Edward Cline's Blog, page 21

The Supreme Court's "Declaratory Act"

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, wrote the majority opinion upholding the alleged constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. Obamacare will compel, under penalty of a monetary payment, all Americans to purchase health insurance. This monetary penalty was never intended by the authors of the ACA to be a revenue-raising impost. It was never intended to be a tax, either, although the Internal Revenue Service was appointed the enforcer of the law and collector of the penalty. Further, proponents of Obamacare argued that Congress had the power to enforce compliance with the law under the Commerce clause of the Constitution, which bestows on Congress the power to "regulate interstate commerce."

Opponents of the law have argued that Congress does not have the power to force individuals to engage in such commerce. During initial arguments before the Court, the Court rebutted this argument to some extent, dismissing the Solicitor General's position that an absence from such commerce is no excuse for not complying with the mandates of Obamacare. The "individual mandate" – or the feature of force – became the bête noir of Obamacare.

Chief Justice Roberts, however, side-stepped the whole issue and, as some commentators have observed, "rewrote" the punitive feature of the individual mandate and called it a "tax," arguing that such a tax is not outside the bounds of Congressional power. In that single act, Chief Justice Roberts, in an act of evasion and moral cowardice, conferred upon Congress the power and authority to tax every human action and commodity.

Violating the Aristotelian law that a thing cannot be A and non-A at the same time, Roberts wrote that the punitive penalty can be treated as a tax. Worse, the Constitution can limit Congress's powers, and expand them at the same time, as well. He did not recognize the Commerce clause argument advocating compulsory engagement in the commerce of insurance. He recognized, however, Congress's power to enslave and destroy.

The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part. The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause. That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress's power to tax. (p. 58)

But many pages before Roberts' lop-sided logic, he begins with this reductio ad absurdum gem.

The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers. (p. 3, Italics mine)

So, rather than undermine the principle behind the Commerce Clause (which does not grant Congress the power to "regulate" business in terms of controlling it, but rather to bring objective law to chaos), Roberts elects to undermine the principle of limited and enumerated powers that constrain Congress.

This opinion is unprecedented in the Court's annals, because it does and does not uphold Obamacare. In his opinion, Roberts wrote, with the pouting, moral fervor of a scold, "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."

Charles Krauthammer wrote in his Washington Post column, "Why Roberts did it":

How to reconcile the two imperatives — one philosophical and the other institutional? Assign yourself the task of writing the majority opinion. Find the ultimate finesse that manages to uphold the law, but only on the most narrow of grounds — interpreting the individual mandate as merely a tax, something generally within the power of Congress.

Result? The law stands, thus obviating any charge that a partisan court overturned duly passed legislation. And yet at the same time the commerce clause is reined in. By denying that it could justify the imposition of an individual mandate, Roberts draws the line against the inexorable decades-old expansion of congressional power under the commerce clause fig leaf.

Law upheld, Supreme Court’s reputation for neutrality maintained. Commerce clause contained, constitutional principle of enumerated powers reaffirmed.

I do not think the advocates and supporters of Obamacare will much mind that Roberts, with the flick of his pen and a leap in logic, dubbed the penalty a tax. After all, the penalty and the tax will accomplish the same results.

Let us not say that Roberts's actions are, in a political context, unprecedented. There are historical precedents. We must go back to the pre-Revolutionary period to find them. The Proclamation of 1763, the Stamp Act of 1765, and the Declaratory Act of 1766.

The Proclamation of 1763, on occasion of Britain's victory in defeating the French for possession of North America, was issued under the name of George III. It forbad all British colonials from escaping the mercantilist, regulatory and taxing authority of the Crown by crossing into the transmontane, or the Western wilderness beyond the mountain range from the settled colonies on the Eastern seaboard, and establishing new settlements. That was the overture.

In 1765, to defray the costs of the French and Indian War, and to fund the costs of maintaining a standing army in the colonies as well as maritime courts and a civilian bureaucracy to enforce Crown law, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which imposed a tax, payable in Crown silver only, on most court and legal documents, newspapers, playing cards, and even university degrees. The pseudo-Solons of the Crown had observed two things: That colonials were insatiable readers, and the most litigious subjects in the Empire.

The colonials revolted against the Stamp Tax. Without going into details, except for a paltry amount collected in Georgia, the Stamp tax was a famous failure, the Crown not collecting a penny of the tax, and seeing its Stamp Tax collectors hounded from their royally appointed sinecures. The turmoil caused Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act exactly one year later, in 1766, rather than allow it to stand and exacerbate hostility towards the mother country. The American colonials celebrated their victory.

Most did not pay attention to the companion legislation that accompanied repeal, The Declaratory Act, which was:

AN ACT for the better securing the dependency of his Majesty's dominions in America upon the crown and parliament of Great Britain.

WHEREAS several of the houses of representatives in his Majesty's colonies and plantations in America, have of late, against law, claimed to themselves, or to the general assemblies of the same, the sole and exclusive right of imposing duties and taxes upon his Majesty's subjects in the said colonies and plantations; and have, in pursuance of such claim, passed certain votes, resolutions, and orders, derogatory to the legislative authority of parliament, and inconsistent with the dependency of the said colonies and plantations upon the crown of Great Britain: ... be it declared ...,

That the said colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and of right ought to be. subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain; and that the King's majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons of Great Britain, in parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever….

Note the stress on dependency. Congress wishes Americans to become dependent on it for every conceivable human action and relationship, in "all cases whatsoever" – by edict and fiat. There is no difference between Parliament's intentions and Congress's.

I have noted in past columns that Mitt Romney, the de facto Republican candidate for President, is no antidote to either Obama, Obamacare, or statism. He is a statist. Chief Justice Roberts (likely under some threat from the White House) has sanctioned the humongous expansion of federal power, aside from upholding the ACA. Romney is no friend of freedom, either. He signed MassachusettsCare into law, after all, and that was a miniature template for Obamacare.

Either way, Americans have just been put on notice that they are wards of the state. Two things should alarm Americans: Roberts's apparent last minute switch from a majority that would have struck down Obamacare (obviously a sign of White House arm-twisting, or Capone-style persuasion), and the expansion of federal tax-and-punish powers. Remember, the "tax" that's not a "tax" feature of the ACA is not a revenue-raising one, but a punitive one.

That is the hallmark of "conservatives" – to seek a "middle ground" that seems apolitical and non-partisan. That is, to uphold no principles at all, except that of "me-too." After all, we would not want to challenge the altruist nature of Obamacare, would we? We're nice guys at heart, just like the collectivists. And if it turns out to be a pernicious law, well, you people asked for it. It's not for a Chief Justice to judge.

Well, no we didn't ask for it. It was passed over the raucous and highly visible and exacerbated hostility of the Americans on whom the burden would fall.

The Court has never consistently upheld the Constitution, not in its entire history. The role of the Chief Justice, however, is not to evade judgment of an outrageous, looting, confiscatory law and blame the electorate for voting for the creatures who passed it. He and his colleagues are supposed to say: "This is evil, this violates individual rights, this is villainous and tyrannical, and we're declaring it unconstitutional." We are not paying the Chief Justice to collect a sumptuous salary and enjoy perks we can't afford. (Remember, ALL federal employees are exempted from ALL features and stipulations of Obamacare, as well as ALL members of Congress.) We are paying him to pass judgment on legislation. Sure, he can blame some of the electorate for voting the creatures from the Black Lagoon into office, but that is not his job, to place blame (except perhaps in an aside or a footnote to an opinion) and pass the buck. That feature of Roberts's opinion is, I think, unprecedented in the Court's annals. How low can you get?

Republicans, as "conservatives," consciously wish to “conserve” the status quo, which can mean any state of affairs in any point in time, as long as it means the welfare state, entitlements, subsidies, tens of thousands of regulations, all kinds of taxes and tariffs, central banking, and so on. Perhaps the correct term should be “preserve.” Now, that would make an appropriate designation of most Republicans: the Preservatives.

Seriously, however, the Conservatives cannot challenge the Left in any fundamental way, because they share the same morality, which is altruism. All they can say to the Democrats and Progressives, with the indignation of a priggish scold, “Not so fast!” The Right and the Left agree on the ends; the means and speed are open to bipartisan negotiation. That has been the history of Congress and the Executive Branch since the late 19th century.

