toward the middle. And the last year or so — I suspect as a result of her buddy-buddy relationship with Sean Hannity — Greta may have actually started leaning a tad … just a tad … to the right.

In truth, though, my sense is that she’s just a very smart woman who tenaciously tries to get at the facts, regardless of whom it hurts or helps. She’s a straight arrow who has a deeply ingrained sense of justice about her that causes her to ask pointed questions … again … and again … and again. I doubt that she thinks of herself in strong ideological terms.

I say deeply ingrained sense of justice, because she becomes very impatient when guests talk nonsensically, lie, or try to spin the facts. And in her recent interview with Russell Mokhiber, founder of “Single Payer Action” — a group right out of Atlas Shrugged — there was a lot of all three going on.

In a recent article, I noted how Barack Obama’s former doctor, David L. Scheiner, didn’t just talk like Saul Alinsky, he looked like him! But everything is relative. Scheiner’s scowl makes him look like Ronald McDonald compared to the hateful frown on Mokhiber’s face.

I couldn’t make up my mind who Mokhiber most resembled — Joseph Goebbels or Adolf Eichmann. I guess I’d have to give the nod to Eichmann, because his twisted scowl reminded me more of an executioner than a mere propagandist.

And yet, a propagandist he proved to be during the interview. In fact, his endless repetition of his assertion that “sixty people die every day due to a lack of health insurance” made it clear that he understood Goebbels’ famous words: “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

In nonstop fashion, Mokhiber vilified Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey, who is famous for his pro-employee philosophy of business. Whole Foods, which employs some 50,000 people, has repeatedly been named one of the best companies in America to work for, and it provides insurance benefits to 80 percent of its employees.

As a result, Mackey has been something of a populist hero to the average working man and woman. Then, just like that, he went and ruined it all by daring to suggest that the Duplicitous Despot’s government-monopoly healthcare plan may not be in the best interests of patients, doctors, or America in general. Zap! Mackey went from hero to scumbag quicker than you could say change you can believe in.

Worse, he had the audacity to offer his own idea of what he believes to be a better healthcare plan for America. Audacious! Who does he think he is, a free citizen? A successful employer who has a proven healthcare plan in place for his employees? A productive individual who has created thousands of jobs? A business owner who has succeeded by giving consumers what they want?

What in the world would make him believe he has a right to voice a dissenting opinion? He’s probably just another one of those dreaded teabaggers in disguise.

Mr. Mokhiber was having none of such hype. He wanted Mackey tarred and feathered, and sent his progressive troops to picket Whole Foods stores in Austin, New York, and Washington, D.C. Outrageous, yes, but a real yawner … a supreme dud.

What really ticked off Greta was Mokhiber’s repeatedly saying that because John Mackey is against single-payer healthcare, he’s a “bad guy.” Gee, and here I’ve been led to believe that most Americans are against single-payer healthcare. The only thing I’ll give Mokhiber credit for is that, unlike his Oval Office hero, he didn’t lie about what he wants: government-only healthcare.

As everyone in America now knows, BHO continues to claim that government healthcare would be “just another option,” even though he was captured on video, in 2003, saying, “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health-care program.” The man does have a charming way about him, doesn’t he?

But this isn’t about BHO, who is already way too overexposed. It’s about how Greta handled Mokhiber’s nasty assertions that John Mackey is a bad guy who should be silenced. True-blue progressives simply don’t like to hear dissenting views. Greta skewered him and never backed off, no matter how many times he followed his Goebbels repetition strategy. She simply was dumbfounded that Mokhiber would call a model citizen a “bad guy” for not agreeing with the president’s viewpoint.

You can see the whole interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bokc3ArB4M0

Let me know what you think — Goebbels or Eichmann? It’s a tough call. Either way, just remember that Mokhiber is typical of the kind of person that too many Republicans believe they can reason with — you know, “reach across the aisle.” You have a better chance of trying to get Ayman al-Zawahiri to consider your point of view.

In any event, a thumbs up to Greta. And could this mean that there’s hope for Geraldo? Easy … let’s not get too carried away here.

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As I expected would be the case, my interview with David Horowitz yesterday was fascinating. As many of you undoubtedly know, Horowitz, like Thomas Sowell, is one of the lucky ones who had the intellect to figure out the sham of communism and evolve into a committed conservative.

Horowitz is not your everyday case of a naive youth gone astray under the tutelage of Marxist professors. Hard as it is to believe, he got his communist training at home — from his own parents! He was one of those rare “red-diaper babies” with a mother and father totally committed to the worldwide communist cause.

Early in his career, Horowitz was a vocal supporter of the infamous Black Panther Party. But, much like what is happening today with ACORN, his bubble burst when he discovered that the party was steeped in corruption and crime — including violence.

He officially cut his ties with the Black Panthers when his close friend and bookkeeper for the Panthers, Betty Van Patter, was murdered. Horowitz believes that the Black Panthers killed her because they were concerned she was going to blow the whistle on their financial corruption.

I shared this brief overview with you because I want you to give serious thought to something else David Horowitz said in our interview. He emphasized several times that conservatives make a big mistake when they refer to people on the left as “liberals.” Having been there himself, he is adamant that the word liberal, as it is used today, is a misnomer. He says that most so-called liberals are really socialists, and that they should be referred to as such.

My past writings bear out the fact that I myself have believed this to be true for a long time. The only place where I might disagree with Horowitz is that I would not refer to those who are afraid to use the word socialist as conservatives. It would be more appropriate to call them pseudo-conservatives. You know … the conservatives in Congress who carry water buckets for their socialist buddies across the aisle.

By creating a crisis of unimaginable proportions, the Duplicitous Despot and his army of czars and assorted thugs have given Republicans an opportunity like none they have ever had before. And a nice young man from Chicago once told me that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Unless the progressive fascists now in power can stave off free elections in 2010 — or use ACORN and other criminal organizations to rig the elections — the Republicans should win a majority of their races in a landslide. Especially if the Democrats ram through universal healthcare, which most Americans do not want.

If the Republicans allow the mushy McCain-Graham axis to prevail — if they sugarcoat their words about the opposition and its overthrow of the Constitution — they may well be responsible for blowing America’s last chance to turn back from a socialist dictatorship on the horizon and start moving once again toward a free society.

Republicans have a lot of nice guys and gals in their party (Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, and the now-deceased Mark Sanford), but being nice doesn’t cut it against thugs who are willing to do anything, anytime, to anybody in order to gain, and hold onto, power. If you don’t believe me, just ask David Horowitz, who knows from firsthand experience how these people think.

On the other hand, as we continue to see, American socialists cannot seem to figure out how to handle a kick-em-in-the-ass personality like Sarah Barracuda. She sounds more like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin rather than Orrin Hatch or Mitch McConnell — which, I believe, is exactly what a majority of Americans now want to hear.

Of course, Sarah Barracuda is “not a serious person,” so the Dems need not worry about her, right? Now, Paul Begala is what I would call a serious person. Just look at all that he’s accomplished in his never-held-a-job career as a political parasite.

Note to Begala the Irrelevant: Keep up the nervous dismissals and you might just get exactly what you and your socialist buddies are so fearful of — a barracuda running for president who isn’t afraid to use the word socialist!

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As I watch the White House and its henchmen — the Pelosi-Reid-Frank-Schumer crowd, ACORN, SEIU, youth pawns, and miscellaneous thugs and goons (loons?) — engage in childish name calling in an effort to discredit anyone who disagrees with Obama’s vision of two Americas (political-elite class and taxpaying serfs), it brings back memories of being in grade school.

I’ve written extensively about teacher and student bullying  (The Cho Factor, Parts I-XXXIV), so what the Obamaviks are now doing rings a familiar bell with me. Almost without fail, the schoolyard bully, when confronted, accuses his victim of doing precisely what he himself is guilty of. And, sadly, all too often it works.

Whether it’s Kathleen Sebelius calling town-hall protestors terrorists, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs chuckling and waving them aside as angry mobs, or the arrogant Wizard of Words in the Oval Office lashing out at Fox News, their tactics are childish, pathetic, and shameless.

Birthers … deathers … teabaggers … astroturfers … truthers … the left has an endless arsenal of epithets with which to vilify, discredit, and dismiss their dissatisfied employers. As Ann Coulter says, if you want to know what liberals are up to, just listen to what they accuse conservatives of. In my recent interview with Michelle Malkin, she referred to this tactic in psychological terms as “projection.” Whatever you’re guilty of, just accuse the other side of doing it.

One recent example is when a little girl (Julia Hall) read the phony question at the phony town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: “As I was walking in, I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming healthcare. How do kids know what is true, and why do people want a new system that can help more of us?” How sad. Poor thing. It’s stuff like this that brings a softie like Glenn Beck to tears.

The Dean of Duplicity then used the planted question to turn on his “change we can believe in” campaign charm and wave aside talk about “death panels that will pull the plug on grandma.” As the world now knows, however, Julia’s mother, Kathleen Manning Hall, was a coordinator of Massachusetts Women for Obama during the election. I can smell the strong fragrance even now.

Then there was the woman at Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s town-hall meeting in Houston who stood up to speak, said she was a doctor, then talked glowingly about the importance of “healthcare reform.” The only problem was that she isn’t a doctor. She’s a college student who was a DNC delegate for Obama! Hmm … probably just got confused. Another innocent mistake from the left.

Healthcare is a serious issue, to be sure, but, in an odd sort of way, it’s really a distraction from the main issue: freedom. The majority of Americans are now against government-run healthcare, but I wonder what percentage of them understands that it’s more about servitude versus freedom than government-run healthcare versus private healthcare.

Will the Thugocrats try to ram through a healthcare bill in the Fall that could start a second American Revolution, or will they back off and come up with a slicker, more sinister way of achieving their objective? Remember, Obama is a Leninite through and through, meaning that he believes that his “moral” objectives justify lying, deception, and even the death of innocent people. (Left-wing revolutionaries have always believed that the death of innocent people is simply an unfortunate side consequence of “people’s revolutions.”)

Much sooner than I thought was possible, Obama’s popularity has become a perishable commodity. But here’s the problem: Neither he nor his collaborating thugs care what voters think — other than their voters, of course. Their attitude is pretty clear at this point: The rest of their employers — the general public — can go to hell.

So, it’s business as usual on Planet Earth — just another struggle between liberty and tyranny. The struggle never ends, and the Liberty-Tyranny Pendulum never tires of swinging back and forth between the two. How will it end this time — in, of all places, the United States of America?

No one knows for sure, but the suspense would make for a great novel. Unfortunately, it’s real life. But if we get government-run healthcare, many of us may not be around long enough to see how it turns out.

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A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I had an appointment in Arlington, Virginia. As we were walking toward our destination, we noticed a thin, elderly lady standing near the street corner. She was exceptionally well groomed, and dressed in a colorful, neatly pressed outfit.

Leaning on her cane, she was looking around in what appeared to be a confused manner. We were concerned, because the temperature was well into the nineties, and it was a very humid day. As we approached her, my wife asked if she needed any help. She smiled sweetly and said that she was looking for her bank, but was not certain she was walking in the right direction.

She went on to explain that she had glaucoma and could not see very well. When she gave us the name of her bank, I told her that it was just on the other side of the street, and said we would be happy to help her across. She appeared to be pleased by the offer.

My wife and I took hold of her arms, waited for the streetlight to change, then slowly helped her to the other side. As we approached the curb, she explained that even though she was not totally blind, she could not see the curb clearly enough to be sure she wouldn’t trip and fall.

We carefully guided her up over the curb and onto the sidewalk in front of the bank. She assured us that she could make it into the bank on her own, so we wished her a nice day and began to turn away. Then, suddenly, the kindly little lady began talking to us about her life and her family. She said she was ninety, and her eldest sister was still alive at age ninety-nine. She also mentioned that she had another sister who had passed away.

Several times, I said that we had to be running along to avoid being late for our appointment — and each time, she went on to another subject … her deceased husband … her osteoporosis … her son who was a medical doctor. She seemed genuinely excited to have someone to talk to, and clearly did not want the conversation with two strangers to end.

It was obvious that she was lonely. One side of me wanted to stay and talk to her for as long as she wished, but the “responsible” side of me was thinking of our appointment. Awkwardly, we finally ended the conversation.

As my wife and I walked away, we turned around and watched that adorable little lady walk, with considerable difficulty, toward the door to the bank. I couldn’t help wondering if her doctor-son knew that his mom was walking by herself to the bank in 90-degree heat.

As a result of that unexpected encounter in Arlington, many thoughts drifted through my mind the remainder of the afternoon. First and foremost, I thought about my ninety-nine-year-old mother. My mother was the ultimate housewife/mom at a time when such an occupation was considered noble. She spoiled the heck out of me, and I loved every minute of it. More important, I loved her to pieces … and still do.

I remembered how, from the time I was about six years old, whenever I spotted the smallest bit of debris on the floor, I would pick it up and throw it in the wastebasket because I didn’t want my mom to have to bend over. Now, with six children of my own, I’m still in awe of the fact that she, merely by being who she was, motivated me enough to want to spare her any unnecessary work.

I’m thankful that, in their senior years, I was able to do so much for, and with, my parents. A fabulous trip to Hawaii, full of joy and laughter, comes quickly to mind. Sunday night dinners at Matteo’s and gourmet meals at The Bistro in Beverly Hills, too. Having lived through the golden age of Hollywood, my mom and dad got a big kick out of eating at celebrity haunts like these.

I also thought about how long it’s been since I visited my mother … and about the time, when my brother-in-law’s mother died and I offered my condolences, he said, in a reflective tone, “You only have one.” As we go about our day-to-day lives, I guess it’s pretty easy to forget the obvious.

Hugh Downs, himself nearing ninety, is convinced that there is more prejudice against the elderly than any other group in our society. He is especially offended by the cry to get “older, dangerous” drivers off the road. As he puts it, “We should get all dangerous drivers off the road.”

I think one of the chief reasons we tend to brush aside the elderly is that the society we live in is not only drowning in materialism and narcissism, but is a throwaway society as well. No one fixes anything anymore. When something is broken, you just throw it in the trash can … and then buy a new and better model.

So it’s only natural that we do the same thing with old people, right? After all, they can’t be fixed, so why not just throw them away? It’s too bad we place so little value on the elderly, because, on the whole, they have so much to offer … wisdom … purity of thought … and, above all, tranquility. If the medical community could transplant an eighty-year-old brain into a twenty-one-year-old skull, one can only imagine how much better the life of the young person who owned that skull would likely turn out.

I believe it’s healthy to be conscious of the fact that we’re all on our way to the same destination: old age (provided we’re luckier than the Tim Russerts and Tony Snows among us). And when we arrive at that destination, let’s hope that we won’t be walking down a street alone, cane in hand, barely able to see the curb. And that our children will visit us often.

As Katharine Hepburn once said, “Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”

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Amidst all the insanity and meaningless chatter that overwhelms us each day, every so often the Conscious Universal Power Source cuts us a break and hooks us up to nature’s Sanity-Support System. We have little control over when the blessed intervention will take place, how often it will occur, or what its components may be.

In my book Action! Nothing Happens Until Something Moves, I describe one such experience I had on a beautiful sunny day in November, when I was still in my mid-twenties. I was driving on the Grand Central Parkway on my way to JFK International Airport, and my mind was exploding with a thousand and one thoughts about all aspects of my life.

Then, just as I began steering my car south onto the Van Wyke Expressway, my entire life seemed to freeze into sharp focus. It was as though I were being given the means to solve all my business and personal problems simultaneously. It was an impossible-to-describe feeling of total control.

Instead of having to exert the normal intense mental effort to sort out my thoughts, every item that was of importance to me at the time — perhaps forty or fifty in number — instantly became clearly fixed in my mind in such an orderly fashion that I felt almost omniscient.

It seemed as though a bright light had suddenly brought my thoughts out of the dark recesses of my subconscious mind and allowed me to consciously focus on all of them at one time. It was a feeling of immense power, joy, and inner ecstasy.

I live for Sanity-Support moments such as the one I just described, and only wish that I had the metaphysical powers (as in, high state of awareness) to bring them into my life more frequently. Still, I’ll take what’s given to me — and this past Sunday evening a lot was given.

My wife and I had been out for several hours in the humid 95-degree summer heat. When we finally arrived back home, I turned down the air conditioning, kicked back, and cooled off for an hour or so. As time passed, ominous storm clouds began moving into view.

For reasons I cannot explain, and contrary to my Felix Unger personality, we decided to go outside and stroll around on our veranda. There was a deliciously strong breeze blowing, which swept away all thoughts of such secular issues as politics, money, crime, and, above all, petty and banal matters.

And to top it off, coming from our outdoor speakers was a soothing voice from another time — Neil Sedaka. We’re talking Solitaire, King of Clowns, Love Will Keep Us Together … and more. Surely, Heaven has Neil Sedaka piped in.

But Neil Sedaka’s wasn’t the only music we could hear. He was just one part of a massive symphony that nature was presenting. There is a huge conglomeration of tall trees to the left and somewhat distant from our veranda, which creates a tranquil shield from the outside world. For what seemed like an eternity, the wind whipped those trees into a choreographed frenzy that brought with it a windy, rustling melody — a melody that seemed as though it were being guided by a master Conductor.

It immediately brought to mind the “melody of life” that the late Guy Murchie wrote so eloquently about. According to Murchie, as well as others whose understanding of such scientific issues is far beyond what my brain is capable of absorbing, the earth and every other “sphere” in the universe oscillate much like musical instruments. Supposedly, the two fundamental “notes” to which the earth’s body oscillates are one vibration every 53.1 minutes and the other every 54.7 minutes — but I’m not the guy to ask about it.

I do, however, know this: There was music and choreography going on in those trees, and it was happening all around us — as far as the eye could see. If my description is inadequate, it’s because the scene is impossible for me to accurately describe. Moments like this have to be experienced firsthand.

On and off, light raindrops fell, but my wife and I chose to remain outside and enjoy the moment. Like the other times in my life that nature hooked me up to her Sanity-Support System, I was immersed in metaphysical magic that I did not want to come to an end. I tell you, a man could solve all the world’s problems if he could exist in such a state of high awareness throughout his life. (Buddha? Confucius? Jesus? Baha’u’llah?)

Finally, the rain started coming down more heavily, and, reluctantly, we were forced to retreat inside — but we talked about those otherworldly moments we experienced on the veranda for quite some time. As with my “conscious of consciousness” experience in New York decades earlier, I will never forget that evening.

Undoubtedly, you’ve experienced similar moments in your own life … times when you felt only peace and tranquility … and, perhaps for a brief moment, a connection to all the knowledge of the universe. I hope so … but, if not, your time will come.

One bit of advice: When nature’s Sanity-Support System makes its appearance, seize the moment. Whatever else you may be doing at the time is not nearly as important. The secular nonsense can wait. Nature, on the other hand, will not. Nature is impatient when she is ready to connect you.

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In Erich Fromm’s 1956 classic The Art of Loving, he provides some unique insights into the subject of faith that have given me a lot to think about. Fromm did not believe faith is in opposition to reason or rational thinking. On the contrary, he simply made a distinction between rational faith and irrational faith.

He believed that irrational faith is based on submission to irrational authority, while rational faith is based on one’s own convictions. Rational faith is a character trait that involves one’s whole personality rather than a specific belief.

Rational faith, then, is an important component of rational thinking. In fact, Fromm believed that creative thinking begins with a “rational vision,” a vision that results from study, reflective thinking, and observation.

In other words, rational faith is rooted in one’s own experiences, thoughts, observations, and judgments. Irrational faith, on the other hand, is the acceptance of something as true only because an authority or the majority say it is.

The rational believer must have faith in his core being. He must have trust in himself — know that the person he really is will not change with changing circumstances. If we lose faith in who we are, we become dependent on others and change in ways to gain their approval. Not a good thing.

The belief in power over others is the reverse of faith. There is no rational faith in domination — either for the dominator or the dominated. To be sure, power is an all-encompassing objective for politicians and many religious leaders, but, to their dismay, it is the most unstable of all achievements.

Fromm pointed out that because having faith and having power over others are mutually exclusive objectives, all religious and political systems originally built on rational faith become corrupt and lose their strength. It would be difficult to argue that history has not supported his viewpoint, and over the next several years this will become eminently clear to all but the most brainwashed American sheeple.

What Fromm did not address head on, however, is faith in a Higher Being. Is it rational or irrational faith to believe in God? The atheist would say it is irrational, while the believer would come down on the side of rational.

But the individual who believes in a Conscious Universal Power Source could just as easily say that the atheist’s viewpoint is based on irrational faith — faith, perhaps, that the universe somehow created itself. And if the universe could create itself, is the universe not God?

But, in truth, both an atheist and a believer in a Higher Being can have rational faith in their beliefs, so long as those beliefs are based on study, reflective thinking, and observation. As I’ve said so often, I agree with Viktor Frankl’s view that there is probably not much difference between a so-called atheist and an individual who believes in God. It’s more a matter of semantics than zealous people on both sides might believe.

So, whether it’s faith in yourself, faith in your spouse, faith in a friend, faith in your future, or faith in a Conscious Universal Power Source, don’t let anyone tell you that faith is not an integral part of the human experience. Make that rational faith. And you will do your children a great service by making sure they understand and believe in rational faith from a very young age.

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I’ve often been asked if I think Mike Huckabee will run for president in 2012 and, if so, do I believe he can win the Republican nomination — and the presidency. These are three interesting questions, and, until recently, my answers were (1) I’m not sure, (2) no, and (3) no.

The reason I’ve never been certain whether Governor Huckabee would run or not is because if I were in his shoes, it would be a monumental decision for me to make. Overnight, he’s become a TV star and is in a position to make untold millions of dollars in the coming five-to-ten years. He’s incredibly talented, and began his stint as a TV host as though he had been doing it all his life.

If Huckabee gives it all up to run for president and loses, he could have a difficult time getting back on the Star Train. He’s certainly smart enough to know that fame is fleeting and that things change as time passes.

But recently I’ve started putting two and two together, and they might just add up to four. Conservatives have long been dismayed by the fact that liberals, in abundance, are welcome guests on Huckabee. Which causes many to believe that, at heart, he’s a liberal.

I had similar concerns when I read his book Do the Right Thing. The governor tends to pander to “the Walmart crowd” throughout the book, which smacks of populism. But I am compelled to admit that most of what he says in the book, and, even more important, what he has been saying on his television show, is pretty solid conservatism.

So, as I’ve watched guests such as Oliver Stone, Richard Dreyfuss, and Bill Maher appear on Huckabee, I haven’t been able to figure out why he’s so attracted to these far-left types. But last Saturday’s show was so over the top that I think I just may have figured out what’s going on.

Huckabee’s first three guests were liberals — Representative Loretta Sanchez, Dr. David Lipschitz, and Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania. Many conservatives must have been going ballistic. How could the good governor possibly hope to garner the Republican nomination by continuing to showcase liberals on his program? Well, here’s a theory that hit me as I watched each of the libs make his/her appearance:

Mike Huckabee already has the religious right sewed up, but he can never win over the conservative Republican base. Solution? Pick off everything left of center that he can get his vote-catching machine to grab hold of, including liberal Democrats who are disgusted with how “change we can believe in” turned out to be a hodge-podge of corruption, bailouts for big corporations, deficit spending, government-controlled health care, repression of individual rights, and astonishing arrogance.

Light bulb: If Governor Huckabee could find a way put together a coalition of evangelicals and disenfranchised liberal Democrats, he could conceivably slip in without the support of the conservative Republican base — and use the same strategy to win the presidency. It’s not so farfetched when you consider that:

Sarah Palin, though still a possibility, is probably not a viable candidate until 2016.

Bobby Jindal is probably still too young and timid, though he would be a prime vice-presidential candidate.

Mark Sanford has been banished to Edwardsville.

Mitt Romney is distrusted by many in his own party.

Ron Paul may not run again … but, in any event, the party base breaks out into hives at the mere mention of his name.

And Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and the rest of the field are … well … dull.

I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but you have to admit that my new Huckabee Theory is interesting. And remember the rules: If it should it play out as I have suggested, you heard it here first. If it doesn’t, it was just a wild theory I threw out there for the fun of it.

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Well, here’s one for the books: Dr. David L. Scheiner, who was BHO’s general physician for twenty-two years, is more extreme on the issue of healthcare than Obama himself! I’m not kidding. Scheiner believes that Obama’s healthcare plan doesn’t go far enough.

The good doctor says we that the U.S. should have “Medicare for all,” a single–payer system in which the government would pay all medical costs for everyone. Let the good times — and the printing presses — roll! Scheiner would put a limit on what doctors could charge patients for various kinds of services and operations. Sounds so … you know … progressive.

The guy not only sounds like Saul Alinksy (Rules for Radicals), he looks like him. I’m serious. I couldn’t believe it when I watched him in an interview on Huckabee recently (one of three liberals Governor Huckabee had as guests on that particular show). And, as you might have expected, Scheiner sported that trademark perpetual scowl of progressive true believers.

What do I mean by “true believers?” Progressives like Alinsky … er, I mean Scheiner … truly believe that they have been blessed with superior wisdom and intellect — along with superior morality — to make decisions for others.

When Huckabee asked Scheiner , “What if someone chooses not to be insured?” he responded, without batting an eyelash, “Everyone has to be insured.” Okay, Doc, if you say so. After all, you know what’s best for me better than I do, right?

This is scary stuff, to be sure, but it’s also fascinating. What in the world would give people like Dr. Scheiner, Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Kathleen Sebelius, Chuck Schumer, and Harry Reid, to name but a few of the worst scoundrels, the idea that they are superior to the average person in wisdom, intellect, and morality? Especially when many of us (me included) see them as most decidedly inferior in all three categories.

And as to common sense, they have none, while the average working stiff — repeat, working — tends to have a lot of that particular commodity. In all honesty, I don’t know what childhood problems started any of these miscreants on their paths to progressivism and unfounded feelings of superiority. Neither do I know what leads them to believe that they not only have a right to tell others what is best for them, but to force others to do what they believe to be in their best interest.

In cases where a sincere progressive genuinely believes that he is doing the right thing by forcing people to do what he deems to be in the best interest of “the common good,” my hunch is that there is a mental disorder at play. It’s akin to a small child who throws a tantrum because he can’t have everything be exactly the way he wants it to be.

This is the mentality that is on the verge of taking another giant step toward tyranny by destroying the best healthcare system in the world and herding us all into long waiting lines … subjecting us to life-or-death verdicts handed down by bureaucrats … and ending our one-on-one relationships with our doctors.

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention Nancy Pelosi in the above Gallery of Scoundrels, the reason being that I don’t take her seriously. She is nothing more than a wine-and-cheese airhead for whom Congress is but a playground. Instead of occupying her time doing phony charity work with her rich girlfriends, she is able to play out her fantasies at the center of the country’s political power grid. In all honesty, I can see where that would be a kick for a wealthy woman who is fighting a losing battle against the Aging Clock.

No, the people I’m talking about are the hard cases who either suffer from genuine feelings of guilt or those who are mad as hell at society for their own lack of achievement — those who sincerely believe they have a moral obligation to remake society, even if it involves toying with eugenics.

Dear reader, hear this: We are living in dangerous times, and these are dangerous people. You cannot change them. You cannot reason with them. You cannot trust them. They lie; they steal; and, above all, they believe in the use of force. Make no mistake about it, violent organizations such as ACORN and SEIU exist at the behest of the government. From Barack Obama on down, they are encouraged to cause trouble and intimidate the opposition.

Getting back to Dr. Scheiner, he is just another run-of-the-mill progressive who believes in the use of intimidation and force to make people conform to his vision of an all-mighty government that tells its subjects what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. And anyone who believes such malevolent thoughts must also believe in the use of force, because the only way you can get those who believe in liberty to go along with such arrogance is to force them to do what they’re told.

But, for now, let’s forget about Dr. Scheiner and the progressives who roam the halls of Congress. My question is this: Is there a libertarian-centered conservative congressman or congressional or presidential candidate out there willing to step front and center and say something like this:

“The idea that ‘We all agree that some kind of healthcare reform is needed’ is akin to Al Gore’s saying that ‘the debate on global warming is over.’ The only reform that is needed is for the government to get 100 percent out of the healthcare business — including Medicare and Medicaid — and let insurance companies vie for customers in a free-market environment.”

Then, so-called fairness would be 100 percent guaranteed. A truly free market is always fair, because people are free to buy want they want — including healthcare.

If Republicans should regain control of either the House or Senate — or both — in 2010 and merely slim down the Democrats’ healthcare plan, I’d just as soon see the Democrats remain in power. Americans are tired of a one-party system.

Unless Republicans are ready to loudly, clearly, and firmly use the words repeal, rescind, revoke, and abolish, best they stay out of power and let history record that it was the Democrats who covered the last mile of the drive toward socialism in the U.S. that began as far back as Theodore Roosevelt.

Gotta go now … have a 4:00 pm appointment with Dr. Scheiner. Prostate exam — the favorite of progressive doctors.

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What a horrific tragedy last Saturday when a small plane crashed into a helicopter and nine people plunged to their death in the Hudson River — the same river, ironically, where 155 people walked away unscathed from the crash landing of a US Airways commercial jet less than seven months ago. Whether an atheist, religionist, spiritualist, or agnostic, a person can go mad trying to make sense out of life.

Seemingly random deaths from airplane crashes, train wrecks, automobile accidents, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis … and endless freak accidents … leave a person scratching his head and resigning himself to the reality that, despite man’s best efforts to protect himself and his family, he cannot do much about the seemingly inevitable.

Saturday’s tragedy caused me to think about my own crash many years ago in a Learjet. The plane was totaled, but I and five others walked away unharmed. To this day, I have no explanation for how that was possible, but the fact is that it happened.

Fast forward thirteen years to a predawn automobile accident at a major intersection in Los Angeles. My nephew — a smart, ambitious, soft-spoken young man with a weightlifter’s build — died instantly from the bloodcurdling impact. Why him but not me? I will never know the answer to that question.

The only thing that makes any sense to me is to thank God … or the universe … or something every morning when you wake up and realize that you’re still alive — especially if you are fortunate enough to have relatively good health. Unfortunately, there are some who are reading this who have serious health problems, and I know, from firsthand experience with my own family, how difficult that is to deal with.

I am sensitive to the feelings of those with serious health conditions, and always mindful not to be presumptuous when giving advice. “Until you’ve walked in my shoes,” the person on the receiving end of such advice might be thinking, “don’t presume to tell me what will make me feel better.”

However, when things are going badly in my own life, I first try to remind myself how much worse off millions of other people are. And at the top of the list are those who meet a fate like that of the nine people whose lives ended in what must have been a terrifying plunge into the Hudson River on Saturday. Something like that gets your attention and makes you realize that your situation is better than “the alternative.”

Second, I remind myself of all the things I have to be grateful for, the kinds of things that most of us take for granted. All too often, the best things in life — such as your relationship with a loved one — are not fully appreciated until they are gone.

Third, I tell myself that whatever I’m going through is a test of faith. I know this is difficult for those who think of themselves as atheists, but, if nothing else, perhaps they can think of it in pragmatic terms … you know, sort of an “insurance policy” faith.

Speaking for myself, I look at the universe and find it incredulous to believe that all those trillions of massive balls of gas and rocks and dirt and minerals (How did they ever get to be near-perfect spheres?) that are spinning perfectly around massive “balls” of fire — as well as each other — are doing so randomly. If I don’t believe in a Conscious Universal Power Source, then I have no choice but to believe in fairy tales, for that is the only other explanation of the universe.

Simplistic to some, I’m sure, but that’s my take on the inevitable. My sympathy goes out to the families of the victims of the Hudson River crash. May their loved ones rest in peace. Which of us is next, and how it will happen, no one knows. So let’s do the only thing we can do and make every effort to make today the best day of our lives.

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Now that citizens who show up at town-hall meetings officially have been labeled “angry mobs” by their employees (i.e., the people they elect to represent them), Saul Alinsky (“the founder of community organizing in America”) must be smiling from below. An individual’s voice of dissent is no longer seen as such, because he is simply part of an unruly mob. In other words, he’s not a real person.

Dehumanization is a favorite trick of progressives. When the Supreme Court, in a landmark case in 1857, ruled against Dred Scott, a slave who had lived for long periods of time in free states with his master, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney explained the court’s decision by simply proclaiming that Scott was nothing more than the property of his owner — and property, of course, had no right to file a lawsuit.

As Judge Andrew Napolitano points out in his book Dred Scott’s Revenge, pro-choicers now use the same argument to kill unborn babies. A “fetus” is simply declared to be a “clump of cells” and — Presto! — the incubating human being is dehumanized.

Which brings us back to the congressional usurpers, who have a major decision to make. Do they face the “angry mobs” who will no longer let them get away with their doublespeak and lies, or do they hide behind drawn shades and risk being thrown out of office in 2010?

Ridicule and a dismissive attitude toward those who challenge their authority to do as they please are tactics right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook, Rules for Radicals. Simply wave aside dissent and declare that “Some people just don’t want to work toward solutions. Instead, they’d rather politicize everything.” No one spews out this cutesy Orwellian stuff better than The Master of the Forked Tongue himself — always with a unique sort of smirk-scowl on his face.

I agree with Karl Rove, who said recently, “I’m more concerned about whether people are going to speak out.” I will continue to say it: What is needed is not 10,000 people at a protest rally, but hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters in the streets of every major city — day and night, nonstop.

Should those who recognize that their liberty is slipping away at an ever-accelerating pace reach that point, it would be interesting see the reaction from those peeking out from behind the curtains in the White House. Would the Thugocrats panic and use Iranian-style force to disperse and silence the people they work for?

If so, it would bring every last “independent” — and a lot of “moderate,” philosophically confused liberals — into the liberty tent very quickly. This would send a clear message that an overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of their autocratic actions.

The Thugocrats would then be left with two alternatives: (1) Establish a dictatorship or (2) accept the fact that they will be thrown out of office, en masse, in 2010 and 2012.

I, for one, don’t want to take a guess at which choice they would make. How about you?

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I’ve always thought that Frank Luntz seemed like a nice young man with an interesting shtick — measuring people’s reactions to words via some kind of electronic gizmo he puts in their hands. I have no idea how valid his measurements are, but it’s worked well enough to make him a regular on Fox News.

And I say more power to him; I love to see people succeed. Luntz’s day job is acting as a political consultant and pollster for the Republican Party, and he also is one of the principals of the Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research firm.

