I know that many of you were expecting that I would be talking about the travesty that occurred Saturday night in the House of Representatives. Fear not, I am going to tackle that, but not tonight. I want to finish reading the bill that passed before I begin commenting on it. I will say I am very disappointed that it passed, and thus far I am under the impression that the Democrats in Congress are interested in passing a health insurance reform bill, but have no concern with whether it will actually be a good bill or an effective bill. But enough for tonight, I am hoping to make the newly passed bill the topic tomorrow night. For tonight I offer some thoughts from over there at the Huffington Post. It seems that the tragic events at Fort Hood have become yet another excuse for those on the far left to clamor about taking people’s guns away yet again. I will offer you all the opportunity to read what this particular person had to say, and then weigh in with my own thoughts…

The far left loon of the day is Bill Mann. Allow me to once again make sure everyone understands that I really have the big problem with those on the far left. Left of center doesn’t rile me up. But the kooks on the fringes of the liberal spectrum are just as dimwitted, control-seeking, and dangerous to America as the kooks on the fringes of the conservative spectrum. In truth it is about time that we started to, as Americans, ostracize them for the threats to civilization that they are. The fringes on each side are polarizing Americans against each other, and they are the primary cause for a lack of dialogue between sides today. Moderates on either side hear the radicals on the other side and then apply their lunatic ravings to the entire other side rather than recognizing it as the fringe drivel that it is. Liberals think Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh speak for regular Conservatives. Conservatives think that Pelosi, Olbermann, Franken, and a lot of the Huffington Post writers speak for regular liberals. It is time that both sides begin to force those on the far reaches of the political spectrum out of the public spotlight. They are killing America with their madness and driving the political process to ruin.

Bill Mann is someone that I sometimes find amusing. But let’s not mistake his humor for not driving the madness. Bill is a far left guy who wants to push the progressive agenda as far as possible. His website, titled “DC Weasels”, is little more than a Republican bashing website that appears to offer nothing of substance. Little more than snipey little comments about how horrible Republicans in Congress are. Apparently he has blinders to the actions of the other side of that chamber. And for this website alone, he fits the description of the fringe radicals that are hurting our country by falsely attempting to demonize the other side with infantile comments.

Mr. Mann decided that the Fort Hood shootings were a perfect opportunity to once again make a far left attack against the Second Amendment. From the Huffington Post:

Fort Hood Reminds Us: Our Gun Laws Are a National Disgrace

Our current lack of health insurance for all is a national disgrace. But so are our handgun laws — or lack of them.

You’d think you might have heard a bit more about our heedless national pistolero mentality in the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the tragic shootings at Fort Hood this week. But no such luck. How many times have we seen this movie before? It’s only the locations that change.

There was only scant mention in all the coverage that suspected mass murderer Nidal Hasan had bought his lethal cop-killer handgun at “Guns Galore” in nearby Killeen, Texas. How charming.

Why is it that comic Stephen Colbert seems to be the only one on national TV who regularly reminds us about this country’s twisted love of handguns? (Colbert keeps his piece, “Sweetness,” under his anchor desk, occasionally taking it out to smooch its barrel).

Something I’ve written in my newspaper columns about for years bears repeating here:

Any country with as many mentally ill people as the U.S. that allows virtually unlimited access to handguns is on a suicide mission.

Gun sickness is our most pressing national illness.

I live within sight of the Canadian border, and Americans who visit Canada are often surprised at how serious Canadian customs officials regard guns — specifically, bringing them into relatively handgun-free Canada. Where are these people’s priorities, they seem to be saying?

(Note: Canadian customs can — and does — turn people back at the border who have a DUI conviction. Again, different national priorities).

Canadians recognize handguns as a direct threat to civilized society, unlike here, where the NRA and the gun-toters evidently believe we’re living in Tombstone, Ariz., circa 1885.

How many more mass shootings and troubled-loner gun sprees (what the New York Post calls “Slayfests”) can we afford before we finally get serious about gun control? How much longer will network TV news continue to soft-peddle and play down this most basic issue?

I don’t really care that much about what drove Hasan to apparently murder all those soldiers, which has been the prime focus of nonstop cable news. The fact is, he did. What I DO care about is how easy it was for him to get the means — a lethal gun — to do it.

Not to belabor the Canadian issue — we Americans are, after all, the noisy, gun-toting downstairs neighbors — but re-entering the U.S. after living in Canada for several years (which we did) was a maddening experience.

We lived a major metropolitan area, Montreal, for seven years. And even in the more disadvantaged parts of that city, you feel safe. You never feel you might get shot, either by a handgun-toting robber or a troubled loner.

Coming back into the United States you lose that peace of mind. It’s like a slap in the face.

Don’t believe me? Ask anyone else who’s lived in a developed country in which handguns are restricted and can’t be bought as easily as cigarettes.

We have millions of sick Americans who need health insurance. But there are even more of us who live in danger of being shot by an easy-to-obtain weapon. It’s way past time for the media to pay attention to THIS life and death issue.

Read the article at the Huffington Post: Bill Mann: Fort Hood Reminds Us: Our Gun Laws Are a National Disgrace

I hate to have to do this to Bill, but I think perhaps that he, along with most of the media, the federal government, and the two major parties out there, have somehow forgotten about the fact that the founders sat down and founded this country under the concept that we have rights that are not the government’s to toy with. Among those would be the Bill of Rights, which the founders felt were important enough rights to actually write them down so the forgetful wouldn’t forget that the people have them regardless of what government thinks, or regardless of what folks like Bill Mann, who must believe that he is simply smarter than the founders were, happens to believe. Among those Bill of Rights proclamations was a quirky little one called the Second Amendment. That one states fairly clearly:

Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791.
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.

Now I understand how difficult this can be to understand. So I will try to help out here where I can. The document seems to need some interpretation. I am no Supreme Court Justice, but I will give it a shot. The RIGHT (as in inherent right, existing with or without the mandate of government, unable to be taken away) to keep (as in own, possess, hold as one’s property) and bear (as in hold in one’s hand, use when necessary) Arms (as in guns), shall not be infringed (as in shall not have any lunatic who has an agenda attempt to take away such rights). I understand how difficult this must be for folks to understand. It is amazing how hard these simple amendments are for folks in the government to understand. I am sure if I was a smarter fellar, I would be able to see the nuances that make their interpretations make more sense than my simpleton manner of understanding the english language. Ahhh, if only I was more smarter.

The first falsehood in Mann’s article is that he operates under the assumption… no strike that, he knows better and intentionally attempts to mislead people… that gun control laws not being tough are the problem. He implies that the Fort Hood catastrophe is another example of how weak gun control laws have led to a tragedy. But that doesn’t make a lot of sense does it? This killer, Nidal Hasan, was a Major in the United States Military. Anyone want to take a guess at how few people in the United States military make this rank? I am sure our resident Colonel can fill us in. I submit to you that a man who can get the clearance to be a Major and to spend this long in the US military, can easily pass the background checks to get a handgun in the toughest states in America to do so. Gun Control laws were not the issue in this case. And to use this case as a basis for an article on strengthening gun control laws, which are unconstitutional in the first place, is a blatant confusing of the issues.

I have grown tired of listening to the talking heads from the left who consistently ignore the reality in today’s world. Let me scream this little piece so maybe even someone as dense as Mann can hear it. Although I doubt he will acknowledge it, as it would destroy the entire argument from the left on this issue: WHEN YOU MAKE GUN CONTROL LAWS THAT MAKE GUNS ILLEGAL FOR LAW ABIDING CITIZENS, THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO WILL HAVE GUNS ARE THE CRIMINALS, WHO DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR GUN CONTROL LAWS. I am unsure why this concept is so hard to understand. I don’t have the statistics from a source with zero bias. Perhaps someone else does. But I know that the NRA study said that only 1% of gun crimes are committed by a person who was carrying the gun legally as it is. That can’t be too far off base. And that is just the carry law. So how many gun crimes are committed by folks who give a shit what gun laws you put in place? Exactly. None.

Mann stated, “Any country with as many mentally ill people as the U.S. that allows virtually unlimited access to handguns is on a suicide mission.” And I say bull. It isn’t usually the mentally ill that commit gun crimes. Those just get the headlines. It is the morally corrupt that commit gun crimes. I saw an article tonight about a man who shot and killed three women in a car at a gas station in St. Louis. He wasn’t mentally ill. He was a criminal with no regard for human life. I will go ahead and put even money that he obtained the gun illegally. How would stricter gun laws stop that? I would say that any country with as many criminals and morally corrupt youth as America that doesn’t have every citizen able to adequately protect themselves will eventually be overrun by criminals. And further, any country with a federal government as far reaching and out of control with power as ours that doesn’t have armed citizens is asking for a quick tyranny rather than a slow, methodical one.

Gun sickness is our most pressing national illness? Please. I would say liberalism is our most pressing national illness. OK, that was just a joke, don’t let anyone’s head explode. In reality a failure of the family unit is our most pressing national illness. Perhaps with stronger family structures our country would not resemble the Tombstone Mann describes. However, the federal government has done everything in its power over the last 50 years to eliminate the family unit as the strongest bond in America. Some still exist, but they are becoming more rare by the day.

“Canadians recognize handguns as a direct threat to civilized society, unlike here, where the NRA and the gun-toters evidently believe we’re living in Tombstone, Ariz., circa 1885.” I am interested to hear everyone else’s take on this one. I know that there are a plethora of Canadians who frequent the site. Do you find this to be a true statement? I tend to disagree, as I see a disregard for rule of law and a lack of respect for individual liberty as the direct threats to civilized society. I was surprised to see Mann also add in the following little tidbit:

(Note: Canadian customs can — and does — turn people back at the border who have a DUI conviction. Again, different national priorities).

It is interesting to see someone from the left make a statement such as this. Does anyone else find it ironic that Mann would champion Canada for not allowing someone who has a DUI into their country while simultaneously fighting tooth and nail to ensure that illegal immigrants in America convicted of DUI do not get deported back to their home country? Don’t let law abiding citizens who make the mistake of DUI into the country, but don’t dare let non law-abiding non-citizens who make that mistake be deported. A fascinating contradiction of morality there from a far left person. But I digress.