Parliament meant what it said when it affirmed legislative and taxing authority over the American colonies. Beginning in 1764, Parliament passed over two dozen Acts to make the colonies dependent on Britain for its trade and sustenance. It made no finicky distinctions between taxes and penalties, between commerce and non-commerce.

President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democrats meant what they said when they asserted legislative authority over Americans' lives, health and fortunes. They rammed Obamacare through Congress, blithely indifferent to or ignorant of Congress's enumerated powers. Little could they know that Chief Justice John Roberts would affirm their tyranny with his own Declaratory Act.

And we all know what the original Declaratory Act led to.

Well, not all. Congress is oblivious. And so is Chief Justice John Roberts.

It can happen again.

Ludwig von Mises's Omnipotent Government: A Primer on Statism

Given today's political circumstances, in which this country, in November, will either reject the boisterous, crude, arrogant statism of the current administration in favor of one that will consume the country at a less gluttonous rate (thus allowing champions of freedom to marshal their intellectual and political forces), or submit to a suicidal sanctioning of its demise, I thought it would be timely to revisit a classic that over half a century ago projected the consequences of omnivorous statism, Ludwig von Mises's Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War.

Originally published by Yale University Press in 1944, Omnipotent Government offers an airtight negative prognosis of nations that elect the statist route to imagined security, prosperity, and happiness by granting governments the incremental and ultimately wholesale authority over virtually every possible human action and condition. The principal subject of Omnipotent Government is Nazi Germany and the fallacies surrounding its origins and pretensions, however, the principles by which von Mises discusses them are eminently applicable to any nation. Von Mises makes this clear at the very beginning:

The distinctive mark of Nazism is not socialism or totalitarianism or nationalism. In all nations today the "progressives" are eager to substitute socialism for capitalism. While fighting German aggressors Great Britain and the United States are, step by step, adopting the German pattern of socialism. Public opinion in both countries is fully convinced that government all-round control of business is inevitable in time of war, and many eminent politicians and millions of voters are firmly resolved to keep socialism after the war as a permanent new social order. (Introduction, p. 1

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Why does von Mises stress capitalism and not "liberty" or "freedom"? Because capitalism is the vehicle that makes liberty and freedom possible in man's existence. Ayn Rand provided a more specific definition of capitalism than does von Mises:

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. (“What Is Capitalism?” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 19)

Rand does not state that capitalism is merely an economic system, as von Mises implies. She says that it is primarily a social system in which individual rights are recognized, protected, and upheld. The role of government is to protect and uphold those rights through its monopoly on retaliatory force. Individual rights, wrote Rand elsewhere, originate and are based on man's nature as a being who must think to survive and is responsible for his own life and happiness. He can survive and pursue his happiness with his fellow men only if he respects these conditions in others, and others respect them in him. In a society of individual rights, force is banished from all human relations. Only the government may initiate force in the pursuit and prosecution of individuals who resort to force (or to its cousin of indirect force, fraud).

Rand elucidates on the nature of capitalism:

The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. ("What is Capitalism," p. 20)

Consequently, I have two major objections to von Mises's defense of capitalism: One is that he continually justifies capitalism as a means to satisfy the wants of "consumers," and portrays capitalists as mere "servants" of "consumers." The other is that nowhere in Omnipotent Government does the term trade occur (at least, I didn't spot one). This is not merely an issue of semantics, but a revealing and dangerous premise that allows conservative defenders of capitalism to claim that it is fundamentally altruist. It explains why conservatives consistently lose the debate about freedom, and without exception concede the moral argument to their alleged enemies, the "progressives" (alias collectivists or socialists and pinkish totalitarians). After all, who could object to selfless trade to advance and improve mankind's material existence? I could object to it, because any trade is a selfish exchange of values. Von Mises uses the term selfish in Omnipotent Government, but it is nearly apologetic.

One minor objection is von Mises's constant use of the term consumer throughout his opus. It is an unfortunate and ubiquitous choice, made by most economists, and means "customer" or "trader." The term consumer conjures up, at least in my own mind, the image of an identity-less zombie that does nothing but ingest products and services. "Customer" or "trader" would be a truer and more honest term that stresses the volitional and voluntary relationship between the buyer of a seller's product, and confers the virtue of consciousness on individuals. On the reverse side of that coin is the practice now of government agencies referring to their involuntary hostages as "customers" or "clients," as though taxpayers and droves of the entitled and extorted had a choice.

See George Orwell's essay on how government jargon suborns and corrupts language and the mind.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow....

By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he "felt impelled" to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: "[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write -- feels, presumably, that he has something new to say -- and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

I do not know who first employed the euphemism, but I am not alone in my distaste for the term consumer. See this interesting blog. Another minor complaint is von Mises's usage of the term democracy, which is not the same thing as a nation that is a constitutional republic whose government respects and protects individual rights, but which von Mises thinks it is. This is another dangerous equivocation, and one would have thought that such an encyclopedic mind such as his would have been familiar with the Founders' abhorrence of democracies, or political systems of mob rule with no restraints on the "majority's" persecution or looting of minorities (such as businessmen, industrialists, or, in present circumstances, the medical profession under Obamacare). It is such careless usage that perpetuates confusion and ambiguity, and provides the burglars of collectivism with a jimmy with which to "lawfully" enter our lives, businesses, and homes.

But, to his everlasting credit, he reclaims the political term liberal, which to his generation meant a system that advocated individual rights, capitalism, and free markets – markets free of government interference.

My reservations about Omnipotent Government being made, von Mises's book is a paragon of reason and prescience. In it he unabashedly employs the term capitalism (itself originally a term of ridicule coined by 19th century socialists), and for the term government force, he uses the term interventionism.

To von Mises, the great crime of statism (or etatism, as he prefers to call it) is its propensity for interventionism.

Governments have always looked askance at private property. Governments are never liberal from inclination. It is in the nature of the men handling the apparatus of compulsion and coercion to overrate its power to work, and to strive at subduing all spheres of human life to its immediate influence. Etatism is the occupational disease of rulers, warriors, and civil servants. Governments become liberal only when force to by the citizens.

From time immemorial, governments have been eager to interfere with the working of the market mechanism. Their endeavors have never attained the ends sought. (p. 69)

Rand also comments on statism:

If the term “statism” designates concentration of power in the state at the expense of individual liberty, then Nazism in politics was a form of statism. In principle, it did not represent a new approach to government; it was a continuation of the political absolutism—the absolute monarchies, the oligarchies, the theocracies, the random tyrannies—which has characterized most of human history.

Von Mises describes the collectivist ends sought by governments throughout history and in our own time. His premise?

All civilizations have up to now been based on private ownership of the means of production. In the past civilization and private ownership have been linked together. If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property in inextricably linked with civilization. (p. 68)

Mises does not define civilization, but Ayn Rand does.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. ("The Soul of an Individualist," For the New Intellectual, 84)

And a society of privacy is possible only when private property is preserved and protected. A society in which one's property, pleasures, efforts, expression, and even one's life are ruled by government interventionism is a society in which one has little or no privacy and no limits exist on what a government may deem in the "public interest." Democracy is not compatible with individual rights or with property. A government not founded on the principle of individual rights is one that will proclaim eminent domain on private property for one gang (e.g., the anti-smoking or "healthy diet" lobbyists) and on expression (e.g., restrictions on speech that criticizes Muslims and Islam).

Von Mises would not have been surprised by the extent to which federal and state governments have broadened their powers in the name of "social justice" or "social equity." The U.S. has had a mixed economy from the beginning. The seeds of interventionism lay mostly dormant in the 19th century, but began to sprout late in that era and have spread over the economy and our lives like a suffocating canopy of kudzu. Von Mises notes:

Thus socialism must lead to the dissolution of democracy. The sovereignty of the consumers and the democracy of the market are the characteristic features of the capitalist system. Their corollary in the realm of politics is the people's sovereignty and democratic control of government…Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship. (p. 63)

Need I cite the "planning" of the current administration, and its disastrous results? Need I cite the fiat absolutism of the current administration to underscore Von Mises's predictions?

