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.

A Nation whose citizens refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and refuse to be self-sacrificing will accept a government intrusion into their lives depriving them of Individual Liberties and Freedoms in exchange for being coddled and sentimental Social programs.

“We have a separation of Church and State”

What, exactly, is the separation of Church and State about?  Does it mean that Law and where Government are superior to ones individual beliefs or that ones individual beliefs are superior to the Law and Government?  Does it mean that Government and the law are defer to religious beliefs or that religion is deferred to?  When one reads the “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” in the First Amendment, one cannot reasonably deduct that religion takes a back seat to Laws passed by Congress.

Yet Coakley, someone who took the oath of office which includes no small promise to defend the Constitution, seems to have no clue what the Constitution talks about.   Such ignorance of the document upon which the USA was founded is inexcusable for someone attempting to represent their State.    But this is perhaps a sign of how entrenched the idea that the “Separation of Church and State” (which is an idea outside the Constitution not even found in the Federalist Papers but in a letter) means that Religion is shut out and disenfranchised rather than the State being shut out of influencing or managing Religion.   The gross perverting of the Constitution to mean something contrary to what the Founders intended had not been a slow process or even a new process.

It is a process that does not hold our Freedoms or our Liberties in high esteem yet it will unflinchingly hide behind those same freedoms and liberties in order to tear them down for everyone else.   It is as dishonest as it is hypocritical.

Here we have Coakley stating that because of the separation of Church and State, Catholic Doctors cannot decline to offer contraception and they should find other employment.  Our Nation happened to have been founded by people who fled from statists like Coakley.    The Constitution and Bill of Rights were formulated to combat them as well.     May Steve Brown beat Coakley hands down.

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.

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows:

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts

John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York

William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland

Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia

George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina

William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia

Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Copied from here.  Why?  Sometimes we need to recall certain Founding Documents alluded to in Obama’s Inauguration speech. 

I thought that this was a very well given speech concerning belief.