The bottom line here is that I believe that it has come time to start taking these far fringe folks from both sides out to the woodshed and teaching them a lesson or two about individual liberty and freedom. I know that the right wants to make us into a controlled stated that holds Christianity at its core. I know the left wants to make us into a controlled state with some form of socialism at its core. What I don’t understand is why there are so many moderates who don’t stand up and say “enough”. People like Pelosi should have been silenced by the majority a long, long time ago. People like Bush should have been removed from power by a vocal populace the second he signed the Patriot Act. We have allowed the far reaches of both parties to dictate the message, control the issues, and polarize the people for far too long.

Gun control is an issue that I am willing to take a stand on. I will not stand by and listen to any more of the batshit crazy rhetoric from the left about this. Mann is just one of many. The message that goes back to folks that parrot Mann’s position needs to be a loud rendition of the Second Amendment followed by “if you don’t like the idea of personal freedom and individual liberty, may I suggest that you go back to Canada?” Canadian brothers, don’t take that as a slap against your country, It is merely a recognition of where Mann came from. As the sing up there says…. it is time for people to realize that gun control is about control, not guns. The far left needs to be shut down on this issue.

Did you really expect anything different from someone with the name USWeapon?

Guest Commentary comes to us once again. It has been a really good week for discussions this week. The discussions around health care were especially good. They were, at times, a bit frustrating. Not because of the directions that any of the people took, even when some of them were completely off base. I was more frustrated because of the fact that I was unable to jump in and actually participate in the discussions in a substantive manner, which means I missed out on having some good debates with some of you. I especially was interested in discussing things with “Buck”, so I hope that he will continue to hang around and discuss things with us! As many of you know, next week will be a big week for spending time with family as we deal with the services and taking care of things. So I may not be real engaged next week, but I intend to be far more engaged in the conversations in the weeks to come.

Tonight’s guest commentary is one that I know many of you have been waiting on. Black Flag returns to the guest commentary realm with a follow up to his first article. I hope that everyone enjoys the discussions that are sure to follow from this one…

Limits on Knowledge
by Black Flag

Many discussions on the blog hold a particular premise at its core;

“Man has the knowledge or can obtain the knowledge to shape society to his own design“

Many – if not most – people believe that society (politically and economically) can be designed if only we had enough power,
information, and control over the actions of our fellow man.

That belief stands on a premise that social action can be understood as a science.

But it cannot. There is no experiment on human action that can prove a hypothesis that would confirm that action on all humans!

Fredrick Hayek, in accepting his Nobel Prize, gave a remarkable acceptance speech. His was a stern and grave warning to the world about the limits of knowledge in predicting, controlling and designing human action.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/hayek-lecture.html

He said that the most dangerous person on earth is an arrogant intellectual who lacks the humility necessary to
see that society needs no masters and cannot be planned from the top down.

An intellectual lacking humility can become a tyrant, and an accomplice in the destruction of civilization itself. His speech was an implicit condemnation of a century of intellectual and social trends and a warning to us, his future.

I fear we have not listened well.

Fredrick Hayek: “Yet the danger of which I want to warn is precisely the belief that in order to have a claim to be accepted as scientific it is necessary to achieve more.”

This way lies charlatanism and worse.

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

In the physical sciences there may be little objection to trying to do the impossible; one might even feel that one ought not to discourage the over-confident because their experiments may after all produce some new insights.

But in the social field the erroneous belief that the exercise of some power would have beneficial consequences is likely to lead to a new power to coerce other men being conferred on some authority.

Even if such power is not in itself bad, its exercise is likely to impede the functioning of those spontaneous ordering forces by which, without understanding them, man is in fact so largely assisted in the pursuit of his aims.

We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is based – a communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed.

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible.

He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, ”dizzy with success”, to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will.

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

As I monitored the comments to yesterday’s article on the public option, I was saddened to see some of the folks who discussed things fall into the common trap of using an emotional appeal in order to attempt to win a debate. Unfortunately, the entire health care reform debate has become little more than an emotional argument along the same lines of so many other political topics and debates. I won’t attempt to say that the GOP arguments are not also just as emotional in their “appeals”. The GOP is just as guilty in this tactic as the Democrats are. I am going to point out a few emotional appeals that are flawed positions from the GOP. And then I am going to delve in to the health care discussions here lately, and point out the emotional appeals. I will also point out where a few of them are fatally flawed. But what I would like to do is point out to everyone that these emotional appeals are quite effective rhetoric, but completely useless against those who use reason and logic as their starting point.

The fact is that emotional appeals are the most effective weapons that the politicians have at their disposal. The problem with this tactic is that the emotional appeal throws out the most effective and necessary part of problem solving… logic. As many of you know, I am a fan of logic. I am not interested in emotions. Emotions have absolutely zero place in the realm of political discourse, and I do my best to eliminate them whenever I can. The use of emotional appeals has found a true home in the Democratic party. That is not meant as a shot at the party, just a recognition of the reality of today’s liberal politicians and their supporters. They are called “bleeding heart liberals” for a reason after all. The appeals to environmental changes, the appeals to welfare extensions, the appeals to financial regulation of business, and now the mass appeals to government run health care.

But let’s not leave out the right on the use of emotional appeals in order to further the cause with the less logically adept fan base. We have the appeals around the right to life movement, which include grotesque pictures of aborted fetuses have no bearing on the argument, but are meant to do little more than shock the senses and appeal to emotion. Where the warmongering party really makes its hay, however, is in the use of an entirely different emotion: fear.

The GOP has made an art out of using fear to get the public to go along with the outlandish plans that they come up with for global domination and citizen control. This has been a long standing tradition within the Republican party. And one that I am ashamed to admit for many years I fell for, hook, line and sinker.

A quick sidebar here: Due to the nature of my previous career, I am well versed and certainly aware of the very real threats to the United States and her citizens. I urge you to not discount these threats. Instead, acknowledge them, and then seek to deal with them in a far better way than the federal government’s policies of the past. The threats are often real. The solutions offered by the government to deal with those threats are often not the best solutions, however. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Just think about the justification that we see from the GOP when it comes to the general tactic of going to war or attacking someone or continuing the war. For that matter, they get right down to using fear in the election cycle by proclaiming that we will be attacked or in danger if we are so bold as to select a Democrat to lead the country. After 9/11, we decided we had to go on the offensive and wage a “war on terror,” proclaiming to the world that “you are either with us, or with the terrorists.” (unfortunately (or fortunately) the world decided that they did not have to choose one of those two options). They got Americans to go along by using an emotional appeal to fear. We invaded Afghanistan. Then we decided Iraq was next. “If we don’t attack these countries, the terrorists are coming to get you!” Perhaps if we did less attacking of countries the terrorists wouldn’t really care enough to come and get us.

And even further, the GOP went a step further in using the fear tactic to impose stifling legislation designed to infringe on the civil liberties of the American citizen. They created the PATRIOT Act. Aptly named, it immediately took away the ability for anyone in the country to be a true patriot. “If we don’t have these broad powers to wiretap without warrants and investigate whomever we want whenever we want, the terrorists are going to get you!” I will go on record and say that the PATRIOT Act was one of the first indicators for me that I didn’t belong in the Republican party. I believe it is one of the top three reasons that people abandoned the GOP. And when the GOP makes a resurgence, and they will, it will be a rebuke of the Democratic Party rather than a feeling that they have righted their listing ship.

They are almost out of time... Sign Kyoto Quick!

But the true masters of the emotional appeal are the bleeding heart liberals. There is always a call for them that the rest of us have to wake up and do what is right, while simultaneously offering solutions that are anything but right (sorry I couldn’t help myself there, but saying that I need to do what is right and take care of people and then saying the way to do that is to take my money by force and give it to someone who didn’t earn it is not right). The left is full of emotional appeals and it is my belief that they use this tactic so often because without an appeal to emotion there is absolutely no moral ground for them to argue for the solutions that they want to implement. The environmental group uses emotional appeal because the science to back up their claims simply isn’t there. The Welfare groups use emotional appeal because there is no other way to convince people that it is OK to take their money and “redistribute” it to someone else who didn’t earn it. The housing folks discuss the poor families losing their homes while ignoring the fact that they bought homes they couldn’t afford and did so with contracts they didn’t take the time to read.

But my focus from this point forward in this article is the health care debate. Because nowhere is emotional appeal used in place of logic, reason, and principles than the health care debate. The GOP has attempted to use the emotional appeals lately in this arena as well. Sarah Palin and the “death panel” stuff was an emotional appeal. There was nothing that could prove the existence of such a thing. The simple fact that opponents called it a death panel was proof of an appeal to emotion.

But the lion’s share of emotional appeal in the health care debate goes to the Democrats. It started with manipulation of numbers… 47 million uninsured who will die in the street if we don’t pass health care reform. I have already debunked the reason and logic behind this claim by relying on facts. But it was a pure emotional appeal. Every speech that Obama has given on the health care issue has offered some tearjerking examples of those without health care forced to live or die so tragically. The initial push for health care reform was a pure emotional appeal. The facts simply weren’t good enough to convince America that such massive legislation was necessary, so the facts got inflated and manipulated. It worked.

Yesterday’s emotional outbursts focused on the insurance companies and what animals they are. Mathius and Buck declared that they were price gouging, service denying bureaucracies. I am not going to make the entire argument over and over that the insurance companies are a business that provides a service, and they do it more efficiently and effectively than the federal government could ever do it. I won’t waste my time. But I will say that it is pretty easy to attack the insurance companies. They are not a person. And therefore it is far too easy to attack them and overlook all the good things that the insurance agencies have done.

What those emotional appeals lacked was an acknowledgement of the fact that the rate of denied claims for Medicare is higher than the rate of denied claims in the private insurance industry. And believe me, I have read countless articles trying to spin that data in favor of Medicare. But manipulating numbers and saying that the insurance companies deny for a “more mean” reason than Medicare denies doesn’t change the fact that the rate of denial for the government run health care we have now, which already operates on a vastly limited segment of the population, is higher than the private insurers. Can you imagine how much worse that would be when the entire population is under that care and resources become more scarce? I tried hard to find solid numbers on the claim denial rates in Canada, the UK, Australia, and France, without much luck. I hope someone who has them will share. Additionally, I would point out that the other government run health care program, the Veteran’s Administration has initial claim denial rate that averaged 49.8% over the last ten years.

The bottom line on that particular emotional appeal…. it is somewhat tired. I will tell you that you will miss the private insurance companies greatly if they disappear and the federal government is responsible for your health care. That old saying “you don’t know what you got till its gone” applies. The federal government has made a killing by denying citizens for a long, long time. And the fact that you somehow think that this is going to change in the world of government run health insurance is somewhat baffling.

