Boris and Ivan Again

Thomas Sowell wrote this article about the human condition of using envy, hate, and fear to grab power.

An excerpt -

There is an old Russian fable, with different versions in other countries, about two poor peasants, Ivan and Boris. The only difference between them was that Boris had a goat and Ivan didn't. One day, Ivan came upon a strange-looking lamp and, when he rubbed it, a genie appeared. She told him that she could grant him just one wish, but it could be anything in the world.



Ivan said, "I want Boris's goat to die."

Thomas Sowell went on to explain how this old Russian fable tells us something painful about many Americans today, when so many people are preoccupied with the pay of corporate CEOs. It is not the general public that singles out corporate CEOs for so much attention. Politicians and the media have focused on business leaders, and the public has been led along, like sheep.



Those who want more power have known for centuries that giving the people somebody to hate and fear is the key.



This article jarred my memory about a book written by Henry Thoreau, Walden Pond.



Walden's original title page...The drawing is by Henry's sister, Sophia Thoreau. The text under the drawing is:

I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.

In this book Thoreau spells out the basics that are necessary. an excerpt -

The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success.

Each individual is going to secure these necessaries of life in differing amounts, and we have got to let go of envy for those who have more than others. The envy and the hate that follows will not get you any more of the necessaries. All that hate can do is spread the misery.



Let's expand on this fable from the economy to entertaining the problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Why was so much effort made to ban a ballot initiative in California that defines marriage as only between one man and one woman? It had nothing to do with the necessaries of life, and it would not add any additional legal rights that citizens of California already have.



There are some in the gay community who want everyone to applaud and approve of their sexual activity. It is not enough for them to be legally protected from harassment. They want everyone to approve and appreciate their sexual activity.



They see the traditional family respected and admired in the community, and this brings them envy followed by hate. When they can't have what they want they become Ivan wanting Boris's goat to die.

Frederick Douglass's First Meeting With President Lincoln

Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838 after a harsh life of servitude in Maryland. He was later hired by William Lloyd Garrison as a speaker for the Anti-Slavery Society. He founded and edited the North Star, an abolitionist newspaper.



Frederick Douglass had impatiently snapped at Lincoln on the pages of his newspaper for sloth and indifference to the issue of slavery. He came away from his first meeting with Lincoln in August 1863 surprised.

I find the president the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely who, in no single instance, reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color. The reason is because of the similarity with which I had fought my way up, we both starting at the lowest rung of the ladder.

Based upon the writings of Frederick Douglas, if I were a fly on the wall listening to the conversation of this first meeting between these two, I would have heard the following:



President Lincoln: I am alarmed by the increasing opposition to the war, in the North, and the mad cry against it, because it is being made an abolition war. I am apprehensive that a peace might be forced upon me which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our lines. I want to make my Proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace. The slaves are not coming so rapidly and so numerously to us as I had hoped.



Frederick Douglass: The slaveholders know how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few know of your Proclamation.



President Lincoln: Well, I want you to set about devising some means of making them acquainted with it, and for bringing them into our lines. I am troubled by the attitude of Mr. Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, and the growing impatience there is being manifested through the North at the war. I am being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object, and of failing to make peace, when I might have done so to advantage. I am afraid of what might come of all these complaints, but am persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels, and I am not for giving them rest by futile conferences at Niagara Falls, or elsewhere, with unauthorized persons. I see the danger of premature peace, and I wish to provide means of rendering such consummation as harmless as possible.



Frederick Douglass: I am the more impressed by your benevolent consideration because you previously said, in answer to the peace clamor, that your object was to save the Union, and to do so with or without slavery. What you are now saying shows a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had even seen before in anything spoken or written by you. I agree to undertake the organizing of a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel states, beyond the lines of our armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.



President Lincoln: Douglass, I hate slavery as much as you do, and I want to see it abolished altogether.



A few days later, Douglass wrote the President:

All with whom I have thus far spoken on the subject, concur in the wisdom and benevolence of the idea, and some of them think it is practicable. That every slave who escapes from the Rebel States is a loss to the Rebellion and a gain to the Loyal Cause I need not stop to argue the proposition is self evident. The negro is the stomach of the rebellion.