Speaking of dissolution, Von Mises later in Omnipotent Government makes the historical distinction between "doctrinaire" Marxists and pragmatic ones. The first group wielded very little influence in German, British, or even American politics. It was the pragmatic ones who paid lip service to pure Marxism but were devoted to its piecemeal implementation in Western nations. Pure Marxism is what Karl Marx had in mind, and pleaded with the socialists and progressives of his day to stop putting impediments in the way of capitalism in the form of minimum wage rates, taxes and tariffs, labor legislation, and other interventionist policies. Capitalism, he argued in Das Kapital, should be allowed to reach its "maturity," and then it would automatically morph into a pure communist or socialist society. Von Mises notes:

Marxians do not support interventionism….Orthodox Marxians scorn interventionism as idle reformism detrimental to the interests of the proletarians. They do not expect to bring about the socialist utopia by hampering the evolution of capitalism; on the contrary, they believe that only a full development of the productive forces of capitalism can result in socialism.

But consistency is a very rare quality among Marxians. So most Marxian parties and the trade-unions operated by Marxians are enthusiastic in their support of interventionism. (p. 70)

In other words, the "doctrinaires" wish the pie to finish baking before it somehow, by some mystical Hegelian force, can become a one hundred-place banquet table created by capitalism but inherited by everyone but the individuals who created it. The creators, the producers, the innovators, will all somehow go "poof" and disappear. Inconsistent Marxists – for example, the Democratic Party, the "Progressives," and the UAW – want the pie now, and don't care that it isn't fully baked. Marxist purists wish capitalism to reach some alleged "maturity" uninhibited so it can magically turn into a socialist paradise. Pragmatic Marxists don't want to wait; their appetite for power demands instant and immediate gratification. (p. 172) In this respect, the current administration has much in common with Occupy Wall Street.

In discussing the fallacies and pretensions of the Nazis, Von Mises observes that the Nazis ultimately (and necessarily, because they were statists) adopted the interventionist policies of their bitter enemies, the Communists, essentially implementing measures described in The Communist Manifesto.

Eight of these ten points have been executed by the German Nazis with a radicalism that would have delighted Marx. The two remaining suggestions (namely, expropriation of private property in land and dedication of all rents to land to public expenditure, and the abolition of all right of inheritance) have not yet been fully adopted by the Nazis. (p. 171)

Marx and Engels later distanced themselves from such policies, calling them socio-reformist frauds.

Von Mises discusses at great length in different sections of Omnipotent Government the futility of war. He was not a pacifist, however. Doubtless he supported the Allied war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. There are, however, many questionable points he makes and premises he writes from, and with which one can disagree. For example, when discussing the paralogisms and polylogisms of the Nazis, Communists, Marxists, and other collectivists, he nearly commits the error of relegating reason to being just "another way of thinking," one, however, he insists can refute the collectivists. He does not explicitly claim that reason is man's only tool of survival and living. He merely infers it without elaboration.

He did have one warning, one that should be heeded by champions of freedom today. In our age of statism, open borders for semi-free welfare states that are hamstrung by interventionist polices would be an overture to the collapse of civilization.

These considerations are not a plea for opening America and the British Dominions to German, Italian, and Japanese immigrants. Under present conditions America and Australia would simply commit suicide by admitting Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese. They could as well directly surrender to the Führer and to the Mikado. Immigrants from the totalitarian countries are today the vanguard of their armies, a fifth column whose invasion would render all measures of defense useless. America and Australia can preserve their freedom, their civilizations, and their economic institutions only by rigidly barring access to the subjects of dictators. But these conditions are the outcome of etatism. In the liberal past the immigrants came not as pacemakers of conquest but as loyal citizens of their new country. (pp. 120-121)

Von Mises wrote these words during World War II. And we are no less at war with Islam, which the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamic proxies are waging with violence and demographics and the subornation of Western concepts of civil liberties. Europe is being swamped with Muslims. They have established a beachhead in the U.S. Von Mises died in 1973, having emigrated from Switzerland to the U.S. in 1940. I do not think he could have ever imagined that forty years later the U.S. would adopt a policy of evading the fact that Islam is an ideological enemy and that our government would consciously open the door to invaders who ideology is inimical to American freedom. I imagine that even as late as the 1970's, he did not think Islam could ever be a threat to the West. In Omnipotent Government he devotes chapters to why populations can adopt and encourage statist and totalitarian ideologies, as the Germans, Italians, and Japanese did, why they must endorse their governments' policies of aggression and conquest, and how they abet their own demise. Islam is not an ideology of freedom; there is not a single Muslim, moderate or otherwise, who can defend it and still regard himself as a rational being.

Just as no individual could effectively defend German Nazism or Italian Fascism, and still command the respect of his fellows. The irrational is indefensible.

Omnipotent Government is not as heavy or as technical a read as many of Von Mises's other books. Anyone with strong reading habits will not find it daunting. Once begun, the layman will find himself drawn into Von Mises's arguments and reasoning, and will grasp from a rational perspective how he has been duped, manipulated, scammed, lied to, and robbed by his government. And even by his teachers.

Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, by Ludwig Von Mises. (1944) Ed. by Betttina Bien Greaves. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, IN, 1974. 331 pp.

The Bedlam of Statism

Is statism bipolar? Schizophrenic? Autistic? Obsessive-compulsive? Multi-phobic? Inherently dysfunctional? Psychotically antisocial? A form of dementia? A narcissistic personality disorder? A kind of panic or anxiety disorder? Just plain maladaptive? Or all of the preceding? This column will enter the mad house of statism and explore its various wards.

John David Lewis, in his masterpiece about the means and ends of war, Nothing Less Than Victory , cites both Ludwig von MIses and Ayn Rand on etatism and statism or fascism.

In Omnipotent Government, von Mises notes that etatism denotes those political systems that "have a common goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion." (Lewis, p. 44)

Quoting from Rand's column, "The Fascist New Frontier," Lewis cites Rand:

The dictionary definition of fascism is: “a governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.), emphasizing an aggressive nationalism . . .” [The American College Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1957.]

Of statism, she also wrote:

If the term “statism” designates concentration of power in the state at the expense of individual liberty, then Nazism in politics was a form of statism. In principle, it did not represent a new approach to government; it was a continuation of the political absolutism—the absolute monarchies, the oligarchies, the theocracies, the random tyrannies—which has characterized most of human history.

Lewis continues:

Statism applies to any government with such power, whether a primitive tribal ruler, a theocratic council, or a communist or fascist dictatorship – including a democracy unrestrained by fundamental laws – each of which swallows the lives and fortunes of individuals without regard for their rights. The identification of such governments as statist is relatively new, but the practice is of enormous antiquity (as Lewis demonstrates in his chapter on the Theban Wars against the Spartan slave state).

But the subject here is that wherever statism in any of its forms has been established and tried, it has failed, causing economic dislocations and eventual collapse, the impoverishment of its most productive citizenry, their incremental or outright slavery, and an excuse to war on more prosperous and freer neighbors. The history of statism is riddled with these disasters, and at no time has it ever been successful on its own terms, nor will it ever be. Even with a willing and compliant citizenry, it is destined to fail.

If Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia seemed to be "successful," it was only by grace of the inertia of the semi-free past and a proximity to freer nations, which they immediately began to conquer. The longevity of statism is illusory. Today mixed economies are endemic and seem to thrive only because of the shrinking quantum of liberty and capitalism that may exist in any one nation, and on which statist governments depend for revenue (or loot). Governments produce nothing, not even the desks and chairs and pencils and grosses of paper and ink used by bureaucratic chiefs and their staffs.

Remember that even in the U.S., there are no such things as government-owned and run gun or tank factories, only private companies contracted to produce weaponry or the instruments of force (such as Tasers, electronic cattle prods, protective gear, etc.). The only government-owned and managed "enterprises" by tyrannies have been the charnel houses of concentration camps and Gulags. The exceptions to this rule are communist nations in which the government owns and runs everything and everyone. Even in such overtly totalitarian countries, however, their governments are thieves and parasites preying on the achievements of freer nations. The phenomenon has been amply recorded by many observers, such as Werner Keller and Anthony C. Sutton.

Look at Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela, or "capitalist" China: these are countries that thrive on the products of freedom, while outlawing it for their own populaces. And their longevity is sustained only by the ignorance of those who help them survive, such as Western policymakers, pragmatic businessmen, and tourists.

So, if statism, whatever its form or scope, has a consistent record of tragic and costly failure whenever and wherever it has been tried, what is its appeal? Why do men keep advocating it and imposing it in the face of the incalculable destruction, death and misery it has caused?