Another emotional appeal that I saw extensively yesterday and for many arguments in the past is the appeal that those without health care a being denied a basic human right. This is an emotional appeal as no person wants to deny someone their rights. The problem is that health insurance and health care are not a right. They are a service that is available. Attempting to put them into the category of a right is false. And I reject the attempts to do so. You have no right to health care any more than you have a right to electricity. It sure is nice and we all want to have it, but it isn’t a right.

And what is more baffling to me is the fact that those who claim it is a right believe that in order to provide this right (which isn’t a right) to others, they have justification to take away something that really IS a right: The right to live my life as I see fit so long as I don’t impose on another. You have the right to jump off a cliff. You don’t have the right to take me with you. And you don’t have a right to force me to pay to fix you if you happen to survive the exercising of your right to jump.

The other big emotional appeal that I hear regularly from those in support of all the government “gimme” programs is that those who don’t support them simply don’t care about people who are less well off. That is a pure emotional appeal and I liken it to when the term “racist” is thrown around. No one wants to be accused of not caring about those who honestly struggle despite their best efforts. The reality is that most of us who oppose the government handout programs do care very much about people. But that doesn’t mean that we are going to support a solution that is either unconstitutional, in-efficient, ineffective, or that violates the rights of others. The bottom line is that there is not an easy fix to the health care problems in America. And I don’t have to have a perfect solution to know that the ones being proposed in Congress currently are not good solutions. Reason, logic, and ethics tell me that they are not good solutions. The existence of a bad situation and the emotional appeal that results from that situation is not a sufficient argument for implementing any solution. Come up with a solution that doesn’t take money from one group and give to another who didn’t earn it and you might be surprised to find many people would support it.

The point of the article is this… Emotional appeals are the tool of those who don’t have a logical argument. Remember that. I am not opposed to anyone’s ideas. I welcome them all. But I go to great pains to eliminate emotion from my thinking when I get into the world of public policy. I am not always successful, but I try. I am open to debating health care, but I will do it based on logic, on reason, on reality, and most importantly, on principle. I want to make the world a better place. But I am not going to sacrifice liberty or freedom in order to do it. That is supposed to be the beauty of America, we have liberty and we are free. We have too often allowed politicians to inject emotion into our discussions and they have used it to gain power, take way our liberties, and limit our potential.

And if anyone disagrees with me it is because you are a racist, you hate America, and you want the terrorists to win. Was that emotional enough? I know I can count on Mathius to offer something far more outrageous and comical, but I had to try. As a bonus I included some of the emotional appeal ads I have seen and giggled at, along with some satirical ones that I liked as well. The Japanese Soldier one is my favorite.

And just like that, I am back to writing about the health care madness that is sweeping the United States Congress. As anyone following this debate can see, the major point of contention in the health care debate is the inclusion or exclusion of some form of a public option. The problem that I see when I talk about this with folks is that there are many who don’t understand the public option very well. And that gets compounded by the fact that there are so many different versions of a possible public option being floated out there. I will come right out and say that I would be OK with the most limited form of a public option that is possible. I will discuss what I mean below. But thus far, I have seen nothing in the offerings that even comes close to meeting my standard of what a public option should be. I will also remind everyone up front that I oppose all of the health care reform as it currently stands. I think the ideas being pursued are both Constitutionally illegal, and for the most part completely self serving for the federal government. The stuff being discussed out there will do nothing to make things better for anyone involved. They will only make things worse.

The public option as the Congress and the President currently propose it is, more simply put, a government run insurance plan. The public option would operate in a similar way to the private health insurance plans that the health care industry currently offers via private companies. When proposed that way, it doesn’t sound quite as imposing. After all, there should be no reason to fear a government run health insurance plan, right? We will get to that in a bit.

Reich in Center

So let’s get a better grasp on the idea. Robert Reich, from the Huffington Post, offered a fairly straightforward dialogue that explains the public option in health care. The video is about two and a half minutes long. But you only need to watch the first 70 seconds. After that he goes on the partisan attack against the health care lobbyists and insurance companies. You can watch the video here: YouTube – Robert Reich Public Option Video

That doesn’t sound so scary, now, does it? But let’s remember that Reich is a very big supporter of the public option and he does hail from the Huffington Post. He was the Labor Secretary under Clinton and currently teaches at UC Berkley. I applaud his 70 second explanation for setting some of the basics up. And I appreciate the ease with which he makes it sound very innocuous for all the folks who don’t understand the bill, the industry, and the realities of federal government machinations. Reich does a great job of explaining the public option, but he completely fails to discuss any of the other things that can result, any of the rest of the 2000 page bills impact, or how any of this will work. For those unable to view the video, here is a quick summary of how Reich explains the public option in 70 seconds:

• Right now if you live in a city, you have several health insurance plan options available to you (with option A, B, C on screen)
• The addition of the public option simply adds another choice, so that you can now choose A, B, C, or the Public Option.
• If the public option costs too much or doesn’t provide a good service, you can simply stay with your private plan.
• The public option is not subsidized by taxpayer dollars in any way.
• The public option will have the scale and authority to negotiate lower prices from the health care providers, and thus will push private insurance companies to do the same.
• The public option must be big and national to do that.
• See…. it is a win/win for everyone! (OK, I added this last one)

See, the public option is so simple that even Sarah Palin can understand it! Unfortunately, Reich’s version is also full of holes and doesn’t even begin to tell the truth about what the public option will end up being. To be fair he didn’t lie. Everything he said was truthful from his perspective. But it is akin to saying that coaching an NFL team is nothing more than deciding whether to pass or run on this play. His explanation ignored all the blocking schemes, routes, defensive sets, practice drills, game situations, score, and talent levels that all culminated in the next play. To put it more bluntly, it was, in my opinion, a propaganda video aimed at persuading the many Americans who don’t know any better and who lack the critical thinking skills to analyze the entire situation.

Reich’s explanation of the public option is certainly not the only one coming from the talking heads. The Obama administration, on the official website, states that the public option would offer coverage at a competitive price to people that can’t afford other insurance as well as those who have been rejected by private insurance. There are all kinds of explanations out there for the public option. I encourage you all to go out and read more of them. Some are enlightening. Most are partisan, one way or the other.

But there are a lot of questions about the public option and what the unintended consequences (or perhaps intended consequences) will be. There are a lot of questions about what government is trying to accomplish in adding the public option to the fold. And there are questions about whether the public option is a necessary thing or even an effective strategy to address the health care concerns today.

Some of my favorite answers come from those on the left that want to explain that the claims made by opponents of the public option are false, but do so only by pointing out the current state of the industry. For example, Associated Content had an article that I linked to below that dug out the 3 biggest claims agains the public option and then said they would be debunked. Here are their “myths” and reason why they are wrong:

1. Taxpayers paying the bills for the uninsured – Wrong because taxpayers are already paying for the uninsured because those uninsured already get medical care in a more expensive way at the emergency room

2. The government wants to control you – Wrong because the insurance companies already deny claims, limit what procedures or doctors or medicines are allowed.

3. How can private sector compete with the government? – Wrong because the CBO says so. And besides, if employers drop coverage the private industry will still be available so you can still get coverage.

So taxpayers won’t foot the bill because they already do foot the bill. The government won’t deny claims because the insurance companies already deny claims. And the private sector can compete with government because when your employer drops coverage you can still get coverage on your own from the private sector. Brilliant. Just brilliant. The truly amazing thing is that Associated Content actually paid this guy for writing this, while I toil away on this blog for free.

Allow me to answer those claims myself:

1. Taxpayers paying the bills for the uninsured

It seems as though most of the legislation being written currently is focused on the idea that government will put the money up front, but the public option would be funded completely through the premiums that those who choose it pay. This is how the private insurers do it. I have some concerns around this claim. I imagine that nearly every government program ever created was done so under the premise that it would be self funded. Social Security certainly was supposed to be self-funded. However, the government has a way, once implementing a program, to figure out how to run it so badly that the taxpayers are forced to put billions of dollars into the program to make it continue to be offered.

2. The government wants to control you

I am up in the air as to whether the government wants to control you or not with this. However, I am under no illusions that it will not end up that way regardless. The unintended consequences of this health care reform will be, ultimately, a rationing of care in the United States. It has happened in every country that has implemented a government run health care system.

3. How can private sector compete with the government?

Let’s stop playing games around this one shall we? The private sector cannot compete with government. And the public option will ultimately spell the demise of private insurance for everyone except the very wealthy in America. Employers will end up dropping the health insurance that they provide. I do not begrudge them for this. It makes business sense to do so. Private insurance companies lack the one thing that Reich so quickly added without any emphasis or recognition, authority. He clearly said the public option would have the scale and authority to negotiate lower prices. Authority is the key here. Government is giving themselves the authority, and they will use it. And the private insurers, who will not have that same authority, will not get the reduced rates, and will therefore have higher premiums, and will go out of business.

But the key word in that whole argument is the word compete. Because private insurers will not be competing with government. There is no competition for government. Government doesn’t compete. Government demands. Government dictates. Government legislates. Imagine the massive federal government not getting what it wants from the health care industry. They have the power to pass any number of laws that would damage any who don’t “play ball”. Saying that the government would “compete” with private insurers is like saying that the IRS “competes” for my money with the TV Cable company.

Another article I read (and I am sorry I copied the text into the draft but not the URL and I cannot remember where I got it, I think it was CBS News but I am unsure) said that we have to keep the realities in perspective. They claimed:

Very few Americans would sign up for the public option. In the Democrats’ legislation, the public option would only be available to consumers who are eligible to shop in the “health insurance exchange” they would create. The exchange would only be open to people who buy individual health insurance plans or to people who work for small companies. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that only about 30 million people would join the exchange; of those 30 million, only about 6 million would choose to enroll in the public option.

I don’t care what the bill says here. The reality that is being ignored is that the number of people who end up on the public option will eventually be far larger than 6 million. That is a complete load of crap. If it was only 6 million, the Democrats would not be working so hard to get the public option. And we would not be constantly hearing about “46 million uninsured.” This is an attempt to persuade folks that it isn’t a big deal when it clearly is a big deal. If it weren’t the Democrats would have dropped this dead weight a long time ago.

There are also many different ideas around a public option that are different alternatives to the straightforward implementation. For example, there was a brief discussion of co-operatives instead of a public option. Additionally there has been talk of some sort of trigger for the public option.