So far, so good. But, like so many Republicans, Luntz tries very hard to act as though he’s above the fray — capitalism, communism, freedom, slavery … no big deal … it’s all just part of the political game, right? Everyone’s viewpoint has equal moral validity, right? Civilized people can agree to disagree, right? Hmm … not so much, Frank. I take the subject of liberty a bit more serious than that.

Appearing on Hannity a couple evenings ago and discussing the town-hall holocausts the Democrats are now facing, Luntz said, “I think it’s organic and real. But I do want to make this point, and I think it’s important that these are elected officials — they are our senators and our congress people — and I think it’s important that we treat them with respect and civility even if we disagree with their point of view.”

Say what? These people have bankrupted the country, violate the Constitution on a daily basis, take our money without permission and hand it to mega-corporations and banks, are threatening to destroy our healthcare system and appointing czars to usurp our freedom —and Luntz believes that it’s important to “treat them with respect and civility?” Allow me to pose a silly question: Why?

Frank, I say this to you with the utmost respect for your talents: You have to put down your word-measuring gizmos long enough to do some serious reading. You might start with Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Michelle Malkin’s Culture of Corruption, Dick Morris’s Catastrophe, and Wayne Allyn Root’s The Conscience of a Libertarian. Then take the time to think about what you’ve read. This is not a political game. It’s a life-or-death struggle for our children’s and grandchildren’s future.

From Saul Alinsky (Rules for Radicals) … to Frank Marshall Davis (BHO’s original communist mentor) … to Bill Ayers (“In revolutions, innocent people get hurt.”) … to Rev. Jeremiah Wright (“G… damn America!”) … to the Duplicitous Despot himself, the progressives … collectivists … Marxists … communists … statists — call them what you will — are deadly serious about making good on BHO’s promise to “remake America.”

And, make no mistake about it, all progressives believe that the greatest advantage they have over those who are old-fashioned enough to still give liberty a higher priority than all other objectives is that the such people not only do not believe in violence, they also are civil and respectful to those with opposing views.

Now hear this, Frank: The left is not civil, does not treat those who disagree with their collectivist’s views with respect, and, going back to the days of Lenin himself, does believe that lying and violence are among the means that are justified by their “noble” objectives.

It is this same naiveté about treating the opposition with “respect and civility” that has Islamic fascists around the world laughing at us. Remember well the words of Mohammed Atta before he embarked on his suicide mission of crashing a jetliner into the World Trade Center on 9/11: “The enemy is stupid.”

Having said this, Frank, please join with me in a moment of silence to thank Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin … and a long list of other conservative and libertarian-centered-conservative radio and TV commentators who are more interested preventing the progressive thugs in Washington from “remaking America” than in being respectful and civil to them.

If respectfulness and civility worked, I’d be all for it. It doesn’t.

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The bloggers (and media) are still saturating the planet with stories of Sarah Palin’s stupidity. So much so that she should start demanding royalties. So, are they right? Is Sarah Palin just plain stupid? Or is she smart but ignorant (uninformed)?

Here’s an interesting question: If Sarah Palin really is stupid or ignorant — or both — does that necessarily mean that she’s not a good, or even great, leader? Going back to the days of Henry Ford, we’ve heard tale after tale of people who lacked intelligence but were great leaders.

Now that the media has forced me to think about it, based on my own experience, I’m inclined to believe that leadership has little to do with either intelligence or knowledge. To be sure, both are assets, but not essential to the job of a leader.

When I think of great leaders, two essential characteristics come immediately to mind. One is the ability to pick employees or aides who are smarter than they are. The second is the self-assured confidence that motivates others to follow them. Their enthusiasm rubs off on those around them.

In the modern era, Ronald Reagan is perhaps the best example of this phenomenon. I never saw him as a genius, but just about everyone to the right of Rev. Wright saw him as a great leader.

So, if Sarah Palin really is dumb, it begs the question: Does it matter?

Why did her 1982 high school teammates elect a dumb person to be captain of the Wasilla Warriors’ state championship basketball team? Why was the same dumb person later elected mayor of Wasilla, Alaska? And why was this dummy elected governor of the state of Alaska in 2006? Finally, why, as late as November, 2008 (before the national media got its trash-Sarah machine rolling at full blast) did her Alaskan constituents still give her an 83 percent approval rating?

Of course, there’s another possibility: What if Sarah Palin is smart — and knowledgeable — but simply isn’t adept at expressing herself? In other words, maybe, due to a lack of verbal skills, she just comes across as Chauncey Gardiner or Forrest Gump but is really Laura Ingraham upstairs?

… a lot to think about if SP should decide to light the far-left’s hysteria fuse and run for president. I don’t now what the outcome would be, but it sure would be fun to watch the progressives choke on their collective apoplexy. And the Peggy Noonan Chapter of Fairleigh Dickinson University Alumni frantically raise money to buy airtime for their Sarah-is-a-dumb-hick ads.

Hmm … since the current system of electing a president doesn’t work (you did notice, didn’t you?), why don’t we just try something new and have everyone vote for the best-looking person in the field. That way, we’d be certain to get a chance to see if Sarah Palin is smart, stupid, ignorant, defective in expressing herself — or just a great leader.

Wouldn’t it be fascinating to find that all she has to offer is an incredible amount of common sense and the ability and courage to apply that common sense to all issues, large and small? What if the first thing she said as president was that she is going to fight to cut out every government program not called for in the Constitution?

If that’s what you call dumb, you can be certain that an awful lot of Americans would favor dumb leaders. I know, I know … probably a fantasy … but please don’t awaken me from my dream.

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Obama’s “Beer Summit” was yet another stupid distraction from the reality that his czars, thugocrats, and progressive supporters in Congress are moving quickly to shove us into the socialist cage and slam the door shut before another election can take place. Thankfully, most people didn’t buy into this sideshow, seeing it as just another asinine, arrogant attempt to bolster his good-guy image.

Francis Reilly, president of Reilly Communications Inc., described Obama’s cheap theatrics this way: “Roosevelt had his Malta, Obama has his Malt.” If BHO didn’t have bad intentions, you’d be tempted to dismissively chuckle at his childish antics.

Having said that, and even though BHO’s poll numbers are sinking, it’s scary to contemplate the number of bamboozled Americans who still don’t get it. Rush Limbaugh had the courage to say it straight out in a recent interview with Greta: “This is a bad guy.” Now that’s what I call candid.

Every time the man looks into a camera, snickers, and waves aside those who resist going along with his Marxist agenda as obstructionists or extremists, it makes me realize what an amateur liar Bill Clinton was. Obama is the real deal — Fidel, Mao, and Lenin rolled into one. Or, even worse, how about Pelosi, Reid, and Frank rolled into one?

But I digress. Back to the world-shaking Beer Summit. I’m in the minority on this, but I feel compelled to say what no one else seems to be willing to say: Police Sgt. James Crowley was a major disappointment, for two reasons.

First, he didn’t have the courage, self-discipline, or dignity to say no to Obama’s invitation. Let’s be honest here. Apparently the thrill of being thrust into the limelight — visiting the White House as a guest of the president of the United States — was simply too much for him to resist.

Now you might be thinking, “Given similar circumstances, I’ll bet Robert Ringer would have sold out too.” If so, you’re wrong. I can’t prove it, but I’m positive I would not have lowered myself to buttress the president’s image by being part of yet another cheap BHO campaign stunt.

And, quite frankly, I’d be willing to bet that most of you folks reading this article would not have sold out either. After all, you’re Voice of Sanity subscribers!

Fifteen minutes of fame is okay, I guess. I understand the desire to get attention, but I understand the need to stick to one’s principles even more. There are some things that are far more important than a brief moment of feeling important.

Like, for example, a little something called liberty. BHO is a well-documented lifetime hater of capitalism and individual sovereignty who is in the process of keeping his campaign promise to “remake America.” Why in the world would you want to help him continue to mesmerize those remaining supporters whose eyes are still glazed over from Inauguration Day euphoria?

Sgt. Crowley could have been a hero to millions of fed up Americans — especially those who now realize they were had in the last election — if he’d simply responded, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Wow! Can you imagine what a message that would have sent to the country? Crowley would have been immortalized had he said something like:

While I mean no disrespect, I have decided to decline the president’s invitation to have a beer at the White House and talk things over with someone who violated the law and caused me to have to arrest him. I have a job to do, and I have neither the time to go to Washington, nor an interest in going, for what is obviously a PR stunt.

Enough taxpayer money has already been wasted, and I don’t want to be a party to wasting even more on flying me and others to Washington to talk things over. The only thing that matters here is that I carried out my duty as a police officer in a professional manner, so there is nothing to discuss.

Contrary to what the media and the White House seem to believe, this is not a national news story. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.

Those comments would have ensconced Sgt. Crowley in the Teabagger Hall of Fame alongside Joe the Plumber!

The second reason Sgt. Crowley was a disappointment is that, at his post-summit press conference (yawn), he came across as an amateur politician reading comments that sounded suspiciously like they were prepared by someone else. I won’t try to guess who that someone else might be.

What came out of his mouth was a make-nice conglomeration of words cut in the BHO mold — tiptoeing gingerly, careful not to say anything emotive or politically incorrect. For me, it was a real turnoff. I would rather have listened to Louis Farrakhan or Rev. Wright. At least they’re entertaining — and straightforward about their views.

And then, of course, came the questions from the media puppies. While I respect police officers who don’t use their badges to bully citizens, how many more times do we have to watch one of these star-struck lawmen hold a press conference and say to the salivating press, “Yes, in the back there … your question?”

I have this uncomfortable feeling that every police chief in the U.S. is waiting patiently for a “nationwide” story to hit his district so he can get behind the mic and show his reality-TV stuff.

Enough! It’s time for all of us to get back to work. Fighting progressive fascists is a full-time job for those of us who cherish liberty. Let’s hope the prez with the chip on his shoulder and the fake smile keeps wasting his time on ever more campaign schmaltz so the rest of us will have time to spread the truth about universal health care, cap and trade, and the Marxist agenda that he is close to having securely in place.

Oh … and by the way … if you happen to have the president’s ear, you might mention to him that Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Russia — not to mention several million terrorists around the world — are still causing, and plotting, mischief for the U.S. Perhaps we need a Mischief Czar? If so, I would like to take this opportunity to nominate Joe the Plumber.

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If there’s one thing that Wayne Allyn Root excels at, it’s getting people’s attention. In an age of politically correct tiptoeing, Wayne dishes out the truth, sans sugarcoating. That’s what has made him a frequent guest on such shows as Neil Cavuto’s Your World and The Glenn Beck Program.

Now, with his just-released book, The Conscience of a Libertarian, Wayne covers the entire spectrum of political and social issues. And in doing so, he manages to stay focused on the root of the issue: liberty. Covering everything from abortion to government bailouts to health care, what makes him stand out from reach-across-the-aisle conservatives is his consistency. It is a trait for which I enormously respect him.

The title The Conscience of a Libertarian is, of course, a play on Barry Goldwater’s famous book, The Conscience of a Conservative. It’s no coincidence that Goldwater is one of Root’s heroes. What’s interesting is that when Goldwater ran for president in 1964, many thought of him as a right-wing zealot. And, as a result, he lost in landslide to incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson.

The truth? Barry Goldwater was a libertarian-centered conservative, cut in the mold of the Founding Fathers. For example, Root points out that Goldwater called it “conservative” to not want government in your bedroom. As one of his other heroes, Ronald Reagan, said, “The very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.” Had Goldwater written his book today, he might very well have named it The Conscience of a Libertarian.

One of the more important aspects of Root’s book is that he takes former Columbia classmate Barack Obama to task — head on. No niceties or political correctness, thank you — just the bold, raw truth. It’s understandable he says that some might refer to him as “the Anti-Obama.” I would go one step further and say that The Conscience of a Libertarian is the ultimate anti-Obama book.

In this fast-paced work, Root disrobes just about every Obama scheme the president has pulled off to date, and, even more important, the schemes he is still trying to sell to the American Public. One of the points I especially appreciated in this regard is when he said:

“Once the clear-cut majority of people either work for government, or collect a paycheck from government, the majority will vote for higher and higher taxes on the minority (those who earn their own keep, create jobs, risk their money to build business). Why not? Taxes aren’t painful, as long as someone else has to pay them.”

He later warns, “Giving government power is always a dangerous idea. Today government may use that power on your behalf. You may applaud government’s decision. But tomorrow government may change sides and decide to use the power you have given them … against you. The best solution is to never give the government that authority, power, or control in the first place — simply because (drum roll please) it’s none of the government’s darn business.” Amen.

I was happy to see Wayne define the term Libertarian as someone who “is fiscally conservative, socially tolerant, pro freedom, pro constitution, standing for more rights for the individual, and reducing the size, scope, and power of government.” He goes on to say that if you word it that way, the LP has the potential to attract a majority of U.S. voters.”

For me, he nailed it with these words. I have always believed that there are millions of conservatives who don’t realize that they are very much aligned with libertarianism — in other words, the kind of conservatism that Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan believed in.

Those of us who believe that liberty is the key issue — that it must be given a higher priority than all other objectives — need to stop the infighting and academic debates and join arms. The enemy — progressivism — is relentless. Progressives love it when the other side brawls internally and surely would hate the thought of conservatives and libertarians joining forces. Wayne Root has it right — libertarian right.

Finally, true to his bold, relentless nature, Root closes out his 350-page book by making it clear that he is the man to lead the Libertarian Party to first-class status in 2012. Had he not done so, he wouldn’t be Wayne Allyn Root. He is a bold leader who is prepared to fight to return America to its libertarian-centered conservative roots.

It’s almost a cliche to call a book required reading, but it’s definitely true of The Conscience of a Libertarian. It is a rare combination of important, factual content conveyed in an entertaining, easy-to-understand style. Wayne’s writing is both breezy and pithy, which makes you anxious to see what’s coming on the next page. There is not a dull spot anywhere along the way, so fasten your seat belt.

If you would like to “hear” a knowledgeable voice cover all of America’s ills — and offer workable solutions in a consistently pro-liberty manner — you will absolutely love The Conscience of a Libertarian.

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Here’s the question of the day: Is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stupid or just plain crazy? In criticizing gun laws that allow people to actually exercise their Second Amendment rights and carry a concealed weapon, Bloomberg said, “[Criminals will] be able to go to the movies with guns, and there will be nothing that our police officers can do about it.”

Mayor, I hate to break the news to you, but criminals already do carry concealed weapons — and, you’re right, there’s nothing police officers can do about it. Here’s the Duh Factor: In states where carrying concealed weapons is illegal, the only people who don’t carry them are law-abiding citizens.

I was glad to hear Glenn Beck respond by saying that he went to the movies last weekend and had a concealed weapon with him. Which means that if some nut had started to shoot up the theater, Beck would have had a chance to take him out before he killed everyone in the place.

As to the question of the day, let’s be honest here. We know that Bloomberg has made far too much money to be either stupid or crazy. He is just more living proof of what I have been saying for decades: In analyzing political and social issues, intelligence doesn’t carry the day.

For reasons that are completely unknown to me, when it comes to political issues (e.g., stimulating the economy), social issues (e.g., global warming), and, in particular, ideological issues (e.g., LIBERTY!), many people think with their arses.

Which raises a scary question: Could it be that some people’s brains are actually located in that sensitive area of their anatomy? And, if so, what happens when they undergo, say, a hemorrhoidectomy?

Let’s hope Mayor Bloomberg will never have to find out the answer to that question. Al Gore, yes. Mayor Bloomberg, no.

In Part I of this article, I made a shocking confession: Robert Ringer’s daughter voted for Barack Obama. How was this possible? How was I Hypbamatized? To be sure, it didn’t happen overnight. Like the drip from a leaky, rusting faucet, it slowly and insidiously seeped into my brain.

Whether it was from my upbringing, my liberal arts education, or my influences from living on the West Coast, I have always prided myself on being open-minded and nonjudgmental, always interested in the views and experiences of other people and cultures. That didn’t mean that I didn’t have opinions. But, over time, I learned that expressing them came with a price.

In a national survey released by The Anti-Defamation League in November 2008 — “American Attitudes on Religion, Moral Values and Hollywood” — 59 percent of Americans agree that “the people who run the TV networks and the major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans.” I was in the vortex of that cultural current, and trying to escape its pull was a virtual death knell – both personally and professionally.

People in Los Angeles are arrogant enough to refer to the entertainment industry as “The Industry” – as if it reigns supreme over all other industries. And in The Industry, the unspoken message is clear: “Play by our rules or don’t play at all.”

What does that mean? Time magazine noted, “It is hard to dispute the contention that [Hollywood’s] creative community, on the whole, has a liberal bent.” But it’s worse than that. The Industry’s culture permeates the entire city of Los Angeles.

Early on in my profession as an event planner, I learned to keep my political and cultural viewpoints to myself. At one event in which Al Gore was to be the honored guest before a Hollywood “A-list” crowd, the printed menu featured “free-range lamb.”

When I found the chefs giggling in the kitchen, I asked what was so funny. “Do you really think we’re serving free-range lamb?” they chuckled. To appease their Hollywood clientele, they had taken poetic license with their menu. Sorry, Al … the joke’s on you.

When my sons started school, I attended a Moms-Night-Out during the presidential race of 2000. I enjoyed our camaraderie … that is, until the conversation turned to the election and I mentioned that I was considering voting for George W. Bush. Talk about a conversation stopper!

After an uncomfortable pause, the other moms picked their chins up off the ground and aimed their liberal lasers at me: “How could you even consider doing something like that?” I voiced my reasoning, and one mom angrily responded, “Do you know all the horrible things he wants to do, including an overturn of Roe v. Wade?”

I respect the right of a liberal to her opinions, especially if she is consistent with her beliefs. But I do not concede her the right to impose her beliefs on others through sheer intimidation.

For example, I had a girlfriend who chastised me for driving an SUV. “You need to do something to make up for driving a gas-guzzling car,” she shrieked. My assigned reparation: Beach cleanup with “Heal the Bay.” To make a long story mercifully short, my girlfriend declared, “We need to part ways. We simply do not share the same values.”

Then there was the popular television actor and his wife. When we socialized, I was tolerant of the wife’s priorities. “With invitations for fundraising events, listing my name as an honoree is just as important as having my husband’s. Who do you think decides which causes he supports? And who do you think reads those invitations? Other Hollywood wives!”

Clearly, the Hollywood pecking order was very important to her. She pointed to a national magazine article that featured Laurie David on her efforts to “stop” global warming. Ms. David, at the time, was the wife of Larry David, creator and producer of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Never mind that Ms. David’s activism was at odds with the fact that she owns homes on both coasts and flies in a private plane when traveling back and forth. That is simply An Inconvenient Truth — which, by the way, she produced!

To say the least, the Hollywood liberal bias spills over to the political arena as well. I once dined with a travel buddy of a college girlfriend. He had run presidential and gubernatorial races for Democrats, and he was determined to expose my political preferences.

Though I tried to be convivial, when he learned I had voted for George Bush, he went on the attack. It was like he had discovered I was the evil mastermind of a homegrown terrorist cell. I was truly taken aback by his viciousness.

As I stated at the beginning of this article, I consider myself to be an open-minded, nonjudgmental person. And it is in that spirit that I look at the political and philosophical views of others. Unfortunately, most liberals are not reconciled with that perspective and exhibit little or no tolerance for other peoples’ viewpoints.

So, the question I need to come to grips with is: Did I vote for Barack Obama as a result of the inherent pressure that the L.A. culture exerts? If so, shame on me for allowing myself to be (gasp!) intimidated. If I did it for any other reason, perhaps I should voluntarily commit myself to a month of hard thinking in the Ayn Rand Objectivist Rehabilitation Camp.

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As a young co-ed, I clung to my copy of Atlas Shrugged and titled my first college paper “Why Conscientious Non-Voting is American” — a treatise against the two-party political system. I argued that a non-vote could be considered a vote against the two-party monopoly system.

To my pleasant surprise, my professor actually encouraged my impassioned voice. My ideals were fresh and resolute, and I had a reputation as an independent thinker.

Fast-forward to today — and The Confession: I voted for Obama! That’s right, Robert Ringer’s strong-minded daughter was swept away by the waves of social convention and a sea of “change” rhetoric. Mortified, I’ve watched as Obama and his machine have replaced my ideals of liberty with their collectivist agenda.

To say the least, I, like millions of other naive Americans, feel duped. Worse, I feel embarrassed to the point that it’s difficult to look in the mirror.

The Confession is not an easy one to make, and I am not alone in my ideological derailment. In his book Catastrophe, Dick Morris aptly describes how millions of us were hypnotized:

Willfully suspending skepticism, [America] eagerly believed his superficial promises to change the way Washington worked… In a mind-numbing series of debates with his fellow Democrats, he spelled [his program out] for us all to hear. But we weren’t paying attention to the boring programmatic details. How much more exciting it was to focus on the fact that we were witnessing the end of the color bar. … How much more thrilling … to watch … what was clearly a moment that called for change.

In the wake of a crashing stock market, a plunging housing market, and an unprecedented economy, the non-specific idea of “change” offered us hope that America would avert more chaos and emerge as a viable player in the modern-day New World Order. Of course, most of us had no idea what the New World Order meant, but it sounded good. So we voted for Community Organizer Obama.

When President Obama emerged, it was like a blitzkrieg on Democracy. Yes, it is a New World Order.

As radio host Herman Cain related:

I started to get a growing sense that more and more people are having voters’ regret when one very brave and loyal listener to my radio show called and asked me if I knew what a “mulligan” was. I said yes because I play golf, and it’s when you are allowed to take a shot over if you make a bad shot when playing with friends. Jane [the caller] then said, “Mr. Cain, I want a mulligan, because I voted for Barack Obama.”

The internet was full of passionate debates. One poll on SodaHead.com (What’s Bubbling in Your Head?) asked the question: “Do you regret voting for Barack Obama?” Of 17,872 respondents, 16% regretted voting for Barack Obama.

A typical sampling of the over 33,000 amusing and thoughtful reader comments included:

Volunteer: I made a horrible mistake in voting for this Counterfeit American!! (7/16/09)

Bacon Bits: We all make mistakes and you were not alone! He lied to us all! (7/18/09)

Michele: To me, saying “he lied!” at this point is merely a way to escape responsibility. It is the responsibility of “We the People” to listen to what the politicians say, question them, demand straight answers, and then make up our own minds. It is the responsibility of “We the People” to NOT allow the media to make our decisions for us. (7/18/09)

Not only were we not listening to Obama’s actual words, we were failing to take the example of Joe the Plumber and actually listen to his proposed program.

To whom were we listening? To a mainstream media that went so far as to cover Candidate Obama as if he were already President Obama. When McCain commented on Obama’s lack of foreign travel, let alone foreign relations, the press followed Obama on his staged tour oversees and portrayed him as a statesman.

Fred Barnes from The Beltway Boys on Fox News called it this way:

[Obama is] taking … the television anchors with him. … He should say, look, anchors stay home. I’m taking minimal press. This is a serious trip. I’m fact finding and getting to know and learn about foreign leaders. He should say, I’m not Bruce Springsteen and this is not my summer rock tour. But it is going to be a summer rock tour.

Those of us who recognized the liberal bias of the mainstream media had turned to Fox News. But, even there, we had trouble feeling comfortable with McCain. When he had the opportunity to do so, he failed to execute a decisive blow in the debates. Rather than exhibiting a presidential demeanor, he sounded more like a schoolyard bully.

A friend knew that I was disenchanted with McCain and skeptical of Obama. Knowing that I am philosophically a libertarian and that The Economist generally supports free markets and social liberalism, my friend suggested that I read a piece in that publication. Reluctantly, I read an article titled “The presidential election: It’s Time. [sic]”

Though the author acknowledged “it’s a gamble,” the paper wholeheartedly endorsed Barack Obama. One of the biggest reasons? John McCain, the senator who displayed maverick qualities, seemed very different from John McCain, the candidate who “seemed all at sea, emitting panic and indecision.”

As The Economist justly opined, “Had he become president in 2000 instead of Mr [sic] Bush, the world might have had fewer problems. But this time it is beset by problems, and Mr [sic] McCain has not proved that he knows how to deal with them.”

Then I read the following:

There is no getting around the fact that Mr [sic] Obama’s resume is thin for the world’s biggest job. But the exceptionally assured way in which he has run his campaign is a considerable comfort. It is not just that he has more than held his own against Mr [sic] McCain in the debates. A man who started with no money and few supporters has out-thought, out-organised and outfought the two mightiest machines in American politics—the Clintons and the conservative right.

Bottom line: Obama had out-mavericked The Maverick! No matter my concerns about Obama, I had to admit that his campaign organization was pioneering and its triumphs remarkable. Two days later, I did the unthinkable — I (shamefully) voted for Obama. Was Lauri Ringer now Lauri Pelosi? My regret was almost immediate.

In Part II of this article, I’ll explain how a nice liberty-minded girl like me became Hypbamatized.

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Once or twice a year, my wife and I eat at Bonefish Grill, a chain restaurant that isn’t all that great, but they have a special way of fixing mussels that is excellent. For a couple of years after they opened, we could rarely get in because there was usually at least a two-hour wait.

That was then; this is now — on a Friday night at 8:00 pm, prime time for restaurants. The place was only half-full and we got seated immediately. I scanned the room to study the patrons. Noticeably absent were the APFs (Artificial-Prosperity Folks).

You can easily spot them, because when they go out to eat they wear the team uniform — sandals, Bermuda shorts, and a T-shirt. The APFs have begun to abandon places like Bonefish Grill and Red Lobster in favor of such depression-priced eateries as McDonald’s and Burger King. When we left Bonefish Grill around 9:00 pm, it was 90 percent empty. Not good. The times they are a changin’.

As I discussed in some detail in Part III of my article “Can Inflation and Deflation Coexist?” (December 19, 2008), restaurants whose business models are based on the nonstop false-prosperity of the masses are headed for trouble.

Among others, I mentioned the big three: The Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Chang’s, and California Pizza Kitchen. These — along with medium-priced steakhouses such as Outback and Longhorn — are the poor man’s gourmet restaurants.

Then, on Sunday night, we treated ourselves to one of our favorite meals at Five Guys, a Washington-based hamburger chain. Best burgers and fries in the D.C. area — and they come with a guarantee to kill you if you eat them at least once a week for a year. With each giant bite of a Five Guys burger, pure cholesterol squirts out of your ears. Kinky … kind of makes you feel like Homer Simpson.

While I was vacuuming in my fried-in-peanut-oil burger, the manager came over and chatted with us. I asked him if the depression was hurting sales, and, not to my surprise, he said that his sales were actually up last month.

The reason I was not surprised is because now that the Obama Depression is worsening, many of the ex-patrons of these restaurants have only two choices: Eat at home or eat at fast-food places. For years I’ve said that when the decades-long invisible depression finally starts to become visible, the KFCs and Taco Bells (and, of course, Five Guys) would continue to do well.

But Sam’s Club and Costco should do even better, with people buying large quantities of staples and hunkering down for a long winter’s night. When I say long, what I have in mind is something along the lines of, say, the Dark Ages.

Of course, whether the depression lasts ten years or a hundred years depends upon many factors. Will the Duplicitous Despot succeed in implementing his Saul Alinsky plan to establish an eat-the-rich dictatorship, or will enough congressmen and congresswomen in his own party so fear being booted out of office that they will turn on him?

Or will a savior step up to the plate — perhaps a Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, or Wayne Allyn Root? And will such a savior have the guts to firmly grip the U.S. Titanic’s steering wheel and guide the ship of state away from the Spending Iceberg that the progressives are now trying to crash into?

But I digress … back to our discussion with the manager at Five Guys. We were sitting next to a window that looked out on a row of stores across the street in the same mall. One was the Ritz Camera store that we used to take our film to. It had closed its doors about a month ago, after the parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. All told, Ritz has closed, or will close, about 300 stores. Now that’s what you call change.

The Five Guys manager told us that, surprisingly, the Gym Source, directly across the street, is still selling a couple of exercise machines a day and managing to cover its overhead. Its sales pitch to prospective customers is that having your own equipment at home is a lot cheaper than paying health-club dues. All well and good, but how long will that logic ring true with people who are focused more on how to pay their rent than on six-pack abs?

It was only 6:00 pm, and Art & Frame, Cork & Fork, Bella Diamonds, and The Running Store were all closed for the day. The manager said he had watched them move their closing times from 8:00 pm to 7:00 pm, then from 7:00 pm to 6:00 pm, to cut back on payroll costs.

Then there was Cold Stone Creamery — one of my most unfavorite retailers — at the end of the street. Cold Stone is a classic shtick company, with yet another business model based on the assumption that the false prosperity of the masses would last forever.

At Cold Stone, you pay a king’s ransom for a dip of ice cream, the shtick being that you get to watch some skuzzy kid toss the ice cream around on a marble slab, smash it, chop it, let loose strands of his hair drop into it — then scoop it together in a way that makes both the customer and him believe that he’s done something magical to it.

Companies built on shtick — aimed at trying to quench the gluttonous desires of false-prosperity addicts — are all destined to become extinct. That is, unless they change their business models.

As my wife and I drove out of the center, I noted the number of empty stores for rent. Along with many who are far more knowledgeable about commercial real estate than I am, I long ago predicted ghost-town shopping centers and strip malls in our future.

But it’s happening quicker than I thought it would, and if those in the government who hate prosperity get their way, empty stores soon will be an accepted part of the American landscape. To our kids and grandkids — growing up with wind farms and solar panels all around them — it will seem perfectly normal.

Forget the financial pages. Above all, forget what you hear on television — especially from politicians. If you want to know what’s going on with the economy, check out your local restaurants and retail stores. Visit strip centers and shopping malls and count the vacancy signs. Drive around and look at the For Sale signs in nearby neighborhoods. Then use — you guessed it — your common sense.

You may even want to buy Common Sense, written by an ex-alcoholic entrepreneur who has more of that commodity in his little finger than all of Congress combined. And, to boot, he has remarkable self-discipline. The fact that he has resisted the temptation to smash his little dashboard Obama doll against his forehead is quite impressive. I admire people who can remain calm under trying circumstances.

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As cap and trade, universal health care, new bailouts, and more welfare programs are forced through a Congress too arrogant to read its own bills, the question is: Will a majority of Americans continue to sit by apathetically with a “Gee, what if the new ‘stimulus plan’ doesn’t work?” attitude — or will they grow up, get their heads out of the clouds, and take to the streets to peacefully protest?

Alert the media: Nothing this collectivist government does will work! Base your actions accordingly.

The U.S. has often been accused of being a nation of sheep. Personally, I think that’s a bad rap on sheep. Sheep are passive creatures who have never asked for anything from anyone. Gene Wilder even fell in love with a sheep in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* (* But Were Afraid to Ask).

No, Americans are not a nation of sheep. The truth is that the U.S. is a nation overrun by what the late and great Eric Hoffer referred to as “labor fakers.” As state workers used to put it in the good old days of communist Poland: “Whether you stand up or lie down, you get paid just the same.” More simply put: “They pretend to pay us a wage, and we pretend to work.”

Sounds like that could have come from a General Motors “worker.” You know, the guys who get paid for reporting to a “Jobs Bank” every day and play cards, read, and watch television. There is no more U.S. auto industry. Forget about that fantasy. General Motors and Ford are nothing more than transfer-of-wealth programs.

Or the Social Security bureaucrats who just finished a three-day, $700,000 party at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel at the expense of … you guessed it … you! Make no mistake about it: The Age of the Labor Faker is in full bloom.

Even so, none of this would be impossible to overcome if it were not for the fact that more people are trying to get on the Labor Faker Train every day, while no one appears to have any interest in getting off. And at some point in time (soon), that train is going to become so overloaded that the engine — i.e., the productive individuals in this country — will not be able to pull it.

Is there a solution? Yes — educating the public. That’s why I started the Liberty Education Interview Series. But with those who worship at the Power Altar tightening their grip on our remaining freedoms, time is running out. It is critical for every productive individual not only to help expose the labor faker, but spread the word that the cost of government largesse is the loss of our most precious asset: liberty.

In The Liberal Mind, Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter gives us some insight into how so many people bought into the seemingly self-evident absurdity that they could live the good life without working — that their neighbors would foot the bill for them:

The adult citizen’s dependent attachment to government comes at an enormous price: the constant growth of the politician’s power to gratify his constituents is paralleled by a constant growth in his power to dominate them. Unfortunately, the resulting decline in the citizen’s freedom is gradual enough to avoid alarming them.

The liberal agenda’s favors seduce the people a little at a time, always playing on their regressive longings to be indulged. Favor by favor, accompanied by the constant drumbeat of entitlement propaganda, the otherwise intelligent citizen is led to an increasingly erroneous conception of the proper role of government in a free society. Like a child molester, the liberal politician grooms his constituents until their natural cautions against yielding power in exchange for favors dissolves in reassurance.

Why do people allow themselves to be so duped? … Despite a general tendency toward increasingly realistic perceptions of the world as they grow up, children easily acquire misconceptions about human nature and the realities of human life, about the nature of government, and about the economic, social and political processes that characterize modern societies. …

Some of these misconceptions can be attributed to simple ignorance. But some of them arise from neurotic and other irrational mental processes and not from lack of knowledge per se. … Some are characterized by delusions of grandeur, or infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation.

I can’t top what Dr. Rossiter has said, but I will add my own words from an article I wrote back on March 21, 2008, titled “The Real Danger: Obama’s Sincerity”:

“Because Obama is a truly sincere revolutionary, he should be taken at his word. While he is superbly talented when it comes to talking with a lack of specificity, just those few things he has shared with the American public all but guarantee that the invisible depression we’ve been experiencing for decades will become very visible sooner rather than later.”

Perhaps we are fortunate that sooner turned out to be the case. But if a majority of Americans persist in infantile claims of entitlement, indulgence, and compensation, we will all pay for their misguided view of reality with a loss of our remaining liberty.

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As the poll numbers for the Duplicitous Despot have finally begun to slip a bit, conservative smiles are cautiously surfacing. Could it be that the walking dead (read, “centrists”) are starting to realize that 2 + 2 actually equals 5, not 4?

Not so fast. Optimism is a good thing, but realism is even better. There are a number of obstacles that still have to be overcome before liberty lovers can begin celebrating a return to our once-cherished state of semi-freedom.