It must be madness. A form of mental illness in politicians, leaders, and their followers. It's easier to champion than are rational self interest, individualism, and no-strings-no-fetters freedom. Collectivism appeals to politicians because it guarantees votes and power. It appeals to voters because it proposes to share the misery of having one's wealth and that of one's neighbor expropriated for the greater good of an anonymous, amorphous whole, that omnivorous monster called "society." The joke is that sacrificing for the "greater good" is not a virtue, but a vice resting on delusions, obsessions, unreasoning malice, or unexamined fears.

Altruism, the morality that underlies collectivism and statism, is a form of madness. It asks a person to value ice cream by never tasting it, or to sacrifice it after one has tasted it. It asks one to value life by not living. It demands that one surrender one's liberty in exchange for an entitlement. It requires that one not know that one's rights and freedom originate in the requirements of living as an independent individual, but to believe that one's rights originate with society or the state to be granted or withdrawn when the state deems it politick.

Daniel Greenfield made this observation:

The Clash of Civilizations is all-encompassing. It doesn't just cover the big thing, like ramming planes into skyscrapers, but also the little things…. For Mayor Bloomberg, it's banning large sodas….When there is no limit to government infringement on rights, then the law is a collection of bugbears and control mechanisms…. It's senseless, but so is fighting obesity by banning people from buying large sodas. When the obsession of a few men is turned into law, then the result is equally contemptuous of the individual as a rotting sack of vile habits which he has to be forced to abandon by the majority of the law.

Once you abandon the rights of the individual to the fiat of activists, judges and politicians-- then laws can be made by anyone who wants them badly enough. The same process of judicial activism, hysteria, violent attacks, and pressure groups that created gay marriage can one day lock up the happy couples. It's only a matter of who is making the laws.

Statism is legalized, institutional irrationality, criminality elevated to the status of duty and "public service." The irrational, by itself, operating in a social vacuum, is self-destructive. Operating unchecked or unchallenged among men, is destructive of them and of their values.

Walter Williams, in his article, "Immoral Beyond Redemption," poses the question:

…[D]oes an act that's clearly immoral and illegal when done privately become moral when it is done legally and collectively? Put another way, does legality establish morality? Before you answer, keep in mind that slavery was legal; apartheid was legal; the Nazis' Nuremberg Laws were legal; and the Stalinist and Maoist purges were legal. Legality alone cannot be the guide for moral people. The moral question is whether it's right to take what belongs to one person to give to another to whom it does not belong.

From science fiction, statism can be characterized by a variety of malevolent, inimical creatures. In our public education systems (including universities), children and young people are mandated to sit in front of Alien pod teachers from which leap parasites that cling fast to their minds to plant the seeds of multiculturalism, volunteerism, self-sacrifice, and deference to the state. In economics, we are all attacked by The Blob of taxes, controls, and prohibitions that eat us alive. Predators identify and hunt down anyone who defends himself word or deed against government force.

From the horror genre, the intelligentsia and its cohorts in academe may be represented by Hannibal Lecter, a charming, articulate killer who will promise men the moon while plotting to prepare a meal of them for himself.

Let's say that statism is bipolar. A bipolar government takes action, such as imposing confiscatory taxes that skew, reduce, or redirect private spending for the sake of raising revenue to support sometimes legitimate but too often illegitimate imperatives and programs. The decades-old campaign against smoking is salutary. Politicians, heeding the demands of anti-smoking lobbies and activists, impose higher taxes and more controls on cigarettes and other tobacco products, theoretically reducing smoking rates among the population ( a state-designated "public good"), and allowing anti-smokers and the asthma-stricken and sensitivity feigners to frolic in businesses, restaurants, and bars they don't really own.

At the same time, however, government depends on cigarette taxes for revenue, and when the revenue falls, it raises the taxes on cigarettes higher, or finds another taxable product – say, gasoline, or capital gains, or bottles of imported Bailey's Irish Cream – to make up for a shortfall that becomes increasingly bottomless. (And incidentally creates an "illegal" or underground market for the targeted goods, from smuggled, untaxed cigarettes to outlawed light bulbs to profits deposited in offshore banks, which in turn causes to the government to create more agencies and hire more employees to "police" said market, which in turn requires more taxes and revenue to pay for enforcement.)

A statist or command economy is therefore a Sisyphean nightmare that grows worse with each new echelon of salaried mediocrities put in charge of regulating the latest "public concern." Statists declare society blighted and proceed to impose eminent domain on neighborhoods, choices, habits, and everyone. This has been the incremental history of Progressivism, which has never had to look far for a "social ill" to cure and regulate. Any human action may be deemed a "social ill" and a candidate for taxation, regulation, or prohibition, from consuming milkshakes to stock or commodity speculation.

The purpose of the taxes, regulations, and prohibitions is to impose the "social justice" clamored for by various social engineering groups that wish to punish, control, or extinguish other groups. Governments – federal, state and local – wish to have enough revenue to either balance their budgets, or at least stave off bigger than usual deficits, while at the same time heeding the social justice brigades' demands for smoke-free air or reduced car emissions or nutritional information on food products or a "fairer" redistribution of earned income. This compels government policymakers to seek a median, which only ratchets up costs all around. It is a no-win episode of bipolarism for everyone, two steps forward, one step back. It is disguised as "social progress" by the pronouncements of activists, politicians, and public interest groups. What it is in reality is an insidious conditioning of men so that they become inured to slavery.

Some of those activists, politicians, and public interest groups know exactly what it is all progressing to – socialism, fascism, a straightjacket state – but most don't know, and think that once the tax, regulation, or prohibition is legislated, their work is done. They've done their good deed, and remain on the sidelines or become spectators while other activists, politicians, and public interest groups take their turn at "democracy."

It is all a prescription for bedlam, of groups fighting each other for controls over each other, a "democratic" anarchy that can only result in the stasis of totalitarian rule.

Choose your dementia from the group of statist disorders which introduced this column. As with personal, clinically defined mental illnesses, each is founded on some species of the irrational.

When are Americans going to stop believing in the miracle nostrums of statism, and seek out and heed the advice of those who prescribe the steps to take toward the sanity of freedom?

Review: Nothing Less Than Victory

The last engaging book on the means and ends of warfare before John Lewis's was a 2009 abridged version of Winston Churchill's The River War, originally published in 1899. Its original, full title included An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan. The term "reconquest" was misleading, because the Sudan had never before been "conquered" by the British, but was under the jurisdiction of Egypt, then a protectorate of Britain. Egypt was unable to deal militarily with the Dervish forces that meant to conquer it. It fell to Britain extinguish the Mahdist or Islamic threat, which, unchecked, could well have spread from Egypt to the rest of North Africa and the Middle East.

General Herbert Kitchener was tasked with that formidable project. Churchill describes the meticulous and determined campaign he waged, which was not just a matter of sending an army into the desert wastes to fight fanatical tribesmen. It meant reforming the corrupt and ineffectual Egyptian government, rebuilding the Egyptian army and its Sudanese levies, building a railroad into enemy territory, and mastering the stupendous logistics of supplies and men. The stated objective was to erase the Mahdist regime as a military and political threat in the whole region. The climax of the campaign was the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898, in which the Dervish army was utterly decimated and routed.

In the end, over a year later, the successor of Mahdi Muhammad Ahmed, Abdallah ibn Muhammad, was killed and the remnants of his forces routed at the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat.

The Sudan Campaign had clear military and political objectives. The British government then had the will to take the necessary actions to destroy an enemy and discredit the ideology that moved it.

Churchill noted in The River War that, " The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."

In short, Islam, like the Nazi, Fascist, and Shinto ideologies which compelled Germany, Italy, and Japan to invade other countries, must be repudiated by the aggressor and cease to be regarded by its adherents and converts as a feasible and desired ideology that fosters "peace."

This comports with the main theme of John David Lewis's seminal work on the efficacious "warfighting" policies of the past, Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Princeton University Press, 2010). That "great power" comes in many disguises. Lewis tackles some of them.

Lewis, however, does not immediately discuss 20th century conflicts, but wars of antiquity, using them as overtures to his discussions of the Civil War and World Wars One and Two, underscoring the need, in warfare, of a government to have the will to identify an enemy and his morality or ideology, and then the will to fight the war on its own terms, and not those of the enemy. What is more, the attacked nation must be willing to eviscerate the enemy's will to fight on to foreshorten the conflict and possibly establish a peace beneficial to the former opponents.

In each of the conflicts that he illustrates, Lewis economically dwells on military strategies of opponents, but places far more importance on the moral force, or lack of it, that guides one side to victory and the other to defeat. In his Introduction to Nothing Less Than Victory, Lewis states:

Those who wage war to enslave a continent – or to impose their dictatorships over a neighboring state – are seeking an end that is deeply immoral and must not be judged morally equal to those defending against such attacks.