The reasons for my posting this short little history lesson is to refute a couple of ideas being projected about what the Republican Party needs to do.



One idea is that we cannot spend any time, money, and resources on outreach to folks who have a track record of criticizing and voting against Republicans.



We are assuring the prospects of always being in the minority if we only spend time, money, and resources on folks who compliment and vote for Republicans. Folks who fall into this category are in the minority, and we need to stop being in denial about it.



A second idea is that we need to stop protracting the "culture war" with regards to overturning Roe v Wade, and prematurely surrender for the sake of achieving election victories. There is no middle ground on an issue like Roe v Wade.

There Is No Middle Ground

In Hartford on March 5, 1860, Mr. Lincoln said:

If abortion is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted -- there is no middle ground. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality -- its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension -- its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought abortion right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition as being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think abortion is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation.

Mr. Lincoln's philosophy was often revealed in letters designed for publication. One such letter was to Kentucky editor Albert G. Hodges in April 1864. President Lincoln began:

I am naturally antiabortion. If abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.

James R. (Ron) Weddington, one of the co-counsels for Roe v. Wade, wrote to president elect Bill Clinton in 1992, advocating elimination of the lower class through birth control and abortion:

But you can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I'm, not advocating some, sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can't afford to have babies.

There, I've said it. It's what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and...well...so Republican...

Condoms alone won't do it. Depo-Provera, Norplant and the new birth control injection being developed in India are not a complete answer...

No, government is also going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions...RU 486 and conventional abortions. Even if we make birth control as ubiquitous as sneakers and junk food, there will still be unplanned pregnancies. There have been about 30 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery ...and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario...

We don't need more cannon fodder. We don't need more parishioners, We don't need more cheap labor. We don't need more poor babies.

So, Weddington's solution to the "problem" of the poor is to convince them to use birth control, and when that fails, provide them with government-funded abortions. Planned Parenthood has taken this strategy to heart, putting the vast majority of their abortion clinics in inner city neighborhoods, resulting in a disproportionate number of abortions among African Americans and Hispanics. So, even though African Americans makeup only 12% of the U.S. population, they account for 35% of all abortions.



Ok, Ok, so I took the liberty to replace the word slavery with the word abortion in the speech and letter of Abraham Lincoln. I did not replace any word that Ron Weddington used in his letter to Bill Clinton. I believe that there has not been a change of heart and attitude by the donkey party from the time of Abraham Lincoln with respect to the barely educated poor segments of our country. There has been a change of strategy. The strategy then was to make good use of them in the same way good use was made of livestock. In our more modern urban world the strategy is for them to just die out by not reproducing.

More Faces Of The Future GOP

This is a list of photos of CongressCritters™ who have been elected to serve in the House or the Senate of their state. source



I pray that these folks are rising stars in the GOP because this will smash to smithereens the narrative framed by the left about who the Republican Party represents.











Rep. Donald A. Blakey DE-34











Rep. Jennifer Carroll FL-13









Rep. Melvin Everson GA-106







Rep. Willie Talton GA-145






Sen. Bill Hardiman MI-29

















Rep. Jane Powdrell-Culbert NM-44















Sen. Maurice Washington NV-2


Rep. T.W.Shannon OK-62







Sen. Jackie Winters OR-10









Rep. Paul Scott MI-51

Faces Of The Future GOP

Sen Jim Risch ID

Sen Mike Johanns NE

Rep Bill Posey FL-5

Rep Tom Rooney FL-16

Rep Duncan Hunter CA-52

Rep Mike Coffman CO-6

Rep Aaron Schock IL-18

Rep Lynn Jenkins KS-2

Rep Brett Guthrie KY-2

Rep Phil Roe TN-1

Rep Bill Cassidy LA-6

Rep Erik Paulsen MN-3

Rep Gregg Harper MS-3

Rep Blaine Luetkemeyer MO-9

Rep Leonard Lance NJ-7

Rep Steve Austria OH-7

Rep Glenn Thompson PA-5

Rep Cynthia Lummis WY-AL

Rep Jason Chaffetz UT-3

Rep Pete Olson TX-22

Rep Chris Lee NY-26

On This I Agree with Obama

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share.