But let’s get to brass tacks and just say what many are thinking. All the talk about a public option gets confused with a single payer system. It is easy to refute the claims of the folks opposed to the public option when the opposition is actually talking about a single payer system. When people talk about government control over your health care options, they are talking about single payer. When people talk about the idea of a “death panel”, they are talking about single payer. So the real question is whether the unintended (or intended) consequence of the public option and its machinations in the health care bills being pushed is the eventual progression to a single payer system in the United States.

President Obama says no. Pelosi says no. Reid says no. All the power players say no. First of all, a group of politicians all saying no is a sure sign that the answer is yes. All kidding aside, Obama has been a big proponent of the single payer system in the past. There is video footage of him saying so quite clearly. There is no misinterpreting what he is saying.

My personal guess is that the far left segment of the political world is looking to do exactly that. They are well aware that a single payer system cannot possibly be passed in the United States today. But they think they can get away with laying the groundwork to make it happen later. A single payer system is unconstitutional. It goes against everything this country has used to get to its position as the premier economy in the world. I am glad our friends in Canada, the UK, Australia, and other places are happy with the single payer system that was implemented in their countries. But I don’t want it here.

So the final word from me…. Scrap the public option. It is a bad idea. More importantly it will do absolutely nothing to better the health care in America. Our health care system needs some reforms. There seems to be few who would disagree with that. But it is time that we stopped playing partisan games and start figuring out what will ACTUALLY be reform that will result in positive results. IT seems these days, no one is focused on results. They are only focused on proving that this party or that party is wrong. If we want to fix health care, the first step is taking it out of the hands of the fools in Washington DC.

Healthcare Reform: Understanding the Public Option – Associated Content – associatedcontent.com

Good Morning fine readers of Stand Up For America. As I begin writing this evening I am in a fairly good mood. Tuesday night open mic is upon us again and it seems that the very elections we discussed yesterday are dominating the news cycles tonight. I am going to avoid open mic’ing the big governor’s races and the “message sent to Democrats” nonsense that seems to be dominating the airwaves. I will touch on some of the election night news in some different ways, however. I am excited to be working on what I think are some good upcoming articles and I have been discussing a few things with some of the folks that read here daily for future ways to get us back to discussing the things we need to be discussing. I do have a request of everyone though… If you have any guest pieces that you are thinking about, I am in need. I have one from Black Flag that I plan on posting this week, and I know many of you have been anticipating that one. But I have a specific need here…

My gram passed yesterday after a long battle. Don’t worry, I am quite OK with it. She has been ill since February and unable to be herself. She had 84+ good years. And fortunately, I took three separate trips to see her for a week each time this year while she was ill. I was able to spend a lot of time with her towards the end, read to her, and tell her that I love her many times over. I cannot begin to ask for more than that. She left us with my blessing (although she was too stubborn to actually need it, lol) and I am relieved that her suffering is finally over. The last couple weeks have been difficult as we all knew the end was near, and there was little we could do but wait. I am glad that is over as well. I will be handling family business and attending services from Thursday, April 12 through Sunday, April 15. I will not be able to write on those days. That leaves me with three nights of articles that I am unable to provide. Therefore, if any of you want to write, please fire away. I ask that you submit your articles to me by the end of this weekend so that I can edit, approve with you, and schedule to have them post on the appropriate days.

Tonight I sat here and thought for quite a while about what I wanted to write about for tonight’s topic. I read all kinds of articles, and hadn’t decided on a topic as of 1:45 am. But I did notice a common theme in articles throughout the different news sites and blogs out there. There were a ton of articles that discussed the upcoming elections that are occurring as you read this. And they all had an opinion one way or another as to what the results from this election will mean going forward. Obviously the results will be interpreted and then given a biased spin by all sides. But the key question seems to be whether what looks like it could be a bad day for Democratic Candidates is a sign of the future or a message being sent to the Democrats. I find that interesting. What message exactly do the national folks think it sends when the races are being determined by such a small percentage of the national population?

Let’s face it. It is interesting to watch. But we are essentially watching the state of Virginia, the state of New Jersey, and a single district in New York (the 23rd). Let’s put that in perspective shall we? New Jersey has a population of 8,682,661, 76.4% of which are of voting age. Virginia has a population of 7,769,089 with 76.5% are over 18. New York’s 23rd District has roughly 654k folks and we can assign a similar mix of voter eligibility. If we eliminate the under 18 crowd and give the very generous prediction of a 60% eligible voter turnout (which is very doubtful), we will hear from roughly 3.98 million people in New Jersey, 3.57 million folks in Virginia, and 300,351 in New York’s 23rd. A grand total of 7.85 million folks would have a say tomorrow in those three elections. A whopping 3.4% of the US population. But pundits, being the brilliant folks they are, will debate for the next two months what this means as far as Obama popularity, the pulse of the two parties, etc.

The results tomorrow will show an important trend in the political spectrum of New Jersey, Virginia, and New York’s 23rd District. Nothing else. But should we even accept any longer that these results even show trends in the political spectrums in those three places? I would argue that we shouldn’t. Because these races, like any other race these days, are tainted by political machines, upstart third parties, and scandals. Let’s face the fact that the results of the elections in these three areas tomorrow will tell us little more than who ran the least shitty campaign. All the candidates weren’t great. None of them ran a campaign platform that was the deciding factor. The results will merely tell us which political campaign tactics were the most effective in those three areas. And it will tell us that regardless of the fact that many Americans seem to have no trust of the two parties in power, they aren’t yet willing to latch on to a candidate from another party.

New Jersey has the ability to give us a little bit of insight into the power of the President at this point. A heavily Democratic state with a incumbent Governor who had the best speaking President in history working in his state for his reelection. If Corzine loses. I do think that it will tell us that the President’s power isn’t nearly as strong as it was a year ago.

But these elections, regardless of what the political talking heads will claim tomorrow, won’t tell us a thing about where the average American’s head is at in the political landscape. Because 96% of the population will not be represented in those votes. I suspect we will see a sweep by Republicans. And the right wing talking heads will claim it shows America is beginning to wake up and smell the rat that is the Democratic party. I tell you they are full of it. While that may be a true statement or it may not be, the fact is these elections mean nothing to the rest of us. The two big ones are for Governor positions. Governors get to impact federal law how exactly?

But the question that I have for everyone is what do you feel is the pulse of today’s political landscape? Obviously the tea parties have made a very vocal point that there are many in today’s America that are unhappy with both parties. And that seems to be backed up by voter registration data. In 2008, 36% of American voters were registered as Democrats. Interestingly, that same 36% are Independents, while only 27% are Republican. Compare that to 2004, when Democrats were 35% of the spectrum while the Independents and Republicans were tied at 33%. As far as those Independent voters go, in 2008, the way that they leaned was 15% Dems and 10% Reps. In 2004 they each had 10% leaning their way.

That would appear to show us that the Republican party has been consistently losing members to the Independent ranks. Simultaneously, the Democrats have held quite steady in their portions of registered voters, actually moving up from 35% to 36%. Overall that 4 year swing was +1% for Democrats, +3% for Independents, and -6% for Republicans. So is the Republican party in real trouble these days?

I would answer that they are not in real trouble yet. Their recklessness cost them the Congress in 2006, and Obama helped to increase that lead in 2008. But 2010 may see a quick reversal in Congress. The Democrats in Congress and in the White House have done enough shenanigans to cause a massive shift away from their party. But much like 2006 and 2008, I believe the voters would be sending a message that they are fed up with the incumbents, as opposed to actually believing in the core principles of the Republican party.

I remember in 2004 thinking that the Democrats were done. They had put Kerry up as the Presidential candidate. They ran an entire campaign on never stating Kerry’s positions. Every campaign speech was nothing more than Kerry criticizing Bush’s positions and tactics, but never telling America why he was better, or what he would do as President. I just watched that completely inept party go forward with no solutions, only complaints. If buried Kerry. The Democratic party showed no leadership, no vision for the future. They were a party, in my mind, on their way out the door, to be replaced by some other liberal leaning party. Then Bush did everything in his power to resurrect the Democrats from the ashes. He was so bad, Americans were willing to accept any alternative.

And now, after two election cycles of Democratic victories, there are many who are proclaiming the Republican party as dead. The reality is that they are awful weak. They have no leadership (because Limbaugh is not their leader). They have no plan. They have no ability to change their stance on key issues to remain relevant to the political landscape. Fortunately, the Democrats in Congress are doing for Republicans what Bush did for Democrats. Today’s Democrat congress is once again showing how bad their party is, as well. As a result, the Republicans are once again regrouping and beginning to assert themselves.

I thought the Dems were dead 6 years ago. I was obviously mistaken. Now it feels like the Republicans are dead.

The Republicans can get back in the race, and perhaps even dominate the political landscape if they would renounce certain parts of the GOP platform that simply don’t sit well with the American public. For example, Republicans could embrace gay rights, acknowledge that a woman’s body is hers to make decision about and attempt to change with the times. The Christian far right used to be a very powerful entity. However, the younger population today doesn’t have nearly the same commitment to the church or its teachings. So the christian right is losing power quickly, because they hold little sway with today’s younger voter.

I say the Republicans need true leadership, something they have been sorely lacking for quite a while now. And then they need to reevaluate their party platform. By switching back to being a party of values and principles, the GOP could resurrect the independent voters to their side, and perhaps get back in power. And they need to come up with some solutions. Another area that they have failed miserably in over the last 5 years.

So what do all of you think? Is the Republican party really as dead as the MSM makes them out to be?What are the key things that you think they need to do?

I was attempting to drown my disappointment with Mountain Dew this evening. The Phillies let me down. Brad Lidge, you are now on my list of guys who should not be a closer. Maybe that is just the disappointment speaking. As a Sawx fan, I certainly find it tough to root for the Yankees. But I would actually be OK with them winning if it weren’t for the fact that A-Rod and Joba Chamberlain will get rings. I would have preferred to see them both never get one. But at least Alex has earned it this year. But a Phillies win would have made it a series! Instead we now have to see three wins in a row to make it happen. Disappointing. So I went on to check on how things are going with the big Governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia. I stumbled across this article and thought, “Hey, let’s take a pulse on the site and see what people think.” They were basically discussing the fact that 3rd parties are having some gain in the current elections and speculating that 3rd parties will have an even bigger impact on the 2010 and 2012 elections.