Obstacle No. 1: The straight-faced deviousness of the Duplicitous Despot. Most politicians will say anything, anytime, anywhere to gain or hold office. Nothing new in that. But few qualify for the major leagues — like, say, Barney, Chris, Nancy, Harry, and other well-known congressional scoundrels. And none are in a class with the Duplicitous Despot.

Right out of the Saul Alinsky, Vladimir Lenin playbooks, he has demonstrated a remarkable skill for not only reversing his position on myriad issues (GITMO, taxes, the Iran protests, etc.), but convincing people that no such reversals have occurred. All switcheroos are simply misunderstandings on the part of the confused proletariat. The Duplicitous Despot never lies, steals, cheats, or deceives — and he is never wrong.

Bottom line: Do not underestimate the Duplicitous Despot when it comes to smooth-talking the walking dead into believing that any deceit on his part is but a hallucination on their part. Unfortunately, If the walking dead continue their march down the Duplicitous Despot’s road to serfdom, they will drag you and I along with them.

Obstacle No. 2: The uncertainty surrounding the 2010 Congressional elections. As I have warned on numerous occasions, having free and fair elections in 2010 is no certainty, to say the least. And if there isn’t a big change in the makeup of the House and Senate in 2010, Vegas bookies will probably be giving odds that there will be no presidential election in 2012.

After all, one can’t change dictators … er, leaders … in the midst of a “crisis.” Just ask the Duplicitous Despot’s chief of staff, Rahmma Obama. Dick Morris is right. It’s 2010 or bust!

Obstacle No. 3: And now we get to the biggest obstacle of all: the Republicans. Even if the Grand Old Party were to miraculously gain control of both the House and Senate in 2010, the question is: Will they have the courage to seriously dismantle socialism? Or will they merely make a token gesture to slow the pace toward total tyranny? The latter has been the drill for at least the past one hundred years. Sadly, most professed conservatives today are to the left of FDR.

Specifically, undoing the damage that’s been done would entail repealing each and every unconstitutional law that has been passed — not just during the reign of the Duplicitous Despot, but since at least the early part of the 20th century. Just because an immoral law has been on the books for a long time doesn’t make it any less immoral. How long was slavery legal in the U.S.? How long was communism accepted as the norm in the Soviet Union?

Liberty is man’s natural state, tyranny his natural enemy. Natural Law is superior to manmade laws, and the essence of Natural Law is self-evident: Individuals have a right to sovereignty over their own lives. Period.

McCainizing about “cutting waste” and “slowing the growth of benefits” is nothing more than a cowardly surrender. Cutting and slowing only succeed in holding things in place until the progressives regain power and move their agenda still further to the left.

The problem with all forms of welfare is that once a program is on the books, no one has the guts to suggest completely removing it. When progressives manage to push something through, they know very well that the pampered populace will see it as a “right.” They are counting on this free-loader mentality for long-term victory.

Bailing out California will be a mega-example of what I’m talking about. If the bailout occurs — and it probably will — IOU Arnold will say to the American taxpayer, “Thanks, chump.” Once he gets his bailout, he will show his appreciation by cutting back on ZERO benefits. That’s right, ZERO. Nothing will change. In fact, California will continue to expand its economy-killing welfare agenda, and you will continue to support the lifestyles of millions of people in that state who eat more taxes than they pay. Please quote me on that.

The only hope for the U.S. is for a libertarian-centered conservative candidate, one of incredible honesty and courage, to step up to the plate and say: “The party’s over. Neither I nor anyone else in government has a right to anything you earn or own. And you have no right to anything that I or anyone else earns or owns.

“It’s okay to love your neighbor, but I have no right to force you to take care of his medical needs … or support him money if he loses his job … or hire him at a wage that I deem to be fair … or help him financially, or otherwise, in any other way.

“From octomoms in California to welfare bums in Massachusetts … from environmentalists in Oregon to heroine addicts in New York City … I have no right to force you to accommodate their desires just because they call them needs. And by no stretch of the imagination are anyone’s “needs” rights. The only rights an individual possesses are those given to him by God.”

So, where will this courageous humanoid come from? Frankly, I don’t know. I don’t see him or her on the political horizon. Is there anyone out there with the courage not to pander to the unions, illegal immigrants, and other special-interest groups?

Is there anyone out there who is willing to step front and center and praise entrepreneurs and small-business owners? You know, the villains who sometimes get rich by producing products and services that people actually want — and, as a bonus, create jobs in the process?

If all else fails, maybe we’ll have to draft Glenn Beck. Of course, he’d be an expensive president to protect — considering the food tasters and all — but it would be an entertaining ride … no duplicity and lots of laughs. I’m just sayin’, ya know.

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The recent string of celebrity deaths reminds us of the fragility of life and makes us feel grateful to be alive. But don’t we always feel grateful to be alive? Or is that merely a platitude? Do we really need to keep reminding ourselves to appreciate what we have? Dr. Robert A. Emmons thinks so.

In his book Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, he discusses his study of what he calls the “gratitude condition.” He found that people who counted their blessings on a daily basis were 25 percent happier than those who did not, and they were more optimistic about the future.

Dr. Emmons’s research is evidence that we benefit when we recognize that there are things in our lives for which we can be thankful, regardless of the state of the economy, the state of the world, or our personal challenges. The problem is that we get so involved in our everyday routine that we take for granted the miracles around us.

Often, it takes a dire situation to wake us up. Twenty years ago, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. My neurologist, who expected me to end up in a wheelchair, calls me a walking miracle and says that my most powerful weapon has been my attitude. I didn’t realize it, but what I’ve been doing is practicing a form of gratitude.

I believe in the mind-body connection, but am not so arrogant as to believe that my success to date with my multiple sclerosis has been accomplished by me alone. Call it a Higher Power, call it the Universe, call it Dumb Luck — I’ve had a partner, for sure.

One of the things that worked for me was visualization. I would picture myself walking through a wooded area and approaching a tree … touching the bark and having the sensation of hugging the tree and feeling its life force penetrating my body. My feet felt as if they had roots growing deep into the ground, absorbing the life-giving energy of the soil.

I replaced the errant condition of my body with the healing force of Mother Earth. I know it sounds melodramatic, but I am convinced that focusing on images like these had a healing effect not only on my body, but on my soul.

As time passed, I became conscious of being in a “gratitude condition.” Now, I am able to hike seven miles at a stretch. And being able to walk and climb is much more than a physical workout for me; it’s a spiritual awareness.

I feel the life force of the earth coming up through my legs as my muscles work the trail. I feel “a cosmic tunnel to the Universe” in the expanse of sky above me, and I sometimes find myself audibly chanting, “You’re doing it, you’re doing it, you’re doing it.” The chant is an affirmation of my gratitude that my body is working.

Some of my favorite ways to practice gratitude include:

Praying
No matter your religious belief — Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist — some form of prayer helps increase gratitude on a multitude of levels, from being thankful for the miracle of life to feeling like part of a greater community.

Focusing on your senses
Dedicate some time each day to consciously use the gift of your senses — your sense of touch, sight, taste, sound, and smell — to experience the world.

Having visual reminders
Just as you might write a note to remind yourself to buy milk at the grocery store, post visual expressions of gratitude on your computer desktop — whether they be inspirational quotations, photographs, or single words.

Having grateful thoughts
Like taking daily vitamins and brushing your teeth, make gratitude a habit — even a mantra.

Demonstrating gratefulness to others
Take the time to say “Thank you” — and really mean it. And always make it a point to compliment people — on their shoes, their smile, or any one of an endless number of small things you may appreciate about them. It’s amazing how this simple, genuine act affects people.

And there’s a big bonus in doing this: Their response will make you feel terrific as well. Saying or doing something that makes someone else’s day is remarkably self-gratifying.

Don’t get me wrong. I have bad days like everyone else — but my “gratitude condition” never fails to enrich my life.

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David Carradine … Ed McMahon … Farrah Fawcett … Michael Jackson … Billy Mays … Karl Malden … Steve McNair … The Grim Reaper is on a roll.

What might the deaths of these high-profile people have in common with the likes of Gary Hart, Gary Condit, Jim McGreevey, Mark Sanford, and John Edwards, among others?

Or how about Lyndon Johnson, Spiro Agnew, and Richard Nixon?

Or G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, Mark Fuhrman, Wayne (Dog) Chapman, and Don King?

Answer: Things change!

We do not live in a static universe, nor do people or situations remain at a standstill on our little speck of cosmic dust. Mountains erode … riverbeds dry up … technology moves forward … the economy fluctuates … even laws change.

Who could have predicted that the celebrities I listed in the first paragraph of this article would all be gone within a one-month period? Or how their departures would change the lives of those they left behind?

Gary Hart is long gone from the political scene, forsaking his frontrunner position as the Democratic nominee for the presidency for some fun and games with a good looker named Donna Rice. That opened the door for the Mickey Mouse of the Democratic Party, Michael Dukakis, to become the party’s nominee in 1988. Things change.

Then, some twenty years later, the champion of the downtrodden, John Edwards, followed in Hart’s footsteps with ex-party gal Lisa Druck (you know, the “director” and “camerawoman” extraordinaire), who decided one day that it would be cool to transform herself into “Rielle Hunter.” As a result, the public will no longer have to listen to Edwards drone on sanctimoniously about his flawed tale of “two Americas.” Things change.

Following in Edwards’s footsteps, of course, was Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina, who was one of the favorites for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Who benefits? Try Mitt Romney. Things change.

Let’s go back to the 60s …

Following his loss to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential race, Richard Nixon turned right around and ran for governor of the state of California in 1962 as a sort of consolation prize for his failed presidential bid. Only one problem: He lost! That’s when he delivered his famous “You won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore” speech. Finally, the Nixon era had come to an end. Things change.

Hold it … not so fast. On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was elected not to rev up the Vietnam War but end it, stunned the nation when he went on national television and, almost casually, said, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” Which cleared the playing field for Bobby Kennedy to grab the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1968. Things change.

RFK was the ultimate fascist progressive, fully prepared to destroy American civilization forty years before Barack Obama escaped from the clutches of his spiritual mentor at the Trinity United Church of Christ and landed on the throne of American progressivism. But a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to Bobby’s coronation: He was assassinated. And that, in turn, cleared the playing field for — Yikes, back from the dead! — Richard Nixon. Things change.

Nixon’s election to the presidency led to the rise and fall of Spiro Agnew, Watergate, and a third-stringer named Gerald Ford. Ford lasted only a few years, but just for being an accident of history, he became rich and famous. Who ever said life was supposed to be fair? Things change.

And let’s not forget how Watergate catapulted a whole cast of previously unknown characters onto the national stage — Chuck Colson, G. Gordon Liddy, and John Dean, for example. Colson has long been famous for sharing Christianity with prison inmates through his Prison Fellowship; Liddy, who masterminded the first break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building, has hosted his own radio show for years; and John Dean still pops up periodically as a television guest and college-campus speaker. Things change.

And where would Oliver North and Mark Fuhrman be today had they not been thrust into the limelight through accidents of history? North’s Iran-Contra conviction was ultimately reversed on a technicality, and Fuhrman, though convicted, never had to do jail time. But these men used their unexpected fame as a launching pad to stardom. Things change.

Of course, they had nothing on Wayne (Dog) Chapman and Don King, both of whom were convicted of murder (though King’s charge was later reduced to manslaughter) and opportunistic enough to use their infamy to become wealthy celebrities. Dog, in fact, is so cunning that he was able to hold on to his celebrity even after being recorded using the dreaded “N” word repeatedly in a telephone conversation with his son. Things change.

Which brings us to Sarah Palin. From out of nowhere, hapless John McCain picked Palin, a complete unknown, as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Suddenly, a star was born! Things change.

Then, on the evening of July 3, 2009, Palin did her version of LBJ’s 1968 surprise announcement by informing the world that she was resigning as governor of Alaska. Her inexplicable action registered 8.4 on the political Richter Scale. Following on the heels of Mark Sanford’s demise, Mitt Romney must have felt as though he had won the lottery. Zap! Just like that, most of the competition was gone! Things change.

The list is endless …

In the 1940s, the invention of the modern air conditioner becomes the catalyst for a population explosion in the unbearably hot South and Southwest.

Fifty years ago, cash begins giving way to credit cards. Today, credit cards are giving way to bank debit cards.

Pay phones (remember them?) give way to cell phones.

In 1980, the major television networks are caught off guard by an upstart cable TV station called CNN. Sixteen years later, CNN is overwhelmed by its ideological opposite, Fox News.

In 1995, a kid from Albuquerque puts his Internet bookselling idea into practice, calls it Amazon.com, and ends up dictating the business strategy of Borders and Barnes & Noble for years to come. A few years later, two other kids start a little search-engine company called Google, which becomes the first serious challenge to Microsoft’s overall dominance. Facebook … MySpace … Twitter … what’s next? Things change.

And, of course, there are two catastrophic events that changed everything — 9/11 and, less than eight years later, the arrival of the Duplicitous Despot and his army of congressional thieves. Ayn Rand’s warnings, once fodder for liberal snickering, have become today’s reality. Things change.

All of the above comprise but a tiny sampling of some of the major changes that have taken place fairly recently. If someone were ambitious enough, he might spend a few years putting together a book — a very large book — on all the major changes that have rocked the world over, say, the past 100-150 years.

But you don’t need to read such a book to reflect on what change means to you. I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years, and my conclusions boil down to this:

1. Life does not stand still. Count on it. Never carve your plans in stone. Strive to make flexibility an integral part of your being.

2. Rather than fearing change, think of it as an exciting aspect of being alive. Sometimes the unknown disappoints — even devastates — when it makes its appearance. But more often than not, it brings with it incredible opportunities. Practice expanding your mental paradigm to be on the alert for the offsetting positive in every negative situation.

3. Fight the numbing effects of homeostasis — the tendency to maintain the status quo. Hanging on to yesterday’s reality is psychologically unhealthy and can cause you to be out of touch with today’s reality. Yesterday is a cancelled check. Tomorrow is a postdated check. But today is cash.

4. Keep moving forward. Action is the oxygen of success. You have to keep hitting those singles and doubles to stay in the game of life, because if you’re at bat long enough, that perfect pitch eventually will come across the plate. And that’s when you have to be ready to hit it out of the park.

Simplistic … but it works for me. Just realize that the way you view change will have a dramatic impact on the decisions you make, the quality of your life, and your future success (or failure). Things change. Think about it.

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Michael Jackson’s close friend Yuri Geller, talking to Fox News by phone after Jackson’s death, said that one time when Jackson was sitting on a couch in Geller’s living room, he asked the “King of Pop” if he was a lonely man. According to Geller, Jackson paused, then looked up slowly and said, “Yuri Geller, I’m a very lonely man.”

After decades of observation, I have concluded that Jackson’s sad response could have come from any one of millions of people. A lonely person’s giveaway is his eyes. No matter what happy disguises he may wear, his eyes betray him.

It brings back memories of John Belushi, Freddy Prinze, Andy Gibb, Marilyn Monroe, and, more recently, Anna Nicole Smith. We only know what we’ve read and heard about these tragic figures who were so revered by those afflicted with Tinseltown Derangement Syndrome, but what we’ve read and heard is pretty grim.

The truth about these false idols should give Americans hope as they watch government, in the coming months and years, push them from false prosperity into poverty. As the vacation cruises, golf outings, and fine dining continue to disappear from our lives at an accelerating pace, it’s helpful to remember that material wealth has failed to buy happiness for many of the rich and famous.

And what they all seemed to have in common was loneliness. Who but the most narcissistic among us would not trade fame and wealth for love? The tabloid crowd provides a lot of laughs for folks at the checkout counters, but their marriage-divorce … marriage-divorce … marriage-divorce cycles are not at all humorous.

When I think of Angelina, Britney, Lindsay, and Madonna, I think of loneliness. All of them appear to be Michael Jacksons waiting to happen.

I recall a brief encounter I had with Sammy Davis Jr. in the early 1980s when we were sitting next to each other on the dais at a charity event in Los Angeles. He was a warm and gracious man with many similarities to Michael Jackson — African-American, slight of build, multi-talented, and a life of nonstop troubles. In a birthday tribute to Sammy, Jackson sang the heart-wrenching song “You Were There.”

Years earlier, I had read Sammy’s memoir, Why Me? It just as easily could have been Michael Jackson’s memoir. In the book, Sammy was forthright about his addiction to a life of drugs, booze, chain smoking, kinky sex, and lavish spending.

One story, in particular, that I recall from Why Me? is about a multi-girl orgy Sammy had arranged to have set up in his hotel suite after a performance in Las Vegas. When he entered the bedroom, he found the girls already “engaged” with one another. He said it made him sick to his stomach, and he walked out of the room feeling like the loneliest man in the world.

But when it comes to loneliness, Elvis was The King. We’ve all heard his ex-friends talk about how, after every show, he would have parties in his hotel suite that lasted till dawn. The word from those closest to him was that he couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.

It’s no wonder that so many songs have been written about loneliness. People can relate. It’s a common problem. More often than not, I suspect that the songwriters and performers themselves feel very lonely.

Which brings me to Neil Sedaka. I don’t know how much loneliness he may have experienced in his life, but he sure grabbed us with his classic song Solitaire:

There was a man, a lonely man
Who lost his love, thru his indifference.
A heart that cared, that went unshared
Until it died within his silence.

And solitaire’s the only game in town,
And every road that takes him, takes him down.
While life goes on around him everywhere,
He’s playing solitaire.

And keeping to himself begins to deal,
And still the king of hearts is well concealed.
Another losing game comes to an end,
And he deals them out again.

Heavy words. Great songwriters write to a broad audience — and the audience for a broken heart and loneliness is very broad indeed. In the final analysis, perhaps all of us simply expect too much from life, thus setting ourselves up for disappointment when it fails to deliver the endless happiness we envisioned when we were young.

Nineteenth century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer summed up this discouraging reality when he wrote:

There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy …. So long as we persist in this inborn error … the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence … hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment.

[From The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton]

Granted, Schopenhauer was not the kind of fellow you would have wanted to invite over for an evening of small talk and laughs, but he may very well have zeroed in on an underlying cause of the many early deaths that followed a meteoric rise to fame and fortune.

Weighing in on the Michael Jackson tragedy, Dr. Keith Ablow spoke of “people who are not at one with themselves,” mentioning the inability to feel comfortable with their age, gender, race, and sexuality, among other factors that contribute to their feelings of isolation. In other words, the inability to accept themselves as they are.

I think most of us would be far better off if we focused on getting to know ourselves better rather than placing so much emphasis on having an active social life. After all, if you can’t enjoy your own company, why should you expect others to enjoy it?

Fittingly, I shall defer to Thoreau for the final word on this subject: “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

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When yet another politician bit the dust this week, I couldn’t help but think of Henry Kissinger’s all-too-true observation that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” I don’t have a lot to say about Governor Mark Sanford’s situation, except that I think the whole thing is very sad. I don’t know Sanford personally, but he always came across as a sincere individual who was genuinely committed to the cause of liberty.

To his credit — unlike a number of politicians who preceded him on the Infidelity Path — Sanford did not try to deny his affair when confronted with it (though he did keep it under wraps for at least a year). He also impressed me by not humiliating his wife further by having her stand dutifully by his side at his mea culpa press conference — ala Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevey, David Vitter, et al. Attention politicians with uncontrollable libidos: When you’re caught, act like a man and stand before the public alone!

On the negative side, had I been Governor Sanford’s advisor, I would have told him not to drone on and on about his relationship with “the other woman.” Apologies, yes. Details about how innocently it all began, no. I’m sure he’s in a depressed and embarrassed fog right now, but from this point on, for his sake, I hope he keeps the specifics to himself.

More than twenty years ago in Dallas, I recall having a related discussion with Zig Ziglar. Zig made the point that most extramarital affairs begin innocently. He said what men (and women) need to do is have the self-discipline not to get into situations where innocence has an opportunity to heat up.

The example he used was that of a boss who invites his secretary to lunch. Big mistake. “At some point,” he said, “they reach for the butter at the same time and their hands accidentally touch.” (My translation: melted butter.)

During that same trip to Dallas, I watched Zig lecture a church full of pastors on the same subject. He advised them, “When you counsel a female member of your congregation, for goodness sakes, do it with your office door open.” (My translation: Avoid melting the butter.)

Since then, of course, all hell has broken loose in the U.S. and we’ve devolved into a relativist, anything-goes society. Take a good look at what’s being aired on TV these days, and you’ll see what I mean. Not only have the shows become increasingly slimy, many of the commercials, are, to put it politely, sexually explicit.

Would anyone have imagined, even thirty years ago, that ads on television would warn, over and over again, “Call your doctor if you experience an erection lasting more than four hours”? Are you kidding me? If you experience an erection lasting more than four hours, forget your doctor and call Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

The madness of prime-time TV aside, when you get down to it, having an extramarital affair is no different than getting yourself into any other kind of trouble — embezzlement, DUI murder, obstruction of justice … you name it. Yes, human beings are weak. It’s hard to avoid temptation — hard, but certainly not impossible. Put simply: When the snake starts talking to you, don’t take the shiny red apple. Walk away and get a Big Mac and fries instead.

Having said this, I believe that all mature adults realize that good people sometimes do bad things. Which means it’s wise to think about our own embarrassing missteps before joining a feeding frenzy every time we see blood in the water. As Ayn Rand said, “Judge and prepare to be judged.” (Remember, Mark Sanford voted for the impeachment of cigar-trickster Bill Clinton — and offered a number of moralistic comments to boot.)

I have no firsthand knowledge about Mark Sanford as a person, but my guess is that he is a decent human being who yielded to temptation and fell in love with another woman. You may not want to hear it, but as Ayn Rand rationally explained, it is, indeed, perfectly possible to be in love with two women — or two men — at the same time. I know that many people don’t like to hear this, but common sense compels us to accept this reality.

Only when we acknowledge our own frailty are we able to develop a strong enough mental state to avoid getting ourselves into tempting situations in the first place. But even if you achieve an A+ in that effort, you will still have a goodly number of “sins” listed in your Book of Life when you move on to the next leg of your Eternal Journey.

We’re all imperfect … which is why we all have to be vigilant when it comes to not getting ourselves into compromising situations.

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It’s hard to believe that just thirty years ago Iranians revolted against the Shah, and an Islamic republic was born. Millions of Westernized Iranians fled the country, with a million of them settling in Los Angeles alone.

And a large percentage of the remaining population, particularly the young, has never quite taken a shine to the Islamic police-state lifestyle. Isn’t it amazing that no matter how repressed a people may be and for how long a period of time, they still yearn for freedom?

Of course, the last Iranian revolution was led, or at least inspired, by that guy who didn’t smile a whole lot when Mike Wallace asked him what he thought about Anwar Sadat saying he was a lunatic. Poof! Just like that, the Shah was gone and Islamic fascists rushed in to fill the power vacuum.

Alvin Toffler describes the result of such revolutions in The Third Wave:

Time and again during the past three hundred years, in one country after another, rebels and reformers have attempted to storm the walls of power, to build a new society based on social justice and political equality. Temporarily, such movements have seized the emotions of millions with promises of freedom. Revolutionists have even managed, now and then, to topple a regime. Yet each time the ultimate outcome was the same. Each time the rebels recreated, under their own flag, a similar structure of sub-elites, elites, and super elites.

In other words, nothing much changes for the masses, no matter who controls the reins of power. However, by creating the illusion of freedom, so-called democratic governments are more likely to gain the support of their subjects. Give the masses enough sporting events, reality TV, and credit-card-created vacations and they can be enticed into remaining quite docile.

What’s especially attractive about the democratic form of rule from the viewpoint of, say, a president is that it decreases the chances of his ending up doing the Il Duce Exit … you know — shot, kicked, stoned, and hung upside down by his toes. Now that’s what you call a career-ending indignity.

No one knows how the current revolution in Iran will turn out, but regardless of what happens, it’s inspiring to see people defying the government. Human beings have freedom running through their veins. Even progressives have it. The only catch is that they don’t want others to be free.

As I watch the freedom-hungry Iranians protesting in the streets, I wonder to myself if those Americans who still test negative for Kool-Aid feel a tinge of motivation to take action. Does it inspire them at all to see people halfway around the globe trying to overthrow a fascist regime for the second time in thirty years?

Attention Americans: Remember when your brothers and sisters rose up, behind bodacious Boris Yeltzin, and overwhelmed the seventy-year-old Soviet Union dictatorship? And remember how, shortly after that, your brothers and sisters rose up and tore down the Berlin Wall?

So long as a government employs the Machiavelli Jackboot Philosophy of Rule, it’s tough for people to try to start a revolution. Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, and, of course, the King of Glitz, Saddam, were all tops at wielding this kind of power. I tell you, that’s a cast of characters who knew how to make would-be revolutionaries shake in their sandals at the thought of, say, being disemboweled.

If today’s “Supreme Leader,” Ali Khamenei, and his sidekick, Mahmoud the Madman, don’t crack down quickly — with overwhelming force — the new Iranian revolution could get out of hand. But if they employ the Machiavelli Jackboot Philosophy of Rule, it could end like Tiananmen Square.

Either way, Americans should take note. A lot of non-Kool-Aid drinkers must know by now that a fascist dictatorship is brewing in Washington. In fact, it’s been in the making for more than 100 years. And now that the reincarnation of Saul Alinsky has pressed the progressive accelerator to the floor in the Oval Office, the response has been a few scattered “tea parties” — planned in advance, yet.

As one would expect, the progressives snicker at such feeble attempts at protest, and White House staffers swear that the Master of Misdirection hasn’t even noticed them. And maybe he hasn’t. After all, he’s been busy nationalizing banks and automakers, preparing to abolish private health care, and setting in motion green laws to fight non-existent global warming and take control of virtually every aspect of your life.

There is only one thing that will get the attention of the current rulers in Washington — millions of people taking to the streets, protesting twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, nationwide. Sorry, but you don’t put revolutions on pause just to watch the NBA finals or spend a weekend at the beach. No violence necessary — just loud, nonstop protesting.

And the protesting has to happen soon — or it will be too late. Once ACORN takes full control, U.S. elections will be about as fair as the recent presidential election in Iran. And the resulting police state should be about as much fun as the one Iranians are risking their lives to get rid of.

Let’s be honest: There’s not a whole lot of difference between a progressive fascist and an Islamic fascist. If it walks like a fascist and talks like a fascist — you know what mean … I hope.

Right now, every non-Kool-Aid drinker in America should be shouting: “Don’t start the (peaceful) revolution without me!”

Be there.

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What makes the seemingly nonsensical positions of a social progressive possible is his refusal to acknowledge the foundation of any civilized society: Natural Law. In fact, I would say that it is a lack of belief in Natural Law that underlies most crimes committed by progressives (and many crimes committed by nonprogressives).

The basic premise of Natural Law is that each person owns his own life and, therefore, has the right of self-choice — the right to do anything he wishes with his life, so long as he does not forcibly interfere with the life of any other person. Natural Law also may be properly thought of as the “law of nonaggression”; i.e., even though an individual has the right of self choice, that does not include the right to commit aggression against others.

Any time that an individual (or group of individuals) exerts authority over someone else’s life without his consent, he is violating Natural Law. Which brings me to the difference between Natural Law and government law: Natural Law demands personal freedom, while government law demands that certain people obey the dictates of those in power.

More to the point, Natural Law requires that liberty be given a higher value than all other objectives. If one accepts the principle of Natural Law but compromises his beliefs to suit his whims, he is guilty of practicing situational ethics.

Now, back to Joan Walsh and her recent slugfest with Bill O’Reilly. On her website, she says, “I’m Irish Catholic, and I was raised to think abortion was wrong — but, in the end, I support the law as it is.”

Which makes me wonder if Ms. Walsh would have returned a runaway slave to his master in pre-Civil War America just because that was the law. Or called the Gestapo in Nazi Germany to turn in a family of Jews hiding in the cellar next door just because that was the law. As I look around me at the ashes of Western civilization, it’s not difficult to understand how Ms. Walsh came by her belief that all laws, no matter how immoral, are sacrosanct.

Walsh says that “[O’Reilly] just asked the same loaded question over and over seeking the same answer: Do I think there should be any protections for late-term fetuses?” The answer she gave O’Reilly on his show was, “It’s heart-wrenching, and it gets a lot of attention, but we should note that only 1 percent of all abortions in the U.S. are after 21 weeks.”

She argues that her “overriding principle is that [she] believes this very tough choice can only belong to women.” After all, doesn’t Natural Law say that a woman owns her own life and therefore has the right to do anything she wishes with that life? Yes, but let’s not forget the rest of that: “so long as she does not forcibly interfere with the life of any other person.”

However, by simply declaring that a baby in the womb is not a human being, this ceases to be a moral problem for the social progressive. (Without such a declaration, of course, Walsh’s 1 percent statistic about late abortions becomes a red herring. After all, a baby who’s been in the womb for three months has just as much right to live as one who has made it to seven or eight months.)

By dehumanizing an unborn child and simply calling him a “fetus,” pro-abortion advocates are able to bypass the whole issue of natural rights — including the fact that even though Natural Law says that an individual has the right of self choice, self choice does not include the right to commit aggression against others. But if an unborn baby is not human, killing him is not aggression.

To me, it’s axiomatic that all people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights — including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If the founding fathers had never said so, it wouldn’t have mattered at all. Why? Because for all people of goodwill, individual sovereignty is a self-evident human right.

So, to those of us who believe in the true meaning of Natural Law, Dr. Tiller did break the law — and did so thousands of times. I’m always open to the rational opinions of others, but I admit that I have difficulty entering into a discussion with anyone who begins with the premise that a “fetus” (i.e., an unborn baby, not fully developed) is not human.

I’m not going to be arrogant here and invoke the Gore Mantra. I don’t for a second believe that the debate is over, nor will it ever be. But if there is any chance for us to once again become a semi-civilized society, a good place to start is to think about, and talk about, Natural Law in a rational manner — i.e., without indulging in word games that are intended to simply bypass the real issues.

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You may have seen Bill O’Reilly’s slugfest the other night with Joan Walsh, editor of the far-left website salon.com. First, let me give credit where credit is due. Ms. Walsh had the courage to go head to head with the one guy most progressives avoid like the plague.

In addition, it’s fair to say that, as much as I respect O’Reilly, he can, at times, be quite rude. And, indeed, he interrupted Walsh, shouted her down, and told her that she had blood on her hands.

Having said this, I still give O’Reilly credit for inviting her on his show. If it had been The Ringer Factor, the invitation would not have been extended. I gave up debating statists, collectivists, progressives, fascists — call them what you will — a long time ago. Was it Ayn Rand … or Nietzsche … or neither … who said, “It’s not my job to be a fly swatter?”

On her website, Ms. Walsh said about O’Reilly, “The man is driven by demons. God bless him and save him.” “Driven by demons” is code for “He doesn’t agree with my point of view.” Like all of us, O’Reilly has his faults. However, I believe he is driven by a sincere desire to be fair.

In fact, my only criticism of him would be that he tries to be too even-handed. I cringe every time I hear him say something like, “I don’t believe for a second that Barack Obama doesn’t have America’s best interest at heart.” (I’d like to have a long talk with him about that someday, though all he needs to do is listen to Dick Morris.)

Back to the slugfest: Ms. Walsh’s argument was that Dr. Tiller, the abortionist who killed a purported 60,000 babies, most of them still in the womb where they were defenseless, was acting within the law. She even went so far as to refer to him as “a hero.”

Now, as repugnant as her portrayal of Dr. Tiller was, honesty compels me to admit that her point that he was acting within the law is worthy of discussion — endless discussion about an issue that will never be resolved. But if you like to wax philosophical, this irresolvable topic is a good place to put your intellect to work.

It’s a question that goes back to the beginning of recorded history: Do people have an obligation to obey laws that are immoral? The answer, of course, depends upon whether you are talking about a moral or a legal obligation.

For nearly a hundred years in this country, it was against the law not to return a runaway slave to his “owner.” Was it a person’s legal obligation to obey such a law? Absolutely. But it was his moral obligation not to obey a law that relegated another human being to “property.”

Whether or not to obey an immoral law has always been a dilemma under totalitarian regimes such as Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. In fact, to one extent or another, it’s a moral dilemma in virtually every country in the world as I write this. The United States, not to mention the fifty individual states, has virtually scores, if not hundreds, of laws on the books that are immoral. The most obvious examples of this are the endless number of redistribution-of-wealth laws.

Obviously, it’s not practical for you to disobey most of these laws, because it would result in your imprisonment. But where the line gets really fine is on virtual life-or-death issues — and abortion is at the forefront here.

I believe that I’m a very reasonable person. I can understand the dilemmas caused by pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest, or that involve serious health issues. Mature, sensible people have every right to debate such situations in a rational, civilized manner. But let’s get real here. Most abortions don’t fall into those three categories.

The only two reasonable defenses a “pro-choice” person can offer are:

Defense No. 1: A fetus is a parasite on a woman’s body, and she has a right to rid herself of that parasite. (This is a complex moral and social issue, so let’s save that debate for another day.)

Defense No. 2: A fetus is not a human being. With this defense, you avoid the need to justify the murder of a fetus simply by declaring that “a blob of cells” — which contain all of the human chromosomes! — is less than human. It sort of smacks of Al Gore’s mantra on global warming … you know, “The debate is over. Everyone agrees.” Cute.

Sorry, brother Al, but that non-argument doesn’t fly with global warming — and neither does it fly with abortion. I would respect a pro-choice person more if she would just come right out and say that, in her view, murder is justified when a life resides inside a woman’s body.

In Part II of this article, we’ll take a closer look at Joan Walsh’s contention that Dr. Tiller acted within the law. Could it be that she’s wrong about that?

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About two years ago, I recall having a conversation with an acquaintance of mine who built custom homes. At one point, he happened to mention a house that he’d had on the market for about three years.

I said, “You’re asking $650,000 for that house, right?” That was the price I’d remembered from three years earlier. His response took me aback: He said he was now asking $1 million for the same house!

“What makes you think you can get that much money for a house that just three years ago you were trying to sell for $650,000?” I asked. “Especially with the real estate market starting to weaken?”

This time, his response was incredulous (i.e., he sounded incredulous that I had asked the question, and I felt incredulous when I heard his answer). “Robert,” he said, “the whole point of real estate is that prices go up, not down. Why would I ask the same price I was asking three years ago?”

This may sound like an innocent, even naïve, statement — and, in truth, it was. But millions of innocent people have died as a result of their naiveté. Like, for example, the Jews who didn’t leave Germany when they had the opportunity to do so because they didn’t take Hitler seriously.

