Day of Decision

Tomorrow is a day of decision for Americans and a day of history.

It is a day we vote for our representation in our National government in the Legislative Branch, and for the past four decades and more we have become lax in this exercise of our franchise right.

Source: US Census

Our ancestors who founded this Nation fought hard so that we the people would get the franchise so as to be able to have a say in our governance.  To have that say we elect representatives to Congress, so the Nation may know about itself via those who represent us.  Voting is not about parties 'winning' nor about ideology, but a simple means for the Nation to know about itself in its National government so that all the views of the people can be heard and given airing for the people to know about.  This is the role of any government, but is particularly the case in a representative democracy in a republican form of government: we get wide say in our representatives and our government comes to reflect us in our voting for representatives at all levels of government.

We crossed the boundary of 50% for Congressional elections in 1974 and only approached that, once, in 1982.

Worse is that our turnout for Presidential years has been in a steady decline, as well, so that we passed the point of claiming even a plurality support for government, that being over 35% support via 'winning' of the entire population, some time ago.  Not voting is not a vote to support any 'party' or, indeed, our form of government and counting only those who do vote have left out the plurality, turning into a majority, that do not do so.  Winning even 50% of 60% turnout is 30% National support of all those eligible to vote and that was last seen in 1984 with 1992 being a 3-way race.  It follows then that the actual plurality that does not vote is sending a message that they do not support our government enough to exercise the right that so many around this planet give their lives for: a simple say in their government.

When such small segments of the polity come to power there is great trouble in any form of government as the oversight of the few with that power diminishes.  The history of this is such that we can no longer claim the necessary validity that some tyrants have had coming to power based on far larger turnouts, with even more parties to contest elections.  That history is not inevitable, however, as it is the people who give legitimacy to representative government, not the government that takes it or assumes it for itself.

America turned away from the regular cleansing of government when the Progressive movement took hold so as to concentrate power and slowly distance the people from their representatives.

Courtesy: thirty-thousand.org

It is a set of graphs that we will all come to rue if we do not assert our will as a people upon our government and, instead, feel that our voice has no say and that those in power will forever be re-elected to the point that they rarely concern themselves with those they represent.  Distant governors are tyrannical ones, as they have to stake in those they govern and thus feel that they are fit to rule, not govern, over people.

Thus tomorrow is a day of exercising our hard won rights, fought and died for, marched for, and that has left a bloody trail behind it so that we can, indeed, have a say in our own government.

Tomorrow we the people can make history and vote in more than a mere plurality but in a majority, and begin to place legitimacy back into government of, by and for the people.  To get a government for the people it must be supported by the people and consist of representatives from the people.

Voting for a candidate that reflects your outlooks on life, your viewpoints and who will protect your way of life is paramount at all times.  A people willing to govern themselves will hold their government accountable to the same high standards they hold themselves to, and change that government when it fails to meet those standards.  If you can find none in the parties to represent you, then your own name needs to be written in on the ballot so that you, at least, vote for someone who can speak to your needs, wishes and wants in life so as to be free to exercise liberty and create a better society without the interference of others to tell you what to do, how to live and what is right and wrong.  You had parents for that, and government is no fit parent to anyone, especially you as an adult.  Your vote is never 'wasted' even if cast for yourself: you have done your duty to your neighbors and our Nation and honestly voted for a better representative.  No matter who 'wins' your vote is the right one to cast because it comes from your own hand, guided by your mind which is governed by your heart.  There is no 'wrong' vote in voting as the act itself is good and necessary to protect ourselves from the tyranny of government.

I encourage all citizens of the United States who are eligible to vote to do so, as their voice is necessary for all of us to hear.  In our multitudes we come together as one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Only you can form this Nation by taking part in our governance so that you may be free to govern yourself.

May we be the most civil people on this planet able to guide ourselves so as to hold this Nation's honor as our very own.

I thank you for your time.

What you don't know, and neither does your Congresscritter

Yes the vim, vigor and vituperation surrounding the Health Care Bill has been astounding!  Well, mostly on the against side of things, on the for side it has been the usual platitudes of 'how much this needs to be done' and 'how good it is' and 'you will find out what is in it after it is passed'.  Unfortunately that latter is paraphrased from the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and if that had been spoken by, say, some Fifth Earl West San Francisco it would sound like an aristocrat explaining that the workings of government are just too complex for the 'little people' to understand.

Companies are pretty fast off the mark in 'understanding' things as their bottom line is something they care about, so they adjust the fastest to try and absorb the hits from changes in the tax code so as to properly structure their companies as to make a profit.  Any profit.  Thus the following are now taking charges to their bottom line this year to try and stay ahead of the curve:

1) Caterpillar Inc. - $100 million (Source: WSJ 25 MAR 2010)

2) Deere (of John Deere) - $150 million (Source: CNBC 25 MAR 2010)

3) AT&T - $1 billion (Source: Yahoo News 26 MAR 2010 article by Barbara Ortutay)

4) AK Steel (mentioned in the Yahoo News article above)

5) Valero Energy (ibid.)

6) 3M Co. - $85 - $90 million (ibid.)

That Yahoo News article is just full of fun stuff like this passage:

Under the 2003 Medicare prescription drug program, companies that provide prescription drug benefits for retirees have been able to receive subsidies covering 28 percent of eligible costs. But they could deduct the entire amount they spent on these drug benefits — including the subsidies — from their taxable income.

The new law allows companies to only deduct the 72 percent they spent.

AT&T also said Friday that it is looking into changing the health care benefits it offers because of the new law. Analysts say retirees could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers as a result of the overhaul.

Changes to benefits are unlikely to take effect immediately. Rather, the issue would most likely come up as part of contract negotiations between the company and unions representing its employees and retirees. AT&T is the largest private employer of union workers in the U.S.

Hey!  I thought the 2003 Medicare Bill was too big for a Nation at war, that we couldn't afford it, and that the shift to private plans, being something the government could allow also means the government could fool with it in the future.

Which it has done.

And if you like your health care plan and are getting it from an employer?  Its either changing, benefits are being reduced or just going away... so forget about keeping it.  That promise was a lie as anyone who looks at the system could tell you when you start doing wholesale changes to mandates and such.

Now a bit more for the above on folks losing benefits due to this bill from AP via Google 26 MAR 2010 in an article by John Funk:

The health care law signed by President Barack Obama on Tuesday prohibits companies from writing off the subsidies starting in 2011, meaning they will no longer be able to deduct them from their taxable income.

For example, if a company spent $100 on benefits, including a $28 government subsidy, it could write off the full $100 on its taxes under the old rules. The new rules would allow the same company to write off only $72.

The follow-up health care bill to reshape parts of the overhaul would delay the changes until 2013.

As many as 1.5 million to 2 million retirees could lose the drug benefits provided by their former employer because of the tax changes, according to a study by the Moran Company, a health care consulting firm.

James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, said between 6 million and 7 million retirees currently get the benefits. But the number of companies offering them has been dwindling for years.

Generally, retirees would prefer to stay with prescription drug coverage provided by their companies as opposed to enrolling in a Medicare Part D plan, said Marilyn Moon, a health care economist with the nonpartisan American Institutes for Research.

She said most of the company-sponsored plans are more generous and almost none have the coverage gap that comes with Part D plans.

Private plans more generous than what the government can do?  And they keep the retired better cared for without having to spend US taxpayers money?  And the benefits are more generous than what the US government can do under Medicare?

Say, why is Medicare such a great system for retirees if it is stingy, can't fully reimburse medications, costly and, oh, going broke with the approaching retirement of the 'Baby Boom' generation? Because it is what people will be falling back to, once the bite of this stuff fully takes place.  Notice that most of that starts to disappear just before an election year and then fully in place after it?

But the kicker is what those companies that DON'T change their benefits will do, and its a real kicker:

Consumers Energy, a Michigan gas and electric company with 2.9 million customers, said it will not take a big first-quarter charge because, like most utility companies, it can try to recover the added costs from its customers through rate hikes.

It has got to suck to be in MI with such bad tax codes and businesses fleeing Detroit that the city wants to turn some of the abandoned lots back into farmland (Source: AP via Washington Times 09 MAR 2010) .  Costs too much to turn the Motor City into the Farm City, however, so get used to vacant lots and abandoned buildings in Detroit for the foreseeable future.  Just watch RoboCop and you will get the idea, there.  So if you live in Detroit you will pay for the unsubsidized health benefits of Consumers Energy via rate hikes in gas and electric bills.  And through increased federal taxes, too.

Ed Morrisey at Hot Air (25 MAR 2010) hosted a video clip of Bill O'Reilly trying to get a straight answer on who collects the penalties if you don't enroll in Obamacare and he also put up the bill so you could search it yourself.  He came up with the IRS on p. 345 of the bill under its Section 5000A powers given to it by Congress in 1986.  Dutifully I looked that up:

From Title 26 (26 USC 5000) which is under Subtitle D – Miscellaneous Excise Taxes – Chapter 47 Certain group health plans, which has this as its taxing provision:

Sec. 5000. Certain group health plans

(a) Imposition of tax

There is hereby imposed on any employer (including a self-employed person) or employee organization that contributes to a nonconforming group health plan a tax equal to 25 percent of the employer’s or employee organization’s expenses incurred during the calendar year for each group health plan to which the employer or employee organization contributes.

