When did the 19th century end?

A world map, pre-1910:

Map Courtesy of: LEARN NC

And this one circa 2012:

Map courtesy of: Freeworldmaps.net

Beyond the fact that one was done on high resolution paper and the other rendered graphic to a gif file just taking the countries into mind like a 19th century diplomat or foreign minister would, what jumps out at you?

To me there are a few major things that hit immediately:

1) The imperial colonial experiment in Africa failed.  There are some colonies that still have their shape, but the vast majority of Nations didn't exist in Africa in the late 19th century.  Imperialism, as a way of doing business, didn't work which would have huge implications to a foreign minister transported from the late 19th century to 2012.  Worse is that Africa splintered after the Empires receded, meaning that nothing coherent had been left in the wake of them.  The grand European experiment of civilizing the world via colonies hadn't worked out in Africa and may actually have left a worse result behind them.

2) The three 'sick men' of the late 19th century had two dying and one surviving.  The two that had died were the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The former had left a mess in the Orient and the latter had left a mess in Eastern Europe.  There was little that the 19th century Europeans had seen as being able to save the Ottoman Empire and it had been breaking down for at least two centuries.  The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had episodes of ethnic strife prior to WWI, had been unable to reform itself and create a stable, multi-ethnic State.  It was gone.   The third sick Nation was China and it seems to have reconsolidated and even expanded even after the anti-Western rebellions.

3) The Western impositions in China were transitory and the history of unitary rule in China obviously (from a 19th century diplomat's eyes) overwhelmed Western troops no matter how well armed they were.

4) Russia has, apparently, remained intact even with many divergent sub-parts of it and has proven durable over time, like China.  Neither are Empires, as such, but have vast amounts of land under them which used to be Empires, albeit poor ones.

5) The Sun Set on the British Empire.  And the French Empire.  And the German Empire (such as it was).

6) The Balkans and ethnic sub-parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire obviously means that such a State cannot last long if it does not have common underpinnings deeper than the larger government at the old Imperial level.

7) The American Experiment has been strangely successful, by and large, unlike the European experiments with Empires and other top-down government systems.

What a 19th or early 20th century (pre-WWI) diplomat, foreign minster or secretary of State can't get from the map without any further discussion is vast.

1) After 2 World Wars, the Cold War, the rise and crumbling of Maoism, there isn't much really left of all of that by 2012, just looking at the map in small scale like this.

2) That same observer could not imagine the British Empire going down peacefully, and even the French putting up some resistance to letting go of their holdings, so there would be imagined strife of a different sort from the World Wars.

3) There has been some vast economic expansion in the world to get to the modern maps, and that indicates that no matter the social failures of the West, its technological triumphs have done vast good for mankind.  Surely, mankind, as a whole, must recognize this and rejoice in it?

So much to miss at the highest level, isn't there?

If you put in a GDP map of the world:

Map Courtesy: World Mapper

You then get a wholly different view of what must have happened in the intervening century.  The fact that Europe, by and large, has dropped so low is, of course, due to the lack of Imperial holdings and expansive use of those resources.  That China is the #2 economy is of little surprise as it was the #2 economy leaving the 19th century due to population and size combined.  The disheartening part would be the pure lack of capability in the rest of the world outside of the Western Nations or those having just large landmass, to economically develop.

In that realm, the lack of 'The White Man's Burden' success is palpable, for no matter how paternalistic, no matter that it was often put in by force, the idea was to get something on the ground better than what was there to help the Native populations to civilize and become productive and modern societies.  That it can be done is witnessed in places like Australia and the old co-dominion in S. America.

Now a look at GDP per capita in a cartogram:

Map Courtesy: Princeton QED

What would be a surprise is that country just next to China before you get to Japan. which would stand out to a late-19th century or early 20th century diplomat or minister since it was not much of anything there to start with.  The peninsular State of Korea was notable in being a place where the eastern empires roamed be they Russian, Chinese or Japanese.  Like Poland it was notable as a place constantly over-run by its more powerful neighbors.

The major question is: how did this come about?

And since Korea wasn't noted for it's infrastructure, industry or much else back then, there is a follow-up: how come this cannot be replicated across the world?

Even more astonishing would be to see that this isn't even all of Korea but just South Korea, which means that something happened to divide and impoverish North Korea and that something far different happened in the South to make it far more prosperous.  The time travelling diplomat or minister could not even begin to guess just what it was that could do that beyond some sort of civil war in which both sides came to a stalemate and the two different viewpoints then went their separate ways.  Seeing such a stark difference that time traveller would have seek further answers into why the rest of the world does not look at South Korea as a solution for global poverty via prosperity.

Perhaps we should do the same.

Conservative New Media

A pair of articles at Breitbart News looks at the Buzzfeed criticism of 'conservative media' losing the election of 2012: one by Joel B. Pollack and the other by Alexander Marlow.

This is fascinating because the purpose of the Conservative New Media outlets isn't about elections or parties, as such, but about a conservative viewpoint and analysis of events (news and non-news events).  As such these New Media outlets must look to offer viewpoints based upon a conservative understanding of society, culture, economics, freedom and liberty: these are not things amenable to a 'party line' in conservative parlance because they are based on the activities of individuals and what the freedom of the individual actually is.  Parties, elections and the rest of the apparatus of the State is an understood as an organ of society and it is not the brain, eyes, ears nor any of these higher senses or reasoning facilities but the process part of the body meant to contain harm from the body and ensure the body has regularity in its processes.  Instead of the head end of the body, government is at the other end and serves a valuable function but does not deal in a societal 'good' (that is guiding society) but does good only when it acts in accordance with the body, itself.

What conservative media does is to examine how all the rest of the body operates and see what the function and use of government is with respect to that society.  As peoples are different they have different Nations, different sensibilities and different cultures and, therefore, different governments.  Likewise in a federal system of governments within a Nation, conservatism addresses all the levels of government beyond that of the Nation's State or National government.  To that end conservative media isn't about personalities, hair color or a winning smile as those are things that can be done by individuals and are not reflective of their ideas and viewpoints; they are ephemeral parts of being a politician, not a part of policy making nor how policy is crafted into governing legislation or execution of same.  It is very hard to catch a photographer, say, trying to put a halo around the head of a politician: a politician is a human being, not some anointed instrument of the Divine.

From this circumstance the Conservative New Media approaches news (as such) from the vector of 'what are the facts?' and then 'what do they mean?', with an examination of spin to see how far the spin is from the facts and the direct implication of same as seen by those doing the presentation of the facts.  This is in contrast to the Old Media that attempts to present a story, first, which has facts attached to it, and then uses the story to generate a narrative and postulate what will happen next based on a given storyline.  Thus the criticism of sites like Buzzfeed, Politico and Huffington Post is that they are light on facts and high on story and storylines, even when there is little evidence that the facts fit on a storyline that is given.  Conservatives accept more facts as they come in and can re-analyze them in light of prior facts and then draw conclusions from the array of facts, even ones that may be contradictory with each other: facts are facts and must hit into a coherent framework.  Older Media and those sites stuck in narrative making lurch from storyline to storyline trying to find a storyline to fit a given viewpoint, and may not report on, dismiss, discount or wholly forget to look at new factual information that contradicts the storyline.

An example of the latter is the entire 'The Iraq War was about WMDs!' save that the Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force had a number of distinct reasons for restarting the conflict, of which only a few dealt with Saddam Hussein's lack of compliance with the cease-fire agreements after Desert Storm.  By trying to create a storyline or narrative, facts are discounted, dismissed or even laughed at, yet the facts of the Authorization are the facts, and no matter how much any individual tries to say the war was 'sold' on WMDs, Congress obviously was sold on a much broader array of materials.  Even with that, when the next piece is 'And we didn't find ANY WMDs!' and then pointing out that the Poles did, indeed, find WMDs and that storehouses of precursor chemicals and facilities to process them, both violations of the cease fire agreement, those are also discounted, ignored, downplayed or laughed at.  They may have set the bar unreasonably high at tens of thousands of shells with active factories, yet the cease fire demanded NO facilities for processing and, indeed, no PLANS to process them, which was an entire dismantling and reduction of ALL WMD capacity.  Yet the Old Media and its apparatchiks push a storyline, even when there are facts to show it to be wholly and completely false in detail and whole cloth.