I hope that President-elect Barack Hussein Obama was speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth when these word came out of his mouth at the victory speech in Chicago.



There are supporters of Obama who want to see conservatives looking sad, demoralized, and defeated. I refuse to let them see this in me, and it will be so much easier if Obama truly believes in self-reliance and individual liberty.



There is a need among conservatives to stay on message and recognize how important it is to define capitalism, self-reliance, and individual liberty. Too often in the last fourteen years the Republicans elected to the US Congress and the White House made decisions based on fear of losing. We need to promote leaders who will make decisions based on faith in the core principles and values described in the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution Preamble.



In addition to the leaders that we need is the need for a more informed electorate. Parents need to talk with their children about what they are being taught in school. More people need to know what Marxism is all about, and what Capitalism is all about.



There is one more line in his victory speech that caught my attention: And we know the government can't solve every problem. This statement is another part of a message conservatives need to promote.

Americans Embrace Childish Unity

The title of my diary is from an excellent column, Americans Embrace Childish Unity , written by Ben Shapiro at TownHall. I especially like his concluding remarks:

America has always recognized that unity for its own sake is useless at best and dangerous at worst. Unifying behind a mysterious charismatic figure promising transformational change may make us feel good, but it is a betrayal of the open and honest governmental debate our Founding Fathers sought and so many Americans have fought and died to preserve.



Americans think they grew up during Election 2008. They think they moved beyond the past. In one way they did. In another, more important way, they regressed dramatically -- to a time before politics mattered. In the next four years, there will be plenty of growing up to do.

All the talk lately seems to be about unity, and I agree with Ben that this talk is useless and dangerous. Actions speak louder than this talk. Apparently the first decision Obama has made is to choose Rahm Emmanuel to be his chief of staff. One would have to have a real perverted definition of unity for its own sake to look at this choice of chief of staff as a unifying move. Let's just look at what Rahm Emmanuel said to his staff after the 2006 midterm elections.

I'll tell you this, the Republicans may have the 72-hour program. But they have not seen the 22-month program! Since my kids are gone, I can say it: They can go bleep themselves!

From here on for the next four years we've got to stop saying - This action by the President raises questions - and start realizing and saying - This action by the President answers questions.



Another thing I am getting tired of is the use of a label. I am convinced that so many people are so ignorant that they don't know the meaning of labels like Marxist or Capitalist. Instead of name calling let's try getting answers to this question - Which of these economic views do you embrace?

A. To enhance the wealth of a nation, every man, consistent with the law, should be free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of ... other ... men. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. The individual is driven by private gain but is led by an invisible hand to promote the public good, which was no part of his intention.



B. Capitalism is an anarchy of production, in which the businessmen and capitalists run about like chickens without heads. Rationality, order, and planning emanate from the government, not from the participants in the market.



Capitalism and economic freedom are a formula for injustice and chaos, while government is the voice and agent of justice and rationality in economic affairs.

If they answer A they embrace Capitalism, and if they answer B then they embrace Marxism. A is a quote from Adam Smith, Father of Capitalism, and B is a quote from Karl Marx.

Karl Marx is NOT the Father of Capitalism

This morning I read an excellent column written by Wynton Hall at TownHall. The title of this column is Karl Marx is not the Father of Capitalism

This article has this opening line -

Sen. Barack Obama won for a simple reason: historical amnesia.

I encourage everyone to read the entire article. After reading it I was inspired to write this blog with the words of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Ronald Reagan.



Adam Smith

To enhance the wealth of a nation, every man, consistent with the law, should be free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of ... other ... men. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. The individual is driven by private gain but is led by an invisible hand to promote the public good, which was no part of his intention.



Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must in that particular situation, depend upon ... the productive powers of labour.



In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people. As it is the interest of the freemen of a corporation to hinder the rest of the inhabitants from employing any workmen but themselves, so it is the interest of the merchants and manufacturers of every country to secure to themselves the monopoly of the home market.