The article was from Fox News. I found interesting information on other sites as well, but the article on third parties erally caught my interest. I have not put the article in its entirety below. I edited it some, meaning that I cut out sections that I wasn’t interested in discussing or that I felt had little to do with my topic. Most news articles these days add a little fluff, and I didn’t want that. So I kept what I wanted. The link for the entire article will be below. I, of course, added a few random thoughts here and there that I felt needed to be interjected.

Third Party Candidates Shake Up Local Races, Send Warning Ahead of 2010

Third party candidates are shaking up two major races in elections Tuesday, and the success of those candidacies is a warning shot fired at both major parties by voters angry at government and disillusioned by politics as usual.

In New York’s 23rd Congressional district, where longtime Republican Rep. John McHugh stepped down to be Army secretary, Dede Scozzafava, the candidate chosen by state GOP leaders to replace him, was forced out of the race by a surging Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman. High-profile national Republicans endorsed Hoffman, saying Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman who supports abortion rights and gay marriage, had abandoned core GOP values. (I call bullcrap. This is further evidence that no matter the thoughts or concerns at the local level, the national parties have the ability to step in and “force out” a candidate that doesn’t toe the party line. Of course she abandoned core GOP principles. She argued for equal rights and personal liberty…. how dare she)

Corzine, Christie, and Daggett

Daggett is not expected to win the New Jersey contest, and the GOP split in upstate New York could throw the race to Democrat Bill Owens (which would serve the jackasses at the national GOP right).

But the impact of those candidacies on the high-profile contests points to an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment sentiment that could be a prevailing theme in the 2010 congressional elections and beyond.

“What it says is the public is looking for less self-interested parties and candidates who can reflect the needs of a very frustrated public,” said Douglas Astolfi, a history professor at Florida’s St. Leo University. “We have two wars and we’re in a recession that neither party seems to address in any positive way. There’s a deep sense that government has abandoned the common man. People are frustrated and angry.”

Indeed, a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released last week found that trust in government is at a 12-year low, and half of all Americans now support the creation of a new political party.

Both parties ignore such sentiment at their peril in 2010 and perhaps into the 2012 presidential race.

In Senate contests from Florida and Kentucky to New Hampshire next year, conservatives furious at the Republican establishment are mounting primary challenges against more mainstream candidates favored by the national party.

On the other side, Democratic strategists worry that progressives, disgusted by the big money bank bailout and disillusioned with President Barack Obama’s lack of fight on issues such as a government-run health insurance plan, might keep some people from voting. That could cost Democrats seats up and down the ballot.

Political operatives are keeping an eye on independent voters — an important and growing group that often decides elections. Will these voters send a signal to politicians Tuesday as well or will they stay home and leave it to the more ideologically driven base voters in both parties?…… (skipped a bit from here)

Hoffman’s rise infuriated leaders of New York’s Republican Party, who insisted Scozzafava was a good fit for the district which favored Obama last year, but is one of the few still held by Republicans in the Northeast.

In New Jersey, Daggett, a businessman and former Environmental Protection Agency official, has appealed to voters who are turned off by both Corzine and Christie and fed up with the candidates’ campaign bloodbath. Daggett was widely believed to be the winner of a televised candidate debate and has been endorsed by The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., the state’s largest newspaper.

John Weingart, associate director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, said Daggett’s candidacy had succeeded in giving disillusioned voters a competent and credible alternative to Corzine and Christie.

But Weingart said lack of money, the institutional obstacles to a third party candidacy and a growing awareness among voters of the ideological differences between Christie and Corzine would cause Daggett’s campaign to stall.

“To vote for an independent candidate, you have to believe either that the person can win or that there is no difference you care about between the Democratic and the Republican candidate,” Weingart said.

Third Party Candidates Shake Up Local Races, Send Warning Ahead of 2010 – FOXNews.com

So the question becomes again, what impact does a third party hope to have in the elections that will be coming up in the near and not so near future?

I tend to believe a lot of what this article is discussing. Americans in general are definitely beginning to realize that the two parties in power are really on the same team wearing different colored shirts. Both are out to gain power, wealth, and legitimacy. Neither party has the interests of regular people at heart. Not one single bit. And I think that includes the President, regardless of what he says, and all the members of Congress, except for maybe one or two. Americans are ready to have an alternative to the two big boys. However, I have a few concerns…

First, we have to ask ourselves if the impact of the 3rd party candidates on the election cycles is a good or a bad thing. On one hand, it does send a message that the two candidates and the two parties are not a choice that the voters were happy with. But realistically, all the 3rd party candidates seem to actually accomplish in the races are a disruption and a altering of the balance of power one way or the other. One of the two big party candidates is going to win. The 3rd party seems to simply have the ability to steal votes from one, allowing the other to win. Whether that is a good thing, I suppose, would rest with whether it is your candidate that benefits.

Next, the fact remains that it doesn’t seem that the two big parties ever get the message. Perot got 19% of the popular vote in 1992, but it certainly didn’t change the course in Washington. Think about that. 1 out of 5 people voted for Perot. And still the two big boys ignored that fact. So I am not sure that the message is ever going to get across to the big boys unless a 3rd party candidate actually has the ability to win an election. That won’t happen in a Presidential election, but could in other elections. The deck is too stacked in the Presidential election. It is literally an impossibility for a 3rd party to win under the criteria set up under the Constitution, unless that candidate got overwhelming support (they would have to win more electoral votes than the other two parties combined, not just have the most).

The thing that warms my heart is that I do think that the average American feels abandoned by the federal government. Let’s face it, the middle class has been ignored for quite a while. If you are wealthy, you get paid attention to. If you are poor you get paid attention to. Otherwise, no luck. And those two segments of the population are not nearly as large as one might think. But they are both powerful in the voting booth. Regardless, the fascinating thing is that the wealthy have always been served. The poor have never been. They get pandered to, by both parties, although it was the Democrats this time around, but the government never does anything to actually change their situation. The government does little for them besides ease their pain while ensuring they will still be there to be pandered to when the next election cycle comes around.

I do think many Americans realize that the two parties are self serving, not people serving. The fact that half of the American public is in favor of creating a new political party tells me they see the evil before them. Unfortunately it tells me that they also don’t understand reality well enough to understand that a new party would replace one of the two we have and end up with the same results. Remember the Republicans were a 3rd party once. And the Whig party died a quick death. But things didn’t exactly get better from there, did it?

I think that the bottom line is that we are in a sad position where people are supporting 3rd parties when they see the two big candidates are the pieces of trash they are. It isn’t a support for a different ideal or a new platform. It is a rejection of the two dominant platforms or candidates. And there is a big difference there. A big difference between embracing a new ideal and simply taking any alternative to what is being offered by the big two. But it is a start. Look at New Jersey. Two unpopular choices result in 13% of the people choosing someone who isn’t unpopular, as opposed to the people choosing someone who is really a candidate they think is ideal.

In the final sentence of the article above, it states, “To vote for an independent candidate, you have to believe either that the person can win or that there is no difference you care about between the Democratic and the Republican candidate.” And I think that this points to exactly what I am talking about. People are willing to accept a ton of bad about a candidate if he is simply slightly better than the other big party guy and actually has a chance of winning. It goes to that sentiment that a vote for a 3rd party is a wasted vote, as it allows the candidate you don’t like to win because it denies the vote to a candidate with a chance to win. And realistically, 3rd party candidates don’t have much of a shot of winning, so this is the case in the vast majority of elections.

So how does that change? It doesn’t…. at least not until the “real thing” comes along. And I think that the “real thing” is exactly what we have been discussing on this board for the last year. A third party will win, and could even win the Presidency, when that party has a candidate that is the real thing.

I believe that the vast majority of Americans are good people. I believe that they adhere to principles and values. Look at the people that post on this site. Are there any who you think are not “good people” in general? I believe they all want to do the right things and help the people who need help and fix the things that are broken. But we all disagree on how to do that. And I think that this is because we fall into the trap of believing that the two options presented are the only ones that can work. We fall into the trap of believing that the people in Washington, or the University economists, or the big business folks, or whomever, are simply better able to make the big decisions.

That is what we have been told for decades. The economists are the only ones that can fix the economy. Trust them. The politicians are the only ones that can fix the health care system. Trust them. The wall street barons are the only ones that can finance our business world. Trust them. The government is the only one who understands foreign policy well enough to deal with foreign nations. Trust them. The economy, health care, wall street, foreign relations, all of it. We are told that we need big government and all the experts to help us deal with a complex world. They are our protectors. Our saviors. Our guardians.

They are our four horsemen is what they are. They are bringing the apocalypse. Slowly, but surely.

I say bullshit. They aren’t smarter than we are. Common sense, ethics, morals, principles, and values are the tools needed to effectively deal with all the situations we face.

So what is the “real thing”?

The real thing is that candidate that operates from the principles of liberty and freedom, rights that we have regardless of and in spite of government’s constant attempts to strip them from us. The real thing is that candidate that truly operates with the best interests of the people in mind. The candidate that talks like Barack Obama, but acts like Ghandi. The real thing is the candidate that adheres to values, principles, and ethics even when they make the task 100 times harder. When that person comes along, they will transcend partisan games and obliterate both major parties because their message will be the one that resonates with the people. The real thing will be that candidate that makes people believe again in the principles that this country was founded on: life, liberty, freedom, equality for all. The real thing will make Americans stand up and act like Americans again. The real thing will make us once again believe in ourselves rather than believing that a man with a golden tongue has the answers to cure our ills.

Just one problem.

The “real thing” would realize that the second he was elected, he would have to step aside and finally allow the people to live free.

We have again come to Friday Night and with it the ever growing Guest Commentary. As you all know, I am such a fan of the guest commentaries. I, of course, get to take the night off from writing (although those who submit them will tell you that I spend a lot of time formatting, critiquing, and ultimately…. procrastinating on them). The real reason that I remain a fan is because it allows each of you the opportunity to use your voice and voice your thoughts as the center of attention in the same way I get to do it each night here on the site. I value each and every voice on this site, no matter which “direction” it comes from. And the opportunity to give everyone a shot at writing their own articles is one of my most rewarding endeavors on the site. And besides, the fact remains that as much as I might try to appear to know everything, I think I am exposed over the last 10 months to the fact that there is MUCH that I don’t know. Hearing all these other voices exposes everyone to knowledge they may not get otherwise! I felt like this was a good topic given the recent discussions we have been having about government intervention in the home. While not the same topic, it hits some of the same veins.