By trying to attach itself to a particular viewpoint that serves a political end, the Old Media and those following its narrative style online, practice a form of corrupt journalism that serves ends they do not openly state.  When supporting storylines of a candidate looking to 'heal racial divisions' when that candidate openly courts racial groups to try and put animosity between groups based on race, that is deceitful not just to the reader but to the individual writing the material.  It demonstrates a lack of honesty, a lack of capacity to actually read material, and a lack of morals and ethics to do such reporting which states one thing while reporting another.  Yet when in the case of the Breitbart reporters looking to properly put information about a candidate before voters, information that is factual and not based on race or class, but just what a candidate has said and done, this is said to be racist or a 'smear'.  One cannot 'smear' anyone with their own words in proper context of where they were and who they were talking to: that is factual reporting of information that allows analysis of it.  The facts, themselves, should be neutral.  The analysis of them is done knowing the bias imparted by the author in an open and honest manner, not by trying to gloss over words by trying to portray a narrative or storyline.

It is the unwillingness of Old Media reporters and their storyline adhering counterparts online to actually present the facts without preface save for setting who, what, where, when and how that is disturbing.  How can the public properly assess a candidate without a good and thorough grounding in the background of the individual involved?  What they have done or not done, what they have backed or not backed, and the candidate's viewpoints in their own words to different audiences allows for an overview of the individual and their character to be done.  By pushing a predetermined narrative or storyline about a candidate, the Old Media and their online doppelgangers do a grave disservice to their media consumers and leave citizens unequipped with the necessary background to make decisions on how the process function of the body to protect it from harm can be best served.

One other thing about the Conservative New Media is that it is not monolithic nor trying to create a monolithic party nor State.  Our charge that we agree to as citizens is to form a more perfect Union, which means allowing for our differences and ensuring that they do not become a cause for friction or social disturbance.  There is no attempt to try and push a large scale agenda down on conservatives as a whole, but to respect differences and work where there is general agreement and to not interfere save by participation in an honest way when there is disagreement.  This is not done to drive legislation or to force activities upon people: it is done to see if there is any reason to have any legislation AT ALL in certain areas as the principles require respect for each other in our differences, not a forced similarity upon all people.  From that there are social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, military conservatives, cultural conservatives, religious conservatives, and human rights conservatives which includes the positive human right to keep and bear arms to protect our property. 

As all of these venues are in play for any given event or happening, this requires that reporting be with an understood set of references and that there be respect in disagreement of analysis, not a cause to vilify or castigate, but to discuss and understand amongst people.  In this the Conservative New Media is at a stark contrast to the Old Media and their cohort members online: one seeks to unify by common agreement upon what needs to be done, the other seeks to enforce a monolithic agreement upon individuals and mold society to its own ends.  Frank and open discussion amongst conservatives is one that does not boil down to name calling, but often finds citation of first principles so that one must become familiar with Kirk, Smith, de Vattel, Grotius, Pufendorf, Seneca, Plato and a host of others just to be able to understand what the basis for a difference in viewpoint is.  To find commonality amongst such original arguments on man and society is seen as a duty of each individual.  The Old Media wants individuals to just be a collection of items, a checklist of race, color, religion, etc. so that group can be set upon group, class upon class, in an attempt to create a uniform society and control it via media output used to purely political ends.

Conservative New Media puts the process and an understanding of it as a priority as a good process will generally yield good ends.

Old Media and their counter-parts online put the ends as a priority and then use any means to get to it.

And that is why Buzzfeed, Politico, et. al. do not comprehend the Conservative New Media: the means are an end in and of themselves and that fits to no storyline and does not fit into pushing an agenda forward, thus they cannot understand how anyone can think like this.  For all the alleged intelligence of those with such an ends-oriented system, they truly aren't all that smart or capable of accepting true differences in the way people are in this life... diversity only in external things, never in the soul and the mind.

Do you remember when Progressives used to believe...

Actually you would have to understand past positions by candidates who were Progressives way back when the Progressive movement started.  So lets do a bit of a refresher course to take a look at where Progressives were on policy and where they are today.  This should be fun, no?  All that intellectual integrity and stuff, you know?

Do you remember when Progressives used to believe...

1) That large companies were the 'problem'?  You know back in the Good Old Days when there were guys like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and JP Morgan the Progressives got all in a twist about corporate trusts, 'fat cat capitalists' and companies that used to put worker's life and safety at risk for increased private profit?  The guys that were the posterboys for anti-trust legislation, many of them had a major problem with control and money.  Yet in their waning years they also started to give the boatloads of cash away to fund libraries, universities, private foundations and even charities.  Most industrialists of the sole-owner variety do that because they had a long-term conscience even if their short-term ethics sucked.  The Sherman Anti-Trust act was put together to end such monopolies and legislation thereafter went after oligopolies and unfair collusion to rig the marketplace in their favor.

Today we have 'too big to fail' to describe such companies and through their lobbying of Congress corporate giants like GM and Chrysler got government cash and had their bond holders screwed over in favor of the Unions.  Government is not only propping up failing industries, it is propping up failing Labor Unions, as well.  And yet this flies in the face of the necessary reduction in sizes that companies must go through when fiscal priorities finally put them in bankruptcy court for re-structuring.  The necessary income and outgo all get renegotiated from the ground-up, so that failing parts of a company can be removed and the company restructured.  This means Big Labor takes a haircut, various smaller sub-organizations are determined on their fiscal viability and many get cut off, and creditors and bond holders come to legal terms with reduced expectations but still having a vital stake in the companies that go through such restructuring.  The government decided all that, and not well, so that companies had to undergo restructuring not based on fiscal reality but political crony gain.  Yet that is as unfair to the creditors and investors as crunching workers for added profit and the US taxpayer ends up footing the bill for such practices.  These are companies that would have done much better being restructured, selling off parts and trimming others to become lean and profitable against more competition.

And, BTW, that earliest era of Anti-Trust was specifically made to increase competition.  That was seen as forcing the marketplace to have to adopt more than pricing and income to become competitive and would continue the private movement by smaller industries to pay workers more under safer working conditions so that they could own their own homes that had amenities that you couldn't get by working with the Titans of Industry and Banking.  More on that in a bit.

Just so you can see the differences: original Progressivism has Big Business as bad, but their modern counterparts have such things as good and must be supported by the taxpayer!  Isn't that swell?  Sounds like collusion to me to shaft other industries in favor of cronies, which is an anti-competitive process.  They should be prosecuted, Big Business, Big Labor and Big Government.  Too bad Big Government writes the laws, huh?

 

2)  Remember when the banks were seen as the problem?  You know the Big Banks, those by JP Morgan that could lend money to the US government to cover its entire debt for a year?  That apparently wasn't going to last because it wasn't actually forcing the US federal government to offer its debt on the open market.  Yet the evil, fat cat bankers were making money off the debt of the American government and the American taxpayer was footing the bill!  Luckily those Big Banks colluded to create a new entity and proposed legislation that went to Congress with the election of Woodrow Wilson and the Federal Reserve was born!  An institution that is opaque as to who runs it, opaque on its transactions, has a license to print money, makes money off of selling the US debt and would never, ever be passed as legislation today to favor the largest banks with goodies and guarantees and shaft the smaller banks by excluding them from the federal debt market.

Oh, wait, that did happen again, and was called the Toxic Asset Relief Program, or TARP!  It was TARP that brought in the 'too big to fail' meme and what it was supposed to do was buy out real estate assets from banks so as to shore up the market.  Instead what it did was force money at banks both solvent and insolvent types to hide the one or two huge banks that were facing critical solvency issues.  Banks like BB&T were told that they would be audited with a fine-tooth comb and raked over the coals for any minor paperwork problems if they didn't take the cash.    From that we learn that the Federal Reserve and US Treasury put such pressure on small and mid-sized banks to make it look like the entire sector was failing.  It wasn't.  BB&T paid everything back early so they could get out of the hold the federal government had on them and told what little they knew about the larger banks that were being covered by this wasteful fraud.  What 'too big to fail' did was to create a class of 5 banks that could do anything, take any risk, hazard the funds held in them with any venture they wanted and the US federal government would guarantee their continued existence.  In other words they became banking cronies of Big Government and backed by you, the US taxpayer.