Further on he notes:

Certainly the tactics of Roman foot soldiers cannot be applied to tank divisions today, but the Romans might be able to tell us something about the motivations of a stateless enemy that is subverting a world power….The goal of war is the subjugation of the hostile will, which echoes Carl von Clausewitz's identification that war is 'an act of force to compel the enemy to do our will.'

This is Lewis's only indirect reference to Islamic jihad. Today, Islam is the "stateless enemy" subverting a world power (the U.S.), but the U.S. lacks to will to identify that enemy and take the necessary steps to vanquish it. (Lewis does not discuss the Islamic jihad, but all the points he makes about other wars may be applied to that species of aggression.) There is an eerie parallel between the current situation and Lewis's Chapter Six, "The Balm of a Guilty Conscience," which details the evasions, fallacious soul-searching, and moral disintegration of British diplomacy in the face of the evolving and maturing nemesis of Nazi Germany before the onset of World War Two. As Lewis demonstrates in that chapter, British and Allied concessions to Hitler abetted the maturation of Hitler's régime to the point that Hitler could confidently plan and embark on his conquests. Lewis demonstrates novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand's observation that

Do not confuse appeasement with tactfulness or generosity. Appeasement is not consideration for the feelings of others, it is consideration for and compliance with the unjust, irrational and evil feelings of others. It is a policy of exempting the emotions of others from moral judgment, and of willingness to sacrifice innocent, virtuous victims to the evil malice of such emotions.

In a brilliant dissection of the causes of the rise of Nazism, Lewis pinpoints those "feelings" stemming from the Versailles Treaty of 1919, in which the victors laid blame for World War One squarely on Germany's aggressions, but which German politicians and moralists interpreted as an unjust victimization of Germany. It is in this chapter that Lewis best explicates the differences between an aggressor nation's surrender and its defeat.

Germany, he writes, surrendered without admitting defeat. Over time, British and Allied governments were persuaded – or persuaded themselves – that German feelings and assertions of victimization and humiliation were justified, and incrementally, in a succession of concessions, allowed Hitler to cement his power over Germany, and later waived all moral judgment for his takeovers of Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia, not to mention his determined rearmament in violation of the Treaty's terms.

Craven British diplomatic maneuvering and peace-hankering newspapers pressured France into making conciliations. France, devastated by the German invasion and depredations in the first war, and which stood the most to lose if Germany rearmed, initially took steps to enforce the Treaty's terms, but was browbeaten into submission by "public opinion" and the Allies virtual abandonment of the Treaty. After the invasions of Poland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, France was the next country targeted by the wrath of Germany's vengeful feelings.

I guarantee that anyone who reads Chapter Six will emerge with an enriched and refocused understanding of the causes of World War Two. Complementing that chapter is "Gifts from Heaven," in which he discusses how and why the Shinto/Bushido culture of Imperial Japan had to be gutted from top to bottom, beginning with the Emperor clear down through Japanese politics to the schoolroom, as an integral element of the American defeat of Japan to ensure that it would never again formulate a design for conquest. It was necessary for Japan not only to surrender, but to admit to the world and to its citizens the ignominious defeat of its philosophy of existence, which was essentially a philosophy of death.

Grant Jones, in his 2010 review of Lewis's book in Michigan War Studies Review, reprises Lewis's comparison of the strategies adopted by Civil War Generals George McClellan and William T. Sherman in Chapter Five, "The Hard Hand of War." McClellan, notes Lewis, was a superb administrator but a poor strategist, hamstrung by an ambivalent attitude towards his own troops and absent a clear goal.

Lewis shows that Sherman was cut from different cloth, not by focusing on his famous Marches, but by examining the moral force behind his ruthless strategy to destroy the Southern planter class. In looking at Sherman's correspondence with John Bell Hood, Lewis discerns the elements that together made Sherman's strategy so effective: properly assigning war guilt, developing an understanding of both one's own society and the enemy's, identifying the enemy's vital center, and defining victory. Lewis sums up Sherman's famous "War is cruelty" response to Confederate entreaties that he moderate his policies: "These familiar passages cut to the heart of Sherman's attitude toward an enemy that had started a war that his command now charged him to end: he accepted no guilt for a war that was not of his making. This sense of rightness allowed him to prosecute the war to its conclusion quickly, with his force directed at the true source of southern power rather than merely at military positions dependent upon that power.

Lewis briefly discusses the failed war policy of Vietnam, and further rebuts the many and varied arguments that the U.S. should not have used atomic bombs on Japan. He concludes his rebuttals with:

All weapons – from bowie knives to hydrogen bombs – are designed to kill, and there is a scale of destructiveness on which they fall….To break the Japanese leadership out of their ideological blunders and end the war, American leaders needed to kill a lot of Japanese in a visibly shocking way. The resulting shock led to an immediately end to the war.

The alternative, as described in detail by Lewis, was a massive invasion of Japan whose population was being exhorted to fight the Americans to the death with sticks and stones, thus prolonging the war and resulting in incalculable American casualties.

Compare America's warfighting philosophy then with that which has governed our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, governed by "just war theory" which deliberately, at the cost of American lives and treasure, spares enemy populations of the consequences of their active or passive support of their masters.

Lewis's book is not a cobbled-together collection of arbitrary, hindsight anecdotes, but one that takes the rare examples of proper warfighting policy adopted by aggressed-upon nations, and drives home the principles behind his thesis. The logical progression of his examples is enlightening and indisputable.

Lewis, a classical studies scholar, is the author of two previous books on the politics and judicial thought of antiquity, Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (Duckworth Publishers, 2008), and Early Greek Lawgivers (Duckworth Publishers, 2007). So it is not coincidence that he chose to illustrate his thesis in the first four chapters of Nothing Less Than Victory, covering the Greco-Persian Wars, the Theban war against Sparta, the Second Punic War, and Roman Emperor Aurelian's campaigns to prevent the disintegration of the Roman Empire. In each of these chapters he illustrates the efficacy of the policy of taking the war to the aggressor enemy's land for the sole purpose of deflating the aggressor's moral motivation.

Lewis concludes his nonpareil survey with this advisement:

Sic vis pacem, para bellum. Or – If you want peace, prepare for war.

Objectivist Round Up - May 31, 2012

Welcome to the May 31, 2012 edition of the Objectivist Round-Up.
This week presents insight and analyses written by authors who are
animated by Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. According to Ayn
Rand:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of
man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of
his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and
reason as his only absolute.



"About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix.

 So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up:



John Drake presents 3 Keys to Picking a Career posted at Try Reason!, saying, "After giving students advice on picking careers for many years, I have discovered there are three key things to picking one that captures your passions but is also profitable. Values, strengths, and opportunities. Read more..."




Roberto B Sarrionandia presents Tories vs The Enlightenment posted at Roberto Sarrionandia, saying, "Why a British exam question on Judaism is not racist, and what is revealed about the premises of the government officials who think it is."




Diana Hsieh presents Defecting to North Korea posted at Philosophy in Action, saying, "The horrifying story of a man who convinced his family to defect to -- yes, to -- North Korea."




Rational Jenn presents The One About ATLOSCon 2012 posted at Rational Jenn, saying, "All about my ATLOSCon 2012 experience! What can I say? It was wonderful and fulfilling!"




Paul Hsieh presents Scherz and Fogoros on USPSTF posted at We Stand FIRM, saying, "Two nice discussions on why the government wants to clamp down on preventive medicine."




C.W. presents The Immediate Important Lesson From Europe posted at Krazy Economy, saying, "We can learn from Europe what not to do first to move toward capitalism."




Darius Cooper presents To teach posted at Practice Good Theory, saying, "To teach is to step into another man's thought,..."




Peter Cresswell presents A conclusive experiment with a crucial lesson for Christchurch [updated] posted at Not PC, saying, "NZ's earthquake-ridden city of Christchurch has been treated by government as a welfare case instead of opened up as an enterprise opportunity. The experience of two US cities after tornado damage helps illustrate how wrong this approach has been."