A dwellinghouse, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitant; and though it is, no doubt, extremely useful to him, it is as his clothes and household furniture are useful to him, which, however, makes a part of his expense, and not of his revenue. If it is to be let to a tenant for rent, as the house itself can produce nothing, the tenant must always pay the rent out of some other revenue which he derives either from labour, or stock, or land. Though a house, therefore, may yield a revenue to its proprietor, and thereby serve in the function of a capital to him, it cannot yield any to the public, nor serve in the function of a capital to it, and the revenue of the whole body of the people can never be in the smallest degree increased by it.

Karl Marx

In the absence of government intervention, the self-interest, the profit motive--the unbridled greed--of businessmen and capitalists would serve to drive wage rates to minimum subsistence while it extended the hours of work to the maximum humanly endurable, imposed horrifying working conditions, and drove small children to work in factories and mines.



The profits and interest of businessmen and capitalists are unearned, undeserved gains, wrung from wage earners--the alleged true producers--by the equivalent of physical force, and hence the wage earners are virtual slaves (wage slaves) and the capitalist exploiters are virtual slave owners. Taxing the businessmen and capitalists and using the proceeds for the benefit of wage earners, in such forms as social security, socialized medicine, public education, and public housing, is a policy that serves merely to return to the wage earners some portion of the loot allegedly stolen from them in the process of exploitation.



The capitalists expropriate all of the wage earner's production above what is necessary for minimum subsistence. The government's intervention harms no one but the immoral businessmen and capitalists, never the wage earners. Thus not only the taxes to pay for social programs but also the higher wages imposed by pro-union and minimum-wage legislation simply come out of profits, with no negative effect whatsoever on wage earners, such as unemployment.



Capitalism is an anarchy of production, in which the businessmen and capitalists run about like chickens without heads. Rationality, order, and planning emanate from the government, not from the participants in the market.



Capitalism and economic freedom are a formula for injustice and chaos, while government is the voice and agent of justice and rationality in economic affairs.

the disciples of Karl Marx

Karl Marx's viewpoint is the intellectual framework of the great majority of today's professors and of several generations of their predecessors. It is equally the intellectual framework of their students, who have dutifully absorbed their misguided teachings and some of whom have gone on to become the reporters and editors of such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, and the overwhelming majority of all other newspapers and news magazines. It is the intellectual framework of their students who are now the commentators and editors of practically all of the major television networks, such as CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN. And it is this intellectual framework within which the media now attempts to understand and report on our financial crisis.



The educational system and the media do not favor any kind of forcible overthrow of the United States government or are necessarily even advocates of socialism. They are Marxists insofar as they accept Marx's views concerning the nature and operation of capitalism.



Ronald Reagan. a disciple of Adam Smith

Who pays the business tax anyway? We do! You can't tax business. Business doesn't pay taxes. It collects taxes. And if they can't be passed on to the customer in the price of the product as a cost of operation, business goes out of business. Now what they're going to do is make it easier for demagogic politicians--and you've got plenty of them in the state legislature--to say to the people, look, we need money for this worthwhile project but we're not going to tax you, we're going to tax business, now that we can do it by a one vote margin. So they'll tax business and the price of the product will go up and the people will blame the storekeeper for the rise in the price of the product, not recognizing that all he's doing is passing on to them a hidden sales tax.



If people need any more concrete explanation of this, start with the staff of life, a loaf of bread. The simplest thing; the poorest man must have it. Well, there are 151 taxes now in the price of a loaf of bread--it accounts for more than half the of a loaf of bread. It begins with the first tax, on the farmer that raised the wheat. Any simpleton can understand that if that farmer cannot get enough money for his wheat, to pay the property tax on his farm, he can't be a farmer. He loses his farm. And so it is with the fellow who pays a driver's license and a gasoline tax to drive the truckload of wheat to the mill, the miller who has to pay everything from social security tax, business license, everything else. He has to make his living over and above those costs. So they all wind up in that loaf of bread. Now an egg isn't far behind and nobody had to make that. There's a hundred taxes in an egg by the time it gets to market and you know the chicken didn't put them there!