No matter what you say about President Jackson, he knew a corrupt, crony banking situation when he saw it and got rid of the 2nd National Bank and forced the system to scale down so that localized banking at the State level could rise to take its place.  During the recession that started overseas in Great Britain and a few of the Continental Nations, that spread to the US and gave cover to later generations to conflate an overseas problem that was going to hit the US (via foreign held investors) and the demise of the National Bank.  The head of the National Bank also threatened to break the Nation if the thing was dissolved.  Today they don't need threats, just the convenient presence of lobbyists and pointing out that the Federal Reserve now prints money to cover the National Debt, and now HOLDS 60% of it.  They, apparently, wish to own the US federal government and its assets.  Luckily the federal government has all that lovely land it controls in Western States, no?  A match colluded to in the halls of Congress.  But then Progressives never actually treated the Big Banks like they did Big Business, back in the day, and break up such entities. No if you had to have a Big Government you had to have a Big Bank sector to finance it at taxpayer expense. Too bad Big Government writes the laws that protects and creates such entities and programs under the guise of 'breaking the system in order to save it' because they are 'too big to fail'!

 

3)  The rise of Big Labor was something that Progressives wanted, and pushed for as a counter to Big Business.  You needed to have Big entities to go after each other led by a Big Government mentality that makes it possible, after all.  Apparently all the US federal government under the power of Progressives in both parties knew how to do was to establish punishing bureaucracies with regulations so that Big Labor could get a Big Government backing to rise up against Big Business.  Those were the Good Old Days of brass knuckles, armed confrontation and organized crime getting into the racket because it was, after all is said and done, a racket.  That other path of lauding corporations that actually did well by workers, like George Westinghouse and Henry Ford (at least in his early years) showed that if you had safe working conditions, good pay, allowed workers to buy their own housing, put medical facilities into the manufacturing footprint and then subsidized social groups to build a strong surrounding community with good housing, sanitation and roads, that this would be a better thing than extracting every cent from overworked workers in bad working conditions.  Westinghouse had to face down the Big Business and Big Banks of his day and found their manipulative ways were intent on breaking his business because it was actually successful, expanding, increased PUBLIC SAFETY, increased productivity and gave a half-day off on Saturday which was unheard-of amongst the Vanderbilt, Rockefeller and Carnegie types.  He beat Edison at his own game, took 'inside' risk with interior profit to expand business and the few time he had to take on external capital he got punished for it.  A decade after his death his workers erected a monument to him in Pittsburgh, PA.  George Meany, the man responsible for the American Federation of Labor, said that if more capitalists had followed Westinghouse, there would be no organized labor movement in America.

No such men are never championed by Progressives because they freely offer such benefits to compete, make a profit and be responsible to their workers and communities.  You could find George Westinghouse at a lathe helping a lathe operator years after his companies became successful, which was not stereotypical behavior.  So instead of backing these men by offering tax discounts or some such (and that is a subsidy, don't get me wrong on that) to encourage good behavior and drive out bad, the Progressives wanted to 'reform' Big Business and not have it actually have to compete against those offering better labor standards by facing a profitability problem of subsidized good standards.  The power of government was used to force 'regulations' on industries to prevent child labor, unsafe working conditions and the such like, which are all laudable goals, just that the means are those of power, not persuasion.  Really, how many years were children going to be working in coal mines once heavy equipment could do their work at a fraction of the cost?  Vanderbilt's New York Central Railroad refused to put in Westinghouse's air brakes because the life of brakemen (who had to sit at the top of cars and manually turn brake wheels to slow each car, jumping from car to car) was cheap.  Publicity from the next major accident because of this, however, caused ridership to crash and the NY Central Railroad soon sported Westinghouse air brakes.  They are actually cheaper to run when lawsuits and liability are taken into consideration, and the Vanderbilt family proved that point by having to install safety features due to public outcry.  Similarly the large excavator was going to usher in a new era of mining that actually required brawnier men to move equipment around and children going through cramped shafts was going to be relegated to a bygone age.  You can still, to this day, however, find garment sweatshops with working conditions barely better than what was seen in the 1870's through 1910's as they are far easier to conceal than twisted and broken bodies of children from coal mines, and yet are also a heavily regulated industry.  And yet the Labor Movement got US federal backing and it is simply a means for workers to organize themselves... and then kick-back money into campaign coffers of their political backers.

Progressives are all against graft... when they aren't getting it, you see.  When they are getting it, they will dress up such graft with high sounding ideals and good intentions, but take the graft just the same.  Progressives are not about clean government, but dirty government that encourages cronies, kick-backs, hands out goodies to cover those two things, and ensures that by taking graft it gets a political constituency that will always back it, no matter how awful its candidates are.  Because, you see, those candidates are part of the 'enlightened party' of elites that is on both sides of the aisle in the halls of power.  While a man like Teddy Roosevelt wasn't all that easy to convince with money, a man like Woodrow Wilson, was, and he loved that elite establishment as one necessary to mold the US population into being much more amenable to being led, instead of just represented.

 

Today this means that there is an elite establishment that sees much good in 'spreading the wealth around' mostly to cronies so as to corrupt them further and make them compliant to the whims of political struggle.  This elite segment of the body politic uses hard earned taxpayer money to pay off an ever larger voting constituency by hooking them on such dollars, and by hooking banks, industry and labor into such lifelines of corruption, they seek to make the least competent actor in all of this (the US federal government) as the controlling factor of all life in America.

Give the Big Banks control of US federal debt so that they can use such debt to then call on the federal government to make good on it, and if it can't then to seize US federally backed assets.  There are large swaths of land out there to be taken and a whole bunch of residential land with Fannie and Freddie backed and held loans that can also be grabbed.  Hope yours isn't one of them.

Give Big Labor authoritarian stakes in Big Business companies by breaking contracts to do so, the most vital of which are the best understood: those of holding debt obligations from private actors.  By exchanging the 'bail out' money with GMAC TARP funds, GM is just as beholden to the federal government as when it had both such forms of cash, they just shuffled debt from one column to another.  The bondholders got screwed, franchise operators got screwed because government determined that cronies should retain dealerships even when they weren't making any money, and money making dealerships were cut even when those would help the company make sales.  Chrysler had its stake sold to the Italian automaker Fiat.  Has anyone taken a look at the state of affairs in Italy recently?  Would any sane person or company even venture such a deal?  And then take a haircut on it to boot?  Plus still have federal backing for the deal?

The Big Banks, those ones that convinced the Labor Dept. to sell the idea to Nixon of creating Ginnie Mae to give corporate banks an entry into the residential home market, does anyone doubt that the system started by them (that of federally backed security on loan packages) is one that is utilized by political whims?  It was aimed, directly, at killing the vital if conservative S&L system, and that then opened the excuse to political actors for a 'Community Reinvestment Act' to stop the 'redlining' of communities... that were not good investments and that went far beyond race.  By no longer having a locally savvy S&L system the Big Banks opened themselves up to creating an ill-run fraudulently created system that then put the smaller operators at extreme risk due to the cost of increasing regulations and the threat of federal audits.  Only the Big survive in that world of finance and that is one backed by the US federal government via legislation and US taxpayer funds.  What you wind up with is a brittle system of a few Big Banks that are 'too big to fail' and an economy resting on them so that when they do face problems the Nation crumbles under a debt load held by those very same banks which can seize assets in the form of land and companies that the federal government has bailed out.  Plus smaller competitors.  Isn't that sweet?

Always and ever the Progressives harp on Big Business, and yet it is also their benefactor and now has so many lobbyists and revolving door personnel writing regulations to protect them and shaft small business that it isn't funny.  Van Jones' Apollo Alliance writes vast swaths of a 'stimulus' bill that benefits: failing companies, puts money into the pockets of political activists and corporate political backers and then dares to say that these are 'investments' in the future.  But that is how Progressives work when they call themselves Communists: they just change the name and verbiage to make it sound palatable, but the muck they serve is still muck.

Do you remember when Progressives and their Leftist cohorts actually felt they meant what they said about 'protecting workers' and 'holding business and banks accountable'?

I do.

I didn't believe them as I grew up hearing that blather because what they did was opposite of what they were saying.  What they wanted was pure and unmitigated power over everything, which includes you and me.

You were born free.