There you go, Section 5000A of Title 26!  So if you get income that isn't employment income, say you get unemployment benefits or are rich and live on the earnings of off-shore accounts, you don't have to comply.  You have just gotta love how the very poor and very rich are BOTH able to get away from this junk, but the middle class gets screwed.  But don't worry, we Daniel Foster on 26 MAR 2010 at NRO (h/t: Morgen Richmond at BigGovernment)has found out that whatever the bill may say in one place, it might just contradict in another as found in the Joint Committee on Taxation on 21 MAR 2010 on p. 33 :

The penalty applies to any period the individual does not maintain minimum essential coverage and is determined monthly. The penalty is assessed through the Code and accounted for as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the Code.68 The use of liens and seizures otherwise authorized for collection of taxes does not apply to the collection of this penalty. Non-compliance with the personal responsibility requirement to have health coverage is not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay such assessments in a timely manner.

Yes, that's right, there is no penalty for not getting a health care plan that can be assessed against you.  Basically its 'pretty please sign up or if you want to pay a fine you can but if you don't that is a-ok, too'.  Thus we will get 16,500 brandy-new IRS agents to... send you imploring letters to please, please, pretty please get health care and, if you could, send some cash to the IRS for your trouble, would ya?

Oh, joy!

Oh, rapture!

Then at the CampaignSpot at NRO on 24 MAR 2010 Jim Geraghty found the tampon tax:

b) TAXABLE MEDICAL DEVICE.—For purposes of this section— (1) IN GENERAL.—The term "taxable medical device" means any device (as defined in section 201(h) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) intended for humans. (2) EXEMPTIONS.—Such term shall not include— (A) eyeglasses, (B) contact lenses, (C) hearing aids, and (D) any other medical device determined by the Secretary to be of a type which is generally purchased by the general public at retail for individual use.

Yes and in that latter category is: tampons.  That sort of thing was brought up months ago... last year around this time if memory serves, but Harry Reid decided to keep such language in the bill.  Say, you can get a pacemaker, but if you need special lenses to see your way around the house, you gotta shell out for those through the nose. PLUS 2.3%  Good job!

From AP via Hot Air on 24 MAR 2010:

Hours after President Barack Obama signed historic health care legislation, a potential problem emerged. Administration officials are now scrambling to fix a gap in highly touted benefits for children.

Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage.

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.

Yes the 'For The Children' folks who pushed this from Congress were lying.  Young adults are under that too, so sorry.

It was such an important thing to do, they forgot to do it.

I am sure, very, very sure, that the Harry Reid Bill to bring us Obamacare will be chock-a-block with goodies like this because this landmark legislation was so important, so damned necessary, and had to do so very much that no one in Congress could bother to read it.

Just like the 'stimulus' which hasn't stimulated a damn thing save the pocketbooks of Congressional cronies.

I really do think that such behemoth bills should be read out on both floors of the Chambers of Congress.

So that it goes completely on record as having been read out so there are no excuses, no blathering, NOTHING that can be used to defend the passage of such bills.

It is one thing to have a bleeding heart.

It is quite another to slit one's wrists to prove just how much you care.

Political violence is in what part of the spectrum?

Spurred on by those who put forward that it is the 'Right' or 'conservatives' that engender violence in US culture, I decided to take a look at those high level affairs that were either important in their time or in the realm of politics for the US.  This is by no means an all inclusive listing, but one that looks at the realm of high-level assassinations.  I am NOT looking at foreign assassinations nor their political motivations.  And if I cannot quickly discern a political affiliation that is strong for an assassin(s) then I say so.  I am more than ready to put in the actual affiliations, but motivation is far more important than anything else as that is what is implied as being on the 'Right' or with 'conservatives.

So here is the deeply unhappy list I put together.

It is not a list of large scale terrorist events, thus you will not find McVeigh on it as he and other terrorists are generally doing something called 'Private War' against the Nation.  That list is highly diverse, however, and the decades of terror acts aimed at the US has a huge list of events, actors, and motivations behind them.  Terrorists can commit assassinations, but large scale acts aimed at the Nation are Acts of War not assassinations.

If you want a better list of high level assassinations, do it yourself... and read of the unhappiness that can find room in the heart of your fellow man.

=====

2000

Attempted assassination of President Clinton by FARC - Motivation: Terrorism. In general the Colombian police found a bomb planted in a room that President Clinton was to give a speech in within a few hours and the device was traced to FARC.  Political party - Unknown/FARC.

1998

Assassination of Tommy Burks by Byron (Low Tax) Looper - Motivation: Political opportunism to murder an opponent to get his name removed from the ballot.  Looper had changed his middle name to signify his political beliefs, had previously switched parties, and ran numerous false news accounts of his political achievements.  Also an ex-girlfriend sued for child support and fraud and charged Looper of using his political office to harass her.  Republicans helped the wife of the murdered Tommy Burks run a write-in campaign to win the election.  Political party - Republican.

1994

Attempted assassination of President Bill Clinton by Francisco Martin Duran - Motivation: Possibly infamy. Plead guilty, attempted insanity defense that involved a celestial alien umbilical cord and incitement by a conservative talk radio host, and was convicted for his crimes.  He had an aggravated assault conviction prior to this while in the Army.  Political party - Unknown.

Assassination of Meir Kahane bye El Sayyid Nosair - Motivation: Terrorism and member of al Qaeda.  Political party - Unknown.

1981

Attempted assassination of President Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr. - Motivation:  Insanity caused by obsession. Political party - Unknown.

1980

John Lennon killed by Mark David Chapman - Motivation: Seeking infamy.  Sought to be found insane at first, but recanted and was found competent to plead guilty, but was deemed in need of mental treatment at sentencing. Political party - Unknown.

1979

Assassination of District Judge John H. Wood, Jr. by Charles Voyde Harrelson - Motivation: Hitman hired by drug dealer Jamiel Chagra.  Previously tried for the murder of Sam Degelia. Political party - Unknown.

1978

San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk assassinated by Daniel James White - Motivation: City politics/depression.  In general the infamous 'twinkie defense' is best known as Dan White's legacy, and he would later commit suicide while out on parole.  Political party - Democratic.

1975

Attempted assassination of President Ford by Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme - Motivation: Unknown, previously a member of the Manson Family.  Political party - Unknown.

Attempted assassination of President Ford by Sara Jane Moore - Motivation:  Uknown, possibly mental instability, later in life stated it was due to her "radical views".  Political party - Unknown.

1974

Attempted assassination of Richard Nixon by Samuel Byck - Motivation: Derangement/personal, depression, attempt to start "Operation Pandora's Box" given in tapes to columnist Jack Anderson, belief that government was trying to suppress the poor.  Had sent other tapes to Jonas Salk, Abraham Ribicoff, Leonard Bernstein and attempted to join the Black Panther Party, as well as held protests in front of the White House without gaining permits to do so.  Political party - Unknown.

1972

Attempted assassination of George Wallace by  Arthur Bremer -  Motivation: Personal statement about his manhood, wrote that he would kill either Richard Nixon or George Wallace to demonstrate it and become infamous.  Plan to assassinate President Nixon was thwarted due to high security, stopped on initial attempt against Wallace due to teenagers being near glass behind Wallace who might have been blinded.  In general obsession with assassinations, personal derangement.  Political party - Unknown.

1968

Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated by James Earl Ray - Motivation: Racial/Habitual criminal.  In general Ray had been convicted of burglary, armed robbery twice, and mail fraud, thus being a habitual criminal.  He had left the scene of the crime and after conviction attempted to escape from prison.  Political party - Unknown.

Attempted assassination of Andy Warhol by Valerie Solanas - Motivation: Paranoid-Schizophrenia/mentally unstable, possible infamy to get her play produced.  Political party - Unknown.

John F. Kennedy assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan - Motivation: Political, anti-Zionist/mentally unstable.  In general he was a Palestinian-American who did not want a positive foreign policy towards Israel, and was obsessive that RFK would do that.  Political party - Unknown.

1965

Malcolm X assassinated by Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. Motivation: Killed by members of the Nation of Islam after leaving it and shifting his agenda from equal rights to human rights and changed his views after the Hajj that racism by any color is destructive.  Jury convictions covers all three men, Butler claims the others were not involved.  Political affiliation of the assassins - Nation of Islam, Political party - Unknown.

1963

Medgar Evers assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith - Motivation: Racial - KKK member, Phineas Preisthood member, anti-semite, anti-multiculturalism, anti-taxation.  In general hatred of Blacks, Jews, Catholics and the US Government.  Also planned to murder the head of the B'nai Brith in 1973.  Political party - Democratic.

President Kennedy assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald - Motivation: Political, seeking infamy.  Prior attempted assassination of General Walker who was an anti-communist, segregationist and member of the John Birch Society.  Political party - Communist sympathizer.

Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated by Jack Ruby - Motivation: Mental instability, depth of feeling for Kennedy family.  In general Jack Ruby was a small time hustler who came from Chicago and was described as 'meshuga' or 'not having a full deck' and known to be unstable in both criminal and social environs.  Political party - Unknown.