***



That concludes this edition of the round-up. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Objectivist round-up using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Watch What You Say: A Guide for Dhimmis

Feeling a need to humor myself, and casting about for a way to cock a snook at the Department of Homeland Security and The Transportation Security Administration (in German, Die Abteilung der Heimatland-Sicherheit, and Die Transport-Sicherheitsverwaltung, one click of the heels and raised right arm, palm down, required for pronunciation, if you can manage it) and strike a blow for freedom of speech and the First and Fourth Amendments, the DHS provided me with a salubrious vehicle. Cowboy Byte and other blog sites reported the grudging release by the DHS of its 39-page Analyst's Desktop Binder (2011) containing words employed anywhere on the Internet that should cause red flags and whistles and bells to awaken the glaze-eyed human monitors and alert over-heating computers to open that Binder and follow its instructions.

The list is pseudo-comprehensive, including obvious terms that would slap a monitor on the back of his head when they pop up, and numerous terms used millions of times every day by Internet users, so that one wonders why they were included, unless the monitors and computers are programmed to look for suspicious combinations of two or more of them in sneaky repetitions or recurrences. The DHS may as well have programmed the whole Oxford English Dictionary and the Cambridge Complete Works of Shakespeare.

"The keywords are included…in the Binder," notes Cowboy Byte, "which also instructs analysts to hunt down media reports that reflect poorly on the department."

And they're not even in alphabetical order. Very, very sly. Makes it difficult to follow.

"It doesn't include the keyword list used by Obama's gang of plumbers who troll the Net for negative stories, or the NSA, which represents a whole different set of eyes that are watching you."

Well, let's give that a try, and reflect" poorly on our very own We Never Sleep Detective Agency, and imagine the critical infrastructure of the average DHS monitor's mind when he's on the job. Words in italics are push-their-button terms, except for book titles and the like. But, then, you never know. The lexicon reputedly is incomplete.

As a new hire, our man probably went through several weeks of orientation with other recruits, and he might have innocently asked his instructor why the Koran was not listed the Desktop Binder. The guide hemmed and hawed in his best professorial manner, claiming that Islam was never considered an enemy, all the evidence to the contrary, but the question was secretly logged into the new hire's personnel file under "Possible Islamophobic Tendencies and Symptoms." Not an auspicious start of a career of snooping.

The guide's answer was also secretly entered into his own personnel file. After a brief review of his record by a permanent and anonymous committee of employee evaluation, he was subsequently and regretfully furloughed, and his security clearance rescinded. One of his new hire charges happened to have been working for Internal Affairs, a department charged with the task of policing trainers and training classes and just about everyone who worked for the DHS. Except for Internal Affairs personnel.

In the subterranean consciousness of rank-and-file snoops, Internal Affairs had a nickname, the Mutaween, or The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Crimethink, modeled, some said, after the Saudi Arabian religious police, although no one dared investigate and confirm the parallel, nor could they, for all references to Islam, Muslims, mosques, beards and burkas had been excised from DHS literature. "Rhymes with Halloween," whispered the lowly amongst themselves.

Our new monitor learned later that any blunt but incautious reference to Islam and Muslims within the confines of his job – and even during chitchat at the water cooler or in the break room or at the Starbucks down the street – was considered hazmat jibber-jabber and evidence of a radioactive mindset that would be closely monitored by his supervisor. He would come to realize that if he did not wish to be considered toxic by his colleagues, he'd better put his mind in permanent lockdown. The pay was too good and the benefits too fabulous for him to risk losing them over a slip of the tongue or an impulsive fillip of independent thought. How often had the orientation instructor emphasized that certain words were verboten, because they could cause episodes of intellectual contamination, acting as bacteria that could metastasize into a plague of epistemological Ebola, and render the DHS impotent to detect and counter terrorists of anonymous and un-named allegiances?

"Not to worry, however," the instructor had droned on. "The Center for Disease Control has had added to its purview a new task, per executive order, that of managing mental mitigation among the populace. It works closely with the Department of Education to reduce human-to-human ideational infections."

One day, after a week on the job, the new hire was taken to lunch at a very expensive restaurant on K Street, the Tuscany Bar and Grille, by a veteran analyst, ostensibly to compliment him on his alertness and the number of alarms the novice had sent his way with the click of a button and the swish of a mouse.

After Trish, the comely waitress had taken their orders and served them glasses of Chianti, the analyst smiled and said, "That last referral of yours I had to share with my colleagues upstairs. It was worth a chuckle. The dirty bombe was merely a dessert recipe a lady in New Haven had sent to a friend in Cannes, consisting of strawberry mousse and ice cream packed into a pound cake coated with dark chocolate Godiva sprinkles." The analyst laughed. "Hardly the ingredients for an explosion, except to one's waistline, But she called it her 'Bombe Sale,' or Dirty Bombe,' and we had her investigated anyway. There was nothing cryptic in her communication. Our computers also analyzed the text and found nothing threatening in it, and gave the email a pass."

"Sorry about that," said the novice, humbled, and forgetting to smile at the analyst's funny.

"No, no," assured the analyst. "Don't be sorry. It showed you know the drill." He paused. "By the way, I heard that the lobby scanners confiscated a few books you brought to work the other day. What was that one? Atlas Shrugged?" The veteran clucked his tongue and shook his head. "At your age, reading such subversive trash!"

The novice looked perplexed. "Know your enemy," he ventured. "That's been my motto."

"Well, there's a difference between knowing one's enemy, and denying he is one. Our job is to detect and foil terrorists of all stripes, especially intellectual terrorists, such as the author of that badly penned novel. Leave enemy designations to your superiors. Don't go wandering off on your own. There is a point where initiative becomes a vice."

"Sorry," answered the novice.

"Then there was that other book the screeners took," said the analyst, furling his brow. "The Satiric Verses?"

"Satanic Verses, sir," corrected the novice with a tone of polite deference.

"Yes, yes," acknowledged the analyst. "By that odd fellow, what is his name? Salmonella?"

"Salman Rushdie," said the novice.

"Oh, yes. Well, that show-offy writer offended our Muslim friends with that one. Brought it upon himself. No sympathy for him. I've heard it's a lousy novel, anyway." The analyst recited a list of books the novice was advised never to bring to his job. "That new one by Gertie Wildman, that Dutch fellow, or whatever his name is, Marked for Death. The man is a dangerous paranoid. Lives in an armored car, I've heard. The Federalist Papers. Anything by Jefferson, Madison, Adams, that ilk. You don't want people to think you're going high-hat on us. Leave that old stuff to the courts and eggheads. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -- irredeemably subversive. Cool Hand Luke, that Pearce novel, and the movie, too. Claims to be an allegory on modern American society, according to our authorities here, just chock full of anti-government speeches and the like."

The analyst studied the novice's stupefied expression. "Tell you what, son. I'll draw up a list of no-no's and send it down to you. The whole grid of things to stay away from. All you have to do is abstain from reading or watching any of it. You wouldn't want any of those things to spill over into your work, would you? People might think you were in some secret militia spying on us."

"Thank you," said the new hire.

"No problem. Always glad to help the new boy find his way through the labyrinth. Ah! Here are our Panini Supremes!" the analyst exclaimed as the waitress appeared with their orders.

Our novice monitor, over the following weeks, gained confidence in his snooping and detection skills, learning how to filter innocuously used terms and forward the emails containing them to specific analysts, who specialized in various usages. A little quadrant of his gray cells, however, did wonder why, when most of the news concerning terrorist attacks invariably involved Muslims – he did, after all, watch TV news and read "safe" newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post – the terms "Muslim," "mosque," "Iran," "Afghanistan," "Pakistan," "Saudi Arabia," "iman," "mullah," "Syria," "CAIR," "MPAC," "MSA," "ISNA," "ICNA," and many other Islam-associated terms were not to be found in the Binder of All Knowledge and Threat Level Usages. But he cordoned off that quadrant of curiosity, refusing to allow it to cloud his performance or breach his commitment to national preparedness and domestic security. Homeland security trumped all definitions of common sense and required the most stringent enforcement.

He took special pride in forwarding to his analyst friend an email sent by a university medical researcher to a neurologist in private practice complaining that FDA regulations and delays inhibited pharmaceutical development of drugs that would not become treatment resistant in countless patients, and that when Obamacare went into full effect, medical and pharmaceutical research would come to a halt It was obviously an undisguised criticism of government policies, and the email suggested to the monitor the existence of a cabal of such people in all medical professions, a veritable conspiracy to incite a coordinated black out of medical services across the country.