And then government stepped in.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this long trail of abuses done for so long should lead to some change because governments, after all, are instituted amongst men... men are not created by government for its convenience, after all.  Although they will try to sell you that line now that they have IPABs.  Just wait until enforced number of births are required for 'the good and well being of society'.  If you think they are nasty with the power over death, just wait until you find out what happens when you give them the power over life.  And they will call such enslavement liberty and say that it is good.

If you don't remember when they used to say differently now, then your children will never have it taught to them because YOU didn't teach it to them now.  They can't restore America if we allow them to be corrupted by our government.  We are the ones given the honor, duty and hard work of making government accountable to us, as individuals and society, not as a collective.  Yeah, you will probably lose the goodies promised you.  You are going to lose them anyway, at this rate.  Once you are used to that idea, then one of less government is no longer frightening and even quite inviting.

If you only dare to remember what they said and how they have lied to you then, and now.

Anomie and you

anomie

n 1: personal state of isolation and anxiety resulting from a lack of social control and regulation
2: lack of moral standards in a society

Source: WordNet (r) 1.7

Or

anomie

an·o·mie
[an-uh-mee]

noun Sociology.

a state or condition of individuals or society characterized by a breakdown or absence of social norms and values, as in the case of uprooted people.

Source: Dictionary.com

This concept of anomie is one that is targeted at individuals who are the basis for society. Social isolation, societal removal of norms, and the result of them create a more isolated set of individuals that no longer work as a cohesive society. This trend pre-dates the internet and was worrying sociologists for decades long before you ever get to Facebook, Myspace or 'social media'. One of the causes for concern in those days was the concept of 'media' being an isolation system that left the individual with few tools to reach out on the problems of society. The telephone is person-to-person, the television, radio and film are one-to-many and neither of these offered the capacity to actually get mass interaction amongst individuals. What these shared were an isolating interposition of technology turning individuals into passive viewers of information or at least being able to deal with a single other person from the comfort of your kitchen or bedroom while talking.

Movies, while seen together in a theater, were only a 'social' event if you actually were able to socialize with others afterwards, and that was limited to art house venues or similar small venues that gathered like-minded viewers together and then had a post-viewing experience to actually share the experience and find out what others thought about that shared experience. Big Box Multiplexes, the multi-screen venue, and even the large and ostentatious theaters of the 1920's and 1930's, while having lovely settings, did not offer the ability to interact and even discouraged it by having the ushering of audiences out so the next one could then see the film.

Media, be it newspaper, radio, television, film, or any other process of presentation of information to a mass audience lacked the ability to bring individuals together to actually discuss topics: media is anomic to the individual by definition as it only presents information in a relatively static way and even the interaction with a known other on a telephone is not the same as being together physically.

Being INTP

INTP is a personality type derived from using the descriptive Myers-Briggs test(s) and is one of the earliest attempts to do this to help individuals understand just why they act, think and feel in the way that they do, and there is The Myers & Briggs Foundation dedicated to this task and resources to help you find out about what your personality type actually is. Actually there are lots and lots of MBPT tests out there, from quick and easy to the multi-session ones that take a few days. What you get are Type Indicators (MBTI) for your personality, which are rough outlines of what the basis for your personality actually is. This does not mean you adhere to it in all instances, in fact no one does because personality has many different modes of expression because of individuation, so that you have a unique personality type that is individual to you. While identical twins will often have many of the same personality characteristics, because they are individuated they will have slightly different responses via their personality that are distinct to them, even when having a high degree of similarity.

The rough basis of the MBTI is based upon dichotomies of personality preferences as expressed by individuals (that is not only expressed as in 'taking the test' but as how traits drive certain responses) that serve as the basic four letter encapsulation of one's personality. There are refinements to the test, yes, but they are refinements to the rough outline of one's MBTI. They are as follows:

Extraversion/Introversion (E/I) – Extraversion is outward turning, while Introversion are inward turning personality types. This set is first and primary and helps to determine the main social outlook of individuals via the MBTI.

Sensing/Intuition (S/N) – How do you perceive the world and gather information about it? The Sensing (S) person takes in what is around them via their senses and trusts that as this data has meaning in a concrete way. The Intuition (N) person takes in data and then abstract it and associate it with other information to find out how current information fits into a larger scale of information.

Thinking/Feeling (T/F) – These are judgmental functions of personality. Thinking for judgment allows for decisions to be made based on the rational factors presented by such data utilizing an understanding of interactions between events by rules such as causation and consistency within a given framework of known information. Feeling for judgment utilize empathy and internal weighting to attempt to get a harmonization of what has happened and consider such things within the framework of how it affects other people.

Judging/Perception (J/P) – These two are lifestyle determinates and they serve in reference to the other functions. Judging personality determinates have a preference to settle matters and for Extraverts can be the dominant mode of personality, while for Introverts it is an auxiliary to their personality to seek conclusion only after introspection. Perceptive types utilize the framework of keeping options open and that what is set today may not be the best way to do things. Again the driver for Extraverts with Perceptive is that openness to keep understanding open as a dominant function, while for Introverts it is an auxiliary function. For Introverts either of these can become a driver, but only when the internally understood worldview is unsettled by them.

As an INTP, then, these modes put the Introversion thinking as dominant to the Extraverted type, utilized a dominant Intuition perception over the inferior Sensing type, have a Thinking dominant and Feeling auxiliary judgmental type, and utilize Perception over Judging as an auxiliary to my Introversion personality type. I have a flexible world view that must have not just hard data, but have conformity between such data and known frameworks via abstraction of data for a coherent world structure.

Or, as one of the books looking at how often personality types put it, the INTP appears in less than 5% of the population and appears to be a space alien to everyone else.

Anomie and Personality

The vast majority of the population is of basic Extraversion type: gregarious, able to get along with each other, socially needing other people and generally those having a better time working with people than working alone.

Our media enforces just the opposite of that. As I see it (P) that is not in accordance with social norms (T) which creates a disassociation amongst individuals who are not temperamentally suited to such activities (N) and no good for anyone in such a situation (I). That is a worldview expression based on the information and derived abstraction of it utilizing observations of society and individuals to derive an end view that is open to change but serves as a foundational piece for then putting forth that something is horribly out of whack.

No good shall come of that.

The G.O.D. Theorem

The G.O.D. Theorem (as I call it, there are other names for it) is pretty simple: everything was better in the Good Old Days. If you watch any of Bill O'Reilly raging against the machines, you know exactly what I'm talking about, and his tirades against the use of modern technology is both deplorable and comedic, simultaneously. All this technology is killing society, is the short of the BOR rant, and it has been heard for ages about pool halls, pinball arcades, that decadent artwork that actually put perspective into paintings and the Waltz. All of that has been driving the morally upright society downhill, forever and this modern technology will be the end of us all.

Hey! I'm the guy who just said that no good will come of technology, right?

Yes, yes I am, but I am telling you in a bit more refined mode than BOR and NOT telling you pithy little tips of the day nor bemoaning about the harmful crudities of society caught on YouTube, not fit for children, save the teasers which show the worst of it and aren't fit for children, but you don't tell anyone about those. That is a bit on the hypocritical side utilized to build audiences. Building an audience that sits isolated in their homes, watching the program... on a machine... which is evil in the BOR mindset. Don't ask me how that works, I am clueless.

No, what I am pointing out is from my prior bit on the media as a dissociative factor as it is meant for passive or at most response only interaction. Both of these put individuals in isolation and passive response, very much like the educational system that emphasizes 'learning' (passive intake of information) instead of critical thinking (analyzing information to put it into a contextual framework). That dates back to the 1920's and the Progressive movement's March Through the Institutions where Progressive thought would be pushed out at every venue available to disrupt the coherent society and reform it into a passive edifice under hierarchical control. The modern schooling movement of the late 19th and early 20th century helped to foster this as did the Dewey Decimal system which attempted to order information and teaching along strict 'scientific' lines (that is to say lines that Progressives liked, instead of lines towards creative analytical thought).

The main institution for this societal change would be via politics and that meant having to break up the old internal party structure and put in a Boss (top-down) based system. This would be utilized to slowly remove the easy association of individuals to their local party system and seek to support apparatchiks over true representatives at all times in all political venues in each political party. By utilizing governmental power granted to it by the people, government would then begin remolding the people and society to the ends of those who controlled government, who saw themselves as 'enlightened' and you as ignorant. These were the idea put forward by Edward Bernays via the conceptualization of Propaganda which he gained from his advertising background. If you want the man to blame for getting women to smoke, it is Mr. Bernays.