1960

Attempted assassination of President Kennedy by Richard Paul Pavlick - Motivation: Mentally unstable/insane.  In general believed that the 1960 election was stolen, criticized the government and was anti-Catholic.  Political party - Republican sympathizer.

1958

Attempted assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. by a black woman,  Izola Curry - Motivation: Derangement/Insanity determined incompetent to stand trial and committed to a mental hospital.  Political party - Unknown.

1935

Huey Long believed to be assassinated by Carl Weiss, but that is since been put into question - Motivation: Dave Haas led an anti-Long group called "Minute Men" and claims that Weiss drew the straw to kill Long during an ambush.  Dave Haas' statements have been shown to be less than truthful, but it can be said that Long died in a shoot-out with anti-Long individuals.  Political party - Unknown/anti-Long.

1933

Attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Giuseppe Zangara - Motivation: Zangara was a small time pawn shop owner living off of his savings and hated the capitalist system which he saw the President-elect as one of the people involved in capitalism undermining workers.  In general he was convicted of one of the others that he shot at wildly as the chair he was standing on collapsed under him.  Political party - Unknown.

1912

Attempted assassination of President Theodore Roosevelt by John Flammang Schrank - Motivation:  Mentally unstable/insane/political and declared to be insane.  Schrank did not believe any President should seek a third term and also had visions from the previously assassinated McKinley, plus other mental problems.  Roosevelt continued on to give a 90 minute speech with a bullet lodged in his chest, and then was hospitalized after that.  Political party - Unknown.

1909

Jim Miller lynched for killing the local Sheriff - Motivation: Outlaw, gun for hire and assassin.  Political party - Unknown.

1901

President William McKinley assassinated by Leon Czolgosz - Motivation: Disaffected Anarchist using the template of another Anarchist assassination as inspiration.  In general expressed support for anarchism and the working man. Political party - Unknown/Anarchist.

1893

Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr. was assassinated by Patrick Eugene Prendergast - Motivation:  Seeking political appointment after supporting Harrison's run for election/mentally unstable declared insane.  Harrison did not know who Prendergast was.  Political party - Democratic.

1882

Jesse James assassinated by Robert Ford - Motivation: Betrayal/reward for killing an outlaw and getting a pardon for his crimes, infamy.  Political party - Unknown/City Councilman of Las Vegas.

1881

Assassination of President Garfield by Charles Julius Guiteau - Motivation:  Mental instability/derangement.  Failed lawyer and theologian who felt he deserved a job in the Garfield Administration for his support of it.  Political party - Republican.

1876

Assassination of "Wild Bill" Hickock by Jack McCall - Motivation: Revenge for Hickock having killed his brother years previoiusly/act of generosity by Hickock offering to buy McCall breakfast after a bad night of poker for McCall.  Tried for murder on US territory, convicted and hanged.  Political party - Unknown.

1865

President Abraham Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, with help from Lewis Powell and David Herold who was supposed to assassinate Secretary of State William Seward, along with George Atzerodt who was to kill VP Johnson . Motivation: Pro-Secessionist, Confederate sympathizer, opposed the abolition of slavery and emancipation of the slaves.  In general support of the Southern cause during the Civil War, hatred of abolition, attempt to turn the tide of the war with a failed plot to kidnap Lincoln.  Booth's father had threatened the assassination of President Andrew Jackson.  Political party - Know Nothing Party.

1835

Attempted assassination of President Jackson by Richard Lawrence - Motivation: Mentally disturbed, believe that Jackson was in the way of Lawrence receiving funds that would allow him to become King of England.  Also ahistorically blamed Jackson for the death of his father who had never been to the United States.  Political party - Unknown.

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So how many of these are carried out by the 'Right' or right-leaning individuals?

I would argue that Schrank, Pavlick, and Looper all have elements of the 'Right' in them, but in the first two there are reasons to doubt sanity overall and in the last there are personal motivations in the misuse of power that go with it.  So about 3 acts of assassination.

Ok, how many from the 'Left' or left-leaning individuals?

I would argue that Pendergast, Zangara, Oswald, the three convicted of the Malcolm X assassination, Moore, White, and FARC.  About 7 acts of assassination all told.  For Pendergast, Zangara and Moore I would argue that mental disturbances play a major factor in their motivations.

 

But that doesn't end the political slicing and dicing, now, does it?

How many actual or convicted conspiracies are there in this list?

1. Lincoln's assassination, of course, as that was but one intended assassination that evening.
2. Taking down Jesse James required a conspiracy with the Ford brothers, the Governor and the President.
3. Huey Long being taken down by anti-Long individuals.
4. The assassination of Malcolm X, even with the protestations by one individual that he acted alone, the jury thought otherwise, so that, too, is a conspiracy.
5. The assassination of Meir Kahane by al Qaeda is a long-ranging plot that spans from Europe to Africa to America.
6. FARC attempting assassination is part of their stock and trade, as they had been doing that long before and long after President Clinton, but he was one who helped get an effective anti-FARC system started.  It is one of the real feathers in President Clonton's cap that he helped start the process of taking down that leftist narco-terror group.

So 6 conspiracies, all told, large and small.

 

How about party-on-party assassinations?  Leaving out the criminal ones, that is, as crime has only temporary allegiances.

1. Guiteau thought he was due a job for his political support, even though no one knew who he was.
2. Prendergast expected favoritism for his support, too.
3. Malcolm X obviously had a falling out with the Nation of Islam.
4. White had difficulties with fellow Democrats within San Francisco's government.

In two cases the unknowns think they deserve recognition for support, one is a factional falling out and the other is just a build-up of problems within government.  At least we aren't having government by defenestration!

 

Lets flip this around and see how many we get with the mentally unstable, the disturbed, the insane, shall we?

1. Richard Lawrence, obviously, the man who would be King, somehow, with money.
2. Guiteau a failed lawyer, theologian, plagiarist and just not all there.
3. Prendergast for thinking he was someone when no one really knew about him, especially his target.
4. Leon Czolgosz - how do you tell insanity from fervently held anarchism?  Looked insane then and now.
5. John Flammang Schrank had visions, some held political beliefs and found that they played together.
6. Giuseppe Zangara demonstrated a lack of touch with reality during his trial and after, so probably before, too.
7. Izola Curry was judged to be unfit to stand trial, her race had nothing to do with it, period.
8. Richard Paul Pavlick decided to spare the Kennedy children but still thought killing him was a good idea.  That is not ideological commitment.
9. Jack Ruby was meshuga.  His life points to that and he did lack a full, mental deck.
10. Sirhan Sirhan had a definite instability on who did what in politics, and became obsessed into the bargain.
11. Valerie Solanas - was she nuts or just a good actress?  If she was that good she didn't need to act nuts.
12. Arthur Bremer - would it by Nixon or Wallace?  Nixon or Wallace?  To show his manhood?
13. Samuel Byck decades before al Qaeda wanted to fly a plane into the White House.  Personally.
14. Sara Jane Moore and her 'radical views' which she regrets or doesn't depending on when you talk to her.
15. Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme is the fallout of Charles Manson and pretty it isn't.
16. Daniel James White the jury bought the 'twinkie defense' and he did commit suicide.  Contrition or just one twinkie too many?
17. John Hinckley, Jr. wanted to kill the President to get the girl... that just doesn't work out in anyone's book.

Now that is painful, isn't it?  We get 17 acts of assassination that are spurred on in whole or in part by lack of sanity, delusions or just plain losing it.  The 'it' being sanity.  From wannabe King of England to kill the President to get the girl, the range of insanity over the past couple of centuries is damned interesting.  And nothing you can actually pin down for politics in all of them.

 

How about infamy?  You know: kill someone famous to be famous by intent?

1. Richard Lawrence just had to kill the President to get government money to be King of England.  Something got lost between steps 1 and 3, but the fame was a factor.
2. John Wilkes Booth an actor from start to finish, and only an actor puts out a great line to be remembered after he kills someone.
3. Robert Ford would always want to be known as the man who took out Jesse James, before and after he did it, as afar as I can tell.
4. Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to make a name for himself: he was always the loud misfit and even defected to/from the USSR,and STILL no one noticed him.
5. Jack Ruby loved the spotlight, and some part of that must have been a wildcard in that wild deck.
6. Valerie Solanas - was she truly insane or did she do it for her art at the expense of Warhol?
7. Arthur Bremer was going to be known as a REAL man.
8. Mark David Chapman, really it would be better if he was just nuts, but he wasn't.
9. John Hinckley, Jr. he was nuts and that didn't help, but the fame was there too.
10. Francisco Martin Duran, just maybe, but he didn't really earn much of anything, save prison time.

This idea that you can get famous by killing someone famous really has got to be nipped in the bud: it just doesn't work out that way.  Really, do you want people to have scorn when they say your name?  Or is it that they will say your name, with or without scorn?  Really you just have to be nuts to think that way, and most on the list are nuts... but not all of them.

 

Next up is the famous topic from the Left that just won't heal because they won't listen to anyone outside of the Left on it: Racism.  Here I will bundle in anti-Semitism, as it really is a form of racist thought, too.