Ronald Reagan said those words in July 1975, a full five years before winning the White House. Put simply, Reagan stayed on message for years and didn't relent.



Reagan understood that you have to teach voters why Leftist policies are wrongheaded. He also understood that you have to pound home a message before it will stick.



Rebuilding the conservative message will demand that the next generation of conservative leaders do the same.

Useful Idiots Fifty Years Ago

We the People have a duty as voters on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. John McCain is well known from his years of service to our country for the last 55 years. Barack Obama is not so well known. There are some things we cannot know about Barack Obama because the State of Hawaii and major US newspapers have sealed the information. Vote for McCain/Palin as if your life depends on it. It does.

A Timeline of Events Fifty Years Ago



November 1956

Fidel went into exile in Mexico, where he met a young, militant Argentine named Ernesto Guevara, better known as El Che. They left Mexico in late November 1956 on the ship Granma. They landed at Playa Las Coloradas, in the rural eastern part of Cuba. With financial backing from Russia, Castro bribed many military leaders. He got a substantial amount of support from the intellectual and working class, who knew nothing of his Communist intentions.



February 25, 1957

Herbert L. Matthews, a correspondent for the New York Times, Matthews reported:

There is no communism to speak of in Fidel Castro's movement.

April, 1957

Herbert L. Matthews interviewed Fidel Castro at his mountain retreat. For three successive front page articles, he compared Castro to Lincoln and presented him as "a peasant patriot", "a strong anti-communist", "a Robin Hood", and "a defender of the people."



1957

A member of the Intelligence section of the Cuban army hand-carried Castro's dossier to Washington in 1957, delivering it to Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, which revealed that Castro was a Communist. Dulles 'buried' the file.



Arthur Gardner, the American Ambassador to Cuba, referred to Castro as a communist terrorist and so he was replaced by Earl E.T. Smith, who, instead of being briefed by Gardner was briefed by a correspondent for the New York Times, Herbert Matthews. A Senate Committee investigation of William A. Wieland, who in 1957 became the State Department's Caribbean representative, said that he

regularly disregarded, sidetracked or denounced FBI, State Department and military intelligence sources which branded Castro as a Communist.

Individuals in the State Department, and individuals in the New York Times, put Castro in power.

These individuals included Robert McNamara, Theodore C. Sorenson, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Roy Rubottom, McGeorge Bundy, William J. Fulbright, and Roger Hilsman.



December 1958

In 1958, in an interview with Jules DuBois, Castro said:

I have never been nor am I a Communist...

Roy Rubottom, the Assistant Secretary for Latin American Affairs, said in December, 1958:

There was no evidence of any organized Communist elements within the Castro movement or that Senor Castro himself was under Communist influence.

December 31, 1958

After being asked to abdicate by Eisenhower, Batista left office on December 31, 1958 and Castro took control of the country in January, 1959.



February 1959

On CBS-TV, Edward R. Murrow portrayed him as a national hero.



Ed Sullivan interviewed Castro for a film clip which was seen by about 30 million people in which he said:

The people of the United States have great admiration for you and your men because you are in the real American spirit of George Washington.

April 1959

In April, 1959, Castro visited the U.S., and the State Department welcomed him as a "distinguished leader." Castro meets US Vice President Richard Nixon on an unofficial visit to Washington. Nixon afterwards wrote that the US had no choice but to try to "orient" the leftist leader in the "right direction."



July 1959

In July, 1959, Major Pedro Diaz Lanz of the Cuban Air Force toured the United States and revealed that he had first-hand knowledge that Castro was a Communist. This fact, for the most part, was kept out of the media. The truth of the matter was that the State Department was purposely covering up Castro's Communist connections, the fact that his supporters were trained by Russia, and that he was carrying out a Communist revolution.



1960

All US businesses in Cuba are nationalised without compensation; US breaks off diplomatic relations with Havana and imposes a trade embargo in response to Castro's reforms.



1961

Castro proclaims Cuba a communist state and begins to ally it with the USSR.



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