Edward Bernays saw that the subversion of choice preferences for goods could be translated into politics. In politics advertising would be utilized to 'shape' opinion and form it within society to the benefit of those benevolent know-it-alls that should be the ones ruling over you and making decisions for you. He worked with Woodrow Wilson and others and only came to realize what he had actually created after WWII and the explicit use of internal Propaganda by the Nazi Party to have passive social distancing of society from the death camps be put in place after years of advertising against Jews as a whole. And yet that end is not out of the normal course of events when society has individuals get a feeling of isolation, powerlessness and a morally perverted sense pushed at them as 'normal'.

That is anomie.

And it is pushed by the passivity of the educational system, the power structure of the political parties and sustained by socially anomic media that discourages physical interaction save for the most base sort of sexual distraction. This enforced isolation and lack of external social contacts in a real, physical way leaves those using Extraversion with few outlets and those that are left are the most base sort and encourage no thinking whatsoever.

If you have a personality type with an E at the beginning, then you are the target and you are not temperamentally suited by your personality to handle enforced Introversion. This is done with malice aforethought since the late 19th century and the goal is to reshape society but its actual outcome is to liquidate society and remove moral and firmly rooted concepts for the basis of society from individual support. You are isolated and taught to be docile, to have an imposed exterior mental framework of pre-decided moral relativism fed to you, to have any moral standard run down, to no longer invite critical thinking about societies and their relative value but to put forward that all societies (even those that encourage infanticide) as being 'equal' and that you are powerless and should only entertain the most base thoughts towards your fellow man.

I am an Introvert and know how to handle my own internal world domain and situation. Self-imposed isolation and having few friends is not a problem to me and gives me leeway to decide just who is and isn't a friend and doesn't leave me grasping at any 'Friend' in the cyber-way as a means to uphold my personality needs for Extraversion. Because I have a firm reference basis built up of observation and yet one that is flexible to all of mankind, I can utilize my auxiliary traits to understand just what the goal and object of such things are. I can then utilize an understanding of history and tell you that enslavement is the BEST end scenario for individuals at the end of this and the total decay and collapse of modern civilization the WORST end for this scenario. And I can reference at least 3 'Dark Ages' (pre-Ming Dynasty China after the takeover by non-Chinese creating social isolation, Late Bronze Age with Egypt, the Hittites, Achaean Greeks and arguably all those effected by the Sea People, and the end of the Roman Empire) to demonstrate that enforced isolation (social or physical) means that individuals are ill-prepared for what comes when their world is reshaped by external events.

Note that this is Perception talking not Judging: the interior framework of world understanding that I have must have a high degree of correlation to the exterior world so that I can survive. I am willing to do the hard work, hunt down sources no one is even willing to talk about to find answers and I share them with you and encourage you to seek them out, read them, and then examine your own internal worldview to see if where we are in the modern world can come to ANY good end. What I do that is more than BOR is to hand you alternatives, outlets and other means to deal with things, although I also encourage you to get out to coffee shops, go out to see real, physical friends and to really think long and hard about your social valuation structure.

Family, Friends, Associates

My basic structure for social needs and interaction on a personal level are simple and stated above.

Family, first – these are the closest associates you have and biology is only a part of it, as this also includes those others that you have mutual agreement with to share the most personal aspects of your life. If Marriage is the basis for the Nation, then Family is the first social structure of the Nation we make. You can't help the family you were born into, but you can help who it is you pull in close to you in your life. If you value your online 'Friends' that you have never met, that you have never physically associated with, that you have not shook hands with face to face, then, not in a Judging way but in a Perceiving way, you have a problem. I am not here to Judge you, I am here to say that you social structure and Extraverted nature is being used to isolate you and this will cause you to be dependent on the first thing offered to you. It is intentional, malicious and means no good end for you... that is the framework and pattern you get when you passively allow these things to happen to you. You are in extreme danger, personally, and by not being an active part of the physical society, you are part of the destructive Progressive methodology to control even you cyber 'Friends'. I'm sorry if I'm the one that has to break this to you. There is good in having such 'Friends', but only if you actually invest time, effort and real physical location displacement to meet them and understand them directly, physically, as individuals.

Friends, second – the real thing, the ones where you get in a horrible accident, the family is on vacation and have just one or two people to turn to for help. The person who will get to the hospital to see you. The person that will bail you out of jail, give you a ride home, and tell you that you don't have to pay them, just do your duty to show up and they will stand by your side. That person is a FRIEND. And as someone who has gone friendless most of his life, I can tell you that such a person isn't to be passed off lightly. If you ignore this person (or if damned lucky a handful of them) for your cyber 'Friends' you are asking for a world of hurt even if you are interacting with these people as cyber 'Friends' because only the physical bonds of common projects sustain friendship. Trust me on that if you can't figure it out for yourself. Because I am Introverted and self-reliant, I damn well do my best to avoid such situations: you can't. Being basically friendless by choice is one thing, disdaining that person that will get to the hospital to make sure you are OK is lethal. If you lose that person, you have lost your back-up and if you aren't thinking ahead of time to get other back-up in place, then you will be dead in that crisis. Physically spend time with your friends, especially those close friends as an Extravert you need it and deserve it and so do they. Even those Introverts who are your friends... especially them as they are more likely to show up when NO ONE ELSE WILL. Just let them know they are your back-up, OK?

Associates, third – The people you meet up with in your life on a relatively frequent basis at work or at school. You have little choice but to have such associates unless you are: an author, run a sole proprietor business, or are in a cave living off of investment income. Authors who work alone get much say in how their works get distributed, and thus have the ability to choose who they will work with to a great extent. Running your own business and being your own boss and employee means you do have work contacts, yes, but they tend to be commerce related and not a daily recurring physical meeting situation. Then there is Ted Kaczinski, Howard Hughes and the totally bugged out that are self-sufficient and are rarely seen. If you aren't any of those, and do have daily contacts in business or school, then you have associates: those people you associate with frequently. This also includes church organizations, charitable work, helping to run a scout troop, and a whole host of activities from sports to games to reading circles and everything in between that you do for a social life. Your co-workers are those people you may go out and blow off steam after work, fulfilling a good social function and decompressing from the day to be sociable in the rest of your life. These also tend to be cyber 'Friends' that you may interact with via video, instant messaging or text messaging with or without images. This is by no means an unimportant category of people in your life, but they are in that next shell out and the least tied to you even when you physically meet up on a regular basis.

All of these people, plus the casual acquaintances, are a necessary and vital part of staving off anomie in one's life and help to gain some social grounding for you in this life. And while you may be in the situation where you have no choice but to spend time with Associates as a majority of your time, they in no way make up for Family and Friends. All three are critical to all humans, save the Kaczinski types, of course, but everyone needs them in different amounts and spending too much time with groups of people can even be stress inducing to Introverts, who tend to take the rest of humanity in smaller and measured doses. As humans grew up and got acculturated to each other through history, from pre-historic times to present, there are strong bonds that all people form to emotionally sustain them and give them moral and ethical roots in society. I stress physical meeting because there is no substitute for them: actually being in someone's direct presence has physical, psychological and emotional feedback into your psyche that is, generally, positive.

Just don't save up negative feelings for Thanskgiving and Christmas time with your family. Having positive time together as a family with friends is one of the most important things that can be done: let the preachers do the preaching that everyone wants to hear, not what you need to get off your chest or pontificate about. You are better than that. If you have bothered to learn self-restraint, that is.

The Body Politic

You participate in the Body Politic even if you haven't registered to vote, disdain the political system, and generally decry it at all turns. You are a member of society and are to be considered part of the Body Politic no matter how little you want to have to do with it.