1. John Wilkes Booth didn't see blacks as equal to whites and was willing to kill for it.  Die for that as a cause.
2. Byron De La Beckwith was a racist: member of the KKK and other racist, anti-Semitic groups.
3. Sirhan Sirhan was anti-Semitic and feared power in government supporting Israel.
4. James Earl Ray had some racist motivations, even with being a habitual criminal.
5. Arthur Bremer had many racist tracts and such at his apartment and his car.  Plus anti-Republican ones.  The man just had hate as a habit, it appears.
6. El Sayyid Nosair as an operative for terror backed groups looked to spread anti-Semitism.

Well, so much for the 'racial divide' in assassinations: there isn't one.  Racist assassinations do happen, yes, but as an overall factor in all assassinations? No.

 

The last part is the interesting one: being taken out by professional killers or because you ARE a professional killer.  Here the people are a bit more interesting as this is their line of work, more or less.

1. Jack McCall taking out Hickock.
2. Robert Ford taking out Jesse James and getting he and his brother's sentence wiped out by the Governor.
3. Jim Miller finding out that killing can get you lynched.
4. Charles Voyde Harrelson was a hitman.
5. El Sayyid Nosair trained by al Qaeda.
6. FARC a terrorist organization that does a bit of everything criminal from small to Nation State size.

One less than Left violence and equal to conspiracies.  I don't put down the Huey Long one as that doesn't appear too professional and more in the line of: mutual Charlie Foxtrot and the last ones alive win.  Numbers help, but when you shoot one of your own to get to the target, by accident, well... no... especially as the guy you shot was the purported triggerman, but that was probably a fib, too.

 

What this all shows is that assassination is a multi-vector event that depends much on individuals and very little on politics or racism.  Those do have their events, yes, but they are never clear and concise 'this causes that' sort of thing.  In America the #1 cause of high level assassinations is: being nuts, demented, insane, whatever the term of the moment is to describe those not in close touch with any reality.  It is the Trump Card of assassinations: you are more likely to be nuts if you carry out an assassination or try to.

Next up after that is infamy, which is the fame of killing someone famous and not being well loved for it.  Your name might go down in history: as a bad example, of someone to be scorned, not in a good nor positive light.  Together being nuts and trying to be infamous covers a huge swath of assassination events in America.

The residuals are telling.

Criminals taking out criminals or being taken out, in turn.  Fascinating that those sorts of killings of the infamous get you infamous, not famous.

Terrorist organizations, with only a couple of spots on the list, make their depth of hatred towards civilization felt by going down to the individual level and up to the Nation State level.  Truly they are Enemies of All Mankind.

Inter-factional struggles within a party or power structure.  Huey Long, Nation of Islam, and the San Francisco political machine each give us a look at just how nasty politics can get to drive people as groups or individuals against each other.  No one is so hated as those that share 95% of your beliefs: that final 5% becomes more divisive than the joining 95%.  Of course that is why factional fights get so bloody, too... if only you could get that final 5%, and yet, in forcing it you get death.

 

I have many articles on terrorism and why terrorism is a different beast than mere assassination.  Assassinations can be done by terror groups, but not all assassinations, as we have seen, are terrorist acts.  For terrorists the act of assassination is a tactic as part of a strategy.  For individual assassinations, they are purely personal affairs or, at chilling worse, factional within a group.  When that internal hatred and killing gets turned on all others, then you get terrorism.

Our politics have remained remarkably civil.

Let us work to keep it that way and not try to say that violence is engendered in any one part of the political spectrum.  So that we can join together against terrorists who have no love of civility or civilization, and who despise your life and mine.  They are the common enemies of all mankind.

We should be treating them that way.

It is what they ask for.

We are going for a ride on the FFT

Mr. Z at his web site posted a lovely graphic of the Hammer and Sickle being raised at the Capitol and I examined that, just a few short days ago, and came up with the following:

What I love is I can give a Leftist back the exact, same thing they have been wanting for years... so often have I heard it and you have too... and yet when a Leftist criticizes Americans coming out to protest taxation, the phrase is so simple and the cognitive dissonance is so profound:

"The people, united, will never be defeated."

Sucks to be on the pointy end of that, I bet.

I was, of course, referencing Tea Parties which the Left is ever so ready to declare racist, hate speech and any number of other slanders. Of course I see them as an organic outgrowth of the basic culture of the Nation without respect to any race, religion or other external artifact. Remember for all those lovely Leftist protests, they need months to get ready, build costumes and so vent their spleen that it can sit and wait for awhile. Regular Americans like to get to the point and make it, already. And repeatedly. Until they get fed up with demonstrating... the Left always wants that but never seems to get it. Now that it is happening under their noses, they ignore it, speak against it and take the position of the ancien regime. Strange that they forget what happens to the ancien regime, but then the Left is lacking in critical historical analysis that goes beyond Marx, so their cozying up to a power structure they have helped decay is really just desserts and all that.

After that comment I left this one, which is a bit more to the point of things:

"The FFT, remember, doesn't say that information moves with breathtaking speed these days. (Everyone knows that!) The FFT says that people are comfortable processing that information with what seems like breathtaking speed." - Mickey Kaus

As things change faster, people adapt to it faster, thus the cycle time of events compresses. In the old Eastern Bloc it was 9 years for Poland to get out from under the USSR, 9 months for East Germany, 9 weeks for Hungary, 9 days for Czechoslovakia, and Romania pretty near imploded in no time at all...as we grew accustomed to the idea that Eastern Europe could throw off totalitarian communism, it did so faster and faster.

So if we take a look at how our last revolution went... from the Stamp Act of 1765 to the Boston Tea Party 1773: 6 years. Then from Tea Party to Bunker Hill: 2 years. To Revolution from that: 1 year. Then 7 years of fighting, with 5 years of nearly losing it under the Confederation.

So if the first Tea Party of last month is the start, applying the FFT: 6 months to the real turning point, or August. October for conflict. November for Declaration. JUN 2010 victory. NOV 2010 nearly losing it all. Then JAN 2011 a new accord.

I doubt it will happen just like that... but the Feiler Faster Thesis gets us very used to change being compressed and since we are used to that it does get compressed. The American experience dragged on in the old days... we get things done more rapidly now. And then somewhere around 2029-30 we do it all over again, but faster.

Let's just try to keep the body count down this time around... 10% dead and 15% fled from last time and this time that 15% has nowhere to go. Not good.

All spelling errors, error in dates, etc. are in the original and left that way, but highlighting by bolding is mine.

Take the previous US experience and start swapping Years for Months, Months for Weeks and Weeks for Days and you start to get the idea of how the Feiler Faster Thesis (FFT) works. While not explicitly stated, I have a somewhat different working concept of the FFT than does Mr. Kaus or Feiler himself and Mr. Z asked about that and I did respond:

Mr. Z - Feiler Faster Thesis.

It is a derivative of Moore's Law addressing the doubling of circuits per given space of circuit board every 18 months at the same cost, and Metcalf's Law for network size and node contribution making the entire system value for information equal to the square of the number of nodes that contribute. Put increased processing power per given time plus more nodes in the network and individuals now adapt far faster to new information than ever before. Thus time for change evaluation compresses by nearly an order of magnitude.

Not only are things changing faster, but we are adapting faster and events get compressed because of this.

Our feeling of a world rushing by us is the Feiler Faster Thesis at work, but that is, itself, depending on two other movers that are scale based: Moore's Law and Metcalf's Law. The former was a forward derived concept from Gordon Moore, and has been backwards analyzed by Raymond Kurzweil, and the latter laterally derived nearly at the same time as Mr. Metcalf by James Burke. To those unfamiliar with these gentlemen, Kurzweil and Burke are the more deeply informative of how information grows and effects society over time via sheer growth via exponents (Kurzweil) and connectivity for creating new cultural paradigms (Burke).

Now the modern Left is stuck in a rut: it is expounding on 19th century ideas in the 21st century and has expounded on why they are 'right' for so long that it is expected that they would have had an ideological programmatic backing for their beliefs. Once elected those representing the Left have demonstrated that this is not the case, as seen by the grab-bag of programs, payoffs, and corrupt politicians now parading on a daily basis to decry the mess that they have created and attempt to shift blame to anyone but themselves. By creating an atmosphere of 'This is Bush's Fault' the Left has glossed over the Democratic control of Congress during two sessions during Bush's term, thus leaving him with only a political election cycle congress and a lame duck congress under theoretical Republican control. There was no serious de-regulation during that period of time, and yet the Leftist echo chamber incites that there was... while, in fact, the regulations put in during the Clinton era remained in place and as corrosive today as they were when put in. Those, themselves, derive from the idiotic Community Re-investment Act during the end of the Carter Administration. None of those regulations have been repealed and, indeed, it was Democrats who castigated regulators for trying to bring some fiscal sanity to government backed enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those two are *staffed* by political apparatchiks with their own agendas and both have lobbied Congress... which really ought to violate some law for those agencies utilizing the backing of the federal government's funds.

Our funds.

Taken from the US citizenry by taxation.

The Left has only one solution to any problem: spend like hell and deny that debts will ever come due, claim anyone who is trying to perform fiscally sane oversight is 'racist' or 'interfering' and then try to shift blame for the fallout of those insane schemes on others. Well after having control of Congress for four out of eight years, and complaining about the President and saying how it was all done 'wrong', what are the plans of the entire Left now seen?