The point is that nature punishes us just as harshly when we are well-intentioned but stupid as when we are smart but harbor bad intentions. Either way, universal law delivers to us the results we deserve.

Granted, homebuilders and real estate developers live with so many delusions that they make Alice in Wonderland look like she was in the real world. Having been a real estate broker in my twenties, I can attest to the fact that no matter how many times they get burned, builders and developers cannot bring that scarred gray stuff between their ears to accept the reality that the value of their properties is not what they think they should be.

But builders and developers are not the only earthlings who are disconnected from reality. There are a couple of hundred million other poor souls — in the United States alone — who are stubbornly plugged into “The Disconnect.” Like the somas in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, The Disconnect is a mental condition foisted on the public by progressives — both inside and outside the government — whose goal is to decide what’s best for you and me … and, in the process, control our lives.

Nowhere is The Disconnect more evident than in the highly favorable ratings Barack Obama is receiving, even though his performance ratings in almost every specific area are medium to poor. The Disconnect affects those who are genetically programmed to act like sheep especially hard.

Which means that the sheep — dragging you and me along in the process! — are going to get the exact government they deserve. Remember, nature punishes us just as harshly when we are well-intentioned but stupid as when we are smart but harbor bad intentions. In his groundbreaking book The Liberal Mind, Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter puts it this way:

[In] providing for his own material and interpersonal well-being, and the well-being for those for whom he has assumed responsibility, the competent person has no need of parental services. While always humanly fallible and vulnerable, and always subject to failure and loss, his efforts to run his life through his own initiative ordinarily suffice well enough and are personally satisfying in their own right.

In particular, he has no need or desire for the government to assume a task that he is able to perform for himself, with or without the assistance of others. Beyond certain very limited though critical government functions, such as the protection of property and contract rights, military defense against other nations, and the coordination of those relatively few matters best regulated as public goods, the competent man desires only to be let alone by the government in order that he may continue to live his life as he chooses — while he honors the rights of others to do the same.

Translation: Americans need to grow up and start acting like adults! Our problem today is not the economy. In a free society, good and bad economies come and go — sort of like global warming and global cooling. They are natural occurrences … no big deal.

Our real problem is that we no longer live in a free society, and the reason we are moving toward total enslavement is because, much like the builder I mentioned at the outset of this article, we naively believe that the market for freedom always goes up. Take it from none other than Pravda: The market for freedom in America is going down!

And it will continue to go down so long as conservative commentators continue to say things like “I can’t for the life of me figure out why President Obama would do that. If his ‘stimulus plan’ doesn’t work, he’s toast. He’ll be voted out of office.”

Why talk about how to reverse the trend toward totalitarianism when so many Americans continue to believe that Obama and his cronies are well-intentioned but simply misguided? No, no, no, no, no … they are
not well-intentioned. And I have news for you: Fascist dictatorships don’t get voted out of office.

Fortunately, some get it — Dick Morris, David Horowitz, and a few other television commentators have it right: The Obama fascists want to destroy the U.S. economy so they can establish control over every aspect of your life. Since no one else will say it, I’ll step up to the plate: They are running a race to head off free elections in 2010 — and, if that should fail, 2012 for sure.

Is it too late? Hopefully, it is not. But we all have to pitch in and help rehabilitate our family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers who have been afflicted with The Disconnect. Do whatever you have to, even if it means paying them for one evening to miss The Bachelor or Survivor and watch Fox News.

Oh, and one word of caution. If it’s a person who has never before watched Fox News, don’t start him off with Glenn Beck. After all, you don’t want to rip The Disconnect wiring from his brain so fast that you cause permanent damage. I suggest you start with lighter fare, and bring him along slowly. Rehab is a task that has to be handled gingerly.

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As the 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee and a frequent guest on Fox News and Fox Business, many of you already know that I believe in the libertarian ideals of dramatically lower spending and taxes, radically cutting the size, scope, and power of government, and increasing economic and personal freedoms for all citizens.

It is important to note that long-term studies now prove that this philosophy is not just good for your bank account, it’s good for your spirit, too. Amazingly, these studies prove that simply believing in the power of the individual versus that of government power makes all the difference in whether you are successful and satisfied with your life. What a bonus — a political philosophy that hands you the keys to a happier and more fulfilling life in addition to being morally sound.

Back in October 2008, newspapers across the country trumpeted the news that being a Republican automatically makes you happier than being a Democrat. However, happiness is not about one’s political party affiliation. It is a mindset.

What leads to happiness is freedom for the individual — free markets, the freedom to make choices, the freedom to keep your own money and decide what to do with it, and freedom from government interference in your life. None of us is guaranteed happiness the day we are born. As great as the United States is, no government can guarantee happiness. But what our Founding Fathers did guarantee was the freedom topursue our own happiness.

The study, released by the Pew Research Center, is called the “Pew Social & Demographic Trends Project.” The dramatic partisan “happiness gap” that Pew found in favor of Republicans has held steady for nearly four decades — since 1972, when surveys funded by the National Science Foundation first began to ask the happiness question.

Remarkably, it has remained consistent during both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations. Republicans weren’t just happier under Reagan or Bush, they were also happier under Carter and Clinton. And no doubt they’ll be happier under Obama as well.

Republicans have been happier even when Democrats have dominated Congress, as well as during the darkest days of Watergate. The happiness gap actually widened in the Fall of 2008 – Republicans were far happier even as the economy tanked, the stock market collapsed, the credit markets froze, and it became obvious that Democrats would win the White House.

Is happiness really in the DNA of Republicans? Of course not, but it might be something that comes from their attitude toward life (and success). Happiness has nothing to do with party identification. It is about a belief system – a positive, conscious mindset that helps create health, wealth, success, and happiness.

The proof is that the same results hold true in places across the globe where the words “Republican” and “Democrat” don’t exist. In countries all over the world, those who identify themselves as conservatives are far happier than those who identify themselves as liberals. Again, it is a long-term pattern proven by scientific research.

Being a card-carrying Republican is certainly not what makes a person happy. Remember, I’m not a Republican. I’m a Libertarian. But Republicans, libertarians, and conservatives all share a common trait - belief in the individual. They believe in the principle that you, not the government, are in control of your own destiny.

The Pew study found that a key factor for happiness is whether you believe that success is determined by outside forces or by personal initiative. It is this core belief that changes lives. As the Washington Post put it, “The hypothesis: Those who think they can control their destinies are happier.” That’s a belief that fiscal conservatives and free market libertarians share the world over.

To me, the answer is simple and straightforward. If you believe that government can make your life better, and you are waiting around for the government to save you, you are destined to fail. If you are waiting for handouts, entitlements, bailouts, and stimulus checks to save you, you are destined to fail. Most important, if you are waiting for government to make your life better, you are destined to be disappointed, thereby creating own unhappiness — and even depression.

I have also found that fiscal conservatives don’t believe in luck playing a part in success. As a CEO and entrepreneur, I’ve experienced luck many times in the business world - and all of it has been bad! Yet I’ve remained an incredibly positive and happy person. Why? Because I believe that a talented, tenacious, and relentless entrepreneur can overcome even the longest odds and the toughest breaks.

Some people experience bad luck and choose to become bitter, negative, and blame others. They give up in the face of adversity. Then they turn to government to “save” them. They ask government to “level the playing field”

But individuals who believe they control their destiny react differently to bad luck. They become more committed, more tenacious, and more determined to succeed. Individuals with this kind of mindset don’t wait for opportunity.

They create opportunity. There is one more piece to this equation: Fiscal conservatives don’t resent the success of others. We don’t see prosperity as limited or finite. We see one person’s success as a sign that success is possible for all of us. We see the wealthy as role models to be emulated, not greedy or lucky people to be torn down, denigrated, or punished (with high tax rates).

We don’t want to redistribute the wealth of others. We just want to make more money ourselves by working harder and smarter. That kind of positive attitude makes us more hopeful about our own prospects for success (and, therefore, happier as well). We always see the glass as half full. One individual’s financial success doesn’t make us mad or jealous or resentful. It inspires us to change our circumstances and turn lemons into lemonade.

This all leads to one conclusion: Each individual’s success is determined by his or her attitude. The best way to guarantee happiness is to depend on yourself. No one else believes in you more than you believe in yourself. No one else can or will fight harder for you than you can or will fight for yourself.

Always think to yourself: If it is to be, it is up to me. No one will ever buy you a Mercedes or BMW but you. Those who sit around waiting for the government to improve their lives by creating equality and fairness will be waiting for a lifetime.

Without faith in your own talents to change your situation, life can be depressing. Successful and happy people the world over wait for nothing and no one. They take control and they take action.

Our greatness as a nation comes from the laws that our Founding Fathers bequeathed to the citizens in the form of the Constitution, which limits the power of government. It is this remarkable document that has unleashed such incredible creativity, productivity, prosperity, and achievement for 222 years.

Only our Founding Fathers, among all the other nations of the world, had the wisdom and foresight to include the words “the inalienable right to pursue happiness” in the founding documents. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington, Adams – perhaps the most brilliant thinkers ever assembled – all recognized that free individuals had the inalienable right to pursue happiness, not the inalienable right to achieve it.

No government can guarantee you happiness. Nor can government provide it for you. Government can only guarantee you the freedom to pursue it.

Wayne Allyn Root is the author of the new book, The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts! which debuts in July at bookstores everywhere. It is now available for pre-sale at www.Amazon.com. For more information on Wayne, please visit www.ROOTforAmerica.com or www.ROOTofSuccess.com.

Comment on The Mindset Of Success below:

Finally, the trees are back —my trees. The trees have once again shut off the outside world from my veranda. Almost makes me feel a modern-day Thoreau. Of course, he couldn’t see a golf course in the distance.

The global cooling of winter seems to have treated my trees well. They appear prepared for the global warming of summer. As far as I can tell, only a few branches have failed to resuscitate their leaves, so I’m happy to report that I lost very few friends over the winter.

It was early evening, and the trees were in one of their talkative moods. You are aware that trees talk to you, are you not? Trust me, they do … and sometimes they do so in a whisper.

Trees tease and tantalize. They call out to you. And when a soft breeze blows, they can be downright sensuous. When my trees return every spring, it’s like reigniting an old love affair.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone can look at a tree and believe that the universe is nothing more than one big cosmological “accident.” I believe that such a thought reflects cognitive dissonance — i.e., a conflict between what we want to believe (that we are not subject to a Higher Power) and what we know, or at least suspect, to be the truth.

I think it’s more than just a bit interesting that trees have played such an important role in human spiritual history — the Persian Tree of Immortality … the Bodhi Tree (or Tree of Awakening) that shaded Buddha for forty-nine days as he achieved enlightenment … the Hebrew Tree of Knowledge that proved to be the downfall of Adam and Eve (and mankind?).

German poet, novelist, and Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse, who died in 1962, said:

[Trees] are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. …

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. …

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. …

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them.

But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

Would that I could have written that.

When I first wrote about my trees last July (see “The Melody of Life”), I described the wind whipping them into “a choreographed frenzy that brought with it a windy, rustling melody.” But the other night, the melody was produced by a gentle, cool breeze — soft and soothing instead of boisterous and exciting.

I thought about The History Channel’s series Life After People, and smiled. After all the wars have been fought, after all the governments have managed to enslave the human race, after all the technological progress has failed to solve the world’s problems or prove that there is no God, nature will have its way. As foreseen by Life After People, over time, the trees and their leafy relatives around the globe will swallow up every building, every bridge, every work of art … every trace of mankind.

And after a series of global warmings and global coolings, the earth will, like all other matter in the universe, end its life as a lonely ball of ice, spinning around a dying star. Then what? Perhaps, as some scientists have suggested, a quantum fluctuation will tear every atom in the universe apart, and everything — including the atoms of our own dusty remains — will reunite with the Conscious Universal Power Source.

But that’s another discussion for another time. Right now, there’s a tree not far from you. Take a good look at it — and be sure to listen carefully. Because if you listen, Hesse said, you will not want to be a tree. You will want only to be what you are.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

I recently interviewed Judge Andrew Napolitano about his new book, Dred Scott’s Revenge, for the Liberty Education Interview Series. No human being is perfect, but the Judge gives it a good try. He is a delightful individual, congenial and gracious, a hard-core libertarian, a constitutional scholar, and blessed with that rarest of combinations — a giant intellect coupled with the ability to communicate his knowledge in a way that anyone other than a far-left progressive can understand.

In Dred Scott’s Revenge, Judge Napolitano confronts myriad ugly truths about the history of racism in this country, especially as it relates to natural law and the Constitution. And, along the way, he makes a shambles of the version of American history that is taught in our schools.

Judge Napolitano spares no one — including the Great Emancipator who sits on his marble throne at the west end of the National Mall in Washington. This no doubt ruffles the feathers of a lot of Abraham Lincoln idolaters, but, to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, the Judge didn’t create history, he merely reports it.

It takes courage to speak the truth in the face of the status quo. In this regard, I am reminded of something Alain de Botton wrote in The Consolations of Philosophy:

… it is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs and at the same time that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts and follow the flock because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown, difficult truths.

In Dred Scott’s Revenge, Judge Napolitano is not shy about bringing up uncomfortable truths — from the hypocrisy of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the Jim Crow era, from the inhumane Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments to the shameful treatment of the Tuskegee Airmen.

He unapologetically refers to Abraham Lincoln as a man who rode into the White House on “the two horses of Liberty and Slavery,” and quotes Lincoln, in one of his well publicized debates with Stephen Douglas, as saying:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

With friends like Abraham Lincoln, slaves didn’t need enemies. Interestingly, clear back in 1977 I included this same quote in Looking Out for #1. That’s when I came face to face with the reality that most people, rather than loving truth, try to make true that which they love. Much like John F. Kennedy, there is a wide disparity between Abraham Lincoln myths and Abraham Lincoln realities.

The unarguable fact is that Lincoln’s sole focus was on “saving the union.” But by refusing to allow the Southern states to secede, he actually violated the natural rights of every citizen in those states. And by ignoring the fact that it was the states themselves that had created the federal government, he made it clear that the federal government was superior to its creators.

In underscoring Lincoln’s hypocrisy, Judge Napolitano quotes him in a speech he gave to Congress in 1848 (when he was a young Illinois congressman):

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have a right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. … Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.

This sounds more like nineteenth century anarcho-libertarian Lysander Spooner than the man who used federal force to prevent the Southern states from seceding from the Union.

Yet, there is almost always something good that comes out of a bad situation, and the abolishment of slavery (at least in the legal sense) was the most positive result of the Civil War. But it came at a cost of 625,000 lives, or more than ten times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War and 50 percent more than were killed in World War II.

Worse, it cemented the notion that the federal government no longer derived its powers “from the consent of the governed.” From Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus to today’s unconstitutional bailouts, the federal government now does whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whomever it wants.

When I read Judge Napolitano’s description of Lincoln as “politically manipulative and truly Machiavellian,” I immediately thought about Barack Obama’s seeming obsession with the sixteenth President of the United States. The newer, slicker version of the Great Emancipator is, if nothing else, a master manipulator — probably Machiavellian — who makes the Clintons, by comparison, look like a couple of circus clowns.

But I’ll let you make your own judgments on all that. To do so intelligently, however, I highly recommend that you buy, read, and reflect on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s impeccably researched book, Dred Scott’s Revenge, post-haste. Your view of American history will never be the same, and your understanding of how we became a nation that does not respect individual, God-given rights will be considerably enhanced.

To purchase Dred Scott’s Revenge, click here.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

In Part I of this article, I expressed my view that the best investment advice needs to be accompanied by an asterisk. The asterisk is for “Subject to the extent of government intervention.” The reality is that a powerful government can change economic reality through the use of force.

Which brings me to the notion of “animal spirits,” popularized by John Maynard Keynes, who coined the term in his 1936 book The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. He used it to describe the phenomenon of economic activity that is sometimes driven by waves of optimism or pessimism.

Going all the way back to the Tulip Bulb Mania in Holland in the 1630s, the madness of the crowd has always had an impact on the markets. But so long as the markets were relatively free, it was just a matter of time until economic reality set in. And when it did, bubbles created by unfounded optimism ultimately burst, while economic downturns created by unfounded pessimism (not nearly as frequent) ultimately rebounded.

Now, along come two progressive economists, George Akerlof, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley (Need I say more?) and Robert Shiller, from Yale, coauthors of the book Animal Spirits. In their work, they try to make the case for massive government market intervention as the best way to quell pessimism and motivate people to spend.

Oversimplified, what Akerlof and Shiller are saying is pretty much the opposite of what I said in Part I of this article. It is my belief that government mischievousness in the marketplace distorts economic reality, prolongs deflationary collapses, and, at worst, can lead to runaway inflation.

Akerlof and Shiller believe that government should use its power to deceive people into being optimistic. I’m not making this up. These two permanent residents of the Ivory Towers recently laid out their zany idea on Glenn Beck’s show.

The far-left blog Daily Kos expounds on their book with these cringe-inducing words: “With Animal Spirits we hone in on how incentives and narratives can be created to channel the human psychological factor into collectively healthy directions [my emphasis], and how to be aware of the fictions we tell ourselves about how we wish the world and greed and financial security worked.” Again, I’m not making up this Orwellian babble.

Dr. Keith Ablow, a Fox News contributor, is far more than a highly respected psychiatrist. He is also remarkably astute about governments and economics. In a recent appearance on Glenn Beck, Ablow refreshingly and repeatedly made the point that people are often delusional when it comes to economic reality.

He specifically alluded to Barack Obama’s recent statement (without naming him by name) that “our current level of spending is unsustainable,” after which BHO turned right around and continued to promote the idea that more spending is the solution to our problems. Huh?

Ablow says that when you are fed this kind of gobbledegook by those in power, your best defense is to use your common sense. If the daily mantra of the president is that the Bush Administration “got us into this mess” by running up huge budget deficits, your common sense should be asking, “How does quadrupling the deficit in your first few months in office make things better?”

Your common sense should also make you feel like responding to the president’s nonstop blame-game comments by saying, “Fiscally sane people are well aware of what George Bush did to the economy, but that was yesterday. Today we’re looking at what you are doing to the economy.”

By simply changing the meaning of words and using such abstract phrases as “economic and social justice,” social progressives are able to change the nature of the dialog. In other words, they control the argument by controlling the language.

Daffiness aside, Joe Biden, Obama’s worst nightmare, recently said: “We don’t call it redistribution. We call it fairness.” Gee, and here all this time I thought fairness was allowing everyone to keep the fruits of their own labor.

What we need is to rewire ourselves and make a commitment to return to the real world. Rational optimism is based on economic reality. And the short version of economic reality is that we and future generations of Americans are responsible for nearly $60 trillion worth of unfunded government obligations.

To make this short version of reality just a bit longer, I should add that the chief reason — not the only reason, but the chief one — for the creation of a debt that can never be repaid is the failure of the vast majority of Americans to come to grips with the liberty-based truth that no one is entitled to anything except what he earns, in a totally free market, through his own efforts.

This is especially true of labor wages. Unions, backed by government force, have intimidated employers into paying far higher wages than they would have to pay in a laissez-faire market. In other words, most wages are artificial because they did not come about as an agreement between consenting adults, sans coercion.

Some months ago, 60 Minutes, that paragon of objective journalism, did a show on the plight of auto workers. When asked about the common taxpayer complaint that auto workers make exorbitant wages — as much as $150,000 a year — the two workers being interviewed insisted that they haven’t made that kind of money in a long time.

One of them then went on to scornfully say that he now makes only about $60,000 a year. Which prompted the question in my mind: “What makes that worker believe he is entitled to even $60,000 a year?” I don’t get it.

But I do know this: The notion that anyone is entitled to any specific wage or benefit — which can be put into effect only through government force — is the main reason that the decades-long invisible depression has now become visible. Sorry, Messrs. Akerlof and Shiller, but years of animal-spirit optimism is finally yielding to reality.

Dr. Ablow is right, though, when he says that many people are still delusional about economic reality. If you believe that government slogans, cheerleading, edicts, and meddling in the economy is reason for optimism, that means you.

The good news is that you are also a human being — and human beings have free will. Which means you can choose not to be delusional and take action accordingly. If you haven’t consciously thought about this, I strongly suggest that you do so sooner rather than later — because later may be too late.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

I just finished reading The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide by Martin Weiss. It’s an excellent book on investing during bad economic times, and Weiss clearly possesses a great deal of knowledge on the subject.

I agree with most of what Weiss has to say in his book, with two notable exceptions. First, he is a deflationist, and there is no question that he makes an excellent case for a long-term deflationary scenario. Nonetheless, while I’m hoping he’s right, I’m inclined to believe that hyperinflation — even runaway inflation — is a far more likely scenario for the U.S. over the long term.

What’s important here is our reasons for seeing such different economic scenarios in America’s future. As sound as I believe Weiss’s insights to be, he, like so many other modern-day economists and investment advisors, bases his beliefs on the assumption that free-market capitalism is a permanent fact of life in this country.

If it were, I would say there is a 100 percent chance that a deflationary depression is inevitable — which would be the best thing that could happen to America. The marketplace would be cleansed of gross misallocations of capital, hyperinflated securities, real estate, and other assets, and, above all, reckless speculators.

Which brings me to my other disagreement with Weiss. Whereas he approaches economic reality as if it were in a glass bubble — sort of like being in a static universe — my economic reality is perceived through the lens of political reality. And what I see through that lens was summed up quite well by Marcus Tullius Cicero in the first century B.C.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. [My emphasis.] A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”

In modern terminology, Rush Limbaugh recently put it more succinctly: “What makes this country unique is its freedom. We are losing our freedom.”

Yes, it’s that simple. Not exactly astrophysics. It’s encouraging to know that a lot of people who were paralyzed by tingling legs in the last election are finally starting to get it. But it’s puzzling — and scary — that everyone hasn’t gotten it by now. (When I say everyone, I am, of course, excluding the far-left social progressives who want Americans to lose their freedom.)

In Martin Weiss’s vision of the future, “Our leaders recognize that, despite the trillions spent, lent, invested, or guaranteed, the government is not able to prevent a devastating economic decline. They finally understand that it was actually their own zeal to create a perpetual boom that set up the conditions for the subsequent bust.” (This is sort of like believing that Barney Frank will ultimately admit he was wrong to pressure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into making mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers.)

Weiss goes on to say that, in this scenario, the government will finally conclude that since it can’t beat deflation, it should help bring it about so the cleansing process can begin. Sounds great, except for a few faulty assumptions:

First, this scenario assumes that those in power actually want America to prosper. I challenge that assumption on the basis that a prosperous America would mean fewer people dependent on government help, which is anathema to most politicians. Reality check: The agenda of those who are now at the top of the Washington food chain is to transform the U.S. into a collectivist utopia in which the government plans, controls, and, yes, owns everything.

Second, it assumes that even if powerful politicians weren’t hard-core socialists, they would have the courage to tell their constituents that extended personal suffering is necessary in order to save our children and grandchildren from poverty and servitude. I know of no such politician.

Third, it assumes that even if politicians were courageous enough to tell voters the truth, they would be both rational and intelligent enough to understand that a massive deflation is a good thing for America. Again, I know of no such politician.

I believe it’s wise to learn all you can about investing — but, while doing so, be sure to keep one eye on what’s happening outside the economic glass bubble. If you take the trouble to look right now, what you’ll see is that Mao reality that never seems to go away: the barrel of a gun is pointed at the bubble!

Which is to say that so long as government has a monopoly on the use of force, it can crush everything that gets in the way of its main objective: power. And when I say crush everything, that includes market realities.

Recent government actions have made it clear that it can take your money and use it to keep propping up companies of its choice. It can refuse to pay its obligations — or simply inflate them out of existence. Most important, it can silence you if you express dissatisfaction with its conduct.

Limbaugh is right — the real issue is freedom. Economics is a side issue — a distraction. If you have freedom, you have free markets and good investment strategies will work. But without freedom, there is no investment strategy that will work — unless it’s implemented through the black market. (Remember, the black market is the only kind of market that flourished in the Soviet Union throughout seventy years of communism.)

But what about optimism? Doesn’t the outlook of the average American play a big role in how the economy will turn out? Good question — one that I’ll address in Part II of this article.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

To the delight of the hard left, the fork-in-the-road debate continues in the Republican Party: “Shall we be inclusive (read, bring people into the party who believe in big government, higher taxes, more government regulation, more government takeover of private industry, and more interference in the lives of American citizens) or shall we remain steadfast to traditional conservative principles?”

The great fear, of course, is that if Republicans try to please their core constituents (Gee, why would anyone want to do that?), they will never regain the White House, the Senate, or the House of Representatives.

If Republicans want to put the final nail in their extinction coffin, they need only to continue playing the role of progressive-conservatives. That is term, of course, a contradiction in terms, which is why voters find it so offensive. Many party members believe that the way to power (which, unfortunately, is what politics is all about) is to be better bone throwers than Democrats.

That’s right, throw bones to “the poor,” the unemployed, “minorities,” union members, the elderly, people whose houses are in foreclosure … and on and on the list goes. Bone throwers all have one thing in common: tired arms.

When a country is flooded with chazzers (see Part I of this article), each bone that is thrown only succeeds in bringing cries for still more bones … until, alas, there are no more taxpayer bones to pick. And when there are no bones to pick, there are no bones to throw.

In his book Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin says, “Today his [the modern liberal’s, or Statist’s] pace is more rapid, for resistance has slowed. And at no time does the Statist do an about-face. But not so with some who claim the mantle of conservatism but are, in truth, neo-Statists, who would have the Conservative abandon the high ground of the founding principles for the quicksand of a soft tyranny.”

Levin is right on target. The far left never retreats … it is patient … it has been trudging forward in America for at least a hundred years. By contrast, a significant percentage of conservatives retreat at the drop of a moral accusation.

Levin goes on to quote Michael Gerson, former chief speechwriter for George W. Bush, from his book Heroic Conservatism: “… if Republicans run in future elections with a simplistic anti-government message, ignoring the poor, the addicted and children at risk, they will lose, and they will deserve to lose.”

Gerson has it 180 degrees wrong. Republicans who are intimidated into believing that government-enforced collectivism, guided by corrupt politicians, is the ultimate moral option when it comes to governing, they are certain to fulfill James Carville’s prophesy that Democrats will rule for decades to come. Even more likely is that the Democrats will establish totalitarian rule in the next four to eight years.

Take Sarah Palin, for example, someone whom I genuinely admire and for whom I had high hopes. When Palin recently appointed a liberal judge, Morgan Christen (who once served on the board of Planned Parenthood, no less!), to serve on the Alaska Supreme Court, it was a strong hint that she has bought into the myth that the bone-throwing strategy is the shortest route between Alaska and the White House.

If so, it would be sad, because I have long suspected that, in her heart of hearts, Sarah Palin is a libertarian-driven conservative. In fact, she has been an ally of the Alaska Independence Party and the Libertarian Party of Alaska for years. But does she have the courage to continue those ties, or will she desert the proponents of liberty when she smells the aroma of federal power close by? We shall see soon enough.

If Republicans continue to badmouth and distance themselves from staunch conservatives — including, and especially, those on talk radio and Fox News — while assuring the public that they do not question Barack Obama’s “good intentions” for America, they will lose big in 2010 and 2012 (provided free elections even exist in 2012).

How can Republicans win in the upcoming elections? By preaching the simple message that the federal government must obey the Constitution. Which means having the courage to say, without apology, such things as:

• “If elected, I will do everything in my power to first reduce, then completely phase out, all welfare programs. This includes unemployment benefits, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, and all other transfer-of-wealth schemes.”

• “If elected, I will do everything in my power to eliminate the minimum wage, which only succeeds in creating unemployment and hurting the economy.”

• “If elected, I will do everything in my power to get the government completely out of the economy and promote an economy that is unfettered by draconian government regulations.”

• “If elected, I will do everything in my power to limit federal authority to those granted it by the Constitution and return sovereignty to the individual states.”

• “If elected, I will do everything in my power to cut off all federal funding for abortions.”

• “If elected, I will do everything in my power to phase out Social Security and allow people to keep, save, and invest their own money as they see fit. This would be done over a period of fifty years, at the rate of 2 percent per year, so that people who have been counting on Social Security in their old age will not be left out in the cold.”

• “If elected, I will do everything in my power to reverse any legislation that is now in place regarding government health care. This includes the elimination of Medicare and Medicaid, both of which are unconstitutional.”

• Oh, and one other item: “If elected, I will appoint a special counsel to investigate ACORN and all of its affiliates, with a special emphasis on its close ties to the Obama administration.”

That’s the short list, but I think you get the idea. Republicans need to remember Ronald Reagan’s words: “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”

At this very moment, Republicans have a golden opportunity to embarrass James Carville by putting the Democrats out of office for decades to come. But it will not happen if they play the Wile E. Coyote role and once again try to convince the public that they can be just as “progressive” as their Democratic colleagues. People are mad as hell, and in a mood not to take it anymore. But there’s nothing they can do about it if they are not given an alternative to collectivist Democrats.

Obama is the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, but the question is: Will conservatives take the gift or will they make it possible for the Democrats to once again be able smirk and say, “Beep, beep”?

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to
www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

There is a great and elaborate political myth that has been in place since the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Notwithstanding President Reagan’s remarkable accomplishments — especially his economic accomplishments — his successor, George Bush Sr., immediately started blathering about change.

No one thought to ask why there was a need for change, given that Ronald Reagan had already put the Republicans — and, more importantly, the country — on sound moral and economic footing.

When I say immediately, I’m talking about Bush I’s inauguration address. It was the first time, as commander in chief, that he made an appeal for a “kinder, gentler nation.” On the surface, it sounded like a perfectly reasonably statement.

Nevertheless, it bothered me, because nations can be neither kind nor gentle. Only people can be kind and gentle — as well as nasty and harsh. Fortunately, all people of goodwill believe in being kind and gentle, so they don’t need politicians to urge them on.

The problem is that relentlessly lying in wait for any signs of weakness — particularly displays of guilt — were the fascist progressives who, for centuries, aspired to dictatorial rule that would make it possible to remake society in their own image.

Of course, they never came right out and said that. They used words like “liberalism” (which once stood for libertarianism) and “progressivism,” because they realized that the only way they could attain power, and hold onto it, would be to camouflage their true objectives.

Now that they have finally gained full control of Washington, they not only talk openly about liberalism (a word they avoided like the plague for decades), they are more and more openly using the dreaded “S” word — socialism. European style socialism would be bad enough, but my experience has been that once you open the door to iniquity — even a crack — evildoers want to push it wide open.

In the movie Scarface, Frank (a drug kingpin) says to Tony Montana (Al Pacino’s thug Cuban character): “You know what a chazzer (pronounced KHAZ-er) is?”

Tony: “No, Frank, you tell me. What is a chazzer?”

Frank: “It’s a Yiddish word for pig. See, the guy, he wants more than what he needs. He don’t fly straight no more.”

Now, if you think the word chazzer applies to capitalists like Bernie Madoff, you’re right. A lot of capitalists are chazzers. But the worst kind of chazzers are left-wing politicians and organizers of causes who always want more power than they need to properly serve their employers (i.e., American citizens).

Which is why our evolution to socialism will not be the end. As World Heavyweight Champion Chazzer Vladimir Lenin put it during Russia’s infamous Bolshevik Revolution, “The goal of socialism is communism.”

Even Karl Marx before him saw “socialism” only as a temporary, intermediate step, a transitional stage to a world where “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” He naively believed that the State would “wither away” under communism. But wherever communism has been tried, the State does not wither away. It stays on to terrorize the people, and no one but the State has any rights.

And who made it possible for this to happen in America? We are all at fault, to one degree or another, but the most visible culprits are Republican politicians and pseudo-conservatives. For decades they have played the chazzer game right along with their Democratic colleagues in the Demopublican Party.

The Republican wing of the party seems to have a permanent affliction known as cowardice. Notwithstanding mountains of evidence to the contrary, they still believe that the only way they can get elected to office, and reelected, is to prove they are “compassionate conservatives.”

The truth is that the term compassionate conservative is a redundancy. True conservatism (which, as Ronald Reagan pointed out, has libertarian principles at its heart) is compassionate.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey has often referred to the sweetheart of the far left, John McCain, as “philosophically confused.” Undoubtedly true. But I would argue that most self-proclaimed conservatives are philosophically confused.

One of the three great loves of my life (after my wife, of course), Ann Coulter (Do I even need to say that the other two are Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham?), recently made a great point during a guest appearance on Fox News. She said that while it’s true that the number of voters who have actually registered as Republicans has fallen to 21 percent, poll after poll has shown that roughly twice as many people think of themselves as conservatives rather than liberals.

Which means, dear reader, that you have been scammed by a smooth-talking young man who, raised from birth to believe in the worldwide communist revolution, portrayed himself as a moderate while running for president. In truth, nothing about him is moderate. He’s not even a moderate liar. He’s as hard-core as they come.

In all honesty, I respect him for having the boldness to take this opportunity, while more than half of America is still in a government-is-the-solution slumber, to move swiftly to put into place the system he so strongly believes in.

The question is, how many conservative and libertarian citizens, how many conservative and libertarian media people, and, above all, how many conservative and libertarian politicians are going to buy into the scam that they must move away from the “extremists” (i.e., those who believe in the Constitution and, even more important, believe that liberty is superior to the idea of “social justice”) in order for the Republican Party to become appealing to more voters?

Now hear this: Voters don’t need another Democratic Party. The one they have is already bankrupting and enslaving them. What they need is a party that will stand up for freedom.

In Part II of this article, I will risk life and limb to tell you what Republicans can say if their objective is to guarantee that the fascist progressives now in power will continue their march toward totalitarian rule … and what they must say if their objective is to have them thrown out of office and steer America through a U turn that will lead it back to being a democratic republic.

It goes without saying that I don’t expect anyone to agree with everything I have to say, but by now you already know that I’m a hopeless masochist.

As you can imagine, I receive an incredible amount of e-mail from people who share their woes with me — particularly during these bad economic times. And while I can’t answer all of them, I do try to read each and every one.

I not only do it because I feel a moral obligation, but for selfish reasons as well. You would be amazed at the continuing education I receive by reading subscribers’ e-mails.

The following (partial) e-mail is a good example of what I am referring to. It is from West Indies subscriber “G.H.”

I am an avid fan. I am committed to change since I believe that, in spite of my talents, it is the shoot-from-the-hip, BS from the mouth that has me where I am today — over forty, no savings, and re-starting my business every Monday morning.