He learned a week later that the purloined email led to the arrest by a special military SWAT team of the researcher and neurologist, who were incarcerated without charge indefinitely by the authority of a law passed by Congress a year before. Thus the monitor's first commendation was entered into his personnel file. Over lunch one day again at the Tuscany Bar and Grille with the analyst, after they had ordered, he queried: "Was there a conspiracy?"

"Probably," answered the analyst, "Whether or not there is or was, is irrelevant. We cannot tolerate resistance in any form. Not any kind of organized crime. Extraordinary threats justify extraordinary powers, to protect the Homeland, which, in the final analysis, is us. You and me, and all our colleagues. The Homeland isn't just the country, you see. It includes the state. You mustn't distinguish between them."

"I'm learning not to," answered the monitor eagerly. Still, a little comma of memory tickled the cordoned-off quadrant of his mind. He seemed to remember – and quite reluctantly – reading about historical figures who had uttered words similar to what the analyst had just explained: Bismarck, Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and others. But that reading was done long, long ago in grade school. He hoped his mother had gotten rid of those books, they were an embarrassment and possibly a liability. "I'm learning to get my mind right," he added, not realizing that submitting to authority was a subject of Cool Hand Luke, the book and the movie, because he had not read the book, nor watched the movie.

But the analyst, who had done both as part of his own training, and had tasted much more of the forbidden culture than he would ever confess to his protégé, smiled mysteriously and said, "Admirable effort, my friend. I see that you are trying not to remain a hostage to your youthful expectations."

Just then the waiter appeared with the analyst's Chicken Verduta Flatbread and the monitor's Risotta and Insalata. He gracelessly set the plates in front of the customers. The analyst frowned and looked up at the waiter, a large, bearded fellow with a swarthy complexion and an inscrutable visage. His white tunic seemed to about to burst from his weight.

"Say," ventured the annoyed analyst, "where's Trish, our usual server? Is she off today?"

The waiter smiled. "She is off. She had an accident with a box cutter. She is resting in the kitchen, with all the others." Then he reached inside his tunic, and, as he pressed a button, shouted, "Allahu Akbar!"

Only then did the analyst and his protégé notice that all the waiters were in the crowded, elegantly appointed dining room, standing erect among all the occupied tables, and were all reaching inside their tunics and shouting the unfamiliar malediction in chorus with the analyst's server. The analyst had just enough time to turn and see another waiter in the outdoor café, before he and his friend were blinded by a flash that turned them both into something resembling cooked calamari and tomato sauce.

The Washington Post, the next day, however, blamed the unfortunate incident, which claimed seventy-five lives (mostly federal employees, not counting the restaurant staff of fifteen), on a dispute between the restaurant owner, the Service Employees International Union, and a renegade splinter group of Occupy Wall Street.

End of story.

Sticks and Stones

Sticks and stones may break my bones, goes the adage, but names will never hurt me.

The new adage, tailored for our age, goes:

Sticks and stones may break my bones, and names, insults, derogatory remarks, denigrations, defamations, "hate" crimes, "bias intimidations," rude or indecent gestures, mockery, satire in textual print or imagery, disrespect, lifestyle harassment, bullying, and other verbal, visual, and non-violent actions, attempts at passive victimization and gross insensitivities that tend or are calculated to hurt, depress, humiliate, or shame me, and otherwise offend my self-esteem and rightful dignity, compromise my privacy, and diminish my standing in the eyes of my fellow creatures – may be grounds for civil and/or criminal suits.

Sticks and stones may be used in the commission of an actual felony, as well as guns, knives, one's fists, or any other physical object. But an evolving complement of new chargeable felonies, often appended to legitimate ones, is growing, and if not challenged, will reach a "critical mass" in law that will stifle all realms of speech. These new "felonies" are "hate crimes." A new subset of them is "bias intimidation."

In "The Peril of 'Hate Crimes'" I noted:

…[T]he why of a crime is increasingly treated as though it were a weapon, such as a gun, a knife, or a club. In standard criminal cases, however, it has never been the instrument of crime that was on trial, but the defendant and his actions.

Proponents of hate crime have attempted to find a compromise between objectivity in criminal law and the notion that a felon should also be punished for what caused him to commit the crime. But no such compromise is feasible if objective law is to be preserved and justice served. The irrational element – that is, making thought, however irrational or ugly it may be, a crime – has suborned the rational. No compromise between good and evil is lasting or practical. Evil will always come out the victor.

It did not take long for the corrupting notion of hate crimes to degenerate into thought crime. This is what happens when reason is declared irrelevant or is abandoned or diluted by the irrational.

It used to be that a criminal was sentenced for his crime, and if the crime was committed from some form of prejudice, the court's and jury's afterthought was usually: And, by the way, your motives are contemptible and despicable.

Appended now to a guilty verdict for the murder of an individual because of his race, gender "orientation," religion, or political affiliation, is another verdict: You had no right to think that way, so we are adding five years to your sentence and adding X amount to your monetary penalty.

"Bias intimidation" played a role in the conviction and sentencing of Dharun Ravi, the Rutgers freshman whose webcam spying allegedly drove roommate Tyler Clementi to commit suicide. The New York Times reported in March;

The jury in the trial of a former Rutgers University student accused of invading his roommate’s privacy by using a webcam to watch him in an intimate encounter began deliberations on Wednesday and asked the judge to define two crucial terms.

Jurors asked Judge Glenn Berman of Superior Court in Middlesex County to restate the definition of “intimidate,” as well as of the word “purpose,” as it related to the bias intimidation count.

The judge ruled that the defendant, Dharun Ravi, could be found guilty of bias intimidation only if he was also found guilty of the first charge, invasion of privacy. And he told the jury that the roommate, Tyler Clementi, would have been the victim of bias intimidation if he had been made to feel fear. [Italics mine.]

“A person is guilty of the crime of bias intimidation,” Judge Berman said, “if he commits an offense with the purpose to intimidate an individual because of sexual orientation.”

Mr. Ravi is charged with 15 counts, including bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence. Prosecutors say he encouraged friends to view a feed from his webcam that showed Mr. Clementi with another man. Mr. Clementi committed suicide shortly afterward, in September 2010.

And the denouement of this drama on May 21st, as reported by the Times:

The jury found that he did not intend to intimidate Mr. Clementi the first night he turned on the webcam to watch. But the jury concluded that Mr. Clementi had reason to believe he had been targeted because he was gay, and in one charge, the jury found that Mr. Ravi had known Mr. Clementi would feel intimidated by his actions.

On May 21, Mr. Ravi was sentenced to a 30-day jail term. He had faced up to 10 years in prison. He was also was sentenced to three years’ probation, 300 hours of community service, counseling about cyberbullying and alternate lifestyles and a $10,000 probation fee.

USA Today provided a few more details of the sentencing by Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman:

While Ravi wasn't charged in connection with his death, he was convicted of 15 counts, including two second-degree bias intimidation charges that carry a presumption of jail time. Ravi also was convicted of a second-degree hindering charge.

Judge Glenn Berman ordered Ravi, 20, to report to the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center on May 31.

Ravi must pay a fine and costs of more than $11,000 -- $10,000 of which will go to an agency that assists victims of bias crimes. Berman also ordered three years probation and 300 hours of community service.[Italics mine.]

USA Today included an important update, a point of Ravi's defense which the jury apparently ignored:

Ravi's defense team is making the case for an acquittal of the charges, saying Ravi did not know the effect his behavior would have on Clementi.

The unstated premise behind the whole trial was that Ravi had driven Clementi to commit suicide. And it is doubtful, highly doubtful, that Ravi's intentions were more than just exposing Clementi to adolescent ridicule. As a new college roommate, he barely knew Clementi. He could not know how "sensitive" he might have been to exposure, mockery, or to an invasion of his privacy. Ravi, then 18 years old, could not have known, even had he been 50 years old with a lifetime of experience behind him, what Clementi might have done as a result of his webcam spying which he shared with others.

Notice that the term bias intimidation is synonymous with bias crime. Whatever it is called, in New Jersey, the "crime" garners a presumption of jail time.

The larger picture is the introduction of the notion, not only of "hate crime," but of an appended but invalid felony charge that may accompany the charge of a validly defined felony. The question is – and it may be a moot question by this time – is how soon mere bias intimidation will be treated as synonymous with hate crime? How soon will individuals be taken to court and charged with it alone, without the excuse of having committed an actual felony?