Spend like drunken sailors and complain that there isn't enough grog to vomit up.

What the Left hasn't gotten used to is the modern world, although they do form lovely 'real world' echo chambers devoid of contrast and dulled to heartburn anger on a constant basis. Critical thinking, programmatics and addressing actual economic problems instead of false ones (health care, global warming, mortgage defaults, etc.), and when the data shows that previous social programs (social security, health care, poorly backed loans by government mandate, etc.) are bankrupting the system and destroying the wealth of the Nation and its citizenry how does the Left respond?

Spend more.

Surely money is the answer, right?

Yet if money were an answer to anything, it would be education. For all that poor Johnny couldn't read in the late 1950's and the hundreds of billions put into education, poor Johnny is reading at the exact, same rate TODAY as he was back in the '50s. This means that education is not a money influenced system beyond the absolute, bare essentials, and anything else layered on it (sexual education, mandatory skills tests, etc.) have not helped the system one little bit. No matter how much you pay teachers, they are just as effective as their forebearers in little red schoolhouses having to teach multiple generations simultaneously. No, scratch that, they are LESS effective as those teachers could multi-task, deal with a diverse class population and still be effective in a wide spectrum of age groups SIMULTANEOUSLY. And yet the answer to poor reading skills is always more money, as we do not want to address the fact that education is not amenable to mere dollars, yet it assuages our feelings that we are 'doing something', even when it is not doing any good at all.

Now raise your hand if the last 8 years have felt more like, say, 20... ok, good enough.

I came down with a serious problem during this time span and when my mind went fuzzy in 2004 and started to re-gel back in 2006 it *still* felt like that to me, and I had spent a couple of years 'out of the loop'. And politics had gone loopy. That feeling of time compression is the FFT at work: you adjust so much faster to so much more that it all feels much, much longer. The reason that feels that way is that you are far more productive and can do so much more in that same space of time that, even living the same life span as your parents (you will live longer, save for a societal collapse) you are packing in far more in the way of living than they did by experience. And when you get an additional 14% of your life devoted in your 'declining years' when you are far more physically fit than any forebearer of yours EVER you gain a different perspective on life. Europeans may have shorter working time spans, but you feel as if your life is far more exciting, interesting and jam packed full of living that you now feel you live a better life even without lots of free time.

In politics this means that 8 years of protests, whining, complaining, finger pointing, name calling, etc. now feels closer to twice that time-span if not three times it. Any political movement that does not devote time to putting down programmatics and, instead, reverts to infantile name calling and finger pointing and saying how bad those in power are will get and are getting a rude awakening when handed the actual reigns of power. They aren't ready for them. By expending all that vitriol to create no better social concept, and just attack what is, when those on the Left get to power they have only one answer to ANYTHING: spend more. Promise the heaven, the earth, good health care, lower taxes, more sunshine, less rain, always a rainbow in every kitchen, but if you don't spend any time building up the necessary mechanisms to CREATE anything, these are all destructive no matter how well intentioned and you get the feeling that most of these are not well intentioned at all.

As unfair as it may seem, the FFT is where the power is holding: in change and perception of it. A man like Barack Obama does not have the deep family ties of a JFK nor the political acumen to do enough wheeling and dealing to even land a cushy Senatorial spot for one of the Kennedy clan in NY. He does not have any political clout, beyond trying to incite his backers to being a mob, and yet THEIR expectation is based on the FFT. Two months in feels like two years ALREADY and the time compression of events is increasing, not decreasing. Even while others have pointed out that this is all a 'scheme' by the Left to break America, it takes nothing more than a man without any idea of what government is or having any skills of internal political diplomacy to get you here. The one with the skeletons in closets that are known? That is the Clintonites: they know how to use those, and those bits of knowledge are not open to Barack Obama. Wouldn't help him as he does not have the backstabbing skill of the Clintonites to actually use 'dirty little secrets'. They know they are looking out for #1 who is not the President, no matter how many Clintonites are around President Obama, they cannot use the firepower of the Clintons as that takes skill, cunning and deceptive capability beyond Obama's reach.

What happens when an absolute political neophyte gets into power during times of trouble?

Ever read any histories of the 30 Years War? Take any young Prince suddenly thrust into power and finding his religious beliefs opposite that of his father's (those damned radicals, always wanting to be 'progressive') and you will get an idea of the bloodshed that comes with it. For all that this is the modern era, President Obama is utilizing a set of ideas for the socialist conception of the international (Communist) and national (Fascist) sort, trending more towards the latter as Nationalism is always easier to sell than internationalism. The impulse to nationalize financial institutions and banks, health care, and enforce public service to the State are all National Socialism, or Fascism. When government controls private financial and social affairs to the benefit of the Nation that is Fascism. Socialism is the liquidation of those artifacts to be controlled by a central controlling authority that presses for some internationalist brotherhood, but always seems quite able to impoverish everyone first to make them all equal and then spend its time killing the dissenters. Communists ruled all the major industrial institutions in the USSR and did a worse job than our Congress is doing with AIG. Hard to imagine, but that is the case.

By championing 'civil rights' for so many years, the expectation of the Left was that it would actually remove the worst artifacts of government, not increase them or add on newer, even worse ones that will bankrupt us all faster. And as the complaints went on for a seeming eternity, when the Left has demonstrated that it not only didn't mean what it said but meant just the opposite, and didn't even bother to figure out what it was they were protesting or wanted, the FFT now makes it seem like they have been in power for the entire time they have been complaining plus two months.

That is almost an experiential lifetime in the modern age.

Yet the prescription by the Left for 19th century idealistic socialism via 20th century conceptual frameworks that are clearly Fascistic and often Communistic, puts them at odds with a world that is changing far faster than Marx had ever imagined possible as HE thought socialism was 'right around the corner'. At least the Right had gotten up to the Dinosaur age, and couldn't figure out that big old rock coming down from the sky. The Left is in the late Permian and absolutely unready for the Permo-Triassic event about to hit them... and yet they had nearly a lifetime, by subjective experience standards, to prepare for this.

A dollar doesn't go as far as it used to and now it will soon go almost nowhere at all.

And then time will really start to compress as those who are capable are put out of work and the FFT starts working for THEM. And as these are the builders and creators, engineers, mid-level managers, project managers, accountants, construction workers, small business owners and their employees, they will not depend on 'being nice' to get things done nor on government to 'take care of them', just seek common ground and cooperation to get the will of society instated in its proper place over government. This storm has taken generations to build.

We can already see it coming, feel how it will devastate us, and the time to do something grows short... weeks and months which will feel like months and years.

I suggest the Left let the 19th century go and adapt to the 21st.

The Left and Right are the late comers to the party, and their garments are moldy and in tatters when they are not gone entirely.

What comes next will be unpleasant for all concerned.

No matter who loses, the FFT wins.

Easing out the Conservative Elite

Looking at Ramesh Ponnuru at The Corner at NRO today got me thinking that most conservatives and Republicans don't know what they hell they are saying as he looks at Ross Douthat's piece on where conservatism should go, and I will put the short piece in full as follows, and bold those parts of interest:

In developing an agenda, Republicans and conservatives need to figure out what the top challenges facing the country are and how to meet them. But it would be pointless to devise an agenda that could not possibly win over a majority of the voters. And of course the same type of politics that might attract one group of voters will repel another. To generalize wildly: Upper-middle-class, college-educated voters tend to find the Republican party's economics attractive and its social positions less so; vice versa for lower-middle-class voters without college degrees. Which group should the builders of a center-right coalition try hardest to get? I largely agree with Ross Douthat's take on this question, but I would make an additional point.

I don't think many people are arguing that if Republicans just emphasized their social conservatism more, they would attract enough additional lower-middle-class voters to win a majority. The argument that Douthat, his co-author Reihan Salam, and I (among others!) are making is that it is possible to craft conservative economic policies that would serve the interests of this group. These policies need not drive away upper-middle-class voters. The Democrats' promises to help downscale voters have been compatible with an increased appeal to upper-middle-class voters, after all.

And if Republicans can appeal to lower-middle-class voters on domestic policy—health care, taxes, etc.—then they will have less need to make the type of cultural appeals to these voters (we disdain arugula, wave the flag a lot, etc.) that seem to drive some upper-middle-class voters batty. Such an economic agenda might thus help the party directly with the lower middle and indirectly with the upper middle. So I think the party's best bet is to keep, while doubtless modifying in some respects, its social conservatism while searching for free-market economic policies that would help lower-middle-class voters. I am doubtless biased by the fact that this approach would also be best for the country.

So the first paragraph is telling us that the Elite Conservatives are pushing a conservative economic agenda and that this isn't appealing to the working class. They are?

From the party that wanted 4 day work weeks in Congress during its time in the majority? And then signed on for a 3 day work week under Democrats? This is an ECONOMIC CONSERVATIVE AGENDA?

Hold your horses right there, what ever happened to a good old 'work ethic' and showing up 5 days a week, 8 hours a day and putting in over-time? What the hell ever happened to THAT? Because that *is* as econmically conservative as you can get and just where is the Republican Party in Congress? On FOUR DAY WEEKENDS!