I have had far too many peaks and troughs since I started my business back in 1994. Sometimes the troughs were very deep and excruciatingly painful, only because I never stuck with anything long enough.

I was always leaving for a trip here, another opportunity there, getting sidetracked and sometimes opting to be like Bill [the NFL player in your Voice of Sanity article] and party instead of attending to what needed to be done.

Thank you for your thorough explanation of this thing called persistence. I am encouraged.

What struck me about G.H.’s e-mail was his willingness to bare his soul and be totally honest — not so much with me, but with himself. By doing so, I believe he has already taken the first step toward rising above his past mistakes and achieving the kind of success he clearly aspires to.

Admitting your mistakes may sound like a small thing, but it is not. On the contrary, you cannot navigate in the direction of success until you have gone through the catharsis of being honest with yourself about the real reasons for your failure.

I thought about G.H.’s e-mail the other day when I was strolling on the Mall in D.C., reflecting and contemplating. What caused his e-mail to come to mind was something I happened to read on the south wall of the World War II Memorial:

The Battle of Midway — June 4-7, 1942

They had no right to win. Yet they did, and in doing so they changed the course of a war … even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit — a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor — that lifts man from certain defeat to incredible victory.
— Walter Lord, Author

The moment I read these words, it became one of my favorite quotes. Walter Lord was a gifted author who wrote extensively about World War II and other historic events, such as the sinking of the Titanic. He had a long and productive career, passing away only recently (2002) at the age of eight-five.

What immediately struck me about this quote was Lord’s gift for sculpting words. As I have repeatedly stated, it is not a writer’s duty to come up with new thoughts. It is his duty is to craft ageless wisdom in ways that bring about epiphanies in the minds of his readers.

What a poetic and accurate way to describe the uniqueness of our species: “Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit — a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor — that lifts man from certain defeat to incredible victory.”

Is this not the story of virtually all great successes? G.H.’s tale of woe describes the predicament that much of the human race finds itself in today. Between the brutal realities of socialism combined with our own flaws, it is often difficult to pick ourselves up and trudge forward.

But the fact is that just about anyone with reasonable intelligence can do it, because the human spirit is comprised of skill, faith, and valor.

Skill. You are born with one or more unique skills, and it is your job to discover what those skills are.

Faith. Faith is belief, and belief is a choice. In Star Wars, when Yoda effortlessly frees the X-Wing from the bog, Luke Skywalker says, “I don’t believe it.” To which Yoda responds, “That is why you fail.” Jealous as I may be, I cannot improve on that strange little guy’s explanation of why faith is so crucial to success. Who am I to question a Jedi Master?

Valor. Valor is courage. Because you have free will, you can choose to be courageous. In other words, valor is a state of mind.

The bottom line is that the magical blend of skill, faith, and valor is always available to us. Unfortunately, we do not always utilize these powerful tools. But when we do, we indeed have the capacity to lift ourselves from certain defeat to incredible victory. We see this happening and read about it virtually every day of our lives.

So, if G.H.’s e-mail seems to describe your own situation to one extent or another, take heart. You can begin moving in the right direction today simply by utilizing those three remarkable human traits — skill, faith, and valor — that are already available to you.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

[You may have already seen this piece, but just to make certain that those who haven't read it would have the opportunity to do so, I decided to reprint it. It certainly gives us all a lot to think about. The challenge is how to get the out-of-touch, corrupt politicos in Washington to understand that they are getting paid to do our bidding, not the other way around. Thanks to Voice of Sanity subscriber David Altschul for passing this along to me.]

Guess our national leaders didn’t expect this, hmm? On Thursday, Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, was invited to address the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee. What he said to our national leaders during this special session of Congress was painfully truthful.

They were not prepared for what he was to say, nor was it received well. It needs to be heard by every parent, every teacher, every politician, every sociologist, every psychologist, and every so-called expert. These courageous words spoken by Darrell Scott are powerful, penetrating, and deeply personal. There is no doubt that God sent this man as a voice crying out in the wilderness. Following is a portion of the transcript:

“Since the dawn of creation, there have been both good and evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness and the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.

“The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the NCA — the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain ’s heart.

“In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA, because I don’t believe they are responsible for my daughter’s death. Therefore, I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel ’s murder, I would be their strongest opponent.

“I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy, it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies. Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best.

Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You’ve stripped away our heritage,
You’ve outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question “Why?”
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!

“Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact.

“What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and, in so doing, we have opened the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs, politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that erode away our personal and private liberties.

“We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts.

“As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right. I challenge every young person in America, and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School, prayer was brought back to our schools.

“Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him. To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA, I give to you a sincere challenge: Dare to examine your own hearts before casting the first stone.

“My daughter’s death will not be in vain. The young people of this country will not allow that to happen.”

Do what the media did not do. Let the nation hear this man’s speech. Please send this out to everyone you can. God Bless. – David Altschul

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

As I witness the daily events that surround me, I sometimes feel as though I’ve landed on another planet. Or perhaps that I’m having a dream where I’m trapped inside a George Orwell novel.

Comments like “We live in an upside-down world” and “The world is standing on its head” have become cliches a result of decades of a dismissive attitude by “social progressives” (or, more accurately, socialist progressives).

It seems as though speech and behavior that was once considered morally wrong, uncivilized, or inappropriate is today not only tolerated, but extolled. Likewise, speech and behavior that the vast majority of people once considered to be morally right, civilized, and appropriate is now reviled.

So, yes, the world is upside-down. I saw this moral transformation coming late in my teens, and started writing about it in the late seventies. Of course, giants like Ayn Rand, F.A. Hayek, and George Orwell preceded me — and many other likeminded writers — by decades.

But when I was in high school — at a time when a generally accepted code of behavior actually existed in the Western world — I had no idea that so-called progressivism had been gradually moving forward since at least the days of Teddy Roosevelt. In fact, some liberty purists would argue it began moving forward when the Constitution was ratified.

I thought about this during the recent flap over Carrie Prejean’s (Miss California) answer to a loaded question from a nasty little bug who goes by the pseudonym Perez Hilton — one of the judges in the Miss USA pageant. It’s not just that a question about gay marriage would have been unthinkable in a Miss USA contest not that long ago, it was an outrageous question even in today’s upside-down America.

What in the world does anyone’s personal opinion about gay marriage have to do with being a worthy Miss USA? Obviously, nothing. So, why did this Hilton character pose the question to Ms. Prejean? Because, having taken control of the body politic in Washington, progressivism is feeling its oats. Agree with us, or else. Sieg heil!

Much like a brown-shirt youth having to swear his allegiance to Adolf Hitler back in the thirties and early forties, having the “right” opinion of gay marriage is a litmus test for liberal fascists. The message is: You’re either with us or you’re against us. Hmm … seems like George Bush said something similar regarding terrorism (how antiquated that word now sounds), and to this day he is being hammered for his audacity.

As to the gorgeous-times-10 Ms. Prejean, her answer, under enormous pressure, earned her an A+ for poise on my scorecard: “We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage,” she said. “And you know what … I think … in my country … in my family … I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

Would it have been possible for her to be any nicer … any more tactful … and still have the courage to say what she believed in? Now, juxtapose her gracious response to the Barney Frank-like hysterical babble of gay militant Perez Hilton.

Until I saw him in the news, I had never heard of this little weirdo. In fact, I just now looked him up on the Internet and found that his real name is Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr. Converting that to “Perez Hilton” took quite an imagination. Though I would never be one to disparage anyone who calls himself a Hilton, as far as I can tell he is a nobody whose only achievement to date has been to find a way to mingle with minor celebrities.

After he stated, on camera, that Carrie Prejean lost the Miss USA contest because “she’s a dumb bit–,” the media was all over the story. When Sean Hannity asked her about the remark, Ms. Prejean politely replied that he was obviously a very disturbed individual and that she felt genuinely sorry for him. I believe she meant it.

Watching Hilton in action in those news clips, I have to agree with Ms. Prejean. His words and demeanor are those of a very angry, very disturbed person. Maybe he’s mad because he can’t be in the Miss USA contest himself.

Like abortion, gun control, and other hot-button issues, the question of gay marriage isn’t going to go away — ever. And the progressives will probably win on this issue, as they have on most everything else, because they are relentless. Their march to reverse, one by one, the mores of Western civilization is nonstop.

Personally, I don’t believe that homosexuality, of and by itself, bothers most people all that much. In fact, I think that a large percentage of Americans sympathize with the plight of “gay” people.

Like anything else that makes a person feel like a outcast, I have to believe that homosexuality has to be the source of an enormous amount of pain and frustration for those saddled with that condition from birth (as opposed to those who simply choose to lead a perverse lifestyle). A gay person has a right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, the same as anyone else, and I’ll stand up and be counted on that every time.

What is distasteful, however, is the in-your-face, hateful attitude of a significant number of gay men and women. If only they were smart enough, and secure enough, to just go about their business in private and leave others alone.

But being an integral part of the fascist progressive movement, they cannot settle for that. They feel compelled to force others to think as they do. Probably nothing short of outlawing the traditional family will appease them.

After watching Mr. Lavandeira-Hilton spew out his hateful remarks, I couldn’t help but think about one of my all-time favorite actors, Richard Chamberlain. In his 2004 book Shattered Love, Chamberlain discusses, in a calm, forthright, dignified manner the trials and tribulations of his coming to grips with his homosexuality.

What sticks out in my mind is when he said, during a television interview, that he came to realize that his homosexuality was actually a “pretty uninteresting fact.” And he said it with that Father Ralph de Bricassart (The Thorn Birds) smile that must have endeared him to most of the folks watching.

So you see, Mr. Mario-turned-Perez, you can be as gay as a thorn bird if you want, without feeling the need to shove it in everyone’s face. Sorry, but your sex life is about as interesting to the rest of us as is Rosie’s — and interest in her sex life hovers around zero. And whether we — and, for sure, a contestant in a beauty pageant — are against gay marriage is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. And that’s the politically incorrect truth.

Sorry, junior, but you’re a bore compared to serious newsmakers like Dog Chapman, Octomom, and O.J. It takes super shtick to make it in today’s world of full-fledged progressivism — a world where
anything goes. You’ve got to come up with something better than naming yourself after Paris Hilton if you want to stay in the limelight.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

What a tragedy that Farrah Fawcett not only is suffering from terminal cancer, but that her twenty-four-year-old son, Redmond O’Neal, was arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle drugs into a jail to give to a friend. (How comforting it must be to know that your son has buddies in the slammer.)

Then there’s Sarah Palin’s daughter, who got pregnant by an eighteen-year-old punk who not only backed out of marrying her, but decided it would be real classy to go on national television and tell tales about the Palin family. It had to be orgasmic for any viewer coming from the left … oops, bad word choice … make that, “It had to be exciting for any viewer coming from the left.”

These stories of celebrities’ kids screwing up go on nonstop. And they remind all but the luckiest of parents that one of the not-so-fun aspects of having children is that they all too often don’t take into consideration how the results of their actions might impact their families.

Which brings me to my twenty-year-old son. A few months ago, he was in an automobile accident and nearly totaled both his car and that of the other driver. It was nighttime, and the black car in front of him had run out of gas and come to a stop in the right-hand lane. The driver said he had his emergency lights on, but my son — perhaps due to a momentary lack of concentration — thought the car was moving.

In any event, he looked over his left shoulder to make sure he could switch lanes, and, as he looked forward again, the right front of his car slammed into the left rear of the immobilized black car in front him. Though my son was going under the forty-mile-per-hour speed limit, the impact was great enough to trigger his air bag and spin his car around several times.

Of course, you’re always at fault when you hit a car from behind, but, considering the circumstances (black car … nighttime … the other car out of gas and stopped in the road … and my son driving under the speed limit), it didn’t seem necessary for the police officer to charge him with reckless driving. But that’s what he did.

A reckless driving conviction can bring a very stiff fine, the suspension of one’s driver’s license, and, in extreme cases, jail time. But, thankfully, no one was injured, and the other driver was a sympathetic gentleman who was just happy that his wife and small daughter were okay. He even called our house later that evening to see how my son was doing.

And, as with all negative occurrences in life, a lot of good came out of this one. During a recent conversation I had with my son, he told me that he couldn’t believe how much he had learned from the experience.

When I asked him to elaborate, the first thing he said was that it made him realize how easy it is to have a serious automobile accident. He emphasized how much more careful and alert he intended to be in the future.

Second, he said he had never imagined how involved being in an accident could be — dealing with insurance companies, finding an auto-repair shop certified to do the work, having to come up with the $500 deductible for his share of the $10,000 repair bill, finding an attorney and coming up with the money to pay his fee, going to the DMV to get a copy of his driving record for the attorney, making two court appearances, and, above all, the enormous stress of waiting for both his first and second court dates.

Best of all from my perspective is that he said it made him realize what a major effect his actions could have on others — especially his family. Kids normally learn this simple truth the hard way — over a long period of time. But we adults have no excuse. We should already know that virtually everything we do impacts others, particularly those closest to us.

With the government continuing to disregard the way its irresponsible actions affect our lives, I’m reminded of an old adage: Think before you act; it’s not your money. Unfortunately, that’s not the way politicians’ minds work.

Which is all the more reason why we should think doubly hard about the consequences of our own actions — ahead of time. As I told my son, it’s a heck of a lot easier to avoid a serious mistake than to repair the damage caused by one.

In my article “Learning from Saddam,” I said that it’s a good idea to learn to “look backward from the future.” By that I meant that you should make it a habit to picture the possible consequences of your actions before acting. There’s not a person reading (or writing) this article whose family wouldn’t be better off had he/she always applied that rule.

Of course, your perception of reality is a critical factor in all this. If you delude yourself about the odds and the possible consequences of your actions, looking backward from the future is an exercise in futility.

But having an accurate perception of reality is another subject for another day. Right now, a good start is to just think about the efficacy of the “looking backward from the future” principle — and start teaching it to your children at a young age.

What if your children are already in their teens or early twenties, you ask? Answer: Good luck.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

The message from The Graduate that I was referring to at the end of Part I of this article is simplistic but true. It’s a message that has transcended the ages: Never give up. Watching The Graduate reminded me of a Lucite cube I gave my son when he was very young. On it are inscribed the words: Whatever It Takes! To this day, it sits atop his dresser.

Which, in turn, reminded me of the latest antihero tale that has unfolded before the entire world, that of Susan Boyle. She’s the frumpy-looking forty-seven-year-old Scottish lady who shocked Simon Cowell and billions of people around the globe with her dazzling performance on the U.K. version of American Idol — Britain’s Got Talent.

The unmarried Ms. Boyle claims she has never been kissed and, predictably, was bullied as a child. Considering the way the judges smirked and snickered at her before she lit up their eyes with her singing, this article probably could have fit into The Cho Factor series. The judges were playing the role of adult bullies, a role that has made Simon Cowell a wealthy man.

Watching Susan Boyle speak, my hunch is that she has been saddled with some sort of “life-functioning deficit.” From the little bit she has revealed about herself, it is certainly reasonable to assume that this remarkably talented woman has led a difficult life.

Which is why it excites anyone with a pulse to see her become an overnight sensation. Right now, I guess you could say that she’s the Rocky Balboa of the entertainment world — though, of course, no one can know for certain how the long term will play out for her.

Now, you may be thinking that the stories of Susan Boyle and Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate don’t have much in common. And, on the surface, I would agree.

But you have to look beneath the surface to see a common thread: Whether you’re someone who has been taunted, snickered at, or just ignored — or you’re a Ben Braddock who has been told that it’s too late to achieve a dream — it would pay big dividends if, during difficult times, you would make it a point to think about what makes an antihero an antihero.

Antiheroes aren’t flashy, brilliant, or overpowering. Their main weapon is that they never give up. They do whatever it takes.

To be sure, Susan Boyle’s story is a one-in-a-million, but the lesson to take away from it is that when she got her shot, she delivered the goods. At one time or another, I believe that the door cracks open, at least a sliver, for most people. And when it does, (1) you have to be ready and (2) you have to make the most of the opportunity. This, to me, is what makes Susan Boyle a classic antihero.

Ben Braddock’s circumstances in The Graduate were, of course, much different than those of Susan Boyle. Ben grew up as a privileged child in a wealthy family, and was a totally lost young man at the age of twenty-two — so much so that his parents tended to do his talking for him.

That is, until he knew what he wanted. And that’s what brought out the antihero in him. Maybe the exact way he did what he did could happen only in Hollywood, but, in my experience, the real world is often stranger than the world of celluloid. You may not always win in life, but it’s amazing how many times you can win simply by being quietly relentless.

The truth be known, most people have the capacity to be antiheroes if the requirements to be one were taught in school. But that would fly in the face of the government’s desire to make us conformists who are dependant on politicians. If you feel like you’re falling into that seductive trap, I suggest you treat yourself to another viewing of The Graduate. And this time, take notes.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

One of the many things I regret not having enough time for is watching good movies. I emphasize the word good to differentiate from most of the celluloid sewage that comes off the Hollywood production line — the 90+ percent of films whose only purpose seem to be to dull viewers’ minds with over-the-top violence, sex, profanity, and anti-Western propaganda.

Some movies are so good that you feel compelled to watch them again every ten years or so. The Graduate, one of the greatest “cult” films of all time, is one that falls into the once-every-ten-years category for me. And last weekend, I’m happy to say that I took the time to watch it. Once again, it did not disappoint.

True, the film centers around a perverse sexual relationship, but I’m not exactly a prude. I have no problem with looking past a bit of risqué activity if a movie has a good theme, good acting, and is well produced. And, above all, if it’s based on a great script. To be sure, The Graduate has all of these components.

I’ve written about the main idea of this film (the hypocrisy of “suburban life”) in two previous articles, “Here’s to You, Mrs. Robinson” and “Winking at Hypocrisy”, so I won’t dwell on it here. But there are other aspects of The Graduate that hit home with me on this particular viewing.

One is how intemperance, a lack of self-discipline, or simply bad judgment not only can destroy a person’s life, but the lives of those around him as well. In The Graduate, the infamous Mrs. Robinson (played by the late and beautiful Anne Bancroft) is the human equivalent of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, leading Dustin Hoffman’s character, Ben Braddock, into temptation.

Though trying hard not to succumb to her not-at-all-subtle overtures, Ben ultimately “bites the apple” and becomes embroiled in an affair. Unfortunately, not only are Mrs. Robinson and her husband best friends with Ben’s parents, her husband is also Mr. Braddock’s business partner.

It soon gets worse, as Ben falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine (played by another legendary beauty, Katharine Ross). When the truth finally comes out (Doesn’t it always?), the fallout is catastrophic for all concerned.

Mrs. Robinson’s marriage ends in divorce, and she is presumably left with her alcoholism, her chain-smoking, and her rather disturbed mind. And Elaine, with whom Ben had fallen madly in love, strikes him out of her life.

That brings to the fore what for me is the most important thing to take away from the movie: the remarkable tenacity of the antihero. When I use the word antihero, I am referring to people who tend to fumble and stumble their way through life, yet somehow manage to come out ahead … people who are bullied and taunted during their school years, yet somehow manage to come out ahead … people who are ignored or waved aside by others, yet somehow manage to come out ahead.

In The Graduate, Ben is the classic antihero — a true master of the art of fumbling and stumbling — a lost young man who seems perpetually at a loss for words. Still, against seemingly impossible odds, he finds a way to transform certain defeat into victory — and, in the process, uplift the hearts of three generations of viewers.

After Elaine finds out about Ben’s affair with her mother and shuts him out of her life, she, on the rebound, accepts the marriage proposal of a prim and proper suitor. A wedding date is set, and when Ben discovers that the marriage is about to take place, he puts aside his fumbling and stumbling and goes into a full-court press in an effort to find out when and where.

In one of the frantic calls he makes to find out where the wedding is to take place, he is told that the ceremony is probably already over. And to me, his reaction to hearing this dreaded news is one of the key lessons to take away from this film classic.

Instead of hanging his head in sorrow and driving back home, he jumps in his car and speeds toward the church where the wedding is in progress. But as he nears the church, in predictable antihero fashion, he runs out of gas!

So, what does our antihero do when he runs out of gas? He jumps out of his uncooperative vehicle and runs the remainder of the way. And when he finally arrives — you guessed it — the doors are locked!

Again, instead of walking away in despair, our antihero dashes up an outside stairway and, through a large glass window, looks down on the wedding ceremony — which is about to end with the traditional bride-bridegroom kiss.

Without a trace of fumbling or stumbling, he bangs on the glass, desperately shouting, “Elaine! Elaine!” And, as could happen in only in a Hollywood movie, Elaine looks up and cries out, “Ben!”

After a wild struggle with Elaine’s parents and other attendees, Ben and Elaine, hand in hand, run from the church (barricading the angry mob inside by jamming a large cross through the handles of the front doors), jump on a bus that just happens to be making a Hollywood stop at the corner, and the bus pulls away with another “lives happily ever after” ending in the can.

Even though it would be hard to imagine such an ending in real life, there is a message in all this that is certainly applicable to our hard world of reality — and in Part II of this article, we’ll take a close look at what that message is.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

By John A. Pugsley

When Congress spends more money than it collects in taxes, it authorizes the Treasury Department to borrow from the public by selling Treasury bills, bonds, and notes. The Treasury offers these securities for sale at public auction, and they are bid for and purchased by banks, pension funds, trusts, corporations, individuals, and even foreign interests. These are widely considered to be the safest IOUs around. After all, they are guaranteed by the U.S. government.

Inasmuch as Treasury securities are offered at auction, there is no chance they will not be purchased. The Treasury can offer as high a rate of interest as is necessary to attract buyers. Thus, investors, including individuals, pension funds, banks, and life insurance companies needing safety of principal are induced to sell other debt securities such as bonds, savings accounts, and certificates of deposit, and buy the government IOUs.

Sale of government securities thus absorbs the savings of individuals and corporations. The more that government borrows, the less money that is left over for other borrowers. As a consequence, other borrowers must offer higher and higher rates of interest in order to attract funds. Thus, when the federal government runs deficits, it tends to raise interest rates, and this in turn causes the cost of doing business to rise. As a result, business activity slows down, and both businesses and consumers curtail spending and the economy moves toward recession.

Recessions are politically unpalatable. Idled workers and distraught businessmen hound their government representatives to do something. The only way the politicians can meet the demands of their constituents to “do something” is to borrow even more money and spend it subsidizing business, paying unemployment benefits to idled workers, and buying products from the distressed companies. In other words, the government borrows a dollar from one person and gives it to another as a pretense of fighting the recession — which only makes things worse. Additional federal borrowing further depletes the supply of available credit and amplifies the recession.

It is widely believed that the Fed is sympathetic with the problems recessions create for politicians, and lowers interest rates in order to keep those politicians in favor with the public. That is not the case at all. The Fed is not a federal agency. It is owned and run by the banking industry. In fact, it is relatively insulated from political pressure, but it has other reasons to act.

What are they? A recession means bad times for the banks. People stop borrowing, corporations lose business, and bank profits drop. When borrowers get into trouble, banks get into trouble. If the recession turns into a full-scale depression, widespread bank failures may result, as they did in the 1920s. Since the Fed is an organization made up of banks, it is clearly in the best interests of those running it to ward off the recession by lowering interest rates. And it does so by expanding the money supply.

When the Fed determines that interest rates should be lowered, or at least prevented from rising any further, it contacts private dealers who make the market in (i.e., who buy and sell) U.S. government securities. The Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve meets and issues orders to purchase Treasury securities. (Remember, these are the same T-bills and bonds that created the rising interest rates in the first place by absorbing the savings of individuals and corporations.)

The Fed pays the dealers for the securities with Federal Reserve checks, which the dealers then deposit in their banks. The bond dealers’ banks then forward those checks to the Fed (where the banks have their reserves on deposit), and the Fed credits the reserve accounts of the banks.

Now the bank has new reserves against which it can make loans. These fresh reserves are just like new deposits from customers, and can be expanded by the same process that all bank deposits are expanded. Under reserve requirements in effect at any point in time (the Fed can change them at will), these reserves can be expanded by five, six, or seven times through what is calls “fractional reserve banking.” Thus, when the Federal Reserve buys $1 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, the banks can loan out $5, $6, or $7 billion to borrowers.

Where did the Fed get the money to buy the Treasury securities? It created it out of thin air. It credits the reserve account of a bank by a simple bookkeeping entry. What does the Fed have to back up its IOUs? It has the IOUs of the U.S. Treasury, that is, the Treasury’s bills and bonds.

The Federal Reserve accounts thus balance: They show a liability of the bank reserves and the offsetting asset of Treasury securities. The Federal Reserve Notes in your pocket or checking account mean that the Fed owes you money, and these are in turn backed up by the T-bills they hold — which means that the government owes the Fed money. The U.S. government continues to issue more and more IOUs to cover its ever-growing deficits, and the Fed continues to buy these up and issue its own notes in their place.

This whole process is known as “monetizing” debt, which means that the debt of the federal government is turned into money. The government borrows money to meet its deficits, and the IOUs it issues eventually are converted into Federal Reserve Notes. Those greenbacks in your wallet that you think of as money are only government IOUs broken up and reissued by the Fed.

Thus, in the long run, there is no difference between the government fighting a recession by borrowing money from Peter and giving it to Paul and the Fed fighting the recession by buying up Treasury bills and giving the banks new reserves. The only difference is in the timing. The effects of government borrowing are almost instantly offset by the effects of government spending. But when the Fed monetizes the government debt, it takes months, or even years, for people to offset the influx of new money by raising their prices. The Fed action just postpones the inevitable a bit longer than the government action does.

Federal deficits, then, are the primary cause of continued inflation of the money supply. Once banks have loaned out their depositors’ money to the maximum limit set by reserve requirements, the only source of new dollars is the Federal Reserve. Thus, the Federal Reserve is the real engine of inflation.

John Pugsley is an economist, best-selling author, the Chairman of The Sovereign Society, and editor of The Stealth Investor, an investment advisory letter specializing in natural resources. In the first quarter of 2009, while the Dow Jones Industrials average fell by over 11%, his Stealth Investor portfolio gained a stunning 43%. John has written extensively on the Federal Reserve and the Treasury’s stimulus package, and has generously offered to send a 30-page compilation of his recent articles to Voice of Sanity readers. To request a free copy, contact him at johnpugsley@stealthinvestor.com. Just tell him Robert Ringer sent you.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to
www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

As I said at the end of Part I of this article, myths aside, the facts clearly show that for the past hundred years, Democrats, by and large, have been The Party of War.

Consider:

• Woodrow Wilson led the U.S. into World War I in 1917. (A true fascist, Wilson also got Congress to pass the U.S. Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a crime to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.”)

• Franklin D. Roosevelt took the U.S. into World War II in 1941. (His fascist actions are widely known to any casual student of history, such as his attempt to increase the size of the Supreme Court and bring in “liberal” justices to outvote conservatives on the bench — those who believed that many of his New Deal programs were unconstitutional.)

• After practically blowing Japan off the map in 1945, Harry Truman, in 1950, committed U.S. troops to fight against the North Koreans in what became known as the Korean War.

• John F. Kennedy clumsily got the U.S. into a “police action” in a country no one had ever heard of before (to help the French, no less!), and that little police action became a national nightmare — a losing national nightmare: the Vietnam War. (Under Great Society leader Lyndon Johnson, the Vietnam War escalated out of control. Ditto with Republican Richard Nixon, though he did finally end the fiasco and leave behind millions of South Vietnamese to be at the mercy of the Viet Cong butchers.)

• And when the Monica Lewinsky problem got out of control, what did Bill Clinton do? He ordered a massive attack on Iraq hours before the House of Representatives was scheduled to debate his impeachment! They say that love is grand — but when presidents are in serious trouble, war is grander.

Through centuries, wars have served many purposes for many different factions. Obviously, they are loved by those who finance them and those who manufacture bombs, bullets, and weapons. But for a political leader, one of war’s most useful purposes is to divert attention. Had World War II not happened by, FDR would have kept on trying to get us out of the Great Depression through never-ending, economy-draining government works programs and draconian taxation on producers.

But the war changed everything for FDR. War “brought us all together.” It made us feel good about America and about ourselves. It took people’s minds off their economic misery and refocused them on patriotism. Then came the baby boom and fifty-plus years of the power of capitalism fending off the relentless assault of American progressivism (i.e., “social progressivism”).

Fast-forward to 2008. Economic forces finally expose artificial prosperity in the U.S. for what it is — artificial! — which causes millions of Americans to think, “Gee, if Republicans are going to act like Democrats, why not just vote for real Democrats?” And, by golly, that’s what they did. They voted for some vague notion of change they thought they could believe in. The only trouble was that they had no idea what kind of change was in the making.

And, as they say, the rest is history — history that is, at this very moment, unfolding before our eyes: a total disregard for the Constitution, citizens being forced to bail out companies that the government deems to be “too big to fail,” and talk of a clampdown on free speech, gun ownership, and, above all, free enterprise … to name but a few examples of what’s going on.

Now, millions of Americans are wondering, “What’s next?” Well, the truth is that no one knows for sure, because the emerging dictatorship in Washington is thrashing about so wildly in an effort to “not let a good crisis go to waste” that things are spinning out of control. Anything is possible — inflation and deflation at the same time … timid submission to servitude … even an armed insurrection by millions of people who are mad as hell and unwilling to take it anymore (such as those attending today’s “tea parties” from coast to coast).

Of course, history has seen all this before. And all too often the solution for a president is to play the Great Attention-Diverter Card: War. Didn’t the first of the many Obamas we’ve seen start out as the candidate who was against war? Now, many Obamas later, the candidate of peace is expanding the war in Afghanistan.

Surely, even he knows that no one ever defeats the Afghanis (even if you call them Taliban). Fighting is what they live for. Neither time nor the loss of human life is relevant to them. The Russians found this out the hard way.

So, the W Factor is really the X factor in the economic chaos that the socialist progressives have wreaked upon us. (Yes, George Bush started the whole thing with his massive spending spree, but the solution wasn’t to repeat his mistake times ten — in two months, no less!)

As a result of the over-the-top spending the fascists have already put in place, the lives of most Americans — not to mention their children and grandchildren — are guaranteed to get much worse in the years ahead. That’s written in stone.

Even if a miracle happened and conservatives got control of both the Senate and the House in 2010, it would take years of fiscal responsibility and deregulation to undo the damage that’s been done. And that presumes that conservatives would have the political courage to roll back the massive spending programs that would already be in place.

So, yes, I’m worried about BHO and his comrades putting the W Factor into play in a serious way … say, with another Vietnam … in an effort to distract people’s attention away from their economic misery. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen. But, as Glenn Beck would say, “I’m just sayin’ … ya know?”

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

Unlike the Windows Search effort I discussed in my last article, manually searching Windows Explorer or My Computer begins with how you store a document. Because if you do a good job of storing it, finding it should be easy. There was a simple reason why I couldn’t find my son’s paper: I had stored it in the wrong folder! Doh!

What do I mean by “wrong folder”? In my world, a wrong folder is one that is not a logical place for a particular document to be stored. There is no doubt in my mind that everyone reading this article knows exactly what I mean by this, because every computer user has made this mistake — usually many, many times.

Because I was in a hurry (an open invitation to computer problems), I filed my son’s paper in one of my business folders. For the sake of convenience, I didn’t want to take the time to click a few folders and store it in a
logical one. (Note: This is a direct violation of my cherished Slow, Fast Rule. Taking the time to do things right almost always results in saving time in the long run.)

In my computer, a logical folder would have been “To be transferred,” “Limbo,” or “Temp.” If a file is not going to be a long-term resident of my computer, or if I expect to relocate it at a later date, it gets temporarily housed in one of these folders.

Of course, I had every intention of transferring the document later that evening or the next day — as soon as I found “a free moment.” But who ever gets a free moment? If your brain is anything like mine, you know that thoughts like this make their way into the Lost and Found Cavity of your gray matter very quickly, never to be heard from again.

So, whereas the purpose of Part I of this article was to provide you with a tip that would help you implement an effective Windows Search, the purpose of this article is to help you avoid having to do a lengthy search. It’s so much easier to take a few seconds to store a document in the right folder than to spend forever searching for that document. And, as we all know, from time to time a file can even get lost forever.

There are a hundred tricks to setting up a logical filing system in your computer. If you’re a reasonably sophisticated computer user, you probably already know ninety-nine of them. Even so, allow me to offer just a couple of simple tips.

First, you can place the folders and documents you use most frequently at the top of your list (for easy access) by fooling your computer. By this I mean using prefix letters, numbers, and symbols.

For example, if you want your “Marketing” document or folder to be at the top of your list of files, you can accomplish this by renaming it “!Marketing.” That’s right, an exclamation point trumps “1″ — and, by the way, “1″ trumps “A.” You have to get in there and play with it in order to figure out the best system for your needs.

Second, get in the habit of making and naming new folders — the more detailed, the better. You can do this in Windows Explorer by clicking “File” — “New” — “Folder,” then typing in the name you want to give the new folder. Or, in the “Open” dialog box, you can just click “File” — “Open” — then click the folder icon on the right side of the toolbar at the top of the box and type in the name of the new folder.

If you’ve not spent much time working in this sphere of the computer world, you’ll find that by jumping in with both feet and playing around with it, it becomes very fast and very easy. And you’ll be absolutely amazed at how organized you can make your filing system — and how much time, effort, and grief you can save yourself.

Most important, you won’t incur the wrath of your child, who already sees you as a hopeless boob when it comes to computers. But that’s an article for another day.

At least once or twice a week, I meet someone, or see someone on television, who really inspires me. A few weeks ago, my inspiration came from a remarkable, upbeat young woman by the name of Cara Fortunato.

I met Cara at a high school where my son was playing in a tournament. After his game, he and I happened to pass the open door to her office and saw that she was watching a college game on television. We asked if she would mind if we joined her.

As the game progressed, we struck up a conversation with Cara about her life and career. She told us that she coached the girls’ basketball team for the middle school. At one point, she said, “I get so mad at the girls when they don’t follow my instructions, it drives me crazy.”

She went on to say, “So I get out on the floor with them and try to show them how I want them to move. But it gets frustrating, sometimes, because I have to drag this darn thing around with me.” At that point, she pulled up her right pant leg slightly and slapped a leg that was all metal.

I don’t know about you, but no matter how much of this kind of thing I see, it always gets my attention. I asked her how she lost her leg, and she explained that it happened in a freak accident in California about five years ago.