Using the G.O.D. Theorem, I can state that there used to be a different era of politics that were not centered on elections, not centered on candidates, and were centered on the positive social impact of being in a political party that met up as smaller units for social gatherings. There are very, very, very few positives in growing up in a socialist leaning family, let me tell you that right off. In fact the only great aspect was seeing how the traditional, old-line socialists actually ran their political lives together at party meetings. Party meetings were things like: barbecues, a day at the beach, spending a day to celebrate one of the respected people in the party chapter on their birthday, stuff like that. Maybe 3 meetings a year, tops. The total time spent on politics at a typical 5-7 hour meeting was 1 hour or less, usually with a speech or two. You have to give the old line socialists credit for continuing on a tradition that had been lost in the late 1960's and early 1970's by the mainstream parties. But then the old-line, First International Socialist types had speeches on actual political outlook, dogma and not about plans or policy, by and large. Really, what sane person would attend a nice day at the beach to talk about the intricacies of tax policy or which programs are actually doing any good? Those get shuffled off to meeting rooms, run by party apparatchiks... and that is in the mainstream political parties as well as the old line socialists. No one wants to see how political sausage is made, these days.

With the shift in party power in the mainstream parties from wards, precincts and districts to the higher level offices until the National offices came to run the party, also came the distancing of people from actually discussing politics as a moral, ethical and popular matter. Political parties used to be about ideals and moral viewpoints, not about getting a slice of the power pie. The Body Politic only works well when there is a healthy discourse and intercourse amongst individuals and parties based on ideology, dogma, and arguing the basics of each to see how viewpoints that differ lead to different conclusions. It is society that creates the requirement for government by having a commonality of understood law amongst all members of society, and Nations are formed to differentiate societies due to the ideological, ethnic, religious and moral differences between them.

To unmoor individuals from this connection, those connections must be devalued, slowly removed and the ability of individuals to have say over the Body Politic and the organ of society we call 'government' must also be distanced. This is generally not a fast process and takes much time to degrade and demoralize society via other organs of education, church and the law. Government is created not to think for society, but to be a Punisher and ensure that those that would attack society are punished. It is given power to do those things, but they are safeguarding powers, not productive powers. For all the great edifices put up by government, they come at the expense of human liberty and freedom and the larger the edifice the greater the expenditure in lost productivity to gain it. Necessary infrastructure is to be created and safeguarded as directed by society through government for the benefit of all members of society and the welfare of society as a whole. This requires active participation in the political process to ensure that government only safeguards society and does not think that it is the determinative organ of society.

When government assumes that latter role we have various names for it: tyrannical, authoritarian, and imperial. Those individuals that wish to remove differences across all society are putting forward an imperial dogma as the ones doing the pushing are also the ones doing the deciding on what, really, you need in the way of liberty and freedom. Similarly those trying to liquidate national boundaries are trying to homogenize mankind to end its differences and reduce mankind to the lowest common moral denominator which, when done across cultures, is called savagery. The very worst components of all cultures, taken as the base of all human culture, is a savage thing and it is the conscious effort to move away from infanticide, slavery and so on, that gives a higher moral standing to those who eliminate such things in their own society. Yet this is diminished in 'moral relativism' that says that all good things are only good on a sliding scale and not a positive good in and of themselves.

This end is reached by starting to alienate individual from government by utilizing government's punitive powers against individuals of a certain group or class. Income tax was put into place on a class basis to 'tax the rich' and would 'never go above 7%'. Yet within 7 years it went to 70%, and still the insatiable appetite of government was not assuaged. Also demonized were the 'fat cat' tycoons of the trusts: Carnegie, Rockefeller, and those who sought to purchase corrupt politicians to their cause. While the anti-trust act was passed to break up the large trusts, the large banks counter-attacked because of the problem government had in funding itself. JP Morgan floated loans to the US government and prior to WWI the largest bankers in the US got together to put together legislation to put a Federal Reserve run by them into legal form, via the Progressive banner. The very types of trusts Progressives decried in industry, were most amenable to them in banking and their reach, to this day, is much larger than any or all of the tycoons in business combined. But you will not hear their modern day counterparts talking about breaking such an establishment or member banks up as they are 'too big to fail'. If the public had gotten any word of this legislation, at the time, it would not have passed. The public was not consulted, however, because the new Progressives didn't want the public to know of the deal that went down. Really, parties are only for passing legislation, not representing people, right?

With the Anti-Trust Acts, Federal Reserve and Income Tax, the Progressives had already changed the basis of government to exclude popular oversight and distance government from the Body Politic and society as a whole. It was an intentional set of acts to start creating anomie and isolate the individual by class, by economic status and to then punitively utilize the tax code to further isolate those that politicians didn't like. The media played its role as purveyor of information from government, but rarely, if ever, serves as a feedback instrument past that era of partisan newspapers that populated all sides of the political spectrum. By choosing who is and is not worthy to propagate information, government chooses the propagandists who then change their tune to better suit what government wants purveyed. You have little to no say in this, it is taken from your hands intentionally and you are no longer taught about your right to publish as part of your freedom of speech. It is implied that the freedom of the press is held by the press, not by the people, and yet it is the people who set up the organs that create the press, not the other way around.

The goal of this agenda, started over a century ago, is to install a small group of Elites as those who will dictate your life to you via government. If you depend on government for 'retirement', medical care, and even something like surviving a disaster, then you are no longer doing the basics necessary to secure your own life and survival. Such programs are sold as one thing, that is being a positive good, but they come at a cost of productivity, lost investment opportunity and having you as a thinking, vital member of society. Instead the individual becomes a mere cluster of group overlaps where any single group might be demonized to distract from the work and lacks of the Elites. When you group together to 'protest' against 'banksters' you are no longer holding government to account for it NOT allowing the process of justice work its ends on them. A bailed out company is one that is inefficient, poorly run and no matter how big it is, deserves to go through hard and deep restructuring of all of its elements just to survive. When allowed to tell people what energy is good and what energy is bad, then the most efficient and economical forms of energy can be marginalized so as to jack up the cost of actually having a modern life until the economy grinds to a halt and the dissociative media can soothe you by letting you know that this was the fault of this or that evil company, not your fault for helping to foster such government which wishes to impoverish you after driving you apart from your fellow man and making you dependent upon an authoritarian government that changes how you learn, what you learn and diminishes the ability to think critically.

As an individual I do not sit in judgment of you but tell you of what I perceive and the changes in the course of the world due to the structure of how society works and what part in it you play or do not play. When you hand over government by not even participating in its functioning, then you are giving the assent of apathy to have your life dictated to you by others. You could have a say, you could create a vibrant society that is rich in thought and discussion, and you could hold government to account to yourself and your fellow citizens by actually being a citizen and doing the job of a citizen. That job requires thinking and not just superficially but the deep and profound thinking of what it actually means to be you beyond distractions from media and seeking an easy life of doing what you are told by a set of Elites you do not elect but assent to by being passive. This passivity creates a frail society, a weak society and one that then gains fewer and less robust points of failure, until only a few are left that have no back-up, no capacity to respond to any failure because they all must do those things which you no longer do. And then there is a failure that cascades and your world disappears as the complex systems have gained simplistic governance that has a reach that is vast and a grasp of very little at all. That governance will seek to vilify and displace blame from itself so that you will be angry at anything, anyone, any group but those who have claimed so much and now can perform nothing and fail.

In anomie the individual becomes dependent, all moral decisions including that of which to sustain, life or death, becomes equal as all morals are rendered to have no value. That cannot sustain a society. That cannot sustain a government of any sort as you no longer self-govern. And those who fostered this have forgotten that they sit atop this set of vast and complex systems and for all they say they do not understand that complexity one whit better than those they are trying to control. When such vast societies fail they fail for the rich and poor alike, and while the rich might gain a cushion from their wealth, their very lives have the exact, same value as the very poorest who bear the brunt of their decisions. Soon there are fewer wealthy, fewer poor, and society is reduced by fire and iron to base survival where those who think and can plan are left to pick up the pieces to try and create a better world out of ruins. That is how such plans end as raw power is not competent in anything, save savagery. In that it excels because it is loosed from the bounds of having to weigh and judge towards civilized ends and is no longer held in check by citizens, but is used over mere subjects who are just subject to power, forgetting that they are its very author.

You cannot forget what you have not been taught. Sadly the Elites suffer this as badly in their quest for power. Once your life becomes all about you, then you are the absent author of power, the absent creator of society and the present instigator of your impoverishment by doing nothing to stop it on your own behalf. One cannot be sustained without work and without fear of outcomes: these two things do not go together and allow survival of society.

I prepare and plan for the failure of my fellow man writ large.