Now look at the 'conservatives' pushing the 'social conservatism' agenda. See the lovely degrees by their names. They are over-educated and under-worked. Those social conservatives who do have degrees will have to put forward in common, every day terms *why* their ideas on social conservatism are good. And then try to explain a party that doesn't have a work ethic at its highest levels.

Lotsa luck on that, I tell you.

I am sorry that Mr. Ponnuru is missing the point: a good set of ethical values that you actually LIVE THROUGH and demonstrate day-in and day-out is far, far more appealing than just campaigning for this or that cause. He sees where the appeals need to go but then does not correctly formulate that the Party does not hold the basic and underpinning values to sustain them. How do we know that? Take a look at the party leadership, particularly in Congress. Any group as money grabbing and willing to roll over on issues like that group, and then not even bother to have a full work week is not 'Conservative' by any stretch of anyone's imagination: it is Elitist, putting itself above other groups to try and dictate down to others what their agenda should be.

So lets flip this around, a bit, and see what comes from this formulation of the Republican party and see if it better serves to define what is going on: the Conservative Economic and Social Elite is disconnected with everyday Americans and prescribes ideas that are not connected to daily lives, do not reinforce basic ethical concerns, and then uses 'hot button' issues and 'litmus tests' to remove those that disagree with the Elite from the party.

Hey, not too bad, as it pretty much describes how such a group of slackers can utilize a minimal set of agenda topics to slowly cut themselves off from a voting base. The Elite enforces no working class ethics, enforces all sorts of strange social ethics that have little to do with politics and then wants to run on that mess? Why should anyone vote for people who are unwilling to treat public service as a job, who are willing to fill the coffers of their supporters and brown-nosers with federal funds, always pushing at topics that have little chance of succeeding in the way they have been formulated on the social side and then decide to eviscerate their own party when members who have committed no crimes are drummed out because they had problems of fidelity with their home lives? Can't you folks realize that we have that in everyday life, out here in America, and people going through messy divorces don't QUIT THEIR JOBS, by and large, because they can still *work* while having to take care of that mess at home? So a member is found out to be gay and married straight. So what? Can the person do his job? Yeah, if its too much of a distraction in public service, then do leave, but if the member can still demonstrate that he or she holds basic concepts of governance to be their guiding light and that they have failures as an individual, then guess what? They are 'normal'.

I refuse to vote for Angels.

And even *they* had a falling out.

Ok, now I'm going to tackle a 'social conservative' topic that has been a loser as it has been formulated. It doesn't get votes. It hasn't gone anywhere for decades. Those 'leading the charge' are not flexible enough to try something else and the old arguments just aren't doing it. Here's the lovely thing about America - you can try a different approach to reach ultimate ends and still keep conflicts in society down! And as I've written on this before, I will extract from that piece as a demonstration on how to do this, which is not a backing for the idea but a demonstration that a different approach can yield valid outcomes:

In looking at Freedoms, Rights and the People I started looking at the actual framework of the issues involved and then a whole lot more in When do your rights start? Now in this I do *not* try to figure out when someone is or is not a human but *when* there is a passing point *into* Citizenship. Now why did I do that? Because it is imperfect, of course! Far, far less than ideal but... it does head towards the common ideal of Citizenship and upholding all rights and all responsibilities. Citizenship is a damned important thing in this Nation and the Supreme Court has created a two-tier system of 'Due Process' that actually violates the outlook of the Constitution for one form of justice for All of the People. Here is what it boils down to:

1) The SCOTUS has put a 'viability test' on when an abortion may be performed,
2) What does 'viability' measure? It measures the ability to be sustained outside of the mother or host.
3) What happens when an Individual is outside the mother or host and sustainable? They are 'born'.
4) Being born of Citizens of the United States within a State of the United States or within limits set externally by Congress for such things under its Immigration and Naturalization powers makes one a Citizen.

Short, sweet and to the point: viability is a measure of Citizenship.

Yes, very reductio ad absurdum and all of that, but it does point out the thing about working with imperfect law: one can use its imperfection to achieve things that locking horns forevermore will not do. And in this extremely imperfect ruling the SCOTUS has now set up a 'two tier' system upon fetuses based on positional sustainability outside the mother or host. If a fetus is born prematurely, it gets full Citizenship Rights and coverage. At that exact same gestation point for another fetus going through normal gestation that is NOT the case. Say, that just can't be right, can it? Imperfect law, imperfect ruling leading to a non-Due Process procedure for Equal Protection. Pure idiocy, when you come right down to it. If a 'viability' test is put in place then the requirement, since it is viability to become a Citizen is being measured, then ALL such fetuses at that same point in gestation should get Equal Coverage and Due Process under the Law.

Painful, isn't it?

Enacting State-based legislation on that would *then* require *proof* that a fetus was not in the viability stage and appropriate developmental buffer zone to afford protections to unequal development due to circumstances beyond control of mother or fetus. Under this regime one can, indeed, get an abortion, but only with *proof* that the fetus was not in the gestational viability period. What that then requires is *record keeping* of sexual activity! Yes, more Red Tape! Sworn affidavits, medical exam and post-abortion exam to determine status would then be *required* so that anyone that LIES about their history in this regard can be prosecuted for murder. On the other side society, at that point in time, must afford full minor citizenship rights to such children who are gestating normally and ensure that these new Citizens are properly tracked and accounted for until their full 'birth date' or emergence from the mother or host. This infringes upon no existing set of Rights and applies responsibility to sexual activity because of its paramount importance to Citizenship. And various doctors can be appointed by the State to perform dual exams upon an individual that did NOT keep such records, and then they would attest to gestational period and abortion made available for the non-viable fetus.

This provides full rights to the unborn at the point of viability. Anything *else* then gets one looking at 'when does life begin' which really isn't a question society is set up to deal with. What society *is* set up to deal with is when an individual becomes a Citizen, so using that is not only perfectly reasonable, but then sets new standards of conduct and accountability for sexually mature individuals. That knife cuts across *both sides* of the debate as it is neutral to the debate and looks to uphold society and *not* find some sort of perfect solution. Totalitarian governments are very good at perfect solutions and their eponymous 'Final Solution'. Really, if life 'begins at conception' then it is not the abortion clinics that are mass murder facilities but In Vitro Fertilization clinics that have large numbers of fertilized eggs from generally infertile couples that need to destroy such after a period of time as they become non-viable for *anything* after a couple of years in the deep freeze. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of fertilized eggs are destroyed via that route and yet I see very little protesting around those places for doing so. Somehow that 'perfect' viewpoint needs to be adjusted to the actual, real world of a common society held by the overwhelming majority of Citizens.

What can be done, however, is to find better ways to sustain premature infants, identify better ways to identify developmental stages of gestating fetuses, and afford a bit better help to expectant mothers or hosts so as to get children that are better cared for, generally healthy and, perhaps, have some early intervention for treatment of genetic illnesses and deformities. If all the money that had been funneled into this glacially locked 'debate' had been put to something *useful* for the commonly held public society, then we might have fewer premature births, a better understanding of genetic disease and pre-born deformities and actually hold life to be a bit more sacred than we do now as an entire society.

Yes, why don't you actually SUPPORT the SCOTUS on abortion, use its own damned test at the State level to determine Citizenship and then *dare* the Court to throw that out and explain *why* their original argument is invalid in one area and valid in the other? You know? Actually hit the opposition by undercutting it and then putting in the mechanism to finally allow all of those citizens interested in ending abortions a valid way of doing so that is civil and DOESN'T require protests. Like the Left does on so many things? And notice that the outcomes, of actually making ADULTS responsible for their SEXUAL ACTIVITY is a perfectly valid outcome as the State has a vested interest in citizenship. Plus note that there is more than a bit of hypocrisy on the 'pro-life' side of things: someone hasn't thought these positions out to reconcile fertilized eggs as having 'souls' and then doing nothing at IVF clinics. Perhaps we should leave this 'soul' business up to the Creator and figure out how to deal with it as best we can in the imperfect world that is the Creation? You know, civil discussion about what is and is not valid for all of society and taking in the widest possible set of social input so as to draft good laws.

Like we agreed to do in the Constitution, in the Preamble.

Whenever you get a 'litmus' test from social conservatives, it means they want their view of the world absolutely upheld across all of society. That has been losing voters and now elections.

On the economic side there needs to be some fundamental education going *both ways* in the Republican Party. Yeah, 'free trade' and all that. I have some deep problems with the nostrums for 'free trade' and the non-alignment of outcomes with those self-same nostrums. All that wonderful 'free trade' in NAFTA was supposed to *help* Mexico. Instead it uprooted its workforce, killed its agriculture sector, made it dependent upon the US and derivative jobs, saw jobs go away to the Far East and factories close, then food prices skyrocket and then had a major slow down turn its people that had been flowing northwards into criminal concerns. This will now leave President-elect Obama with a budding criminal insurgency in Mexico that is even now spreading over into Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and other States even further inside the US seeing MS-13 in such places as Nebraska. Good job on that 'free trade' stuff! Didn't know it meant expanding the criminal sector inside the US freely. And those self-same free traderites don't want to shut down the border and control it as that would *ruin* economic efficiency... which has lost jobs in the US and increased foreign criminal and terrorist organizations in the US.