I didn’t quite catch all the details, but the bottom line was that she was standing in the wrong place when a huge truck started rolling down a hill. She got caught between that truck and another one behind her, and the next thing she knew she was, as she described it, “rolling end over end downhill.”

When she got to the bottom of the hill, she thought she had escaped a near-fatal accident by the skin of her teeth, because she didn’t feel any pain. But when she checked herself out, she found that her right leg was missing. She later discovered that her leg was still lodged between the two trucks at the top of the hill.

Today, Cara displays an incredibly enthusiastic, high-energy personality, and clearly has a zest for life. As she put it, “Hey, sh– happens in life. When I wake up every morning, the first thing I think of is how lucky I am to be alive.”

We all hear and see these kinds of stories every day — which is good, because we need to continually be reminded of how lucky we are. With few exceptions, no matter how heavy your burdens, you can always find people who have much heavier crosses to bear. Socrates summed it up so well when he said, “If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own.”

Remember, a handicap is anything that makes achievement more difficult. Which means that everyone has handicaps — physical or otherwise. But just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Put another way, you don’t necessarily overcome your handicaps. That’s usually not possible. The object is to succeed in spite of your handicaps. And that is possible.

As just one example, a fellow by the name of Pete Grey played Major League Baseball back in the forties, albeit briefly, with one arm. In the minor leagues, he hit .333 one year, had five homeruns, tied a league record by stealing 68 bases, and was named the Southern Association’s most valuable player. Grey never got his arm back, but he succeeded in spite of it.

What are your handicaps? Lower-than-average IQ? Lack of education? A poverty stricken childhood? Do yourself a favor and make an honest list of your handicaps. Then, factor them into your planning … and make a commitment to succeed in spite of them.

I ended Part II of my article “Does Anyone Get It Yet?” by saying, “Perhaps you’re wondering what the W stands for in the D & W Factors, and how it plays into all this. No teasing intended, but I think I’ll leave that for another time. I wouldn’t want to say anything that might spoil your otherwise blissful day.”

Well, wouldn’t you know it? Here I am, just ten days later, and I can’t resist revealing the W Factor. As I’ve already explained, the D stands for Dictatorship. Now, there are many avenues that can lead to a dictatorship, but perhaps the one that offers the least amount of resistance is to be found in the W Factor: War.

It’s not exactly a revelation to say that liberal myths have been ingrained in the minds of the general public for decades, and one of the greatest of those myths is that conservatives are warmongers. You do remember how Ronald Reagan was going to pull the trigger on World War III fifteen minutes after being sworn into office, don’t you?

What a disappointment he turned out to be. Other than a little communist butt-kicking in Grenada in 1983, sending a playful missile across Mohammar Quadaffi’s dining room table in 1986, and the much-ado-about-nothing Iran-Contra affair, it was Reagan’s aura of strength — not bombs and bullets — that caused walls to fall and evil empires to crumble.

Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of conservatives have opted for war during the past hundred years, the latest being George W. Bush. But, while ego and revenge are possible motives for his ill-advised foray into the Middle East, I don’t believe Bush invaded Iraq to increase his personal power over U.S. citizens.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for liberals, who are genetically programmed to speak with forked tongues. It has long been apparent to me that these perpetually angry humanoids — in particular, those on the far left — are fascists at heart.

Think environmentalism and “global warming” … think anti-gun fanaticism … think annihilation of free speech. Think of anything that flies in the face of their addiction to causes that take liberties away from individuals and give more power to government.

If you’ve been taken in by the liberal myth that fascism is a synonym for conservatism, consider the words of Jonah Goldberg, from his book Liberal Fascism:

The major flaw in all this is that fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left. This fact — an inconvenient truth if there ever was one — is obscured in our time by the equally mistaken belief that fascism and communism are opposites.

In reality, they are closely related, historical competitors for the same constituents, seeking to dominate and control the same social space. The fact that they appear as polar opposites is a trick of intellectual history and (more to the point) the result of a concerted propaganda effort on the part of the “Reds” [RR Note: Communists, not the Cincinnati Reds] to make the “Browns” [RR Note: Nazis, not the Cleveland Browns] appear objectively evil and “other” (ironically, demonization of the “other” is counted as a definitional trait of fascism). But in terms of their theory and practice, the differences are minimal.

Goldberg later goes on to say:

Now, I am not saying that all liberals are fascists. Nor am I saying that to believe in socialized medicine or smoking bans is evidence that you are a crypto-Nazi. What I am mainly trying to do is to dismantle the granitelike assumption in our political culture that American conservatism is an offshoot or cousin of fascism. Rather, as I will try to show, many of the ideas and impulses that inform what we call liberalism come to us through an intellectual tradition that led directly to fascism. These ideas were embraced by fascism, and remain in important respects fascistic.

So what, exactly, is fascism? Fascism is defined as “a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”

Based on the historical evidence, I would add to this definition “having a penchant for coming up with reasons to go to war.” Sorry to puncture a longstanding myth, but the facts clearly show that for the past hundred years, Democrats, by and large, have been The Party of War.

And in Part II of this article, we’ll take a closer look at that reality.

If you have thoughts to share regarding this article:

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Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

Who Will Tell the People the Truth?

By Robert Ringer

Thomas Friedman recently wrote an article in The New York Times titled “Who will tell the people?” Friedman, liberal though he may be, is an outstanding writer and future-oriented thinker. You may know him as the author of The Lexis and the Olive Tree and The World is Flat.

Friedman says “We don’t need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.”

Which I presume means that Friedman is not planning to vote in the upcoming election. Hello, Thomas. Are you listening? None of the major candidates is tough enough — or honest enough — to tell the American people the truth. None of them has the character to “talk straight” to voters.

I’ve observed more presidential elections than I care to admit to, and I can say unequivocally that, as a group, the current crop of candidates is the most pathetic I have ever seen. It’s like being given a choice of how you would like to die — by firing squad, hanging, or decapitation.

No matter who you vote for this year, the moral and economic decline of the U.S. will continue. Granted, it will happen much faster if Obama is in office than if John McCain is elected. But regardless of who is elected, he/she will preside over more and bigger disasters than any president in history. And since there is no practical way to solve any of the nation’s biggest problems, the next president will receive most of the blame. [RR note: If I'm wrong on this last point, all hope for a return to a semi-free America is lost.]

Friedman says “We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.” Which sounds great, except for one thing. What “working on our country” means is subjective. Candidates like to talk about measures they believe will “work,” but it’s meaningless.

Hey, everything works. To paraphrase Sy Leon, the question is not whether something works but whether we like the way it works. Just because something works doesn’t mean it is desirable.

Communism works, if your purpose is to enslave people. Stealing works (at least some of the time), if all you care about is money. Lying works, if you don’t care about your personal integrity. Literally anything, no matter how monstrously immoral, will work, depending on the outcome you’re going for and how you define the term work.

To be sure, both McCain and Hillary would continue to lead the country down the road to communism, but Obama would take it to its ultimate destination much faster. His perpetually angry wife, who appears to wear the pants in the family, made that abundantly clear when she passed the litmus test for hard-core communists.

The litmus test I am referring to is the ignorant and childish belief that the size of the world’s wealth pie is fixed. In one of her many angry diatribes (which must have had Obama’s handlers trying to figure out ways to muzzle her — the same problem Bill Clinton’s handlers had with Hillary for so many years) — Meanie Michelle said:

“Someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.” Are you listening, mesmerized voters? The Obamas intend to take more of
your “pie” and give it to those whom they arbitrarily believe are in “need” of it. In politically incorrect circles, this is known as communism — and, as I said, it only works if your purpose is to enslave people.

Communist thinkers are not able to comprehend the simple reality that the economic pie can be expanded indefinitely. In other words, there is no practical limit to the amount of wealth that can be created. Sadly, the greatest obstacle producers have to overcome in trying to increase the size of the economic pie is government intervention in the economy. Politicians would rather play the role of Robin Hood than see people be financially better off.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, the only way to control people — since they ultimately rebel when you try to take too much of their pie — is through the use of force, which often results in a dictatorship. I don’t mind you laughing at that, just so you remember you read it here first.

Now in fairness to the Obamas, Hillary Clinton and John McCain also intend to take more of your pie and give it to those whom they believe to be in need. It’s just that their spouses have the good sense not to talk about it in public.

Having said this, I feel intellectually compelled to respect Michelle Obama for being honest. She has a far bigger set of testiculos than her husband. He’s been very careful not to explain how he intends to rearrange the pie. Instead, this ultra-slick politician has wrapped himself in the American flag and talks in clichés and generalities.

So, who will tell the people the truth? Answer: No one, because you can’t get elected by doing it. All the candidates are well aware of the fact that there is no constituency for cutting entitlements. They know they have only two choices: Lie or lose. Just ask Ron Paul, who was brushed aside by the media (including Fox News!) and the Republican Party for consistently refusing to deceive voters.

In a free country, of course, you have a right to go on believing whatever you wish to believe. But, at the same time, you should recognize that reality is not discriminatory. Nature does not accept ignorance as an excuse for making wrong decisions. Nature metes out negative consequences just as harshly to a person who is well-meaning but misinformed as to one who is malevolent and stubborn.

As to your own litmus test, ask yourself this question: “Instead of listening to the three major candidates crack jokes on Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show, and the Late Show With David Letterman, do I have the courage to focus on what is really happening to this country — morally, culturally, and economically?” [RR note: The winner is still spending his time cracking jokes on the late-night talk shows! And, worse, a majority of Americans are eating it up.]

If the answer is no — if you are so hopelessly mesmerized by one of the presidential candidates that you can’t bring yourself to hear the truth — rest assured that that, too, will work. Because, as I said earlier, everything works. The only question is how well will it work — and for whom? [RR note: We are now in the process of getting the answer to this question, and it's almost certain to be a bad one for most Americans.]

Just know that the clock is ticking on American (and Western) civilization, and you can be sure that it will start to tick much faster come next January. [RR note: Forgive my understatement. I should have said, "much, much faster."]

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

As the Obamacrats continue to take over banks, auto manufacturers, and, soon, everything from land-development firms to sports franchises to lemonade stands, more and more people will finally get it. They won’t have a choice: They’ll be living in servitude!

Of all the dictators over the past hundred years, I think BHO comes closest to the model used by Adolf Hitler. I know, I know … I can practically hear you chuckling. Enslaved people throughout history have a propensity for chuckling – until they wake up one morning and find themselves in chains. So, by all means, feel free to chuckle – but do hear me out.

Though few people realize it, Hitler was legitimately chosen to be Chancellor of Germany in 1933 by President Paul von Hindenburg. At his swearing in ceremony, Hitler faithfully repeated the oath of office: “I will employ my strength for the welfare of the German people, protect the Constitution and laws of the German people, conscientiously discharge the duties imposed on me, and conduct my affairs of office impartially and with justice to everyone.”

Nice words … similar to those uttered by the president of the United States when being sworn into office. Hitler was a charming, eloquent speaker who carried on incessantly about change. (Sound familiar?) Then, once elected, he moved quickly to establish a dictatorship – accomplishing that seemingly impossible feat (in a Western democracy!) within weeks.

Big business supported Hitler, because they felt certain his policies would wreck the economy and, thus, lead to a return to authoritarian rule (which major corporations love, because it makes it easier for them to establish monopolies). What they did not count on, however, was that Hitler himself would be the one to grab the reins of power.

The upstart Nazi Party (which was the commonly used name for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party … repeat, Socialist) staged a slobbering love affair between Hitler and the German people. (Sound familiar?) When Hitler spoke for the first time as Chancellor, it was said that “he was greeted with an outpouring of worshipful adulation unlike anything ever seen before in Germany.” (Sound familiar?)

It is appropriate that I close by quoting from The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek, “the bible” when it comes to explaining the way countries travel the road from democracy to dictatorship:

It is important to remember that, for some time before 1933, Germany had reached a stage in which it had, in effect, had to be governed dictatorially. Nobody could then doubt that for the time being democracy had broken down and that sincere democrats like Bruning were no more able to govern democratically than Schleicher or von Papen.

Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy and at the critical moment obtained the support of many to whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the central government of America was very weak – which was a good thing. It was true then, and it’s true now: You can have a strong government and a weak people, or a strong people and a weak government – but you cannot have both. Today, we have a draconian, out-of-control government and a very weak people.

Arguably, democracy in this country started breaking down in 1787, when the Constitution created a strong federal government. It got worse – much worse – under the fascist policies of Woodrow Wilson’s reign from 1912 to 1920. Then, beginning in 1932, FDR’s failed fascist policies took away even more individual freedom from American citizens. And the final disintegration of true democracy in the U.S. was catalyzed by the left-wing revolutionaries of the sixties.

So if you’re wondering how BHO and his Marxist cronies have been able to violate the Constitution as though is didn’t exist, the answer is that they are merely taking advantage of the decay of democracy in the U.S. that was already present when they came to power. While Americans have been busy watching American Idol, Oprah, and other assorted mind-dulling fare on TV, the liberal fascists (to borrow Jonah Goldberg’s appropriate term) in Washington have been quietly (until now) working to establish a dictatorship based on the ruins of democracy.

Get it? I hope so. Because if a vast majority of everyday folks don’t get it soon, it will be too late. Perhaps it already is. We will soon find out.

Perhaps you’re wondering what the W stands for in the D & W Factors, and how it plays into all this. No teasing intended, but I think I’ll leave that for another time. I wouldn’t want to say anything that might spoil your otherwise blissful day.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

I didn’t watch much news for a couple of weeks, because I found it frustrating that almost no one — not even the staunchest conservatives – seemed to get it. Today, however, I am happy to see that a handful of commentators are edging closer to acknowledging what is really happening to America.

Even Bill O’Reilly is now using the term socialism (though he still claims that BHO has “good intentions”). O’Reilly, you will recall, is the guy who, back in the good old days when Rev. Wright was entertaining us nightly, insisted “I don’t believe for a second that Obama shares the reverend’s radical views.” (If the latter is not a precise quote, it’s a close paraphrase of statements about Obama that O’Reilly has repeatedly made.)

Now that I’m back to watching the news, I’m happy to see that Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, and Newt Gingrich have begun to openly accuse BHO of lying. The other night, Hannity even used the word
Bolsheviks in reference to what the Obamacrats are doing to this country.

But Dick Morris is even closer to zeroing in on the BHO endgame. He has frequently stated that BHO is well aware that his policies will destroy the U.S. economy. And he’s right. BHO knows exactly what he is doing. Morris believes that transforming the U.S. into a socialist country is more important to BHO than winning a second term. Pretty good insight – but on that one, he’s still a step away from fully getting it.

I’ll get to what I mean by that in a second. But first, I feel compelled to say that in the Getting It Derby, Glenn Beck is ahead of the field by a solid margin. Beck just may be the most talented commentator in television history. Amazingly, he managed to overcome his drug and alcohol addictions, and is now one of the most well-informed and brilliant voices in the media.

What sets him apart from his equals is his ability to entertain and his fearlessness when it comes to speaking the unspeakable. However, since Beck switched to his natural habitat (Fox News), events in Washington have forced him to transition from an emphasis on humor to an emphasis on anger.

He is the only person on TV who talks openly about communism in the U.S., and yesterday he referred to BHO as “the master of misdirection.” I don’t know how long the government is going to sit by and allow Beck to feed raw truth to the public, but he is saying things that honestly make me fear for his life.

Even so, I’m not 100 percent certain that even Beck has taken that last step – the one Dick Morris is so close to taking. The step I am referring to is talking candidly to the public about the “D & W Factors” – the factors no one wants to think about, let alone discuss out loud.

For purposes of this article, I will zero in on the D Factor only: Dictatorship. This is the one area where I disagree with Dick Morris (i.e., that BHO is willing to be a one-term president in order to implement his socialist agenda). I don’t believe that BHO has any intention of being a one-term president. Quite the opposite, in fact. I think he much prefers the Hugo Chavez model: Take control, then move swiftly to create economic havoc and use it as an excuse to establish a dictatorship.

Now don’t go giving BHO credit for originality. He is the ultimate no-change president, but a very clever copycat. Getting elected and then using your powers to eliminate all competition is an old trick used by power-hungry thugs in countries large and small.

In Part II of this article, I’ll discuss just one example of where the transition from democracy to dictatorship was pulled off quite smoothly – and quickly – and the masses cheered as they marched happily down the road to serfdom.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

By Dr. Ken Evoy

E-commerce is still a very immature and confusing way of doing business. Hucksters and false experts abound at every level. It’s difficult to decide on the best approach to doing business on the Internet and who to listen to.

You can chase the gurus who claim to have the secret system. Or seek out the magical Search Engine Optimizer who claims to be able to get you to the top of the major search engines. Or you can depend on your Webmaster, who talks so far over your head that you have no way of knowing if he’s competent or not.

But what you’re really interested in finding out is why your site gets so little free traffic from Google, Yahoo!, et al. And that begins with taking responsibility for your own life and future, applying your own common sense, and making changes that empower you to use the Web in a logical, effective way.

If you would like to be able to “get the Net,” the first step is to dispel one common myth: that it is hard to create a Web site. The truth is that any monkey can put up a Web site and “be found” by someone looking for his company name or products.

You don’t need a Web site to enable customers and prospects who already know you to find you (although it’s nice to have a special area for them). Rather, you need a Web site to grow your business with people who have never heard of you before, whether your business is as local as a dental office or as global as a software company.

Having said this, I’d like to introduce you to my Five Fundamental Realities of Small Business Online.

The First Fundamental Reality of Small Business Online:

Most of the world does not know you. Use your Web site to grow your business.

Yes, there are other reasons to have a Web site, such as customer support, loyalty programs, etc. But this article is about using the Web to infuse your customer list with high volumes of new blood, find new audiences, and reach clients in corners of the world that you would otherwise never know you existed. Which brings us to …

The Second Fundamental Reality of Small Business Online:

People search for “content.”

Lock that firmly into your forebrain, because it will change everything for you. It’s about how and why people use the Web. Content is information, whether it’s being used for a university project by your daughter or in search of a cure for the type of cancer your uncle has.

Or perhaps in a quest for the perfect golf swing, research on the best planting mix for cacti, or planning a vacation. Whatever the purpose of the consumer of content, your site’s job is to deliver that content, not to sell products. (We will, however, get to that part later).

You must meet your pre-customer at “the point of search.” Deliver the content he wants, and your site will greet (at no cost to you) tens, then hundreds, then thousands of visitors every day — real people who will be interested in you and your business, but who likely had never heard of you before.

Of course, you could advertise on Google. It’s a good adjunct if you have a high-profit product or service to sell — and if you have the resources to assign an in-house person to it or hire expensive outside consultants. But even if you can figure out how to buy Google ads profitably, you still need to be aware of …

The Third Fundamental Reality of Small Business Online:

If you don’t generate your own free, targeted traffic, you don’t own your business.

What this means is that folks who work at building an eBay business really work for eBay, because eBay owns the traffic. E-auctioneers are subject to regularly increasing prices and restriction of practices. Ditto if you depend on traffic through advertising. And the same goes for any company that is not generating its own targeted traffic.

If you don’t generate your own traffic, you are missing the incredible diversity of new pre-customers you could be reaching by building high-value content that people want. And you are squandering the power of providing the “Web 2.0” means for them to provide content for your site and spread your brand and business virally to ever more people in your target market(s). The importance of “high-value content” brings us to …

The Fourth Fundamental Reality of Small Business Online:

Over deliver what your visitors want. Pre-sell, then monetize.

Pre-selling through high-value content warms up your customers with a good first impression. Remember, they found you, so they start off in a favorable frame of mind. Convert that into an interested and motivated sensation that wants to know more about you — the person/company that is a special provider of top-notch information.

Whether you sell widgets or propagate rare tortoises, someone is looking for information related to your business. Give first, then take. Pre-sell, then sell. Only after you pre-sell are you in a strong position to monetize.

Which brings us to the exchange of goods and services for dollars, as explained in …

The Fifth Fundamental Reality Of Small Business Online:

In the world of the Internet, you are not what you sell. You are the content you provide.

Offline, we tend to define ourselves by how we monetize. We’re doctors … or salespeople … or writers … or we wear any one of a thousand other monikers. Online, that translates into creating content sites about whatever your particular specialty happens to be. Remember: You monetize last.

In summation, SiteSell’s success formula is:

Content   Traffic   Pre-sell   Monetize

The good news is that it’s simple to apply this formula to your business. Not easy … but simple.

Why not easy? Because, contrary to popular belief, the Internet does not override reality. It takes gravity for an apple to fall to the ground. It takes two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen to produce a molecule of water. And it takes effort to build a serious, long-term, profitable business.

So, when I say it’s simple but not easy, I mean that once you recognize the reality of C T P M, all you need to do is act on it.

Hopefully, you already know a lot about your business area of expertise. If so, all you need is a vehicle to remove the technical barriers, as there is no good reason for them to exist anymore.

First off, you must shed the lure of false gurus, magical Search Engine Optimizers, and the purveyors of get-rich-quick schemes. Being successful on the Internet is not about getting a site up quickly, cheap, and easy — as so many of the large Web hosts would have you believe. It’s about building a real and lasting business.

Focus on the realities of building an online business that grows long-term, ever-increasing profits. If you do, I can assure you that you will dramatically multiply the profits and equity value of your company.

A Voice of Sanity was so impressed with SiteSell’s philosophy and results that it became a SBI! user itself. If you would like to learn more about this remarkable new way of doing business on the Internet, click here.

While pondering the continued existence of slavery and genocide throughout the world, I also thought about the current batch of scoundrels running for the highest office in the land. They all have at least one thing in common: They employ their favorite euphemisms (e.g., “change”) to hide their intent to further increase government power over ordinary citizens.

Amazingly, these masters of deceit are revered by millions. Especially by those politically sedated humanoids who cheer wildly and pump signs into the air as their political heroes work them into a frenzy with the same tired platitudes that have been used by politicians throughout recorded history.

The airlines warn us to put on our own oxygen masks first so we will be in a better position to help our children. Good analogy, because as I watch those ecstatic sign holders on TV dutifully playing out their roles as political sheep, it occurs to me that folks who are interested in lessening pain and suffering in the world might do well to first concentrate on what is happening right here in America. Most Americans are so lost that they have come to actually love their servitude.

Just as the war against teacher and student bullying is never ending, so, too, is the war against tyranny. Thirty years ago, I wrote that the only hope for the U.S. lies in educating the masses. To be sure, libertarianism — which I believe a majority of Americans would embrace if they understood it — has made strides since then, and that is cause for hope. Unfortunately, those who aspire to consolidate government’s power over the masses have made even greater strides.

We may never become another Burma or Bosnia, but, aside from the varying degrees of violence, slavery by any other name is still slavery. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World painted a pretty stark picture of that reality.

The March Madness guys are great athletes who excel at playing a great game. And for that, I guess they deserve some applause. But they are not heroes. And no matter how exciting any of the tournament games may be, basketball is still only a game.

You, on the other hand, can be a hero. How? By refusing to be taken in by the corrupt political system that is ever more rapidly moving the U.S. toward totalitarianism … by learning all you can about the concept of liberty … by educating yourself about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the true intent of our founding fathers … and by sharing your knowledge with as many people as possible.

Gradualism and lethargy have worked in tandem over the past hundred years to make the odds against steering America back to its original libertarian foundation almost impossible to overcome. Almost — but not completely. To the extent you work at spreading the gospel of liberty to others — explaining to as many people as possible why liberty must be given a higher priority than all other objectives — you are a hero.

By all means, enjoy sports and other forms of entertainment as a respite from the daily cares of life. But for the sake of your children and grandchildren, keep those things in perspective and don’t allow them to distract you from what is happening in the real world — because what’s happening is going to have a dramatic impact on their lives.

Allocating a portion of your time and energy resources to help prevent a further slide toward totalitarianism in the U.S. is a good investment. And the nice thing is that it doesn’t even require a license to become a bona fide hero … yet.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

I rarely watch sports on TV anymore, and that includes March Madness. Somehow, I find it difficult to get excited about these young kids, especially knowing that a majority of them will not graduate from college. Heroes? Not so much.

So, instead of watching college hoops like normal Americans this time of year, the other night I watched the DVD of the last Rambo. It was a grim reminder of the never-ending genocide in Burma (a.k.a. the Union of Myanmar). Part of the movie’s weak plot is based on Rambo’s warnings to a group of well meaning but naïve missionaries to go home … that their efforts in Burma were a waste of time.

Notwithstanding the over-the-top violence that saturated this film, it made it clear that there really is a brutal, repressive military regime in Burma that continues, to this day, to systematically rape, pillage, torture, and murder Burmese minorities, particularly the Karen and Shan people. These military thugs have been in power since 1962, and I’d have to agree with Old Man Rambo that things aren’t about to change anytime soon.

Burma is also a reminder that when most of us think of the word holocaust, we mistakenly associate it only with the Jews who were exterminated by Germany’s Nazi regime during World War II. And when we think of the word slavery, our myopic American view focuses only on pre-Civil War African slaves in the U.S.

Unfortunately, both genocide and slavery are, and always have been, widespread. They have, in fact, been staples of human existence since at least the days of the ancient Greeks, and probably much earlier.

For example, in the 12th century, Genghis Khan specialized in pouring molten lead into the eyes, ears, and throats of his captives. Not exactly the kind of guy you’d want your daughter to bring home. More recently, Pol Pot, who apparently was a neatness freak, kept the skulls of his victims stacked in an orderly fashion on shelves in specially designated warehouses.

Ida Amin, the black bubba of Uganda, preferred to stuff his mutilated victims in the trunks of cars. And Saddam Hussein employed everything from lethal gas to rabid dogs to keep upstarts in line. It’s been pretty much the same story in Rwanda, Darfur, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and who knows how many nameless towns and villages throughout black Africa that are terrorized by thugs brandishing weapons made in Iran, North Korea, and China.

I’m not suggesting that the U.S., or any other Western country, should intervene in any of these ongoing human tragedies, because thousands of years of recorded history have clearly demonstrated that well-meaning people don’t have the power to permanently end Third World suffering.

The days of a British Empire occupying a country like India and leaving behind a modern legal system, modern infrastructure, and a modern education system are gone forever. (It goes without saying, of course, that the Brits also plundered a good deal of India’s wealth, but most Indians concede that their country is far better off today as a result of two hundred years of British occupation.)

The reason such a foreign occupation is impossible today is because (1) the world political climate would never allow it to happen (Just think of the hatred caused by the U.S. “occupation” of Iraq.) and (2) Western countries (particularly the U.S.) are — to put it bluntly — broke. We can’t even afford to pay our current debts, let alone save victims of terror and oppression in other countries.

But in Part II of this article, we’ll take a look at what you can do to make things better.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

I had an eye-opening experience this past weekend. My wife and I were out and about late in the afternoon, and the question of dinner came up. She made a couple of suggestions, but neither of them made me salivate. (A bad sign, since that’s my normal condition whenever eating time draws near.)

On this day, I was in the mood for some serious food. After searching my Zagat-oriented mind for a few minutes, I had an epiphany: Georgia Brown’s – a high-end eatery within walking distance of the White House that we hadn’t visited for at least a year.

Georgia Brown’s is one of those rare restaurants whose food and service actually justify their Trump-size prices. Their Southern-style cuisine is incredible – and loaded with saturated fat and cholesterol.

So much so that I’m surprised Congress hasn’t passed a law requiring Georgia Brown’s to keep a couple of paramedic vehicles ready and waiting out front during business hours. That way, high-risk patrons could be shuttled straight to the nearest hospital rather than taking the trouble to go home before having a heart attack.

But who has time to think about a heart attack when there’s cornbread (the world’s best), fried green tomatoes, crispy chicken livers, and andouille sausage staring you in the face? Besides, is there any better way to die than face down in a mound of cinnamon ice cream sitting atop a hot apple cobbler?

Just as I was beginning to picture the upcoming food-fest in my mind, my wife reminded me that, to avoid a long wait, you need to make reservations well in advance if you want to be seated in the main dining room. To which I chuckled and replied, “You don’t have to worry about that anymore. Since the invisible depression has become visible for all to see, restaurants are bleeding customers. At 6:30 p.m., the place will be half empty.”

Confidently, I drove briskly down K Street, turned right on 15th, and pulled up in front of Georgia Brown’s. After handing the attendant the $8 valet-parking fee (advance payment mandatory, of course), we entered the restaurant. Doh! It was packed!

The maitre d’ told us it would be at least an hour’s wait, but we were in luck: There was a tiny, round-top table open in the bar area, where it’s first-come, first-served. My pride wanted to leave, but my taste buds and curiosity overruled. How could an expensive restaurant like this be so crowded at 6:30 p.m. in the midst of an economic holocaust?

As I studied the display of gluttony, the sipping of top-shelf beverages, and the laughter-laden chatter, it came to me. I had forgotten one little detail while arguing my case for a decline in patronage at Georgia Brown’s: Washington is a depression-proof town – especially when it comes to fine dining.

Why? Because everyone works for the government! Which means they not only make three-to-five times what they could earn in the private sector, for all practical purposes they also can’t be fired.

If you’ve always hoped to be reincarnated as a Jewish princess, you’re selling yourself short. Trust me, if you’re going to come back, pray that it’s as a member of the Inside the Beltway Privileged Class. These people live in a glass bubble – a totally different world from that of folks who have to produce better goods and services to get ahead in life.

While men and women in Des Moines and Birmingham and Kansas City are losing their jobs, their homes, and their savings, the people aboard the D.C. Good Life Express are continuing to live in the style to which they have become accustomed. They are the chief recipients of the print-borrow-tax con that has bankrupted the country and caused millions of outside-the-beltway folks untold pain.

When the masses descend upon the nation’s capitol to gawk at the Washington and Lincoln monuments, visit the Smithsonian Institute, and feast on hot dogs and Cokes while reading the names on the Vietnam Memorial, they haven’t a clue about what life is like for the people who work and live in the nation’s capitol.

They would have a hard time believing that the workers inside all those somber gray government buildings dine at expensive, gourmet restaurants as a regular way of life … among other things. Ah, well … as they say, what you don’t know won’t hurt you.

And speaking of not knowing, after dinner at Georgia Brown’s, while waiting in the vestibule between the inner and outer doors for the valet to bring our car, a nice looking African-American fellow – probably no more than thirty years old – struck up a conversation with us.

He said he had been in a meeting with President Obama at the White House that very day as part of some kind of black coalition or something. He was obviously very proud of the fact that he had met with the president, so, as a friendly gesture, I asked him what his perception of the man was.

Enthusiastically, he said, “Both President Obama and his wife are exceptionally warm, magnetic people.” You would have been proud of me. I conjured up self-discipline I didn’t know I possessed and refrained from playfully saying, “Aha … so that’s it. They’re using magnets to pilfer our pie. How clever. I never would have thought of that. Hmm … how does that work, anyway?”

Thankfully, the valet pulled our car up to the curb before I lost control and said those words out loud. Whereupon we wished the young man a good evening, slipped into our greenhouse-gas machine, and drove away.

As we disappeared into the night, I said to my wife, “You know, someday I should start an e-letter called A Voice of Sanity in an Insane World.”

“You already have,” she reminded me.

“Good,” I said. “Because I can’t imagine how I’d get by if I weren’t able to communicate with people who are serious about separating reality from illusion.”

P.S. If you come to Washington and decide to dine at Georgia Brown’s, do make reservations in advance. Remember, there is no depression inside the Beltway. Enjoy the grits – and, even more important, be sure to closely observe what’s going on around you. Even Ayn Rand wouldn’t believe it.

_______________________________________

Liberty Education Interview Series

We’re happy to announce that Robert Ringer’s Liberty Education Interview Series has been officially launched. To listen to Robert’s recent interviews with Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Stephen Moore, and other prominent pro-liberty advocates, please go to www.robertringer.com and click on the appropriate icon in the left navigation bar.

You can also go directly to http://www.robertringer.com/liberty-education-interview-series.html. In either event, please encourage your family, friends, and coworkers to listen to these interviews as well. Liberty needs all the support it can get right now.

And be sure to let us know what you think about the Liberty Education Interview Series thus far.

(Today’s article concludes my series on gold versus paper money, the content of which has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.”)

Finally, there is the argument that gold does not pay dividends or interest. But such an argument could only be made by an individual who does not understand the financial realities of today’s world.

As I pointed out earlier in this series, virtually none of the (so-called) traditional investments — i.e., Capital Black Holes and Capital Crapshoots — is income producing. They all lose to price inflation and taxes.

It’s true that if you are able to pick the right Capital Question Mark at the right time, and watch over it carefully, you have a chance to break even or, conceivably, even make a profit. But what makes gold unique is that the breakeven is virtually assured.

As to how to buy gold and what types to buy, reams of reading material are readily available to help you in these areas. Not only are there many good books on the subject, but any gold dealer will be more than happy to send you detailed literature.

The South African Krugerrand gets the lion’s share of gold’s publicity, and, all things considered, it is probably the best vehicle for owning gold. It’s a matter of market domination.

Just as more people would rather buy IBM or Xerox equipment because it is much better known in the marketplace, and hence more likely to retain a higher resale value, so it is with the well known Krugerrand.

South Africa, with its enormous resources of gold (relative to other countries), has effectively dominated the gold coin market through its Krugerrand. It now also makes 1/10 Krugerrands, 1/4 Krugerrands, and 1/2 Krugerrands, which are convenient for smaller transactions.

While speaking of lower value coins, I would like to make a specific point about silver. Because silver’s value per unit is much less than that of gold, you will, in the coming years, need a sufficient supply of silver coins for use in day to day transactions. The corner grocer may not be able to make change for an ounce of gold.

Even in a deflation, silver coins are never worth less than their face value. Therefore, depending upon your means, you should convert enough paper currency to “junk silver” to meet your small purchase needs in the future. So called junk silver includes pre 1965 silver dimes, quarters, and half dollars, and is normally sold in $1,000 face value bags consisting of 720 ounces of silver.

In addition to the Krugerrand, other readily recognizable gold coins include the Mexican 10, 20, and 50 Pesos, the Austrian 100 Corona, the Canadian Maple Leaf, the Hungarian 100 Korona, and the U.S. $20 Double Eagle. Large gold bullion bars (100 ounces) are impractical for most people, one of the chief reasons being that too much value is condensed into a single unit.

Buying gold is one area where you cannot afford inaction, because, as Gary North has correctly noted, betting against gold is the same as betting on governments. And, says North, “He who bets on governments and government money bets against 6,000 years of recorded human history.” Those certainly are not the kind of odds you want to apply to your long term planning.

