Pasadena Politics

Anyone who places trust in government misplaces that trust.  The best job any government can do is protecting their nation from external enemies.   Those who are concerned that given power government would misuse it to abuse the rights of the governed do not have that concern without reason.

In Logic, the “Slippery Slope” Argument is considered a fallacy.   In Politics, it is to be expected that given an inch, miles will be taken.

So, with Health-care, I cannot help but think of movies such as Logan’s Run and Brazil.

What the Nation needed was reform and what it has received instead compounds the problem greatly.  Government running Health-care is antithetical to reform itself.   Bureaucracy breeds inefficiency and higher cost.  Certainly one can claim that leaving ones health care in the hands of a business full of bureaucracy is not a great thing, but at least the business has something Government cannot claim to improve service: it cannot survive without making a profit.   In order to make a profit, it has to provide services customers want.   The fewer competitors a business has, the less pressure it has to provide goods and services desired by customers at a competitive price.   Government, as I have mentioned before, is a monopoly.    Monopolies do not have competitors or, if there are a few, they are so weak that they cannot reasonably compete.   Combine bureaucracy with monopolies and you have a wasteful system that lacks any real accountability.

Regulation of industry hampers competition by creating barriers of entry.  If government runs health-care, you can be assured that private insurers will be unable to compete.   While a government’s resources are not unlimited it is able to forcibly take money in the form of taxes, fines, fees, and penalties to generate money, subsidizing their programs.   Barring a very productive population or the conquest of other nations, government eventually dries it’s resources up when sponging off of the population.

“I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people. Look at the trouble now we’re having with choice of schools. Of course parents want a say in the kind of education their children have.” – Margaret Thatcher 1976 TV interview

It is a fundamental truth.  The more you take to give to others; the more you “spread the wealth”, the less money you eventually have.   You end up with less money because the taking of it disincentivizes people and leads to less production.     After all, why should someone work hard to earn money of which most is taken away and given to someone who works less or in a commonly doable job?   If as a college graduate your net paycheck is only a few hundred dollars more a month than the non-graduate flipping burgers as MickeyDees, what point was there in putting forward the effort to excel?

Americans cannot trust government to look out for their interests.   Americans cannot be free and sucklings of Government at the same time.   Freedom and Large Government are antithetical to each other.

I recently read an article from the Economist that mentioned Homeschooling.   As a Home-schooling parent, I obviously found the article of interest.   It assumed that conservatives will pull their kids from school to teach them at home because of Obama’s liberalism.   While it is certainly true that some will, to say that it is simply conservatives and people who are religious who home-school does not represent the actuality: many people don’t think public schools do the job their tax dollars are put towards.

Most people who have looked at home-schooling have already started.   For others, the financial aspect will be prohibitive.   Either they are single parents who have little choice but to have their children in a school apart from home, or they are so financially bound to working that they cannot (or think they cannot) afford to home-school.  Secondly, it asserts that active parents would have as equal impact on their children in home or non-home-schooled environments.   There is certainly much to be said for being involved at one’s child’s school,  but it is not equal to the direct one on one attention a Home-schooler  receives.   Think about the Education establishment’s and Teacher’s Unions complaints (legitimate ones at that) that bigger class sizes deprive students of a teacher’s attention.   Certainly what is good for the Gander is good for the Goose?
Many parents no longer trust the Public School system because many see a great encroachment on their rights as parents when a school can medicate a child without parental permission or decide to take or teach them to special  lessons without prior notification.   Many parents also would prefer to have their children among like minded individuals (such as themselves) than those would influence them to behave contrary to their morals and beliefs.

Anyways, I thought the article was interesting, but not on target.  Well, after today’s news, I rethink that thought.   People are more likely to consider home schooling, and it won’t just be religious or conservatives parents.   See it here.

How about this song:

Mm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said we must be fair today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said red, yellow, black or white
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

Yes!
Mmm, mmm, mm
Barack Hussein Obama

And then this song:

Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say “hooray!”

Hooray, Mr. President! You’re number one!
The first black American to lead this great nation!

Hooray, Mr. President we honor your great plans
To make this country’s economy number one again!

Hooray Mr. President, we’re really proud of you!
And we stand for all Americans under the great Red, White, and Blue!

So continue —- Mr. President we know you’ll do the trick
So here’s a hearty hip-hooray —-

Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!

Well, at least they are being taught about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution which sets our Nation apart from so many others?  I hope?

There are many choices we have and can make in life by benefit of living in this great Nation.   We can choose to have long or short hair.  We can choose who we marry.  We can choose the type of car we drive or the very light bulbs we use (at least until 2010).    We can choose what we do or do not believe.    While there are certain things we have no choice about (who our parents are), we have plenty of opportunity to choose much concerning the courses of our lives.

Emphasis on lives.   We cannot choose nor can we have opportunity without life.   The foundation of this Nation, the Declaration of Independence (the Constitution and Bill of Rights would come later) iterates three inalienable rights (they are a primacy): Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.   Without Life, no one has rights.  Without Liberty, one cannot exercise their rights.   Without the Pursuit of Happiness, one’s freedom means little.    So we have the right to Life.  An inalienable right.

Yet, that most basic of rights has, at times in our Nations history, been denied to people.   Not on the basis of action – such as those condemned by Capital Punishment, but by basis of birth; the color of one’s skin.  There are those who uphold the Supreme Court as the best defence in this Nation against Executive or Legislative abuse of our rights, yet if you look at the but a few examples (Dred Scott) you see that the expediency of appeasing financial and political allies overthrew the rights of many.   It took a bloody civil war to rectify that fault in America.

Today, we have a similar situation.   It was not born out of compromise in order to create the Union as slavery was.   This was born out of a mistaken ideology which does not value life for it sees no separation between man and common animals.    The very Supreme Court case: Roe vs Wade, relied on poor and debunked evidence to support the theory that a human fetus was not human.    When is a human a human if not at conception?    Certainly not prior to conception, there is zero potential for humanity in a sperm or ovum (* link may offend some).    Once conception occurs, regardless of the simplicity, there is 100% potential.  That is: you have human life.    The main differences are: size, intellectual capacity, self-reliance, communication, and maturity.

The premise that a woman has the right to abort her fetus is an erroneous argument.    It presumes that the rights of one individual outweigh the rights of another.    The only instances allowed are in cases of Capital Punishment and self-defense.  With regards to a mother’s choice then; with regards to a pregnant woman’s choice then, we do not have an instance where Capital Punishment of a Fetus is expected nor do we have an instance of self defence except for the case where a woman’s life is in direct danger due to the pregnancy.   Otherwise, what gives the right of anyone to take the life of another?

Where does that right come from except by dehumanizing the fetus; the unborn?   Only by assuming that our inalienable rights do not come from a higher power: not from God but from man – that we make the rules and rights.    All should be very much afraid for if man can pick and chose the rights to bestow on his fellow man, then likewise those same rights and more can be taken away.