Tonight’s guest commentary is another repeat performer who submitted his article to me back at the beginning of September. I finally got around to really working to get it ready towards the end of that month after Mrs. Weapon began to show real signs of healing. Life of Illusion is our author once again. Some of the conversations over the last month or two have been quite intense around the idea that we, as a society, are morally bound to take care of those that cannot take care of themselves. The reverse argument has been that many of those we are forced to take care of are not in that situation by accident. LOI takes that to task with some examples and some thoughts around the sad state of some of the poor in today’s America. In the end, the question we have to ask ourselves is whether we should be required to take care of those who fit the mold he speaks of in tonight’s article.

Self Reliance: Not Government Approved?
by Life of Illusion

My parents split up when I was in the third grade, mother took my sister and I back to her home, we lived with my grandparents for a few months.  As soon as she could, she got a job, saved up, and rented a house for us. She loved her parents, but could not stand living with them, independent streak, I suppose.  So a single working mother with two children, she required us to help out.  When we got out of school, we did the laundry, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, etc.  We both even learned to cook a little.  My father joined us after a while.  In that time, my mother had obtained an FHA loan, and built her own house.  She lost everything except a car and our clothes, and in a few years time, had us living in the nicest house we had ever lived in.

I remember as a child noticing a change in my sister after my father came back.  We stopped doing as many chores, my mother still worked, but my father’s income meant times were no longer hard.  I expanded my cooking skills, my sister got into sports.  She would sit watching TV and ask mother to bring her a soda.  What happened to the girl who helped me clean the whole house and feed ourselves?  What happened to the mother who would require us to take care of ourselves?  I continued to get my own drinks. My father required us to work summers starting when I was eleven.  Both of us can paint, weld, woodwork and could make a living in any of those trades.

Greatergoodcs said August 31, 2009 at 3:53 pm

“You’ve convinced yourself of this stuff and I guess it works in here, but out in the real world, application is what counts (not theory). And there are still 304 million waiting to learn how they are to survive without gov’t and/or chaos.”

Peterson

“When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results.

One wonders how there was “no way” for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You’ve probably seen it by now the photo showing 2,000 parked school buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin?” – Rev Jesse Lee Peterson

If New Orleans is an example, that 304 million would be 226 million taking action for themselves, and 78 million staring at the headlights of an onrushing vehicle.

I recall most of the VDLG “members” support limited welfare and assistance. Bill Clinton would have gone down in US history for the passing of 1996’s welfare reform act.

“Child poverty has dropped substantially since reform was enacted, from 20.8 percent in 1996 to 16.9 percent in 1999.”

Nancy Pelosi erased Clinton from those history books.  The 2009 Stimulus Act required states to expand welfare rolls back to previous levels.  Why?  Was it to help the millions who were starving, and give them a better life?

“Prolonged welfare dependence reduces children’s IQ levels. Out-of-wedlock childbearing and single parenthood are the principal causes of child poverty and welfare dependence in the U.S. Children raised in single parent families are more likely to: experience behavioral and emotional problems; suffer from physical abuse; engage in early sexual activity, and do poorly in school. Boys raised in single parent households are more likely to engage in crime; girls are more likely themselves to give birth outside of marriage. These effects are the result of the collapse of marriage per se rather than poverty; a poor child living with a mother and father united in marriage will do better than a similar poor child living in a single parent home.”  http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/Test031501b.cfm

The harsh reality is Pelosi and her ilk are keeping and expanding a group of people who are willing to be dependent on the government, and to help the Democratic party to remain in power.  We have seen charter schools and voucher programs work, but for some reason, non of that will work for education reform.  Could it be that might affect the governments grasp of those young minds?

Unemployment in Detroit Climbs to 28.9 Percent, must be the auto industry.

Poor families by family type

Married-couple family (17.7%)
Male, no wife present (8.5%)
Female, no husband present (73.8%)

http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-Detroit-Michigan.html

Detroit is a bad example.  Lets look at New Orleans, still being rebuilt after Katrina, there must be plenty of jobs there.  20.6% unemployment.

Poor families by family type

Married-couple family (19.6%)
Male, no wife present (6.1%)
Female, no husband present (74.3%)

http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-New-Orleans-Louisiana.html

And this is not just about welfare, think about the crime rates in those neighborhoods.  78% of the nation’s jail and prison inmates grew up in a fatherless household.

The Goals of Welfare Reform
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) enacted in 1996 set forth three legislative goals: 1) to reduce dependence; 2) to reduce child poverty; and 3) to reduce illegitimacy and strengthen marriage.

Welfare reform was working.  Strong but poor families don’t have the high figures for children quitting school and ending up in prison.

“Prior to 40 years ago, such a pathetic performance by the black community in a time of crisis would have been inconceivable. The first response would have come from black men. They would take care of their families, bring them to safety, and then help the rest of the community. Then local government would come in.” – Rev Jesse Lee Peterson

And where Rev Peterson sees this as an issue for blacks, I see it as an issue for all Americans.  I know of as many or more white that are content to trade their self reliance and freedom for the easy government hand-out. Our government knows the results of their policy on welfare, and is seeking to grow the dependence further with taking over health care.

And what has been happening in New Orleans lately?

The “news judgment” of the major networks implies there is no such thing as individual responsibility.

Kendall Deschamp, suggested all he needs is a little more taxpayer money. “A disabled state highway worker, Deschamp collects just $1,368 a month in benefits — not enough, he says, to afford the sheetrock and new hot water heater he needs for the permit allowing him to move back into his four-bedroom home, which stands just a few tantalizing feet away.”

A little Googling would show the name Kendall Deschamp shows up on a list of Mississippi recipients of taxpayer money in 2003 – $25,500 – two years before Katrina hit.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2009/09/01/bozell-column-never-ending-katrina-bias

What really divides the nation into blue or red states?  It seems about three quarters of us can and do take care of ourselves.  Of that seventy- five percent, we are split on what to do about the remaining quarter.  Some children do not want to learn how to do laundry, clean a bathroom.

And they take that attitude to school, where deadbeat parents expect the school to raise their children for them, there are second graders that cannot clean their own tushes.  And the Pelosi’s out there seem eager to provide for them with money taken from the rest of us.  They are deliberately re-expanding the welfare rolls, knowing that increases child poverty rates.  They hamper or stop education reform, knowing charter schools and  voucher programs work, and instead, want to add pre-school to government control.

This is not really about helping people that cannot provide for themselves.

Its about a dependent class the government may not have created, but for sure has kept, nurtured, grown and exploited.

GreaterGood feels 304 million Americans are looking for a government to set our rules and provide for us. I do not see that. Three quarters of us are able to function very well without depending on the government. I think the 25% looking for the government to provide for them would drop to six to eight percent if we reversed the trend of the government will provide back to those values of self reliance that created this country.

My father told me a story from his childhood. He grew up in a poor farm family that used mules to plow, and had the normal assortment of animals.

A wild boar broke into their pig pen and stayed. Large, sharp tusks and a mean disposition. After a few weeks, my grandfather coaxed it into a stall in the barn. He then tied it to the side of a stall, first by the neck, then each leg in turn, until it was very secure. My father then watched from above as the boar first had his tusks pulled with large pliers, and was then castrated. After that, the boar no longer threatened him or the others, attitude adjustment indeed.

Can we liken the tusks to our second amendment and our testicals to the first? I don’t know. I do know the more we bow our heads like good little sheeple, and let the government think for us, the worse our country has become. Those who shout out for us to cast aside the values that made this the greatest nation in the history of the world are ignoring history and reality. How many millions died for the “greater good” under communist China and the USSR? The standard of living has risen since the Industrial Age for the US and every nation that embraced free markets. Conversely, those that adopt communism or socialism see their standard of living drop.

Is our government completely broken, where replacement, not repair is the only answer? I think not, and its not just the government, its all of us as well. We are the only nation known for “we the people”. The government can only do what we allow. We are a self reliant people, we need the require our government to follow those same values we live by.

Solution? Very Damn Little Government!

A thank you to Cyndi, for some good advice.

Life of Illusion

SOURCES AND COPIED INFO

Unemployment in Detroit Climbs to 28.9 Percent:  http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/08/unemployment-in-detroit-climbs-to-289.html

From an email  CONFIRMED by Illusion at Snopes before sending on:  http://www.snopes.com/katrina/soapbox/peterson.asp

Snopes/Rev Jesse Lee Peterson
Subject: New Orleans Orleans Went Under–A Black Man’s Comments
By Rev Jesse Lee Peterson

Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions:

What would you do?

What would you do if you were black?

Sadly, the two questions don’t have the same answer.

To the first: Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect them from danger. Then, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, as wives and others cared for children, elderly, infirm and the like.

For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question. If you’re black and a hurricane is about to destroy your city, you’ll probably wait for the government to save you.

This was not always the case. Prior to 40 years ago, such a pathetic performance by the black community in a time of crisis would have been inconceivable. The first response would have come from black men. They would take care of their families, bring them to safety, and then help the rest of the community. Then local government would come in.

No longer. When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results.

Enter Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Jackson and Farrakhan laid blame on “racist” President Bush. Farrakhan actually proposed the idea that the government blew up a levee so as to kill blacks and save whites. The two demanded massive governmental spending to rebuild New Orleans , above and beyond the federal government’s proposed $60 billion. Not only that, these two were positioning themselves as the gatekeepers to supervise the dispersion of funds. Perfect: Two of the most dishonest elite blacks in America , “overseeing” billions of dollars. I wonder where that money will end up.

Of course, if these two were really serious about laying blame on government, they should blame the local one. Responsibility to perform legally and practically fell first on the mayor of New Orleans . We are now all familiar with Mayor Ray Nagin the black who likes to yell at President Bush for failing to do Nagin’s job. The facts, unfortunately, do not support Nagin’s wailing. As the Washington Times puts it, “recent reports show [Nagin] failed to follow through on his own city’s emergency-response plan, which acknowledged that thousands of the city’s poorest residents would have no way to evacuate the city.”

One wonders how there was “no way” for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You’ve probably seen it by now the photo showing 2,000 parked school buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin?

Instead of doing the obvious, Mayor Nagin (with no positive contribution from Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the other major leader vested with responsibility to address the hurricane disaster) loaded remaining new Orleans residents into the Superdome and the city’s convention center. We know how that plan turned out.

About five years ago, in a debate before the National Association of Black Journalists, I stated that if whites were to just leave the United States and let blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. The audience, shall we say, disagreed with me strongly. Now I have to disagree with me. I gave blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder.