Have to love how that plays out, no? I wish the Democratic Party would own up for their part in this idiocy as President CLINTON signed this junk into being via treaty.

Say, just why do those in favor of 'free trade' just support holding Mexico to its TREATY OBLIGATIONS towards the US?

Oh, it might hurt the economy... can't do that! Economy uber alles.

But that is not the Law of Nations: we agree that as a Nation we will have some inefficient areas, economically, so as to protect the whole of the Nation. And, yes, I've read Adam Smith and actually have a disagreement or two with his basic arguments. But even HE recognized the economic necessity of protecting a Nation REQUIRES that some inefficiency develop so as to better insure the survival of the overall Nation. The radical 'free trade' folks don't seem to recognize this, and yet it is a bread-and-butter blue collar worker issue, when important and vital jobs go overseas and the Nation loses internal productive capacity for some vital goods and, even worse, war material production.

Both Economic and Social Conservatism have gone way too far in their interpretation of some things over others, and both refuse to hold to the basic concepts that make our Nation and allow us to interact with other Nations in a manner that will not open our Nation up to being weakened, perhaps critically, during wartime. We have already had some overseas concerns not wanting to continue supplying us with vital war components due to Iraq. Things like the ruggedized equipment interfaces in aircraft... you know the stuff that allows you to actually know and program in what you want to target with 'smart bombs'? That doesn't even begin to address things like bullets and batteries...

Understanding the working class culture means that you have some 'bread and butter' issues, some jobs issues, and a number of other concerns at a social level that grow out of wanting to raise a family and keep food on the table and a roof over your heads. These folks also want to see the country protected, are willing to sacrifice some increased wealth to have security and want the rule of law enforced and *don't* want people from any government telling you *what* to do all the time. These are the people hit by 'regulations' in the way of lost jobs, lost productivity and having to face the ladder they were on pulled out from under them whenever good jobs go overseas. Yes, in 5 years they *might* make more, but they have to get through 5 years of lower income, lower living standards and still keep a family together. And deal with foreign criminal and terrorist organizations starting to bring lawlessness to the heartland.

Suddenly that promise of a better job doesn't carry the promise of a better tomorrow with it.

Whatever happened to the 'law and order' Republican Party?

I would vote and happily on those issues, so long as you keep the laws few and prosecutions high and even across all strata of life.

You know: equal protection under the law?

That is, apparently, too much to expect out of the Economic and Social Elite in the Republican Party.

Maybe it is time for the party to ease those losers and slackers out.

Before the Declaration: Sam Adams and the Rights of the Colonists

As we hear much of the inalienable rights of man, and the Declaration of Independence, it must be regarded that these two phenomena did not show up simultaneously. The Declaration of Independence, itself has roots going back into history and is a culminating document of the rights of individuals, the rights of the state and how the rights of individuals are primary to them, while the rights of the state derive from them. Samuel Adams would have an article published in 1769 and again in 1772 to look at such rights (italics in the original, bold is mine) in an untitled document (Source: Learning American History):

At the revolution, the British constitution was again restor'd to its original principles, declared in the bill of rights; which was afterwards pass'd into a law, and stands as a bulwark to the natural rights of subjects. "To vindicate these rights, says Mr. Blackstone, when actually violated or attack'd, the subjects of England are entitled first to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law—next to the right of petitioning the King and parliament for redress of grievances-and lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence." These he calls "auxiliary subordinate rights, which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights of personal security, personal liberty and private property": And that of having arms for their defence he tells us is "a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression."

The British constitution is not a singular document, but a series of views giving Parliament primary power in law making, and affording rights under the various laws added in as-needed. With the Magna Carta also goes: Habeas Corpus Act 1679, Bill of Rights for England and Wales 1689, Claim of Right for Scotland 1689, Act of Settlement 1701, Act of Union 1707 which creates Great Britain. After the abrogation of rights under the Magna Carta by Charles I, and the resultant Acts passed after Cromwell's republic during the Restoration, the rights of individuals were more defined and put in as a matter of law. Thus rights are gained by law, not presumed to pre-exist and then law being applied to them to regulate them.

The Declaration would change some of the wording on the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and in the US Constitution the stronger views on the inviolability of person and property would be established to be without question save as under due process of law. The right to bear arms is seen not only as a public allowance under the English system, but it goes directly with the natural right of resistance and self preservation, when law is not enough to keep violence of oppression in restraint. Note that these two things are each combined, so that it is not only the violence of oppression from government against society, but also the violence of oppression by other individuals who are insufficiently restrained by law. The individual's right to be armed and counter these things, while having due restrictions, must not be so restrained as to remove them. That is a worry in the English system as Parliament decides on rights via law, so preventing laws that would go against those rights is paramount and the only way to back that up is to be armed.

The Amendment II language on a 'well regulated militia' is in accord with this, and every individual must be able to arm themselves for the defense of self and society under due restrictions by law. Banning weapons is a violation of the right to protect oneself from those actors that will not abide by law or that will use law to oppress individuals or society. Adams then goes on to follow up that view with this (I will use some editing for readability, but leave his text 'as-is' as he now uses both italics and bolding):

-How little do those persons attend to the rights of the constitution, if they know anything about them, who find fault with a late vote of this town, calling upon the inhabitants to provide themselves with arms for their defence at any time; but more especially, when they had reason to fear, there would be a necessity of the means of self preservation against the violence of oppression.

-Every one knows that the exercise of the military power is forever dangerous to civil rights; and we have had recent instances of violences that have been offer'd to private subjects, and the last week, even to a magistrate in the execution of his office!

- Such violences are no more than might have been expected from military troops: A power, which is apt enough at all times to take a wanton lead, even when in the midst of civil society; but more especially so, when they are led to believe that they are become necessary, to awe a spirit of rebellion, and preserve peace and good order. But there are some persons, who would, if possibly they could, perswade the people never to make use of their constitutional rights or terrify them from doing it. No wonder that a resolution of this town to keep arms for its own defence, should be represented as having at bottom a secret intention to oppose the landing of the King's troops: when those very persons, who gave it this colouring, had before represented the people petitioning their Sovereign, as proceeding from a factious and rebellious spirit; and would now insinuate that there is an impropriety in their addressing even a plantation Governor upon public business-Such are the times we are fallen into!

Here is one of those great times in history when an individual now calls attention that the civil right to bear arms is far, far better than military troops. As put forward, military troops are a means of oppression against those having grievances against a sovereign, and yet the natural right of resistance via arms is not only legitimate but necessary for a free people to claim their rights under law. This is oppression at its heart: the ability of the State to cow or overawe or threaten individuals that society, itself, is put under threat from tyrannical rule. Without arms one cannot have civil society nor accountability of the State. To those who would like to give the State the power and capability to ban weapons: you would not have had the American Revolution with that outlook.

Sam Adams would re-iterate these things in his listing of Rights of the Colonists and he would use language drawn not only from Blackstone, but other sources as well (bolding mine, throughout):

Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can-Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature

Life, liberty, property and the ability to defend them in the best manner possible. Another line from the Declaration would show up from Sam Adams:

All Men have a Right to remain in a State of Nature as long as they please: And in case of intollerable Oppression, Civil or Religious, to leave the Society they belong to, and enter into another.

When Men enter into Society, it is by voluntary consent; and they have a right to demand and insist upon the performance of such conditions, And previous limitations as form an equitable original compact.

A primary right of humans is the right to associate with each other and bring about, voluntarily, society. That society is then safeguarded via a compact, design, or other such statement of what that society is and will do. This is not a right bestowed by government or States, but is an inviolable right of individuals to do this thing. So many gloss over this in the reading of the Declaration of Independence, but the concept is primary for all of mankind: you have the right to form society, set its limits and then discriminate based on those limits set by mutual agreement within society. If you do not like that society and cannot convince your fellow man to change it, you can dissolve that voluntarily made association and go elsewhere and associate with others more to your liking.

In case it has been missed in all the grand splendor of those talking about 'classical liberalism' this is the foundation of that: the right to tell folks that they must adjust to society and its laws. A society does not have to accept those that will not accede to that and the laws may be used in those circumstances. That is voluntary consent between individuals and society and is reciprocal.

Then comes an idea that would be the guiding light of the US Constitution and re-stated in two Amendments:

Every natural Right not expressly given up or from the nature of a Social Compact necessarily ceded remains.

This is a key part of the Constitutional outlook restated in Amendments IX and X, so that the People and States retain all rights not given to the National government. For the Constitution to have a reasoning behind it, this is its underpinning: the People give government very few things to do and very few rights and retain all other rights and responsibilities at a lower level.

So far we have: life, liberty, property, arms to support those three, self-preservation, to live in a natural state of being, to form societies, to defend societies, to leave societies, to recognize mutual consent about forming, defending and leaving societies, to have equal enforcement of the social compact, and to retain all of those rights not ceded of necessity by the social compact in the individual.

Now comes one that will be a surprise to those not paying attention to the founders:

As neither reason requires, nor religeon permits the contrary, every Man living in or out of a state of civil society, has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.