Owning gold is the only known way to virtually guarantee the protection of your capital from the destruction of paper currencies. By investing in real money, you eliminate virtually all risk and get right to the crux of the issue. In the end, you can absolutely count on gold — not paper money — being king.

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Today’s Reflections:

Not much I can add to what I said on this subject back in 1982, though I do find it interesting that 27 years ago I was telling my readers that “banks are completely controlled by the government.” But, in all honesty, even I had no idea how much more extreme that control would become.

(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” Today, we continue with our examination of real money. Following is what I had to say about that subject in 1982.)

In theory, paper money is fine, provided it is given only to people who produce products and services that other people voluntarily want to buy. So long as a majority of people believe that this is what paper money is used for, they have faith in it. Faith is the key to the whole paper money scheme; it is the key to the stability of any kind of money.

People have faith in gold because of the properties we discussed earlier and because centuries of experience have reinforced that faith. But paper money has none of the desirable qualities of gold, and centuries of experience have belied people’s faith in it.

Therefore, the value of a paper currency at any given time exists only in the minds of the people who are forced to use it. Once those people lose faith in the currency, the currency ceases to exist ─ no matter what laws the government passes.

By the same token, so long as people have faith in gold, governments cannot eradicate that faith simply by insisting that gold is not money. Vern Myers suggests how silly such governmental attempts are in the following analogy: “A comparable case would be if the U.S. government passed a law which said that parents no longer love their children; the bureaucrats would assure you that children were now only a commodity. After all, isn’t it the law? Therefore sell your children.”

Certainly all hard money newsletter writers, and most of their readers, are well acquainted with everything I have discussed up to this point. Yet, as I said before, they still seem intent on overlooking the crux of the gold issue. This is evidenced in many ways.

For one thing, their talk always centers on the price of gold, and what that price means in terms of profits or losses. For another, they recommend selling gold because they fear the possibility of a deflation.

Also, they say that gold has risen “too high,” and that it is therefore too late to buy. Finally, they warn that one of the big drawbacks to buying gold is that it doesn’t pay dividends or interest.

In each of these instances, however, they have drawn their readers’ attention away from the main point of the gold issue. Gold was never intended to be an “investment.” Gold is a protective shield ─ the finest ever known to man ─ against the destruction of paper currencies.

Gold is a survival tool. It guarantees you that the fruits of your labor will not be stolen. Think of gold as markers that keep track of the amount of goods and services you are entitled to as a result of your labor.

Governments can print infinite amounts of paper markers, but gold markers cannot be manufactured. You buy gold as a near foolproof insurance policy against government’s paper money theft scheme; you don’t “invest” in gold in the hopes of making a profit.

Once a person understands the crux of the gold issue, he has little interest in the paper money “price” of gold, whether it be $200 an ounce, $2,000 an ounce, or $20,000 an ounce. When the destruction of paper money is nearing its end, gold may very well be “priced” at $1 million an ounce, but so what?

If $1 million in paper money buys only a basket of groceries, does the price really matter? You may just as well measure gold in terms of air. If you understand the long term ─ which is the focus of this section of the book ─ you will condition your mind to ignore the “price” of gold in terms of depreciating paper dollars.

Likewise, you will not be tempted to sell gold just because its paper money price happens to be dropping at any given time. This is where many “deflationists” totally miss the boat.

A detailed historical study of gold’s effectiveness as a store of value, by Professor Roy Jastram of the University of California (Berkeley), confirms that gold tends to retain its value in relation to other commodities, long term, even through periods of deflation.

What does it matter if the paper money price of gold is $100 an ounce if one ounce of gold at that price buys the same amount of other commodities as it did at $500 an ounce? Gold transcends paper-money prices; in fact, it really measures the value of paper money, rather than the other way around.

As to the argument that it’s “too late” to buy gold because you didn’t get in at $35 an ounce, or $100 an ounce, or whatever, you should by this time see the faulty logic in such thinking. Gold is for long term planning. Just because you didn’t get in at the beginning, when the government first removed its artificial price barrier, doesn’t mean that it’s any less a protective tool now than it was then.

Sure, it’s nice to be able to buy gold at a lower paper money price, for the obvious reason that you can get more of it with fewer pieces of paper. But how many times in your life have you gotten in on anything on the ground floor? Get in now. Buy today. Buy at $1,000 an ounce. Buy at $5,000 an ounce. Let someone else get stuck with the Old Maid.

______________________________

Today’s Reflections:

Again, everything I said here is still true today – and, almost certainly, will continue to be true into the foreseeable future. As I pointed out, there would be nothing wrong with paper money per se if it were given only to people who produced products that other people voluntarily wanted to buy.

Paper money is all about faith. So long as a majority of people believe that it can be used to buy the goods and services they want, they will have faith in it. If the seller of a product believes that the IOU someone wants to pay him with can be used to buy something of equal value, no problem.

But once the general public catches on – once most people realize that government is simply printing up pieces of paper and handing them out to people who don’t produce anything in return – they begin to flee into hard assets. And with Washington’s dramatically accelerated march toward Marxism, the odds that we will see this happen in the not-too-distant future are very high.

(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” Today, we continue with our examination of real money. Following is what I had to say about that subject in 1982.)

It is interesting to note that the government, in an attempt to demonstrate that it no longer considered gold to be money, finally allowed U.S. citizens to own the metal beginning on December 31, 1974. The ensuing meteoric rise in the price of gold was, of course, a source of great embarrassment to the fiat money printers in Washington.

Refusing to be upstaged, the government then proceeded to contemptuously dump gold in the open market in an effort to depress the price and to demonstrate to gold speculators, once and for all, that the paper dollar was king. But, alas, the king had no clothes. The dollar all but turned pink from embarrassment. The more gold the bureaucrats auctioned, the more the price of gold rose.

What these tactics have amounted to is an ongoing attempt on the part of Uncle Sam to demonetize gold. To his dismay, however, these clumsy attacks have instead hastened the day of gold’s demonetization of paper money. What the marketplace has been telling the government is: “We like you and all that, but, if it’s all the same to you, we’d just as soon keep the gold and let you keep the paper. No hard feelings, of course.”

The Galbraithian blushes are still to be found all over Washington, yet Washington’s contempt for gold grows greater each day. (While temporary downturns in the paper money price of gold never fail to prompt a chorus of “I told you so’s” from pa per money advocates, their joy is always short lived ─ and their long term dismay is a certainty.)

Confiscation of gold is the only weapon left for the government, and you can count on just that at some future date. Which is all the more reason for you to own gold. If the government is so intent on taking it away from you, you had better make certain that you have it ─ and that you keep it away from them. You’re going to need it to survive. Above all else in your long term planning, don’t blow this one.

Obviously, if gold were as worthless as government and establishment economists would like you to believe it is, South Africa wouldn’t be producing 700 tons of it each year. And the Soviet Union 200 to 500 tons.

Even the United States produces about thirty tons annually. Someone-lots of someones ─ must be awfully interested in owning gold. And those someones go far beyond dentists, jewelry makers, and industrial users. Yet you are constantly discouraged, usually by subtle putdowns, from buying gold.

What is it about gold that makes it so special? You’ve undoubtedly read about its unique characteristics many times. It is portable, easily and precisely divisible by weight, durable, consistent in quality (while not technically inert, it is extremely stable), easily identifiable, and, perhaps most important of all, scarce enough so that it cannot be obtained in great quantities without considerable effort.

As a result of these characteristics, governments throughout the centuries have never found it necessary to force people to use gold as money. People know that gold is money. It has evolved as money through the process of supply and demand, notwithstanding paper money’s greater convenience as a medium of exchange. The primary reason for gold’s evolution into the world’s most accepted form of money is that, in addition to being a medium of exchange, it is also a store of value.

There is no question that paper money, as a medium of exchange, has made modern society possible. It is by far the most convenient money ever invented. But as a store of value, it is considerably inferior to baseball trading cards. The latter can only be counterfeited illegally; paper money can be counterfeited legally ─ in unlimited quantities.

Though a paper dollar will buy only about 5 percent of what it could purchase in 1940, an ounce of gold will still buy about the same amount of products and services that it did forty, fifty, or even one hundred years ago. To understand this, you must think of money as an IOU. It’s a way of storing wealth that you do not wish to use right now. Gold accomplishes this objective more effectively than any other commodity; paper accomplishes it the worst.

Because of this, you can no longer use paper currency to store what you’ve earned. The printing presses will destroy it just as surely as if someone had set fire to it, which is precisely why politicians exhort you to “save” it. If they can convince you to keep your savings in the form of paper, they can quietly extract those savings from you through their printing presses (i.e., decrease its value through monetary inflation).

Is it any wonder that politicians hate gold? Gold, in effect, acts as a lie detector. If the United States dollar were 100 percent tied to gold (any other kind of gold standard would be merely cosmetic ─ and meaningless), it would be like asking Tip O’Neill each day, “Tip, you sneaky old buzzard, have you tried to steal anyone’s hard earned money today?”

If Tip replied, “Golly, no. I’d never do a thing like that,” the gold alarm would sound, loud and clear, for everyone to hear. The gold standard would tell the public that sly old Tip had tried to slide one by them once again ─ that he had voted for a bill that called for handing out newly printed paper money to people who are not producing products or services that other people are voluntarily willing to pay for. The gold alarm would have caught him red handed.

You may conclude that Tip O’Neill is not a big advocate of the gold standard. Nor, with a few notable exceptions, is any other individual now in public office. And it is precisely this refusal on the part of the government to acknowledge gold as money that has hastened the destruction of its own fiat currency.

In Part IX of this series, we’ll take a look at whether it is theoretically possible to have an unbacked paper currency that can be trusted by the general populace.

______________________________

Today’s Reflections:

It is noteworthy how, for decades, government officials and academics poked fun at the thought of people wanting to own gold, ridiculing the idea of using gold as money as an antiquated concept.

Now, twenty-seven years after I wrote the above (as gold teases the $1,000 mark), interest in gold ownership is increasing daily as it becomes ever more obvious that the Obama depression (dictatorship?) will last many years into the future.

(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” Today, we finally get to the most important kind of investment: Capital Guarantees. Following is what I had to say about that subject in 1982.)

Capital Guarantees
Contrary to what most people ─ particularly speculators – would like to believe, the only way to virtually guarantee the protection of your capital against the destruction of paper currency is to convert it to real money. That’s right, instead of fooling around with “investments,” just use your bogus paper money to buy the real thing.

What is “real money”? In theory, just about anything of value can be used as money. In today’s Poland, for example, tobacco and alcohol are readily accepted as money; i.e., you can buy other goods and services with them. They are accepted as a medium of exchange, whereas everyone knows that the zloty, the government’s mandated paper money, has no intrinsic value.

But tobacco and alcohol, while commanding a certain amount of respect as mediums of exchange, are far from the best forms of money. Tobacco can decompose, liquor bottles can break, and both of them are cumbersome to use when making purchases. These are just a few of the many reasons why tobacco and alcohol, while superior to paper, are vastly inferior to other kinds of money.

If you are at all tuned in to the so called hard money movement, you have heard many times that gold and silver are by far the best forms of money. In my opinion, they constitute the only true Capital Guarantees in existence. (For the sake of brevity, I will for the most part restrict my discussion to gold, but most of what I have to say is also applicable to silver. Gold is a slightly more desirable money than silver, one of the chief reasons being its greater scarcity.)

So much has been written about gold over the past several years that it might seem as though a discussion of it here would be unnecessary. I wish that were true, but, with all due respect to the many brilliant “hard money” writers who have covered gold extensively, I feel that their readers are still missing the most important point.

It’s not the technical information imparted by these writers that has been in error; rarely has that been the case. The error lies in their lack of emphasis on the crux of the issue. In fact, increasingly over the past couple of years, many of these newsletter writers have been totally ignoring the crux of the gold issue.

What particularly disturbs me is that many so called goldbugs of yesteryear have now deserted ship. It makes one wonder if they ever really understood the real reasons for buying gold in the first place.

It has become chic in hard money circles to say that gold was a good investment at $35 an ounce, but that the days of the big profits are long since gone. All I can tell you is that if you allow yourself to be influenced by such talk, you will greatly increase your chances of ending up holding the Old Maid.

If ever there was an area in which to do the exact opposite of that which government and the media urge you to do – if ever there was an area in which to do the opposite of that which causes failure – that area is the purchasing of gold. But first a little background:

The United States government, in an incredible display of stupidity, has seemingly found endless ways to squander its gold supplies. Back in 1949, the United States Treasury boasted an all time high of 700 million ounces of the yellow metal. As of the writing of this book, that figure is estimated to be down to 250 – 350 million ounces.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the government was losing gold to foreign countries by the carload – about 436 million ounces all told. The governments of those foreign countries, for some strange reason, wanted gold instead of paper dollars, so they rushed to redeem their U.S. currency at a furious pace.

That all ended on August 15, 1971, when President Nixon declared that the United States would no longer allow foreign governments to redeem their paper receipts (i.e., “dollars”) for real money (i.e., gold). In other words, the United States admitted (in doublespeak, of course) that it was bankrupt. Its actions announced to the world, once and for all, that its paper money was a lie.

In Part VIII, we’ll take a look at how the U.S. Government followed up this lie by violating the Rule of Holes, which says: If you’ve dug a deep hole for yourself, the first step toward getting out of it is to stop digging. Instead, as one would expect of any government, it just kept right on digging.

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Today’s Reflections:

Today, twenty-seven years later, I stand on everything I said above. Unbacked paper is still a lie, and gold and silver are still real money. I guess you could say they are fiscal axioms.

(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” In the previous excerpt from that book, I examined an investment I referred to as a Capital Question Mark: real estate. Following is more of what I had to say at that time.)

Real Estate - Apartments
Apartments and low priced rental homes are much more risky. For nearly fifteen years it has been difficult, if not impossible, to buy good apartment buildings that throw off a positive cash flow, because rents have not kept pace with the increased costs of construction, real estate taxes, and maintenance, not to mention the cost of mortgage money. But now there is an even greater danger ─ rent control.

Because rent control is such an easy target for vote conscious politicians, you can count on it as a way of life for many years to come. Not just in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica (California) and major population centers, but in small towns all across the country. As word spreads that Brother Bill in Atlanta got the government to hold down his rent, Sister Millie in Wichita will want to be the beneficiary of the same type of thievery in payment for her vote, too.

It is precisely this kind of government meddling that makes real estate such a question mark. While I do believe that there may be routes through the real estate maze that can lead to the preservation of, and even an increase in, capital, these routes are fraught with financial land mines.

And, in my opinion, the route laden with the greatest number of explosives is the one marked “Apartment Buildings for Sale.” As the economy worsens, there will be some potential money makers available in real estate, but be very careful ─ especially with regard to rent control.

On the other hand, high priced homes bought for rental or speculative purposes are an interesting play, because they are unlikely to be subjected to rent control. Nobody cares about protecting “the rich.” In addition, remember that “the rich” tend to get richer during a hyperinflation, and it is for this reason that high priced homes retain much of their value, even while the general housing market is collapsing.

I have noted this phenomenon with great interest while watching the operations of a longtime friend, “Dr. Deal,” who builds million dollar and up homes in the Ft. Lauderdale Boca Raton area. While builders are going belly up in record numbers in southern Florida, Dr. Deal’s sales continue at a brisk pace. In view of the fact that there is no mortgage money around, it is more than mildly noteworthy that a majority of his buyers pay all cash.

Observing this situation firsthand has led me to believe that a good vehicle for converting depreciating paper currency into hard assets is, indeed, to be found in high priced homes in the right locations. Since wealthy people do not much care for discomfort, I would restrict such purchases to warm weather climates.

Obviously, the ideal is if someone is willing to take back a low rate, long term mortgage on a high priced home that is sound in all other respects, or, if you have the opportunity, to assume an existing low rate, long term mortgage.

Real Estate – Raw Land
I reject raw land on the grounds (no pun intended) that it is far too speculative during times of crisis. Undeveloped land carries with it an automatic negative cash flow, for one obvious reason: real estate taxes, with no offsetting income. If the land is financed (keeping in mind my previous caveats about institutional mortgages and creative financing), your out of pocket expenses are even greater.

In addition, the long-term on land can be very long, sometimes even decades. For the person who can afford to hold on indefinitely, while paying the taxes and assessments levied against his land by City Hall, I suppose raw land is a good way to preserve a large amount of wealth for his children. But there are not many people who can afford such a luxury.

One final, obvious, caveat about real estate: It is illiquid. Most people know this; it’s just that their actions indicate that they continually forget it. That is why if you plan to buy your own home, you should do so only if you intend to stay put for a while. If you’re buying your home for speculative purposes, you may just as well convert your depreciating paper into Capital Crapshoots.

In the latter case, you can at least cut your losses short and move on when you decide you’ve had enough. With a house, as millions of homeowners have discovered to their dismay, you may not be able to get out when you want to.
Coming up in Part VII: Capital Guarantees.

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Today’s Reflections:

Not a lot has been said by the new socialist government in Washington about implementing nationwide rent controls, but I’d be concerned about it if I were an apartment-complex investor. And until the real estate collapse reverses itself with the inevitable onset of hyperinflation, apartment complexes could be difficult to sell – especially at a profit.

As to raw land, other than its collapsing price, its inherent problems are always the same. Never, ever, buy raw land with the intention of “flipping” it for a quick profit. In Houston in the early eighties, flipping raw land became the city’s favorite sport. I heard a lot of stories about a lot of guys who were making millions playing this wealth-without-work game – but every player I knew about firsthand ended up broke-or, in a couple of cases, in jail. Beware!

(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” In the previous excerpt from that book, I examined several alternatives for getting your capital out of paper money, including stocks [which I referred to as "Capital Crapshoots"] and two slightly less risky “Capital Question Marks”: collectibles and commodities. A third and very different kind of Capital Question Mark is real estate-and following is what I had to say about it back then.)

Real Estate
Now that everyone has once again been reminded that real estate does not always go up, and now that gullible, arrogant speculators and thousands of uninformed real estate brokers are back to tending bar and waiting tables, we can settle down to analyzing real estate on a rational basis.

I first began to sense that the real estate bubble was about to burst when I heard a famous real estate counselor speak at a financial seminar in the summer of 1980. In response to his own rhetorical question about when the real estate bust was going to occur, he replied, with a self assured air of finality, “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no bust. There is no bust. We have a temporary lull in the market.”

Those who were naive enough to listen to this kind of nonsense, and base their investment decisions upon it, may now be wondering why I don’t just classify real estate as a Capital Black Hole. You certainly couldn’t prove otherwise by their results.

But the fact is that real estate is neither a Capital Black Hole nor a Capital Crapshoot. It is a hard asset, an asset with an obvious utility value. This, coupled with the fact that, in most cases, it is not restricted to a fixed, long term rate of return, causes real estate prices to move generally upward in line with price inflation. If that were all there was to it, it wouldn’t even be a Capital Question Mark. Unfortunately, however, it’s not that simple.

The real estate boom of the past forty some odd years has been built primarily on a debt pyramid of low rate, long term mortgage money. (Whenever I refer to low rate, long term mortgage money, you may assume I am talking only about fixed rate mortgages.)

Now that the lending institutions have awakened – very late in the game, as usual ─ this kind of mortgage money has become an extinct animal. The writing was on the wall when the hotshots began touting “creative financing” – i.e., second mortgages, “wraparound mortgages,” purchase money mortgages, and other schemes used by both buyers and sellers to shield themselves from the realities of the marketplace. “Creative financing” is but a euphemism for selling one’s property at a decreased price without admitting it to oneself.

As we have continually witnessed during the collapse of Western Civilization, human beings will go to ingenious lengths to prolong the day of judgment. They will do almost anything to keep their illusions alive. Unfortunately, the day of judgment is now coming due for those who foolishly signed short term balloon notes to purchase real estate; as a result, foreclosures are rising and prices are falling.

I was once so negative on real estate that I was not even willing to consider it as a possible vehicle for escaping paper money. But the early stages of the collapse in real estate prices have rekindled my interest. It now definitely rates the status of a Capital Question Mark.

Fortunes will not only be lost during the coming economic collapse, but made as well. In between the falling bricks and mortar, there will be pockets of opportunity that would not exist during “normal” times. But there are so many uncertainties involved in real estate – much more so than in any other hard money asset ─ that one must proceed with extreme caution and patience.

Basically, there are two titanic forces pulling the real estate market in opposite directions. On the one hand, chronic debauching of paper money continues to increase the demand for real estate, just as it does for all hard assets. On the other hand, the engine of the market ─ inexpensive, long term mortgage money ─ has ceased to exist, which decreases demand.

It should be pointed out, however, that this lack of mortgage money also means drastically reduced new construction, which further raises the demand for existing real estate. But not all types of real estate. For example, does the demand for single family homes really increase when construction decreases?

Here, once again, the media have misled the public. They talk incessantly about an aberration called “pent up demand,” which seems to imply that just because someone wants something, that fact alone increases the demand for it.

The media have not yet figured out that sellers do not particularly care whether or not a person wants a house, a car, or a television set. What they really want to know is: Does he have the means to pay for it? (Desire + means = demand.)

And, not surprisingly, deteriorating economic conditions are leaving more and more people with the means to pay for fewer and fewer things ─ especially things as big as houses. Thus, pent up demand is nothing more than an invention of the media.

Nonetheless, there is the uncertainty of government intervention in the housing market. On second thought, I should refer to it as an uncertain certainty. That the government will intervene is not subject to dispute. The only question is when, where, and how?

You can be sure that the cries of the voting class will cause white knight congressmen to come forth with freshly printed paper money to make single family homes more affordable. They may not blatantly just hand out paper money to the masses, but the effects will be the same. Leave it to politicians to devise a variety of clumsy schemes to accomplish their aim of pacifying voters.

But don’t base your real estate investment decisions on the hoped for actions of politicians. The problem is that when Uncle Sam starts passing paper money around, he may not be interested in supporting the particular type of real estate that you have invested in.

Commercial real estate, for example, may not get subsidized. Any increase in the value of commercial real estate will probably have to come from a combination of two factors: a de crease in construction and an increase in the number of people wanting to trade in their paper dollars for this kind of asset. And keep in mind that, as the economic collapse increases in intensity, there will be less and less tenant demand for office and retail space, which could decrease investor demand (i.e., decrease prices) along with it.

If you are interested in converting paper dollars into commercial property, patience will prove to be a virtue. Opportunities should increase dramatically as things worsen, and ultimately you should be able to buy properties at well below their replacement costs.

But regardless of how attractive the bargain, never obligate yourself to a short term note on the assumption that you will either be able to refinance the property or resell it at a higher price before the note comes due. Both alternatives are highly doubtful, to say the least.

More on real estate in Part VI.

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Today’s Reflections:

I must admit that it was a pretty easy call when I said: “That the government will intervene is not subject to dispute. The only question is when, where, and how?” Blustering Barney had just arrived on the scene as a freshman Congressman from Massachusetts a year earlier, so I had no idea who he was – let alone that he would make a prophet out of me.

But, as things turned out, he was the driving force that made my words come true: “They may not blatantly just hand out paper money to the masses, but the effects will be the same. Leave it to politicians to devise a variety of clumsy schemes to accomplish their aim of pacifying voters.”

However, humility forces me to admit that anyone who takes the trouble to be even a casual student of history soon learns that governments are addicted to repeating the worn-out mistakes of the past. And in a democracy or democratic republic, those mistakes will almost always be in the direction of appeasing the masses (a.k.a., vote-buying).

(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” So far, you’ve seen the case I made for getting out of paper money – and the reason most of your alternatives for trying to safeguard your capital are like black holes that simply suck it in and make it disappear. In the next section of the book, I examined several alternatives that at least give you a chance – an outside chance – of coming out ahead.)

Stocks

The biggest reasons the Capital Black Hole alternatives are automatic losers are that they are locked into a fixed rate of return and they pay off in paper. Thus, corporate stocks deserve the status of Capital Crapshoots, because they are not automatic losers like Capital Black Holes; they are only wild speculations.

With stocks, you at least have an outside chance ─ a very outside chance ─ of coming out ahead. Even though any dividends paid will not be sufficient to offset taxes and price inflation, what sets stocks apart from Capital Black Holes is the possibility for long term capital gains.

Because there is theoretically an unlimited upside potential, and because capital gains taxes are much lower than taxes on dividends and interest, it is conceivable that an individual could increase his capital in the stock market. I said there is “theoretically” an upside potential, because all the empirical evidence, as well as the current facts, point overwhelmingly in the opposite direction.

A number of studies, including David Dreman’s Contrarian Theory, have shown that a person might very well have equaled, or even bettered, the records of most stock analysts over the years had he simply chosen stocks by donning a blindfold and throwing darts at a stock board. You occasionally hear of a winner here or there, just as you do in a gambling casino, but almost never among the “smart money experts.” I personally have always been of the opinion that an individual has just as good a chance at Caesar’s Palace, and he can have a lot more fun in the process.

However, there is an even worse problem than the problems involved in trying to pick the right stocks at the right time: Even if you make a profit, you will be paid off in paper. I’m trying to be redundant: The objective is to get out of paper! The objective is to convert paper into hard assets (i.e., real assets, meaning assets with a utility value).

This point cannot be repeated often enough, because it is a completely foreign way of thinking to most people. Which is exactly why they are going to get caught holding the Old Maid. They keep thinking in terms of paper profits, forgetting that the increased volume of paper they hold is worth less and less each day.

The so called Dow Jones Industrial Average is the stock market’s leading delusional public relations tool. A 1,000 DJIA, or even a 1,500 DJIA, is pure fiction. The truth is that, adjusted for inflation, the DJIA is at about the same level as it was in 1913, when the infamous Federal Reserve Act (the legislation that made monetary inflation an easy proposition) was passed. As paper money is inflated out of sight, the stock market will go wild. The DJIA won’t have time to catch its breath as it sprints past 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, and higher.

But it’s nothing more than playing with numbers. The reason for its unprecedented upsurge will be the very reason that it’s an illusion: inflation of paper money. The problem is that when an investor wants to cash out, he will be taking back those same pieces of paper that the stock market rise will be telling him are worthless! Unfortunately, hard core stock market addicts will not accept this reality until it’s far too late. Make sure you’re not one of them.

Three Less-Risky Alternatives

There are three alternatives for getting out of paper money that, while far from sure things, are not nearly as risky as Capital Crapshoots, provided you know what you’re doing. For this reason, I refer to them as Capital Question Marks. These include so called collectibles, commodities, and real estate.

Like stocks, Capital Question Marks, which are not usually tied to a fixed rate of return, afford an owner the opportunity for long term capital gains. In addition, however, owners of Capital Question Marks hold real assets, not paper (or at least have the option of doing so). Nonetheless, Capital Question Marks are far from foolproof.

Collectibles

Collectibles encompass such hard assets as diamonds, gemstones, art objects, rare coins, and antiques. All of these derive their values from their limited supply and continuing, though fluctuating, demand.

What is good about collectibles, as a group, is that they fluctuate somewhat in line with increases and decreases in the value of paper money. They will, therefore, almost certainly at least keep pace with price inflation, and should there be an interim price deflation, the decrease in their dollar prices will probably be no greater than the temporary increase in the value of the dollar. An additional plus for the smaller collectibles, including diamonds and other gemstones, is that they are easy to hide.

What is bad about collectibles is that only a relatively small number of experts really know much about them, and you cannot become an expert in this area just by reading a few books. It’s a full time job, which means you can rarely feel certain about what you’re buying. Further, when you buy and sell in this market, you are usually dealing with that same relatively small number of experts, and thus you tend to end up buying retail and selling wholesale.

Another disadvantage of collectibles is that their markets are fraught with counterfeiting, which means that, unless you’re extremely careful, you could end up losing all of your capital. Finally, while the smaller collectibles are easier to conceal than other hard assets, they are also less practical in an emergency.

It’s pretty hard to buy a loaf of bread with a diamond that’s worth $25,000. For this reason alone, I believe that collectibles are primarily for the well heeled, and then only if they have access to the expert advice of someone whom they can totally trust.

Commodities

Commodities (and I am using the term loosely here to include not only the commodities traded on commodities exchanges, but also strategic metals) also tend to fluctuate, long term, in line with the value of paper money. The main problem with most commodities, however, is the impracticality of actually taking delivery on them. Where are you going to store 10,000 bushels of wheat? Or a carload of pork bellies?

And, if you insist on thinking short term, commodity trading is really an area for experts. The odds against even a well qualified investor making money in short term commodity trading are staggering – like putting money on one number at the roulette wheel. Occasionally, the payoff may be substantial, but the likelihood is that you’ll get wiped out long before it happens.

In Part V, we’ll take a look at a whole different kind of “Capital Question Mark” – real estate – an investment that has played a key role in bringing the invisible depression out into the open.

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Today’s Reflections:

Probably the most important point I made in this section of the book was that the Dow Jones would sprint “past 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, and higher” – but that whatever the number might be, it would be an inflationary aberration.

Now that the Obamacrats are totally drunk with power, it’s impossible to know what the stock market will do near, mid, or long term. As the economy continues to collapse under the weight of government spending programs, I can imagine the Dow dropping to 2,000 – or lower.

But as trillions of new dollars are printed in a frantic effort to pay for the wild spending programs that are coming down the road, who knows what might happen? Just keep in mind that even if the Dow were to go to 20,000 or beyond, the number would be even more fictional than it has been over the past twenty-seven years.

Either way – whether the Dow sinks to 2,000 or “rises” to 20,000 – having any money in the stock market, at least the U.S. stock market, in the future would be even more foolhardy than it was in the past.

(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” Part II covered what I said in my book about banks and savings and loans. Now, let’s take a look at what I said about some other Capital Black Holes-insurance companies, government and corporate bonds, mortgages, Treasury bills, and money market funds.)

Insurance Companies

Insurance companies are not much better off than banks. First, they have a majority of their assets tied up in bonds and mortgages, which is like the blind leading the blind. Second, as times get tougher, more and more people will want to borrow on the cash value of their life insurance policies.

This money is lent at rates far below the going interest rates in the financial markets, which, of course, is a disaster for the insurance companies. If too many people decide to borrow the amounts they are legally entitled to, insurance companies, like banks, are forced to dump securities and mortgages at depressed market prices, which can lead to insolvency.

Government and Corporate Bonds

Government and corporate bonds are a joke among sophisticated investors. On the one hand, the federal government is a hopeless deadbeat, along with its state and municipal partners in crime. On the other hand, these bankrupt entities, in an effort to put out their own fires, continue to devastate corporations (and thus corporate bonds) through high taxes.

Squeezed by these onerous taxes-along with price inflation, piranha-like trade unions, falling demand for their products, and consumer, health, and environmental regulations, among other problems
- the balance sheets of most large corporations are looking more and more like they just came out of an alley fight with Bigfoot.

While it is true that whenever interest rates drop sufficiently short term (bond prices rise when interest rates decline), you might be able to make enough of a spread (through an increase in bond prices) to cover taxes and price inflation, it’s pretty much wishful thinking.

First, the long term direction of interest rates is up ─ way up ─ and you would have to be a lot more omniscient than the so called experts to catch so brief a downward trend before it bottoms out and starts moving in the other direction again.

Second, it’s doubtful that any such downward trend would be significant enough to bring bond prices up to a profitable level. So why bother to take the risk-especially when you know that, even if you win, you will be paid off in more paper? Besides, this book is concerned with long term survival, not speculation.

Mortgages

The “entity” behind a mortgage, or deed of trust, is a piece of real estate, and the problems associated with real estate, which will be discussed in more detail later, are many. For now, let it suffice to say that most mortgages today exceed the true value of the properties that underlie them.

Treasury Bills and Money Market Funds

Finally, I should mention two Capital Black Hole favorites, Treasury bills and money market funds. Treasury bills mask the realities of lending money to the government long term, because they are only ninety day instruments.

However, if a person were to continually roll over his money in T bills, “the house” would eventually wipe him out through price inflation. Short term visits for your money are okay, but don’t make the mistake of getting overly relaxed while your capital is in the hands of the government. And never forget that Treasury bills pay off in paper.

Money market funds are really nothing more than an extra middleman, their sole assets consisting of the paper of other Capital Black Holes. Their advantages are twofold.

First, because they deal in large sums of money, they are able to command high rates of interest and thus pay relatively high yields. Second, they offer immediate redemption without penalties.

If you wish to park some capital in a fund for a short period of time (and do make sure that it’s a short term proposition), you should make certain to choose a fund with a high grade portfolio (relatively speaking, that is). In this respect, money-market funds invested solely in Treasury bills are safest. Those in CDs and commercial paper (unsecured loans to major corporations) are the most dangerous.

In any event, never forget that money market funds, like Treasury bills and all other Capital Black Holes, pay off only in paper and will, therefore, ultimately cause your capital to evaporate.

In Part IV, we’ll take a look at what I had to say back in 1982 about “Capital Crapshoots” and a couple of “Capital Question Marks.”

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Today’s Reflections:

If you have difficulty comprehending just how overvalued real estate is nowadays, remember that I wrote the words (above) “most mortgages today exceed the true value of the property that underlies them” twenty-seven years ago! And that was before Barney, Fannie, and Freddie jammed the lending pedal to the floor.

It should also help you understand why I’ve been saying for three decades that the U.S. is in an “invisible depression.” Had the depression been allowed to take its natural course and become visible for all to see, America might now be financially sound-and capitalism would be sitting on its rightful throne.

(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” Even back then, I was warning my readers about the role the banks would play in the inevitable economic collapse of this country. Here’s more of what I said 27 years ago …)

Much like the black holes of the far reaches of outer space, which ravenously suck in all matter that comes their way, there are black holes in the financial markets that can make capital vanish without a trace. Unlike their counterparts in interstellar space, however, Capital Black Holes can occasionally be persuaded to release their prey.

Capital caught in a Capital Black Hole can escape, albeit injured, if its owner takes the proper action before it’s too late. On the other hand, if the owner of capital trapped in a Capital Black Hole leaves it there in the hopes that it will eventually resurface on its own, he is ignorantly, stubbornly, and/or naively assuring that it will never be seen or heard from again.

Capital Black Holes include: certificates of deposit at either banks or savings and loans; cash value life insurance (i.e., “whole life” or “ordinary life”); government, municipal, and corporate bonds; and long term, fixed rate mortgages or “deeds of trust.”