President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans’ black community taken action, most would have been out of harm’s way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves.

All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was blacks’ moral poverty not their material poverty that cost them dearly in New Orleans . Farrakhan, Jackson, and other race hustlers are to be repudiated for they will only perpetuate this problem by stirring up hatred and applauding moral corruption. New Orleans , to the extent it is to be rebuilt, should be remade into a dependency-free, morally strong city where corruption is opposed and success is applauded. Blacks are obligated to help themselves and not depend on the government to care for them. We are all obligated to tell them so.

The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, and author of “Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America .”

78% of the nation’s jail and prison inmates grew up in a fatherless household: inkarcerated.intrasun.tcnj.edu/womeninprison/Prison%20Statistics.doc

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/Test031501b.cfm

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2009/09/01/bozell-column-never-ending-katrina-bias

I didn’t have a lot of time to write about something big tonight so I wanted to find something I could write about off the top of my head. As I started to peruse the news, this article simply jumped out at me. I found it extremely interesting given the discussions that we had the other day during open mic about government intervening in order to protect the child. In Dallas, a father showed “graphic pornography” to his 8 and 9 year old daughters. I don’t know how graphic it was, they aren’t sharing that. But that was the description. The girl’s mother, who id divorced from the father, wanted to file charges against the father. Apparently there is a law that specifically states that he can not be prosecuted for doing this. I will be interested in hearing more about the rights of parents versus the rights of the state to intervene, especially in a case such as this, where the harmful material in question is really a matter of interpretation.

The story from Fox News is here:

Texas Law Challenged After Man Allegedly Forces Daughters to Watch ‘Hardcore Porn’

A 1970s-era Texas law that allows parents to show “harmful material” to their children has come under fire after a prosecutor said he couldn’t file charges against a man accused of forcing his 8- and 9-year-old daughters to watch hardcore online pornography.

Randall County District Attorney James Farren has asked the Texas attorney general’s office to review his decision not to pursue charges in the case, which has prompted at least one lawmaker to vow to change the state’s public indecency law.

“Our hands are tied. It’s not our fault. I have to follow the law,” Farren said Thursday. “The mother of the victims in this case was less than happy with this decision, which I understand. We were less than happy with the statute.”

The law apparently was meant to protect the privacy of parents who wanted to teach children about sex education, but it states clearly that parents can’t be prosecuted for showing “harmful material” to their children.

Farren said police reported the incident to his office after one of the girls told a counselor in June that her father made them watch adults having group sex and various other acts at his home in Amarillo. The parents of the girls, and their 7-year-old sister, are divorced and share custody.

The girls’ mother, Crystal Buckner, wants her ex-husband to be jailed. She said she was stunned to hear from prosecutors and police that nothing can be done.

1970's Porn... Much different from Today's offerings

The Associated Press typically does not publish the names of parents if it could identify children who might have been abused, but Buckner is seeking publicity about the case. She has printed out copies of the penal code, which she hands out to everyone she meets.

“I want people to know about this. I want parents to be mad and say, ‘No!”‘ she said. “I understand in the ’70s everybody wanted the government to stay out of their homes. I don’t want to stop parents from having that right to teach sex education, but there’s a big difference and there’s a line you should not cross when teaching.”

The Texas attorney general’s office said Thursday that it would be months before an opinion is issued and declined further comment.

You can view the article at its original source here: Texas Law Challenged After Man Allegedly Forces Daughters to Watch ‘Hardcore Porn’ – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News – FOXNews.com

One of the interesting twists to this story, in my eyes, is that the law being challenged and the position being taken seems to be a conservative one. I don’t know the circumstances, but this smacks of a “moral outrage” issue. The mother is morally outraged that the father would show this to their children. And the moral clause in a situation like this usually falls to the conservative side. So it could be interesting if we find that in this situation, it would be conservatives arguing FOR government intrusion into the home. Conservatives asking the government to step in and over-rule the rights of a parent. I do understand that it is only one parent and the other is asking for intervention, and that is another twist altogether.

The other interesting side of this is the pornography in question. I have little idea how tasteful or artistic it was. All we know is that it involved group sex scenes. But what we get into here is the realm of defining what is pornography and what is not. Maybe not in this case. But should this move forward and be stricken from the books, who is to say that the state cannot later tell parents they cannot show any type of intercourse or nude adults in videos to their children? I would guess then that those same parents would be decried as negligent for not teaching their children about sex and now their 13 year old is pregnant.

And we are dealing with the recollections of children and the subsequent interpretations of adults, as I am sure that we don’t have the actual footage for review. In other words, “we saw a man putting his pee pee into a woman’s private spot. And there was a blonde woman and a dark haired woman.” This could be interpreted many ways. Perhaps a memory of two separate scenes rather than a group sex scene. We are dealing with 8 and 9 year olds here. And the interpretation was being done by outraged adults, a counselor and the mother who apparently isn’t real fond of the dad.

And what about two parents who sit down and discuss it and decide that their children are mature enough to have the sex talk, and they further decide that some sort of really soft core pornography would be an appropriate way to help their child understand. Perhaps the child is 14 instead of 9. Does that change the dynamics? Do those parents not have the right to do so? They don’t if this law is thrown out. They do that, the 14 year old gets pissed cause his parents won’t let him stay out late, so he tells a counselor and the parents are arrested and jailed. Sure it is is stretch. But no more of a stretch than the parents who were arrested after taking pictures of their baby in the tub and having the developer of the film at the local drugstore call the police because they felt it was child pornography.

So I will go on record here and say that the parent has the right ot show their child whatever they want to show their child. We can call them bad parents. But I am not willing, at any point, to trust the state to properly judge the situation and act rationally. This is yet another place where the state has no say in what the parents do with their children. The biggest issue I had with the mother in this case was when she made the following statement:

“I want people to know about this. I want parents to be mad and say, ‘No!”‘ she said. “I understand in the ’70s everybody wanted the government to stay out of their homes. I don’t want to stop parents from having that right to teach sex education, but there’s a big difference and there’s a line you should not cross when teaching.”

The problem is that there is no way for the state to determine that line that should not be crossed. Pornography to me may be something completely different than it is to someone else. She is right, parents should be mad and say no. They should say, “no, I will not allow my children to view pornography.” They should also say, “no, I will not allow the state yet another avenue to usurp the rights of parents.” Because I still want the government to stay out of our homes. I want parents to start acting like parents and stop expecting government to take the burden of raising their children. This mother has every right to be outraged. She does not have the right to force government into the homes of the rest of Texas.

That does not mean the mother has no recourse. As I said, it makes it tricky that one parent says yes and the other says no. She has every right to request a hearing with the Child Social Services in Dallas and present her case for why the father should no longer have custody. But she must step away from the position of “government does not belong in our homes, except in this case where I want government to step in and punish my son of a bitch ex-husband.”

So I will now turn it over to the rest of you. I know this is a somewhat emotional issue. And I could allow emotion to rule my thoughts on this as well. But I instead simply choose to say there is another way to deal with this issue other than allowing the government to have a say about how parents choose to raise their children. There are many solutions to every problem. The government is not the solution. I am aware I will probably get flamed on this issue by many. But I am standing my ground. No government determining what is right and wrong for me to show my son.

Blast Away.

I am going to do my best to answer several of the positions taken on this site by various folks when it comes to our foreign policy. The fact is that our foreign policy in America is drastically flawed. Unfortunately so are some of the positions that have been espoused on the site when discussing foreign policy. The flaws are many, from taking a interventionist position within the world stage, to using that interventionist policy as a way to excuse away the heinous actions of others, many fail to see the reality of the world as it exists. I feel like I don’t suffer from that lapse in reality. I am not unique, but I am not just another dumb kid when it comes to examining the situation either. What I am is someone who has served this country, both here and abroad. I have seen the world first hand. I have seen the conflicts first hand. I have worked in Washington and seen the intel first hand. And what I offer on this subject is a voice not influenced by a hatred for either side and not rendered blind by a bias that keeps me from seeing the realities we face abroad. But that doesn’t make me right. So everything I say is certainly up for debate.

I have been very clear about where I would like to see our foreign policy go in past articles. For example, on March 9, I took the time to answer some questions that Just a Citizen directed at the veterans on the site:

1. Do you agree with the premise that our use of military force should be limited to only responding to those who attack us? Yes and No. I believe that we should be able to respond to aggression, no matter where it is aimed. We should only be able to initiate that response if the attack was aimed directly at us. So that means to me a direct attack on an ally can provoke us using military force, but only if that ally is formally requesting our help and they are not the aggressor. At that point, assist in repelling the aggression for them and disengage. The key here is we are responding to direct aggression in those instances. I do, however, feel we have the right to attack an iminent threat as well. But in a very limited set of circumstances. We couldn’t attack Iran right now, for example. But if they launched a nuclear strike on Israel and told us we were next, they are now a credible threat and I do believe we should take away their ability to follow up on their threat. The bottom line for me is that I don’t agree that we should be as passive as Kent or BF would espouse. However, we are far too active today, and should be doing far less. If we did, there might not be nearly as much of a need for such a large military.

2. Should we form military alliances with others simply to prevent attack on them (this is one way we get sucked in)? If they really are our allies, we have to stick up for them. We are the big guy in the group. If we went out with friends and one of us was a powerful brute and he didn’t defend us from some random guy in the parking lot who picked a fight, we would probably not be happy with him. I do, however, believe that this type of action must be in defense only. If England or Israel wants to pick a fight, they do so on their own. And if the one they pick a fight with whips their ass, tough luck. We do get sucked in a lot now, but a drastic change in posture for us could change that and limit it greatly.

3. If you agree to #1, then can we defend our country by returning all military personnel to our own lands? We cannot and should not. In terms of Iraq and Afghanistan, absolutely bring them home. But when one of our allies allows us to have a base in their country, I have no issue with that. The second that ally wants us out, we should be gone. This allows us the ability to have a forward defense. A missle defense shield in old Russia isn’t a bad thing if it can shoot down a missle before it gets close to us. The key isn’t having all bases here, it is a change in posture that moves us to a completely defensive posture in those bases abroad. One big thing to consider is that our bases abroad do a lot to prevent attacks on our allies. Bad intentioned people know that we will jump into the fight, and they know it won’t take us three weeks to get there. Knowing that the US Air Force has fighter jets in a base in England or Italy is far more likely to make enemies think twice. The alternative is that it would take 2-3 weeks to float an Aircraft Carrier Fleet elsewhere to defend an ally, which is not nearly as much of a deterrent. Again the answer is not closing bases in ally countries, it is switching to a defensive only posture no matter where we are.