You do have the right to peaceably worship God to your own views inside or outside of civil society. That is an individual right supported by society and comes from the views of Westphalia and from the developed views of the English Common Law over time as Henry VIII had made some definite inroads on it, and by the time of Charles I it had become a sticking point. This is given over to the individual, not the State to choose for individuals. A State may have a religious view, may promulgate holidays, may do many things, save force you to worship as the State dictates. Iraq may have a 'Muslim state' but it is also figuring out how to accommodate both major groups within Islam, a host of sects within those major groups, and then many others like the Yezidis, Syriac Christians, Followers of John the Baptist...quite an interesting thing to see a Muslim country make Christmas a National Holiday.

He then goes on in a more lengthy portion to put in God's place in the law, and then how reasonable men should approach religious differences:

"Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty" in matters spiritual and temporal, is a thing that all Men are clearly entitled to, by the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature, as well as by the law of Nations, & all well grounded municipal laws, which must have their foundation in the former.

In regard to Religeon, mutual tolleration in the different professions thereof, is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced; and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind: And it is now generally agreed among christians that this spirit of toleration in the fullest extent consistent with the being of civil society "is the chief characteristical mark of the true church"2 & In so much that Mr. Lock has asserted, and proved beyond the possibility of contradiction on any solid ground, that such toleration ought to be extended to all whose doctrines are not subversive of society. The only Sects which he thinks ought to be, and which by all wise laws are excluded from such toleration, are those who teach Doctrines subversive of the Civil Government under which they live. The Roman Catholicks or Papists are excluded by reason of such Doctrines as these "that Princes excommunicated may be deposed, and those they call Hereticks may be destroyed without mercy; besides their recognizing the Pope in so absolute a manner, in subversion of Government, by introducing as far as possible into the states, under whose protection they enjoy life, liberty and property, that solecism in politicks, Imperium in imperio3 leading directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war and blood shed-4

When I hear someone say they want religion as it was 'just at the founding as the founders saw it' may I politely say: You are nuts. Folks like Jefferson wouldn't even mince the words as nicely as Sam Adams... mind you Jefferson was not even Orthodox, being a Unitarian, and had some bright things to say about many Protestant sects, also. The reason they followed the Westphalian concept of not having the government inculcate religion, was that they were of various sects, beliefs and outlooks, and a very few had *none* and yet wanted a Nation of *reason* to come about. Adams, Jefferson, and the rest were more than prepared to share a Nation with those they disagreed with on religion, so long as religion was kept out of what was pressed upon them all by common government. Apparently Christianity was something that had multiple different viewpoints, with some very harsh feelings between the various branches and sects.

The founders were wise to hold secular government in common and, while giving an overlook across all Christianity with 'In God We Trust' and other forms of recognition, they wanted no part in actually telling people which sect, group, or cult was actually vested in those words. We do, indeed, trust in that higher power, but heaven help you if you try to push your version of it on others. The Peace of Westphalia and the moves by Henry VIII prior to the 30 Years War all set the stage to try and step away from wars that would see a disturbingly large number of believers *dead* because they fought for their branch of Christianity under the Prince of Peace. That had *not* died down by the founding and the last thing anyone wanted to do was to put in-place the very same sorts of laws that had forced the Puritans and others to leave their homes in the Old World because they could not get equality under the law for their religious views. Apparently I remember a different and diverse set of founders that agreed upon common government to be held apart from religion and only give some obeisance to a generalized societal view of it. As society held no singular view of even Christianity in common, the idea to leave what you believed up to the individual was one that was pressed forward, just as it was in Westphalia so that States with that agreement would *not* practice religious persecution. It didn't stop them, of course, but the slow seeping of that wisdom into how we viewed Nations has changed history.

From there one moves to Sam Adams' views on natural liberty:

The natural liberty of Men by entring into society is abridg'd or restrained so far only as is necessary for the Great end of Society the best good of the whole

In the state of nature, every man is under God, Judge and sole Judge, of his own rights and the injuries done him: By entering into society, he agrees to an Arbiter or indifferent Judge between him and his neighbours; but he no more renounces his original right, than by taking a cause out of the ordinary course of law, and leaving the decision to referees or indifferent Arbitrations. In the last case he must pay the Referees for time and trouble; he should be also willing to pay his Just quota for the support of government, the law and constitution; the end of which is to furnish indifferent and impartial Judges in all cases that may happen, whether civil ecclesiastical, marine or military.

Hmmm... 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few'! Lovely how Star Trek tries to address these things. Yes, that firm and fundamental right to associate and create society comes with it a burden to each and every member to then support that society. If one lived solely by their own hands and with no interaction with any others, ever, then living in a state of nature each man is judge of his actions and his rights with no other to intervene. By being in society and having the benefits of society, one incurs the obligation to support society in its means and methods under law. Thus to gain the rights previously mentioned within a society, one needs to support that society as a whole, enter into it voluntarily and understand that the cost of supporting all of it, even if you vehemently disagree with a small subsection of it, must be done. If your conscience moves you from that ability to support due to a small section you disagree with, you are breaking your societal compact and setting your beliefs higher than those of the society around you.

In our modern day we get a segment of society that wishes to push their views upon the whole of society via government, have the ability to complain and protest and give non-support to those areas they dislike which *are* held in common, while claiming that everyone *else* needs to support their views on things they want government to do that are not agreed upon by the whole or even majority of society. Via the Sam Adams view you do have the right to such civil views so long as you support the entirety of the burden placed upon you, even for those things you do not like. To do otherwise is to set oneself up under the law of nature as above society and dictating one's own beliefs to society while refusing to support it. This is why those who want to 'protest' by withholding their taxes have a difficult time getting traction: they have abdicated their responsibility to the entirety of society for the minority of their views. So long as you support the whole, then it is civil discourse to talk about one's problems and differences with what is going on. The moment that greater support stops, or you wish to pick and choose your obligations outside of what your personal religious beliefs tell you for *yourself*, then one acts in an authoritarian manner putting themselves up as judge and arbiter for society for their views. By placing yourself in that 'morally higher position' you have simultaneously isolated yourself from society to dictate to it your wishes. That normally gets shunning, not an audience.

The kicker is: you may even be *right*.

You chose the exact, wrong means to state your disagreements.

Of final note on this passage is that Sam Adams understands the different provinces of the law: civil, ecclesiastical, marine, military. This is fascinating, not for the ecclesiastical mention which is an individual's choice to subject themselves to such law, but for the marine choice. This is the commonly held Admiralty laws, that go along with the high and near seas, and the commerce it engenders. At this point the English law is already a few centuries from The Black Book of the Admiralty, and marine or maritime law has gone through a few iterations on an international scale in France, Spain, Netherlands, Britain, and elsewhere. While we, today, think of this as a minor jurisdiction for contract law, it is still a view that governs trade, commerce, and the sovereignty of a ship at sea to be a part of its Nation until out of the reaches of the sea (which is a direct access affair for the US, requiring the passing of headlands for local law to take hold outside of traffic restrictions and such for common navigation). It is difficult to determine if the listing of these laws are precedential (that is with the earliest being most important) or equality in different provinces, which I think is what he is getting across, which gives each of these its own separate views that can overlap, but only do so when the type of law is crossed. Something like Piracy, depending upon maritime law, also has civil and military views to it and those differences remain with us to this day, based on activity and what is being done (ex. an attack by a Pirate is a military attack, a capture of a Pirate by civil authorities is a civil action, and the predation of commerce is a maritime action which relates to both the civil and military laws).

After that there is a section that will definitely make a few people pause:

"The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man; but only to have the law of nature for his rule."

In the state of nature men may as the Patriarchs did, employ hired servants for the defence of their lives, liberty and property: and they should them reasonable wages. Government was instituted for the purposed of common defence; and those who hold the reins of government have an equitable natural right to an honourable support from the same principle "that the labourer is worth of his hire: but then the same community which they serve, ought to be assessors of their pay: Governors have no right to seek what they please; by this, instead of being content with the station assigned them, that of honourable servants of the society, they would soon become Absolute masters, Despots, and Tyrants. Hence as a private man has a right to say, what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their Substance, for the Administration of publick affairs. and in both cases more are ready generally to offer their Service at the proposed and stipulated price, than are able and willing to perform their duty.

In short it is the greatest absurdity to supposed it in the power of one or any number of men at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the mans of preserving those rights when the great end of civil government from the very nature of its institution is for the support, protection and defence of those very rights: the principal of which as is before observed, are life liberty and property. If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave-

Yes, do indeed be wary of those wanting government to do things for you: they are not seeking good ends, but the concentration of power to government and the governors. That is especially true when cloaked in the words of giving succor to the poor - society does have an obligation to the poor and charity is best done by those interested in giving it, not those forced to work at it. When one starts to see the government as the source of that which is good and the source of rights, then one begins to alienate themselves from that gift of freedom. The gift itself, as the Declaration would put it, is self-evident and inalienable.

But only so long as you remember that it is you that are the source of good in society and abide by those things society asks to support it.

Beware those that tell you all the good things government can do for you.

They seek your poverty.

And your submission to them and to government.

That soon gets you back to that right to self-defense against oppression as government can at best only be impartial judge, and never the source of your rights. Forget these things and one is well on the path to putting fetters on themselves and their fellow man by empowering government and forgetting their duty to society as a whole. To utilize one rights incurs an obligation in society to one's conscience and beliefs... and government is very, very poor at handling either.