All these pieces of paper are, in the words of Dr. Franz Pick, “certificates of guaranteed confiscation.” You are absolutely guaranteed to lose virtually all of your capital, over the long term, if you commit it to any of these Capital Black Holes.

In the short term, the process is reasonably painless, because you lose only a little of your capital each year. In fact, to the degree you are willing to delude yourself, you may feel no pain at all.

The process is really quite simple: The fixed return paid by any of these Capital Black Hole debtors is not enough to compensate for taxes and price inflation. As a result, you automatically lose a portion of your capital each year.

(While it is true that municipal bonds are presently tax-free, price inflation alone during the coming years will be quite sufficient not only to offset any interest paid on these bonds, but to chip away at the principal as well.) The sooner you rescue your capital from a Capital Black Hole, the better your capital’s chances of making a full recovery.

In the long term, the pain is acute. Not only do taxes and price inflation eventually swallow virtually all of your capital, but a great many — perhaps even a majority — of the Capital Black Hole issuers will ultimately go bankrupt. I am speaking here of legal bankruptcy, as opposed to technical bankruptcy. A large percentage of these entities are already technically bankrupt.

Savings and Loans and Banks

To understand the illiquidity of the banking industry and the insolvency of a large segment of the savings and loan industry, one must look at these “institutions” for what they really are. (By illiquidity, I mean that current assets are less than current liabilities. By insolvency, I mean that total assets are less than total liabilities. )

A bank or savings and loan is nothing more than a middleman, which is a somewhat dignified word for “broker.” As a matter of fact, banks and savings and loans are really just glorified syndicators — the only syndicators, I might add, who do not have to file prospectuses with the Securities and Exchange Commission. They are free to solicit money from millions of investors, then turn right around and “invest” the large pools of money thereby generated in mortgages, stocks, bonds, and other “investment vehicles.”

This cozy little exemption would be delightful, but for one problem. For years, these exempted syndicators have been borrowing money from depositors short term and lending (or “investing”) it long term, sometimes for as long as thirty years.

That means that every bank and every savings and loan is illiquid, aside and apart from the fact that many of them are insolvent. Their ability to repay their depositors’ money is entirely dependent upon their success in raising additional money from new depositors. (This practice is commonly known as “pyramiding,” but don’t get any bright ideas … it’s against the law for you to do it.)

Forget about “IRA accounts”; forget about “all savers certificates”; forget about all the other gimmicks that these Capital Black Hole issuers are frantically coming up with in a desperate effort to keep from going under. All these are nothing more than attempts to disguise the bankrupt wolf as Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother.

In the years ahead, there are going to be millions of people, minus their life’s savings, who are going to be just a bit irritated with certain entertainment figures who urged them, via radio and television commercials, to put their money into “risk free” savings institutions. In fact, such ads collectively constitute yet another of the biggest lies ever told — right up there with today’s accepted description of liberals.

Even if inflation does not completely wipe out the principal in these “tax free” accounts (which it will), count on the government, in a last ditch effort to bail out its bankrupt programs, to pass retroactive laws to tax all types of pension schemes previously declared to be tax-free. Remember, the government has the power to change the rules at will — and does!

Pension funds and various kinds of pension savings accounts are government traps. They make it possible for the bureaucrats to know where your assets are, which in turn makes it convenient for them to get at those assets quickly (under the guise of an “emergency,” of course).

And, for goodness’ sake, I hope by now you’re well aware that money deposited in banks and savings and loans is not insured, in the truest sense of the word. The assets of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation amount to only a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars that are deposited in banks and savings and loans, and, to make matters worse, most of these assets are in the form of questionable government securities.

(A recent study showed that over 500 U.S. banks have more than 20 percent of their assets tied up in New York City securities, while 179 maintain 50 percent or more of their capital in these and New York State accounts.)

More recently, savings and loan ads have been emphasizing that Congress has passed a resolution saying that the United States government’s “full faith and credit” stands behind every dollar deposited with them.

First of all, if the depositors’ money was safe, the government would not find it necessary to pass such a resolution. Second, the government is the least credit worthy of all entities. If Washington ever has to make good on its “full faith and credit” (and you can count on its being called upon to do just that), you and I know very well where the “money” is going to have to come from. Break out the extra large paper rolls and haul in the fresh ink!

As the economic collapse continues to worsen, the problem is compounded. Not only do financial institutions have to borrow short, but they have to do so at rates that destroy any hope of turning a profit. Worse, they have to relend the money to questionable borrowers, because credit worthy borrowers are reluctant to borrow at such high rates. Thus, the interest rate spiral accelerates onward and upward toward infinity.

Ultimately, there will probably be a “run” on banks and savings and loans, which in turn will force them to dump securities and mortgages at huge losses. It will then become a panic, and suddenly everyone will want to get his money out of these Capital Black Holes.

Or, as Gary North puts it, “When a majority of depositors become convinced that a majority of depositors have become convinced that a majority of depositors are going to try to get their money out simultaneously, a majority of depositors start trying to get their money out simultaneously.”

Part III to follow.

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Today’s Reflections:

Of course, the S&L industry is just a shell of what it was prior to its collapse several years after I wrote the above, when half of all these financial institutions failed. Lack of regulation, as always, is a favorite excuse for their failure, but the truth is that failure was built into their fraudulent business model from the outset.

In the past year, banks have finally begun to follow suit, as I said would be the case. But there’s a big difference with banks: You are being forced to hand them endless billions of dollars to keep them afloat – but you’re handing it to them only indirectly.

By that I mean that most of those billions are in the form of unbacked I.O.U.s being printed up by the Treasury Department, which will result in your being invisibly taxed through a reduction in the value of the paper money you hold.

And since the underlying problems (the existence of the Federal Reserve and the lack of a gold backing for our currency) are not being addressed, it is likely that fiat dollars will continue to be printed and handed over to major banks until paper money is no longer accepted in the marketplace as a medium of exchange.

I’d like to pat myself on the back for my 1982 call on the impending bankruptcy of the S&Ls and the banks, but, in all honesty, it was a slam-dunk for anyone who wasn’t a member of the Flat Earth Society.

(The content of this series of articles has been taken from my 1982 book “Civilization.” As you will see, I pretty much could have written the exact same articles today. While I was a bit off on a few things-particularly with regard to my belief that the economic chaos we are now witnessing would happen much sooner than it did-my take on the big picture was, unfortunately, pretty accurate. Here it was I said back then …)

Notwithstanding Ronald Reagan’s tough talk, and contrary to daily media reports about how the plight of “the poor” has worsened under his administration, there have been no meaningful cutbacks in federal handouts since Reagan took office. Quite the opposite, in fact: Today, the federal deficit is expanding almost exponentially.

Never-not even once-has any liberal economist, politician, or media expert suggested how this deficit problem is to be resolved. Short of some new welfare state “miracle,” the federal government will have no choice but to stick with the old reliable pseudo miracle of creating money out of thin air-via the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

There’s only one problem with this “solution”: The “money” that comes rolling off the printing presses isn’t really money at all. It’s only paper, which creates yet another problem: As more and more people begin to figure that out, they want more and more of the paper-in the form of higher prices for their goods and services-to compensate for its perceived lack of value.

Which leads to the ultimate problem: People finally figure out that the paper really has zero value, and that’s when they refuse to accept it at all in exchange for their goods and services. It is at this point that the currency, with the swiftness of a wastebasket full of paper going up in flames, rushes to its deserving demise.

Of course, different people catch on to the paper money scheme at different times and to different degrees, and each person reacts in a different ways. And if a person reacts too late … well, he who hesitates always has the option of repapering his living room in a nice, gray/green color.

Some pundits have likened it to a game of Old Maid: Whoever ends up with the Old Maid (paper currency) has, in effect, given away his products and labor for nothing. If you don’t believe this, just ask the millions of people who have given theirs away in the numerous countries that have experienced runaway inflation.

Though the subtle destruction of our paper currency is taking place daily, its official burial is probably still several years off. I cannot say whether it will be three or four years, or ten or twelve years, because there are far too many unknowns to be certain.

One of the knowns, however, is that the government, through the use of force, will continue to artificially repress the natural and unpleasant consequences of its debasement policy-as it has been doing for decades. But, to its dismay, it will not be able to stave off those consequences indefinitely.

Therefore, the wise approach for you to take is to begin to abandon paper currency now, at a pace that is practical with your own living and business needs. This means exchanging paper for “hard assets,” things that have intrinsic (utility) value.

The most obvious indication that it’s time to start getting serious about shifting into hard assets is that the government and, of course, paper money institutions have of late been exhorting the public to do the opposite.

People are being admonished to “save”-to hold onto their paper money by lending it to (i.e., depositing it in) financial institutions. In point of fact, what the government and the financial industry are really doing is urging people to commit financial suicide.

In deciding what to convert your paper money into-while it can still be converted into something-your personal circumstances and objectives are of paramount importance. Depending on those circumstances and objectives, you may want to speculate with your capital, invest it, try to preserve it, or do a little of each.

By speculating, I mean putting your money into risky ventures in the hopes of making large profits. By investing, I mean putting money into ventures or instruments that you believe will bring you a “reasonable” return. By preserving, I mean safeguarding your capital without worrying about making a profit.

The safest approach, long term, is to bet against government. Which means betting on political expediency … which means betting on more and more government handouts … which means betting on larger and larger deficits … which means betting on government to print more and more paper money … which means betting on paper money ultimately becoming worthless.

But be careful. Keep an eye out for changing conditions. Though you may be right in your long term assessment of various options for speculating with, investing, or preserving your capital, you can go broke in the short run.

As an example, it is possible (remotely) that we could experience a temporary period of deflation prior to entering the homestretch of politically inevitable runaway inflation. Therefore, no matter how certain you feel about the long term, unless you are prepared to tough it out until the truth rises up and takes control of the financial markets, you would be wise to proceed with the utmost caution.

With that caveat understood, I am going to break down the alternatives for getting out of paper money in a way that accurately reflects the realities of our brave new world.

Part II to follow.

______________________________________

Today’s Reflections:

I believe there are at least five major reasons why it has taken twenty-six years for the U.S. economy to arrive at a point I thought it would reach in no more than twelve years.

First, though Ronald Reagan allowed welfare payments to expand under his watch, he did drastically cut taxes.

Second, Reagan’s pro-liberty, pro-capitalistic messages gave both consumers and the business community optimism.

Third, the explosion of technology in the eighties and nineties provided the masses with an incredible array of goodies at affordable prices, which kept everyone happy-and buying.

Fourth, China, along with scores of smaller nations, provided the cheap labor needed to manufacture cheap “stuff”-and that made it possible for people to buy lots of things they didn’t need. This gave consumers more dollars to spend on still more things they didn’t need or couldn’t really afford.

Fifth, the explosion of the fraudulent credit card industry took out-of-control consumer spending to a new level. Most of the banks that issued those credit cards are now broke, and, in an ironic twist, the people they are chasing for unpaid balances have actually loaned them money (through government force, a.k.a. “bailouts”).

By Robert Ringer

After my son made his comment about bringing his “nines” to school (in reference to his basketball shoes), his two tormentors gleefully started yelling, “Andrew said he’s going to bring a Glock 9 to school!”

The teacher, notwithstanding the fact that she knew full well that these two miscreants taunted my son relentlessly every day, told the boys to go to the principal’s office and report the incident. And, of course, they did so with great enthusiasm.

My son was immediately called to the office and questioned by the principal, “Mr. Bershitske.” As I said in my article
“The Principle/Principal Problem,“ Mr. Bershitske bore a remarkable physical resemblance to Adolf Eichmann – but with a much worse demeanor. The man gave new meaning to the word cruelty.

Predictably, Mr. Bershitske said he didn’t believe my son’s story, and subsequently searched his locker. Surprise! Only books and bubble gum … not even a box of ammo or, at least, a bayonet. Nevertheless, Eichmann’s reincarnation called the police. Makes perfect sense to me. After all, my son had been accused by none other than two of the most notorious bullies in the school.

While driving on the freeway, I received a call saying that my son had threatened to bring a gun to school and that the principal had called the police. I knew without hearing any of the details that it was vintage school B.S., but, even so, my heart dropped to my toes.

(When I use the term “vintage school B.S.,” I’m talking about the kind of distractions that go on nonstop in every school in the country and interfere with what the students should be doing: getting an education. One of the main reasons that home-schooled kids do so much better academically is that they don’t have to put up with this kind of teacher-inspired nonsense and can focus on learning.)

When I arrived at the school, my son was in Mr. Bershitske’s office, as was a policeman. I sat down and asked Andrew to tell me what had happened. As he started to explain, the officer stunned me by interrupting him with, “Why don’t you cut the crap? You know you’re lying.”

Have you ever kept quiet in a situation where you instinctively knew you should speak up, then kicked yourself later for not doing so? I will never forgive myself for not telling the policeman that he was out of line, that he had no evidence whatsoever that justified accusing my son of lying.

Eventually, the policeman left and the meeting was disbanded. More waste of taxpayer money and another scar on another child. Business as usual in a typical American school.

But that wasn’t the end. When my son got home after school, he told me that when he went back to the classroom, the kids were just filing out, and the two jokers who had set him up were laughing hilariously about the incident. They further taunted him by chanting the words to a rap “song” they’d cleverly come up with about his getting in trouble for a Glock 9 that he didn’t even know anything about.

I could have escalated the matter by filing a complaint against the out-of-line officer with the police department, and perhaps suing the school,. But I knew that the time and money involved would be enormous, and that the chances of anything good coming out of it were almost nil. So, as millions of other folks have done in similar situations, my wife and I simply removed our son from that particular bully safe haven at the end of the year.

As I have emphasized in earlier Cho Factor articles, some children can handle abuse from teachers and fellow students better than others. Every child is different. But what all bully victims learn is what every adult knows all too well: The world is not fair.

Criminals go free, and many even end up in government. If the meek inherit the earth, they probably deserve it, because what they have to go through day in and day out in their school years is nothing short of a living hell.

S.B., you asked for advice, but, unfortunately, I don’t have the advice you’d most like to hear: how to bring your son back. All I can tell you is that you should be grateful to God for the years you had with him. If he considered you to be his best friend, you had something special that the majority of fathers never experience.

As I said in my recent article “When Desires Collide With Reality,” when John Travolta’s son died, it was yet another reminder of one of life’s harshest realities – that no one, no matter how rich or famous, escapes the tragedies inherent in human existence.

Yes, I’m concerned about the next Cho who takes out his torment on his fellow students. But, as I have repeatedly said in other Cho Factor articles, I’m even more concerned about the millions of kids who are scarred for life as a result of school injustices – children who suffer quietly as the bullies laugh at how easily they are able to get away with their cruel, smart-aleck antics.

Even more, I am concerned about the many others – like S.B.’s son – who don’t even make it through school alive.

By Robert Ringer

I recently received this disturbing e-mail from a reader:

My 16-year-old son hung himself 90 days ago because the school principal threatened him for violating a rule he didn’t break, said that “the cops are getting involved,” that “this is gonna be big,” etc. – a lot of threats.

I had to pick him up and take him home, then had to go back to work. My son hung himself four hours later, before I came home. I cut him down and started CPR before help arrived.

Now, the school says they have no records of that day and won’t produce them. Tox screening showed no use of drugs or alcohol, yet the school has led people to believe the incident was drug related.

My lawyer doubts we can do anything. What should I do? My son and I were best friends, and he even mentioned that in the note he left. Please offer me some advice on how to deal with this. – S.B.

S.B., your story not only saddened me, it brought back old memories and made me see red. I am all too familiar with this kind of terror being wreaked upon students by teachers and principals. While I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of the facts in your case, based on my own experience, I would be inclined to believe your son’s side of the story without even having known him.

While pundits and politicians continue to brainwash the public with blather about how heroic “our” teachers are, I stand firm with John Stossel on the subject: Both teachers’ unions and public schools should be abolished. They are the biggest terrorist threat in America, because they harm children every single day.

While there are certainly teachers who are both well-educated and well-meaning -and who make a sincere effort to help, rather than hurt, children – they are most decidedly in the minority.

Over the years, I’ve received many e-mails from teachers and ex-teachers who have a genuine loathing for the National Education Association (NEA) – which is, in reality, nothing more than a professional lobbying organization for teachers who ruin the lives of millions of children. Their motto should be “No Child Left Unscarred.”

As to principals, I have clearly expressed my views on their ilk in previous articles, particularly in my article “The School Principle/Principal Problem (The Cho Factor, Part XV). As I said in that article, I had many meetings with principals over the years with regard to bullying and other outrageous behavior by teachers, and, without exception, they tenaciously defended the teachers in question.

In a perfect world, every school board would make it clear to the principal that he works for, and is answerable to, the parents of his students. In other words, the principal would understand that he is not there to defend the teachers. But with the professional vote-buyers who are now at the controls in Washington, bad teachers, bad principals, and bad schools are certain to remain untouchable for a long time to come.

S.B.’s story resonated strongly with me because of a similar incident that occurred when my son was in middle school. He has a particular kind of “learning issue” that made him vulnerable to both student and teacher bullies. (This is a sensitive subject, so I want to guard my words carefully. You’ll have to do some reading between the lines.)

My son had the “misfortune” of being the kind of kid who was, and still is, exceptionally kind and nice to everyone, very well mannered, and always anxious to please. His gullibility and naiveté, along with being one of the smallest kids in his class, made him a delectable target for bullies – of both the student and teacher varieties.

There were a number of eminently bad kids who teased and bullied my son day in and day out. And why not? They never got punished for it! If there are no consequences to a bully’s actions, the message is clear: “The victim is fair game.”

On this particular day, two of the punks who constantly gave my son grief, knowing how much pride he took in his basketball skills, started taunting him about how they could beat him in basketball. As usual, they wouldn’t let up, and, as usual, he took the bait and exchanged words with them. It’s not easy to teach a twelve-year-old to ignore obnoxious kids who are trying to provoke you.

At one point in the back-and-forth gibberish, my son pointed to his shoes and said, “I’ll bring my nines to school tomorrow, and we’ll see how good you are.” (Note: He wore size 9 basketball shoes.) What happened from that point on was like something out of an NEA training film, the kind of thing that has resulted in many students ending up like S.B.’s son … and has brought out the worst in disturbed young people like Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho.

]]> http://blog.robertringer.com/2009/02/20/no-child-left-unscarred/feed/ 8 http://blog.robertringer.com/2009/02/18/revolution-part-ii/ http://blog.robertringer.com/2009/02/18/revolution-part-ii/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:26:32 +0000 Robert Ringer http://blog.robertringer.com/?p=463 By Robert Ringer

As I watched Barack Obama do his Jesus imitations in Tampa and Elkhart, I recalled something Jonah Goldberg wrote in his book Liberal Fascism. If you have a pulse and have not yet sipped the Obama-Aid, this should get your attention:

Today the liberal left’s version of the 1960s makes about as much sense as it does to remember Hitler as the “man of peace” described by Neville Chamberlain. In its passion and pursuits, the New Left was little more than an Americanized updating of what we’ve come to call the European Old Right. From Easy Rider to JFK, Hollywood has been telling us that if only the forces of reaction hadn’t killed their Horst Wessels, we would today be living in a better, more just, and more open-minded country. [RJR note: Horst Wessels was a ruthless young leader in the Nazi movement who was murdered at the age of twenty-two and subsequently immortalized by the Nazis.] And if only we could rekindle the hope and ambition of those early radicals, “what might have been” will turn into “what could still be.” This is the vital lie of the left. Western civilization was saved when the barbarians were defeated, at least temporarily, in the 1970s. We should be not only grateful for our slender victory but vigilant in securing it for posterity.

Goldberg goes on to disrobe all the ugly truths about the radical left-wing movement of the 1960s. The talk was all about peace and love, but the aim was power-power that would be achieved through revolution, preferably violent revolution.

The truth about the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), the hippies, and the New Left can be found in the words of Napoleon Bonaparte 150 years earlier when he said of the French Revolution: “Vanity made the revolution; liberty was only a pretext.”

Now, the hippies live on in the form of the Obamies. Overthrowing capitalism and individual sovereignty-and achieving absolute power in the process-is their aim. It is this that the media punditistas cannot seem to grasp. They naively refuse to believe that BHO’s intentions are to destroy the America that his sweetheart of a wife says she was never proud of before her sly-tongued hubby ran for president.

Glenn Beck says that he believes we are headed for a revolution in this country (i.e., a revolution by liberty revolutionaries trying to overthrow the Marxist barbarians who are now in the driver’s seat). And he could be right. But, if so, the revolution will have to come soon, because time is on the side of the Obamacrats.

There are many reasons for this, but two are of special importance. First, with each passing month, they will be flooding the country with more and more new Obamacratic voters from Mexico. Second, every paper-money handout is virtually certain to secure the votes of those who are on the receiving end of the largesse.

Over time, ever-increasing numbers of the “centrists” who drank the Obama-Aid that flowed so freely during the campaign or, at the very least, voted for the lesser of two evils, will come to realize that they were snookered. But if a dictatorship is already in place, it will be too late.

Remember, Jonah Goldberg said that our 1970s victory over the barbarians was a slender one, and that we should be “vigilant in securing it for posterity.” Because the war between fascists and liberty lovers is never-ending, the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I always believed that the barbarians were not at the gates but inside the gates. Norman Thomas, six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, who died in 1968, made that pretty clear when he said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.”

Then, as now, Americans should have listened to, and taken seriously, what the enemy was saying. No matter the disguise, if it walks like a barbarian and talks like a barbarian, you should assume it’s a barbarian.

As usual, the media is in ga-ga land as the Obamacrats tighten their grip around the throats of American serfs. While it’s tempting to write off the far-left power holders as fools or, perhaps, utopian dreamers, that would be a mistake. They are neither. They know exactly what they’re doing.

The objective of the Obamacrats is the same as that of every revolutionary group throughout history: to mesmerize the masses into ceding more and more power to them, ultimately resulting in a liberal fascist dictatorship. Amazingly, almost no one in the media seems to fully understand this, with the possible exception of Glenn Beck.

However, I do believe that Laura Ingraham, Michelle (The Magnificent) Malkin, and a number of other Fox TV contributors and guests (primarily on Beck’s show) are finally starting to zero in on the end game of the Obamacrats. Even Sean Hannity has crossed over some taboo lines by openly calling BHO a liar and referring to his agenda as socialist, but he still has a way to go.

BHO, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd, and other leading members of Crime Inc. know full well that their first “stimulus package” has zero chance of improving the economy over the long term (and very little chance in the short term). Which is precisely what they want, because they believe that the destructive results of their massive wealth-transfer program will accelerate their true agenda.

The agenda I’m talking about is nothing less than absolute dictatorial power. What they hope their new spending bill (euphemistically referred to as a “rescue package”) will accomplish is to get enough voters addicted to government “benefits” to assure a permanent majority for themselves.

You may have noticed that, two paragraphs up, I said “their first stimulus package.” That’s because, as it becomes ever more clear that their original, phony stimulus package has actually made the economy worse, there will be many more government-spending packages waiting in the wings.

That’s right – I said many more. That first trillion dollars is but a small down payment on what is to come. Trillions of paper dollars will overwhelm our economy over the next four years, and almost certainly lead to the total destruction of the U.S. currency.

As BHO continues to hold town hall meetings in carefully selected, economically depressed areas-campaigning as though he were still running for president-more and more people will come to see him as the Money Messiah … a newer, slicker version of Rev. Ike. When that woman in one of BHO’s town hall audiences related her tale of woe to him and he warmly embraced her, it was like watching Jesus touch a blind man on the forehead to bestow upon him the gift of sight.

Give the man credit. He learned well from the Clintons, who are still gnashing their teeth over not having taken the slippery young upstart seriously early on. If you aspire to power, you have to be shameless – a trait BHO exudes. Theatrics must become a part of who you are.

Sure, you may know you’re lying, but to play in the big leagues with people as talented as the Clintons, you have to be comfortable with your lies. The lies have to become an integral part of your moral fiber. Otherwise, you won’t be able to tell them with panache. BHO has the panache of a high-level confidence man who painlessly relieves elderly women of their expensive jewelry.

In Part II of this article, we’ll take a look at what Glenn Beck, Jonah Goldberg, and one of the most notorious socialists in American history have to say about all this.

As I pointed out in Part I of this article, Obama’s solution for the current economic tsunami is more government spending in the form of bailouts, a massive trillion-dollar economic stimulus package, and “tax cuts” offered to people who never paid taxes in the first place.

What is interesting about this is that it proves we have once again elected a president who is either ignorant of, or oblivious to, the United States Constitution. Nothing in the Constitution authorizes this kind of government intervention in the economy. Which means that Obama’s entire economic game plan is not only unworkable, it’s unconstitutional.

Now, as promised, let me give you my version of an economic stimulus plan that makes sense.

* For openers, I propose giving American taxpayers a one-year Income Tax Vacation.

Of course, Obama and his tax-and-spend friends will howl that we can’t afford it. But keep in mind that individuals in the United States of America pay a total of about $1.3 trillion in income taxes every year. So, as expensive as my idea may sound, it wouldn’t cost much more than Obama’s $1 trillion economic stimulus plan.

It’s also only a tiny fraction of the $7 trillion the federal government has given away in bailout monies to fat-cat corporations and bankers. And it’s far less than the $2 trillion or so that the Federal Reserve has printed up to try to put “liquidity” into the banking system.

Obama wants to take our money away from us, in the form of taxes, and then give it to those he deems worthy (e.g., voters who did not pay taxes) in the form of government checks, so they’re awed by the power and generosity of the government. My plan simply allows the taxpayers to keep all of their own money – for one year – without getting government (or government checks) involved.

With my plan, most of the savings would go to the top 20 percent of earners – the people who own almost all of the businesses in America. They’d pump that money back into their businesses and start new ones – which would translate into millions of new jobs. Obama and his liberal friends wouldn’t like that, because it makes too much sense.

Another thing Obama and his friends wouldn’t like about my Income Tax Vacation is that it would set a precedent. They’d be afraid that if we paid no income taxes for a year, we might start to like it. We might notice how being able to keep that extra money improves our quality of life. We might start to notice that the federal government can survive without it, and maybe we’d demand that income taxes never be reinstated.

My plan, unlike President Obama’s, rewards and incentivizes the American citizens who create most of the jobs, who buy the luxury goods, and who invest in the things that make our economy go and grow: stocks, bonds, real estate, investment property, small business. My plan puts money into their hands - our hands – the hands of people who know what to do with it in order to make more money. Now that’s economic stimulus.

The one-year Income Tax Vacation is the cornerstone of my economic stimulus plan. But that’s not the only idea I have to motivate and stimulate the producers and earners and taxpayers and small-business owners … and actually make money for the government.

* I propose phasing out capital-gains taxes on individual investments over a five-year period.

It would work like this: Buy a piece of America (stocks, bonds, real estate, a small business, etc.), hold that investment for five years, and pay ZERO capital gains taxes on it. In the first year, capital gains earned on your investment would be subject to a 15 percent tax rate. In the second year, the rate would be 10 percent. In the third year, the rate would be 7.5 percent. In the fourth year, it would be 5 percent. And after five years, any profits earned on that investment are yours to keep – tax free.

* I propose the elimination of all capital-gains taxes on investments, dividends, and interest for Americans age fifty-five and older.

The idea is to allow Americans who are entering their retirement years (after a lifetime of hard work) to retire on half the amount of savings they now require, because they would pay no taxes on their assets. With this kind of a reward, think of the trillions of dollars that older Americans would spend on investing in America – knowing that the big payoff (in the form of an inheritance) will be enjoyed by their children and grandchildren.

* I propose a business income-tax cut.

Corporate income tax rates in America are the second-highest in the industrialized world. To remain competitive and encourage big business not to move jobs offshore, we must cut that rate to 20 percent (or lower). Perhaps more important, to encourage the formation and success of small businesses – the economic engine of America – we should lower their rate to 10 percent.

* I propose cutting capital-gains taxes on the profits from the sale of any American’s principle residence to ZERO.

To liberal tax and spenders who scoff at this, it was your hero, Bill Clinton, back in the 1990s, who cut the capital-gains tax on the sale of a principle residence to zero on the first $500,000 of profit. But I’m taking Clinton’s idea a step further: Under my plan, any American who invests (and risks) his or her hard-earned money in a principle residence and holds it for a minimum of two years would get to keep any and all profits.

Pass this law and just watch the housing market – perhaps the most important business in America – explode.

* To encourage the creation of millions of jobs, I propose a $7,500 tax credit for employers.

This credit would goes directly to any employer who hires a full-time employee during the next three years, and it would increase to $10,000 if the person hired was out of work at the time.

* At the end of the one-year Income Tax Vacation that is the basis of my economic-stimulus plan, I propose that we institute a national Reverse Flat Tax.

It’s certainly in the government’s best interest to motivate us to work hard … to build more  usinesses … to hire more employees … to make and invest more money. But our tax system has the opposite effect. It punishes success, creativity, ingenuity, and productivity.

My proposed Reverse Flat Tax would solve that problem by having just two rates: 15 percent on all income up to $500,000 per year, and 10 percent on all income above $500,000. In other words, the more money you make, the more you get to keep. How’s that for incentive?

And it’s “fair.” It treats every American same way. No one can complain. There are no losers with my plan. There are only winners … and even bigger winners who take advantage of the opportunity to do better.

For those who argue that my Reverse Flat Tax will not generate enough revenues to cover the government’s expenses, they’re right. But that’s the point. We have to cut government spending dramatically so we can afford to let the American people keep more of their own money. In my new book, The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution With God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts, I explain exactly how that can be done.

That’s it – my Economic Stimulus Plan to get America moving and growing again.

Does it cost trillions of dollars? Sure it does. So do all of Obama’s plans. So do all of Congress’s plans. But my plan puts the money directly into the hands of the taxpayers instead of diverting it through the middleman we call “government.” Mine is based on incentivizing all Americans to invest and build. Mine is based on running the federal government (for the first time) like a business.

Modesty aside, mine is THE GREATEST ECONOMIC STIMULUS PLAN EVER!

Now that Barack Obama is in the Oval Office, it would seem like an ideal time to talk about the greatest challenge facing his new administration – the triple whammy of economic meltdown, credit crisis, and a crisis of consumer confidence. All of them have combined to create the “Perfect Storm” – what appears, to a small businessman like me, to be The Great Depression, Part II.

Obama believes that the way to get out of an economic toxic disaster caused by too much government spending and debt is to spend more and go further into debt. Interesting logic.

I, on the other hand, have an economic stimulus plan that is unlike any ever offered before. Instead of raising taxes on the successful Americans who create virtually all of the jobs, I want to give taxpayers a one-year “Income Tax Vacation.” Yes, I want to suspend income taxes for 2009 and tell the IRS to take the year off. I can hear the liberal tax and spenders screaming right now.

But before I get into the details of my stimulus plan, let me explain where the liberal tax and spenders have gone wrong in their thinking.

Liberal tax and spenders complain that we cannot possibly allow the Bush tax cuts to become permanent.

Why? Because the federal government cannot afford it. The cost? About $400 billion per year. Until recently, that sounded like a lot of money. But now we all realize that $400 billion is chump change.

How is it possible that we could afford to spend $80 billion on a bailout for one company (AIG), almost $50 billion (and counting) on a bailout for the failed Big Three automakers, $7 trillion in total bailouts – but $400 billion in tax cuts is unaffordable?

How is it possible that our new president could give away almost one trillion dollars in an economic stimulus package without hesitation, but $400 billion in tax cuts for millions of hardworking Americans is unimaginable?

When Obama campaigned for president, his position was that extending Bush’s tax cuts would be unaffordable and irresponsible. Yet, it turns out that when Obama wants to spend a cool trillion dollars on his pet project, it’s available, reasonable, and necessary.

They say that a tax cut is a “giveaway to the rich,” and that it’s “unfair” and “greedy.”

Really? How can it be a giveaway when it’s our money in the first place? The real giveaway is Obama offering a “tax cut” to the 40 percent of Americans who paid no taxes last year. The real giveaway is the millions of people (virtually all Obama supporters) who are on welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, housing assistance, free school breakfasts and lunches … the list goes on and on.

And as for the “G word” – you mean it’s greedy to want to keep more of your own money, but it’s not greedy to ask government to give you someone else’s money?

Obama calls tax-cut “spending,” claiming that tax cuts add to the budget deficit.

Wrong! Letting people keep more of their own money does not increase government spending. It isn’t the government’s money in the first place. It belongs to the taxpayers, so it shouldn’t even be in the budget.

If someone steals your car, then has a change of heart and gives back your four tires, would that be a “giveaway”? Would you thank them for being so generous and “fair”? Would you say they increased the spending in their personal budget by giving you the four tires that they just stole from you? I think not.

When President Obama spends a trillion dollars on building infrastructure-or when he spends a trillion dollars giving away money to people who don’t pay taxes-the liberal tax and spenders don’t consider that to be “government spending.” Why not? Doesn’t it add to the budget deficit? But letting taxpayers like you and me keep more of our own money – which isn’t spending at all – that is blamed for busting the budget?

Now, into this miasma of misguided thinking enters Barack Obama with his first big act as president – an almost trillion-dollar stimulus plan (which I predict he’ll expand dramatically after only a few months in office).

He wants to build infrastructure with a large portion of it – highways, bridges, and schools. With the rest, he will send government checks to millions of Americans who’ve never paid taxes, and millions more (including government workers) who have steady jobs.

So why give them a check? The people who need the money are small-business owners who are struggling because consumers have stopped buying. Unfortunately, they made too much money last year, so Obama has disqualified them.

Oh, and just for good measure, Obama will spend a bunch of “leftover” money on creating 600,000 government jobs that will bankrupt taxpayers not just today, but for decades to come. Those 600,000 new government employees will be getting bloated salaries, pensions, and health benefits for the next fifty years.

This is Obama’s version of Economics 101: Massive Spending + Massive Debt = Economic Recovery. Good luck to all of us. We’ll need it. Because it’s not going to work.

In Part II of this article, I’ll tell you what will.

(Wayne Allyn Root was the 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential candidate. His new
book, to be released by John Wiley & Sons in May, is entitled The Conscience of
a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution With God, Guns, Gambling & Tax
Cuts. He also happens to have been Barack Obama’s college classmate (Columbia
University Class of ‘83). For more of his views and commentaries, and to watch
his many media interviews, please visit his website at:  www.ROOTforAmerica.com)