4. Your thoughts on what constitutes an attack on the USA, especially in light of the new enemy without a definitive country. Some folks forget Iraq was shooting at our pilots on almost a daily basis. If you were in charge would you have considered this adequate justification for invasiion? For invasion, No, for shooting back at those shooting at us, yes. I stop short of saying that we EVER had justification for invading Iraq. I will argue WMD proof verus not and the complete irrelevance of that argument to begin with, but that doesn’t mean I think we were justified to invade. Take some actions? Absolutely. Full scale invasion, which should be a last step taken against a country that is clearly offensive, No. An attack is just that, an attack. 9/11 was an attack. I know that the current environment makes identifying an enemy very difficult. How do you hold Pakistan responsible for the actions of a Pakistani terrorist? But I think moving to a far more defensive position can clear that up right away. We heard a lot about fighting terrorism in Iraq rather than here at home. Then we heard about how we couldn’t fight them because they don’t fight in uniform and they blend with the people. Let’s eliminate the second part by eliminating the first. Fight them here, on our turf, where they are clear aggressors and they don’t have the support of the innocent people. I will take fighting terrorists in my house over fighting them in theirs any day. But that is the tactician in me.

I took that time because I thought as the person writing the site, and throwing around discussions about foreign policy, I should take the time to make sure that people understood where I am coming from in terms of where America should be as opposed to where it is. I am going to further expand on my reasoning tonight. We had the discussion on Iran the other night. And that turned into a large discussion on the “American mercantilism” the horrors of modern day American foreign policy. I will acknowledge those. There are many.

America’s mistake over the years has been the strict adherence to a policy of interventionism. There is no way around that in my mind. I understand the philosophy. The world is a complex and dangerous place. As a world power, we feel obligated to protect the weak, support our allies, and take an offensive position against those who seem to want to do us harm. I understand that position. I don’t necessarily agree with it in all situations, but I understand it, because many years ago that was the very position that I rested my hat, and my career, on.

The founding father’s did not intend for us to take this interventionist stance in the world. Thomas Jefferson made the famous quote that America should seek “peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” For a while our country, too weak to perform on the global stage as we do now, followed that mantra. At some point, I consider that point the turn of the century, we decided that we were powerful enough to begin playing ball with the big boys, and we began down the road of interventionism in all of its wicked forms. From controlling commerce relations to meddling in foreign governments to outright physical warfare, we have been one of the world leaders in that realm ever since.

I know that there are those who claim that the founding fathers lived in a simpler time and couldn’t possibly foresee the world today and the need for foreign policy as we now play it. I disagree. I think they were almost psychic in their vision. They knew the trouble that meddling in world affairs would bring. They wanted to keep us from doing so. The folks who will argue this point of view need to answer a single question that I have asked for the last several years, and that Ron Paul gave to me in his 2004 book, “The Revolution: A Manifesto”. That question is what exactly has the foreign policy stance of the last 100 years done for us? What good purpose or national interest have they served?

For example our consistent presence and meddling in the Middle East. And we must admit that most of this is due to the presence of a certain black liquid substance below ground there. We have always had the argument that the work our country does in the Middle East is important because we need oil, and without our government “protecting our interests” in that region, we would see a spike in oil prices that would crush our economy. I don’t buy that we would see those spikes, but suppose we assume that we would. Instead of $10 a gallon oil, we have spent TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS on several wars, massive amounts of rebuilding, massive intrusion into the rights of sovereign nations. Just think about all the costs associated with everything we have done in the Middle East since 1950. From covertly changing Iran’s government to Israel to Kuwait to Afghanistan (both in 1980 and now). Just think about how much money we have spent there. It is mind-boggling. Do you think without the taxes that had to be collected to pay for all those actions (remember this is TENS OF TRILLIONS of government spending), we might have had Americans having a lot more money in their bank accounts and we wouldn’t much care if gas was $10 a gallon. Hell for that matter, everyone could afford health insurance and we would be having that asinine debate either.

President George W. Bush had my vote in for the 2000 elections because of what he said about foreign policy. He ran on a stance of America being a moral leader, not intervening in other country’s business, and ending the practice of forcing our way on the rest of the world. He decried as foul the idea of nation building. Then 9/11 happened and he got my vote again in 2004 because I fell for the fear of being attacked again if we didn’t act. I didn’t, and still don’t, believe that John Kerry was the right choice to protect this country. By the end of Bush’s two terms I was disgusted to see that a man who ran on the principles of a foreign policy I agreed with had done a complete 180 in so short a time. Perhaps he was lying from the start, or perhaps he got pissed on 9/11 and said screw it. I don’t know, but I know he became something I did not agree with.

I despise President Obama’s apology tours and his continued speeches decrying how horrible America has been. But not because I don’t agree that we have done plenty wrong. I simply expect more from the President. If I bought the Baltimore Orioles tomorrow, I would not, as the owner come out and say this organization sucks. I would simply make us better. And that is what the President needs to do. If Barack Obama wants to earn a place as a great President in history, he needs to drastically change our foreign policy and prove to the world, and more importantly to Americans, that there is a better way forward. And that way forward is to treat all nations as our equals, stop imposing our will on them, and become a country who will destroy those who attack us, but who will never initiate force against another.

Because you cannot blame much of the world for despising our country and what it has become. We are a bully. It is unfortunate, but true. We need to be a leader. A leader in a gang is the toughest guy who is volatile and violent. That is not the type of leader we need to be. A leader in the business world is one who leads by example, supports those who endeavor to be better, and acts in a fair and moral manner. THAT is what America should be. In so many ways we are the absolute best country on the face of the earth. A beacon for the rest of the world. And we ruin it with our foreign policy. What is the phrase, you get more with honey than vinegar? Why do we have massive warehouses full of vinegar and a rapidly disappearing honeybee population?

I know that 9/11 is a big issue and a point of contention for those that do not like the foreign policy of non-interventionism. But the question that people have to ask is what were the real reasons for those attacks on our soil? Was it because they simply despise our freedom and wealth and our choice of religion? Was it because the “muslims simply want to destroy and murder anyone who does not renounce their faith and convert to Islam?” I know many of you say yes. That is what the soundbite politicians and media tell us. I disagree. That was a small part in a big play. A larger part is the disdain they have for the fact that we have constantly had troops in their region of the world, that we have bombed their cities, that we have imposed massive sanctions on them that resulted in the deaths of millions of their people, that we have supported oppressive and horrible regimes in their countries (The Shah of Iran for example).

They have a good reason to not like America and what she has become. There are many things that we do in the world that we simply should not be doing. And please don’t make the argument that the “nice” muslims are guilty because they don’t stand up to the “evil” muslims. Because if you do, then you are in favor of the 9/11 attacks because the “nice” Americans didn’t stand up to the “evil” American government and stop them from attacking and meddling.

So I will stand by my belief that America must reform her ways. We must renounce, in a loud and thunderous voice, the government foreign policies that support interventionism throughout the world. We must learn that we can be the leader of the world, not at the point of a gun, but with the morality and freedom the country was founded on. We must take a completely defensive posture throughout the world. My guess is that over time, the world will forgive us for what we have done that was wrong, and we may find that it isn’t so hard to gain support when threatened by a radical force out there. Our policy of interventionism has put Americans at a greater risk from those who we have meddled in the affairs of. And that just isn’t smart decision making.

The bottom line for me is that we must change our foreign policy because the foreign policy that has been embraced for the last 100 years has not made us better, stronger, or safer. In fact, I would argue that it has done the opposite. It will not be a quick or easy task to change our foreign policy. In fact we are so intertwined at this point it will take significant effort, focus, and time. But we must do this if the United States is to regain any form of moral high ground or stature in the world.

And before I forget to say so, this interventionist policy is equally applied by both parties. I know the Republicans are often called the “warmongering” party. But both parties share the blame for this foreign policy of interventionism EQUALLY. Democrats are just as warmongering and meddling in foreign sovereignty as Republicans. And I do mean equally, not even a shred less guilty, despite the fact that they do it in sometimes different ways.

So there you have it…. oh, but wait.

I forgot someone.

Oh, Black Flag, you didn’t think I would forget you… did you?

There is equally a flawed position being argued by you, and it is about time that you were called on this one. So I will be the one to do it. You tend to argue on the other side of the blame game. What the terrorists do is justified because of what the mercantilist policies of America have done to them. I have watched you consistently point out all the flaws of American interventionism, and rightly so. But you have far too often dismissed the actions of those who do what they do in the name of standing up to America.

And there, my supremely intelligent friend, you are being hypocritical and somewhat contradictory in your position.

I cannot remember where I read it, but I recall a quote that has stuck in my head for a few years.

“Only a fool would place the moral responsibility for terrorism on anyone but the terrorists who complete those acts.”

Regardless of what American has done, there is no justification for the actions of a terrorist. None. There is no honor in walking into a market and blowing up women and children who are innocent. There is no justification for terrorist bombings that kill innocent people. As you have argued many times, when it wasn’t the American government being discussed, there is absolutely no moral justification for revenge killing or or acting outside of moral or ethical boundaries. It is one thing to say you understand the reasons why those who commit those acts do so. It is quite another to not decry them as equally heinous in nature. Regardless of how immoral the initial acts of the United States when they take action abroad, that is not a justification of further immoral behavior.

Israel is immoral for what they do in Gaza. That does not make launching random rockets into Israel morally right. Iran has every right to be morally outraged with our meddling in their government in 1953. That does not make insurgents coming to Iraq and blowing up women and children morally right.

It is hypocritical to so strongly argue that America is so evil for the actions that are taken that are immoral while dismissing the fact that those on the other side who kill innocents are just as immoral and evil.

It is contradictory to justify the taking of life by terrorists in response to American actions while simultaneously decrying the death penalty for those proven to have murdered, and further dismissing the fact that some of what America does is a payback for actions taken against us. Afghanistan is an example. I know you will focus on this statement instead of my point, but save it for another time. There will be a later date for discussing Afghanistan.

I know you rely on the ability to be better than the rest of us at playing the blame game and being able to always go back to “America started it”, but the reality is that immoral is immoral. Murder is murder. And both sides are guilty in all of the conflicts we have discussed. No side is less guilty. No side is more guilty.

That is all. I really am done now. Sorry to everyone for such a long article.