I do my part in warning and in letting you know that thinking, while difficult, is worth it as it is the creative process necessary to have a society that upholds your right to think. I see the destructive ends of anomie applied to my fellow man and what its effects are over time and point them out. That is my duty as a citizen to my fellow countrymen and as someone who loves his fellow man globally. I can still do that even with what I see happening around me because judgment is open-ended, adaptable and what is as it is can change. If you believe that being civilized is easy, then I ask that you look at where such ease ends and point out that those ends are savagery. I will, however, not step on the path of savagery with my fellow man and must point out the better, harder, tougher, nastier and yet more fulfilling way that allows you to be the great author in the hardest work of all: civilization.

You have been lied to not just as an individual, but your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents as well. Fed a belief that is destructive to self and society for generations, we are now near the end of that anomie that it has fostered. You have not been taught the basics and, instead, learn only to be dependent upon power held by the Punisher which is authored by us all, and it is base and raw in every instance, at every turn, and in every way. Power is a slavering beast inside us and manifests in that one organ of society that must process the rough and harsh people who forget what it means to be civilized. That is not the brain of society, but that most base organ that is yet so essential to the health of society. It grows cancerous through inattention, spreads its cancer when unchecked and when it claims to be the author of itself, then its true author is reduced to subjugation to it. Thus are the Elites turned into the savages they so desire you to become. That takes work to stop with your fellow man, and it cannot be done without you. For you are also the author of Hope. Unfortunately she got stuck at the bottom of the box and someone has to reach in and help her out after all the demons of savagery have been loosed upon the world and this task cannot be done alone. You must change to get hope, not ask for hope and change inverted for it does not and cannot work that way.

Hope is not bestowed, it is reached for.

Hope does not arrive upon a litter borne up by vast multitudes, but alone, unclothed and shivering when she must be helped up from the box of terrors.

Hope is not released but must be set free by those who change their viewpoint and will to no longer indulge themselves but to offer a hand of kindness to her with their fellow man.

Hope is many things.

Hope is not a strategy.

Hope is not delivered it is built.

Hope is not the product of government, but its dearest enemy for she offers to hold it accountable for its deeds.

You are the author of Hope.

I hold my hand out to you to help you out of the box of terrors.

There is a better way and you are the light of your own life and of our own world once out of that box of horrors and to love those around you and not demonize them for not being you.

I say that not in judgment of you but for the simple fact that it is true.

It takes effort to step out of that warm, dark, and lethal box and a lifetime of work to stay out of it as it is so warm, so dark, so cozy, and if you stay too long the horrors then put the top back on the box and then you are dead and Hope extinguished.

I ask you unleash the power of Hope in yourself, to hold the Hope enslavers to their deeds, to free yourself from the shackles of dark comfort and ill ends and to transform the world together by holding a hand out to the oppressed and a shield against the savage.

You cannot fail me.

You can only fail yourself.

And in my deepest love of you I do not want to see that happen.

Brought to you by A Citizen of the Republic

Thoughts for the future post-election

My views on the past election are simple and clear, or so I hope.  Taken from my commentary at Hot Air:

The next four years has a set of problems that remain unchanged, and they are due to a century of turning away from a fiscally responsible course and never working to pull back programs and hold institutions accountable for what they do. This does not change in 2 years of a Tea Party.

The ‘fiscal cliff’ of higher taxes, unsustainable debt, and the resulting low investment into the economy which gives lower jobs cannot be avoided no matter who is in office. Over-regulation of society and institutions by government was always going to be a hard job and will be harder because of who is elected, but the problem, itself, remains. The lowered productivity is a result of this, as well as an increasing cost to everything as central management fails as it has done since the beginning of time and only absolute poverty of thought and pocket have allowed such conditions to spiral into Iron Times.

As a Nation we see insolvent States about to go belly-up: CA, IL, NY to name but three. Yet Obama winning does not detract from the fact that at the State level the movement is away from ‘just accepting’ dictation from above. With 30 States with Governors who do not necessarily follow the federal government’s lead and Statehouses tasked with survival of their States likewise aligned, the coming problems of a few States going insolvent will point out that the Constitution is not a suicide pact: no State is ‘too big to fail’. That decision isn’t made at the federal level, but the State level and when the good and thrifty States put forth that their people did not vote for pensions in CA, IL, NY and elsewhere, then the second level of accountability comes into play along with its checks and balances.

These things were on the agenda no matter who won last night, and the American people are not giving a solid message but one that is nuanced with an innate understanding of what federalism is, even if it is not talked about. The fight now moves from the failed National institutions to the State and local level just where so many have said it would be and should be since the rise of the Tea Party. In that realm is the hardest fight for those who would correct the problems of society as the federal government will no longer be able or ready to help as it becomes insolvent in its own right. We will have a devalued currency, soaring prices for everything, and a bankrupt educational system from K-12 through to the University level that cannot be sustained and will, due to its own weight, collapse as it has already started to do.

Hard times are ahead and they always were. Mitt Romney promised to put pressure on the wound to at least allow it to clot up and perhaps limp along until something a bit better could be done. Now comes the next path, the harder path, the unpleasant path, the painful path and as we see our Nation devolve at the federal level it is up to the States to bring it back in line. We have grown overly fond of the 20th century Nation State and yet, driven by 19th century dogma against eternal 18th century understandings, it is up to us in the 21st century to apply the thing that is left to us: cauterize the wound. Our fellow citizens won’t want to face that now, but when they are slapped silly by having to pay for what others have promised and cannot deliver, when what they have been promised cannot be delivered, when their straits grow so dire because of unwise governmental choices then what other end is there?

Hold the Left to their lovely promises and continually ask how they can pay for it without killing people. Because medical rationing is the State deciding who should die and when – it is killing people via the element of the State. Taking from the rich does not make the poor wealthy as the economy declines, and that, too is the State deciding winners and losers and extending and deepening poverty for all which will kill those at the lowest part of society. This is the mirror that now must be held up to the gloating, smirking, finger-pointing, condescending Left and point to the blood on their hands and pooling around their feet. If all their lovely ideas are so grand, then why is such misery required and such impoverishment guaranteed? For this does not work out no matter when it was tried or by whom: it cannot be done ‘right’ because of the required misery that none on the Left dare to acknowledge and always decry as ‘someone else’s fault’ never their own.

That is your job: educate those who will listen, warn those who can hear, work with your fellow man to insure his safety, point out that the ills of the many are not solved by making the few worse off and killing the old, the poor, the young and the enfeebled. Help the educational system to implode and be prepared to take its place in your neighborhood so that the young can learn of our folly and that of their grand-parents and great-grandparents. Be an example to others, lead a good life, uphold your ideals, and prepare as many as you can for what comes next for it will be awful in ways we cannot conceive. Winning an election is not the same as surviving the victory, and an election is not a war but a battle.

As Breitbart said, we are at WAR.

I’ve been preparing for the long haul no matter who wins or loses a battle.

Have you?

ajacksonian on November 7, 2012 at 9:10 AM

What institutions are about to fail?

- Medicare and Medicaid, the M&Ms, aided and abetted by Obamacare.  These are no longer vital and insolvent and show the folly of government trying to figure out medicine and, with Obamacare, just decide who lives and who dies.  Just like with cronies in business, the government seeks to make newborns a crony to the ruling government via having to thank it for being allowed to live.  Yet this is fiscally and morally irresponsible, and those two go hand-in-hand.  And these hands drip with blood.

- Social Security is in the red and after a few years of getting paid off with inflated dollars in their bonds, it will soon be insolvent.  The government has attempted to set a retirement age while demographics has been pushing the upper limit of human healthy old age for decades.  Luckily with the Obamacare death panels, government might try to make SSA solvent by killing the old, the sick, the infirm.  That will be YOU because ideology and politics will be involved, and getting SSA will soon get not means tested but compliance tested as this is how tyrants secure power to their government.

- Education – As a 13th century institution it has run its course, and has varied from the best route of teaching one how to think and replaced it with rote learning.  The first gets you a vibrant and constantly questioning citizenry, while the latter gets you a compliant one.  Yet to perform this there must be more bureaucrats than educators, more overburden and less to sustain it, which causes the institution to become brittle, frail, and to implode due to the move to sustain ever growing revenue to ever more bureaucrats, and far less capable teachers who can no longer think on their feet.  This one is coming hard and fast at the post-secondary level, but even at the lowest level these institutions have been crumbling and no amount of money will sustain them.

- Banking at the National Scale has enabled and empowered deficit spending which can only be paid for by one of two routes: inflation of the currency to pay off past debt in devalued currency, meaning you are deprived of wealth as more money is in circulation without work to back it, or, high interest rates so that excess currency can be removed from circulation which lowers the tax base by having people paid less in more valuable currency and the taxes set up for a low valuation currency cannot adjust downwards fast enough to cover the delta.  With lowered tax revenue there is a call to increase taxation, but what does one do when the hard and fast poverty line is numerated in inflated currency?  Taxing the new 'poor' doesn't sell and the old 'rich' are paying less because of a stronger currency as well.  Neither of these will make the bankers to be nice people, and for not doing their duty a decade and more ago of taking the punch bowl away when the party was starting to roar, we will find ourselves truly questioning why we have a National Banking System known as the Federal Reserve as they will be shown to be clear currency manipulators doing the bidding of spendthrift politicians.

- Insolvent States – 'Too big to fail' will be attempted to apply to States like CA, IL, NY and any others that have over-obligated their tax base to pensions and pay-offs to retirees.  This now drives the debt burden up to these States to the point they cannot be sustained.  The States, as signatories to the US Constitution, do have the power to negate and change contracts, to put forward that contracts done with ill intention or just absent-mindedness can be dissolved.  The other States will be pointing this out to those insolvent States and that the power to re-organize is well within the legislative process inside the States.  Other States will refuse to accept the burden of 'too bit to fail' for other States and point out that THEIR taxpayers had no say in the debt incurred and obligated by States they DO NOT LIVE IN.  This will not 'break' the Union, but put up the mirror that it is upon those who obligate such debt to deal with it.

Then there is the backdrop to all of this on the Global level as crony systems fail and become insolvent globally.  The EU is unlikely to last out another decade and it may only have months to live at this point.  Unless you want to see Germany put in charge of it, which would be the equivalent of winning WWII and losing it a generation later.  Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and now France all teeter on the brink of chaos due to Left politics and social policies that can't be sustained by anyone, not even Germany.  Germany might be able to cushion a collapse of that international monstrosity, but it will not be tied to it as their people did not agree to the debt incurred by other European Nations.  See how that works?  It is a mirror of America a few months ahead of us at this point.

China  has spent capital and wealth for cities none can afford to live in and impoverished their people and inflated their currency by stealth.  Already the rumblings of problems from east to west, from polluted and failing industrial provinces to the rise of radical Islam are hammering at that Nation.  Communism has failed.  Corrupt and crony National Socialism has failed which is what China moved to in the post-Mao world.  China has been used to bloody solutions in the past but never had a population educated enough to actually formulate resistance to it.  For the first time ever in Chinese history its government will have to face an industrialized Nation being impoverished that is just educated enough to know what is being done to it and with 21st century electronic and social media tools to talk with each other about their plight.  When all of the Western debt holding move to lower value either via Nation State insolvency or inflation (or both) China's economy will implode and has already started that in seeing low cost labor jobs moving via Chinese companies outside of China.  China is not the last bastion of cheap labor: SE Asia and Africa are and now China will reap what it has sown.

India has grown by leaps and bounds, yet its infrastructure has not followed suit and its ability to uplift the poor has only incrementally improved.  With global problems comes threats to the modern infrastructure of electricity, sewage conditioning and potable water (where they are available).  Technologically India has taken vast strides in the late 20th century with the fall of the USSR and having never fully vested in its backwards economic system, India has allowed areas for growth internally.  Yet those, too, rely on debt and foreign sources for materials and finished goods, along with food.  Unrest due to lack of food has hit not just India but other Nations as well, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, and these will only grow as Western food sources decline in productivity due to backwards government spending.

The Middle East is in the midst of upheaval due to Radical Islam and broken, crony infrastructure that is used to repress peoples.  The elements of Radical Islam do not have any modern notion of economics and will cause further strife, chaos, disorder and starvation in their wake.  Starving masses usually don't provide for competent military machines, however, and utilizing jihadi self-destructive violence only makes problems worse for those Nations supplying such as productive and young individuals are removed from the workforce.  The human bomb of demographic domination is built on a house of cards sustained by Western agriculture and productivity, and once those disappear the problem becomes a demographic one internally to those Nations of the 'Arab Spring'.  North Africa will export foment and jihadism, yes, and the population crash will redouble the devastation upon that weary continent.

In the sub-Saharan southern Africa there are few good and viable Nations outside of South Africa, and even there social turmoil due to ethnic strife is not unknown.  If South Africa cannot assure its food supply then the problems about to beset the rest of the sub-Saharan region will come its way as well.  Outside of South Africa things are not so bright and the list of Nations undergoing social strife, ethnic cleansing, kleptocratic governments, and all with a backdrop of AIDS removing most of a generation is sobering.  It may well be that only the morally and socially upright populations and sub-populations survive to any great extent in 50 years due to the horror besetting their part of the world.

S. America is only meta-stable due to resource industries, which will collapse once Europe and North America no longer have industrial capacity nor demand to utilize them.  Nor will China in recession going far beyond anything we know as modern recession, be able to sustain internal demand (by building cities) to keep industries going.  Without industrialization spread deeply into S. America the opportunity to create vibrant economies is limited.  Chavez has pointed out that the end of socialist doctrines is internal lack of productive capacity and that indenturing people to the State (even if it is competently run) means lowering of living standards for all, not just the rich.  Argentina has had cash problems for more than a decade and its currency is suspect.  Brazil's crony socialism is about to see the end of ready cash flow, which means that without heavy industry and shifting away from agriculture, the Nation will be at extreme peril for internal problems.

Mexico had unwisely signed on to NAFTA, which exposed its backwards agrarian sector to the modernized US agribusiness.  Rural Mexico was deeply harmed as young men moved north to find jobs (first in transplanted US production facilities and, later, as illegal migrants seeking work) now find that those jobs are gone.  Organized crime and the foreign jihadi element helping the criminals now seeps into Mexico via standard means of corruption and through outright murder, often on a scale that dwarfs current wars.  Mexico had signed on to 'Green' ideas and limited marginal expansion of oil and natural gas, meaning that it is now bereft of those sectors to sustain the economy.  Mexico used to be able to feed its own people (albeit poorly) prior to NAFTA, and now that form of agriculture has been decimated by 20 years of NAFTA and those skills and knowledge of local farming, once lost, will not come back easily if at all.

Australia has been a relative bright spot for the world outside of Israel, as it had started to undo some of its socialist policies on retirement and put a relative amount of freedom back into the hands of its people.  Agriculture has done well in Australia and it is serving as the supplemental breadbasket of the world.  The internal problems of Australia are unique to it, including jihadists exporting problems to its shores.  As the British Commonwealth falters, it is Australia and Canada that will become those places trying to repeal the most onerous and financially lethal government policies the fastest.  The rest of the Anglo-sphere had best take note of this as these two Nations have resources, arable land, water, and relatively high productive capacity for the near term.  Longer term issues of global market collapse will hit these Nations, as well, but they will be able to weather these storms by having their people understand that the problems of government trying to control their economies (and their very lives) is the cause of the world's problems, not its solution.  Both Nations have had backwards laws on firearms and preservation of freedom, but nothing like Great Britain itself now has.

That these problems were all known before the election is troubling.  That the American people have not factored them into the Nation State federal government is more troubling, still.  Yet the US wellspring of revitalization starts at the bottom, not the top, which is why so many States moving to get responsible and responsive governments in place is heartening.  As the States are signatories to the US Constitution after in-State ratification by the people, it is these set of governments that hold the major key to renewal along with the people of the Nation as a whole.  If the socialist movements of the 20th century was to put more power into the hands of Nation State governments, America holds the card of that Nation State actually being formulated by the States and must serve all of their needs, not just any one of them or collection of them.  America was instituted on the self-evident observation that governments are instituted amongst men to preserve freedom and liberty and that it is very hard to give up any government even when it becomes contrary to the needs of its people.  The people will undergo great harm, even tyranny, before they finally have enough to change or abolish such government and to renew the tenets that government is given few things to do and must, actually, do them and leave the people to figure out the rest on their own.  First we must do all the stupid things, the good feeling things, the bass ackward things until we finally realize that we are far better with little government than with much of it.  Let us hope that we survive the troubled times ahead.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

-Winston Churchill