Salman Rushdie, who surely knows something about the consequences of "defaming" a religion and its central icon, as well as having "insulted" or "offended" the feelings of Muslims, wrote in The New Yorker:

The creative act requires not only freedom but also this assumption of freedom. If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. If he is afraid of the consequences of his choice of subject or of his manner of treatment of it, then his choices will not be determined by his talent, but by fear. If we are not confident of our freedom, then we are not free.

Dharun Ravi is not a writer, or an artist. But if a writer or artist experiences the fear of what might happen if he allowed his creativity full rein, then he will not create anything but what has been approved by the million censors of protected classes, who could just as easily file suit against him and see him sentenced to a new Gulag, or just financially ruined. Fear of censorship shuts down the mind and sends it on the main traveled roads of the average, the unexceptional, the bland, the expected. Fear of censorship smothers thought, and makes freedom of expression of all but the mediocre impossible and a cruel taunt.

Let's examine the court's, the jury's, and the law's a priori assumptions, assumptions on which they acted. An a priori assumption is one that is knowable without further need to prove or experience. It just "is." . Clementi was gay. Ergo, Ravi's actions were anti-gay, or biased against gays, or in this instance, against Tyler Clementi because he was gay.

First, note that gays are now becoming a new "protected class," as surely as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the ICNA, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and other Hamas-linked "civil rights" groups are working to make Muslims and Islam a protected class, and with some success, especially in our judiciary, and most importantly in regards to what one may say about Muslims and Islam. .

As there is a legitimate distinction between premeditated and aggravated assault – premeditated meaning that a defendant meant to assault the victim, and his motive not being on trial, and aggravated meaning that the victim expected or apprehended physical assault or battery – will our courts now accept as a legitimate charge premeditated bias intimidation? Will a defendant be arraigned and indicted for aggravated bias intimidation?

If a legitimately defined felony can be deemed an action taken with malice aforethought, will writing satirically (or even seriously) about Islam, or gays, or badly dressed people, or obese people, or even about the disabled, be some day treated as malicious and biased intimidation, because the feelings of the subjects were hurt, or because the words instilled unprovable but asserted fear in them?

The emotional states of a felon and his victim are essentially immaterial when judging a crime. The contents of their thoughts are likewise not proper subjects for criminal justice. I could sit here and plot how to rob my bank, especially because I didn’t like the way a teller treated me the other day, but I could not be charged with any crime unless I acted on my thoughts (or my piqued sense of hurt and mistreatment). It is the action that would count, not my motive. Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman, in her article "Is There a Legal Problem with “Hate Crimes?” emphasizes this point:

The definition of "hate crime" is one of those overkill legislative initiatives with unforeseen consequences. It is noble to recognize that some people commit crimes out of hate, but a murder is a murder, and this should be enough.

How can we possibly know a criminal's inner thoughts (his hatred for his victim); furthermore, even if we can know this for certain, what difference does it make to the victim? The hatred of the murderer should only reflect upon the ultimate sentencing: premeditated and aggravated murder.

While a defendant's emotional or even considered "bias" or "hate" may be demonstrated and proven, it should have nothing to do with the criminal charge at hand. It is the criminal action that should be the subject, and the defendant punished for having taken the action. Murder is murder. Assault is assault. Robbery is robbery. The reason why a person commits a crime, or rather his motive, should not be "punishable" and within the aegis of criminal law. The law can decree that men stop thinking, or emoting, or forming opinions, but cannot enforce the decree. It is only fear of government and/or mob reprisals that may cause their minds to sputter to a halt, and die.

Little horrors, such as Judge Glenn Berman putting Dharun Ravi on probation for his "bias crime," have a way of trickling up to greater realms of human action because they remain unchallenged. There are many forces at work in this country to obviate the substance and meaning of the First Amendment. These range from the outright thuggery of an OWS-linked assault on restaurant patrons, to the concerted campaign by Islamic supremacists to outlaw criticism of Islam, to a confused judiciary that is losing sight of individual rights and replacing them with collective rights.

Salman Rushdie has to date escaped the sticks and stones of the Iranian fatwa on his life, but is certainly right about the miasma of fear and political correctness that stifles and smothers freedom of expression.

Little horrors like "bias intimidation" can and will contribute to a greater, incremental, and totalitarian horror.

Facebook Founder Flees Fleecing

The subheading would read: Globalist Senators in Hot Pursuit.

One look at the arrogant, sneering expression on the face of Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat, New York) and one glance at what he had to say about Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin's renunciation of his U.S. citizenship in favor of living in Singapore, and I felt an immediate and compulsive urge to, well, slap Schumer silly. Instead, I must leave him with worse than a stung cheek and a cleaned clock.

But then I'd go to jail, because it's a capital offense to strike any member of Congress. Congressmen, however, may assault us with taxes, regulations and countless Bronx cheers and sneers from the safety of their aerie of indemnification, and walk away with impunity.

Schumer said Saverin's actions were "an outrage," adding Saverin "wants to de-friend the United States of America just to avoid paying taxes. We aren't going to let him get away with it." He said Saverin "turned his back on the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him and helped him become a billionaire."

So, I must settle for characterizing Schumer and his colleagues in Congress as a slimy, collective, real-life Jabba the Hutt, the crime lord from Star Wars.

They are the less-than-one-percent filthy rich that OWS isn't concerned about, an elite bevy of senators and congressmen who usually retire from "public service" (that is, from serving the public sunny side up) to multiple homes, continuing fringe benefits, sumptuous taxpayer paid health plans excluded from Obamacare, and cushy university appointments or a lucrative lecture circuit. I call them "filthy rich" because their wealth is largely ill-gotten through connections with lobbyists and special interests and crony capitalists and each other.

I grimace every time I read of a Senate or House ethics committee grilling a victim or plying a leftist activist ringer with leading questions (e.g., Sandra Fluke), when the only ethics Congress is noted for practicing is that of a thug wielding the club of a subpoena. The Party is immaterial. As a rule, Congress lets its own malefactors off the hook with a verbal slap on the wrist. See the careers of Charles Rangel and John Kerry. They can lie through their teeth and juggle the books, but they're still there, untouched.

To return to Eduardo Saverin – here is a man who helped to create a means for uncounted millions to find friends, make connections, and communicate with the rest of the world without spending anything more than their own time. Saverin and his former partner Mark Zuckerberg (now worth $17.5 billion) deserve every penny of profit from their efforts. I do not use Facebook much myself, and there are aspects to it I don’t particularly like, although I have a page which I use primarily to alert "friends" (and enemies) to my columns and writing projects. Facebook went "public" with an Initial Public Offering that dazzled some investors, others less so.

Why did Brazil-born Saverin renounce his U.S. citizenship, which he did in September 2011 and paid the extortionate "exit tax"?

“My decision to expatriate was based solely on my interest in working and living in Singapore, where I have been since 2009,” Saverin, 30, said in a statement released to ABC News. “I am obligated to and will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to the United States government. I have paid and will continue to pay any taxes due on everything I earned while a U.S. citizen.”

Saverin, who helped Mark Zuckerberg develop the social network as Harvard students, is expected to save millions of dollars by not paying capital gains taxes on his shares of Facebook, which is expected to have the largest technology IPO ever on Friday.

Saverin paid a standard “exit” tax, which included approximately 15 percent of the pre-IPO value of his shares. Saverin is likely saving millions of dollars because he will not pay capital gains taxes while he lives in Singapore.

“As a native of Brazil who immigrated to the United States, I am very grateful to the U.S. for everything it has given me,” Saverin said. “In 2004, I invested my life’s savings into a start-up company that initially was run out of a college dorm room. Since then the company has expanded dramatically, has created thousands of jobs in the United States and elsewhere, and spawned countless new companies across the United States and other countries.”

All those jobs and new companies are nothing to Jabba the Hutt, nor is the fact that Saverin has already been fleeced by the Treasury Department per Congress's own rules for departing citizens.

The performance of Facebook stock is not the subject here. It opened at $45 a share on the 18th and closed at $38. Whether it will become another Microsoft or Apple stock, or fade away as a flash-in-the-pan, remains to be seen. Some financial observers are wild about it. Some aren't.

Senators, Representatives, and Presidents, however, do not announce IPO's. They make offers Americans can't refuse. Or rather they delegate the tasks to vast, impersonal bureaucracies, which implement the ethics of gangland extortion, shake-downs, and protection rackets. Project, if you will, life in these United States as one enormous TSA airport checkpoint. As Forbes notes: (3)

It is unimaginable that U.S. taxes were not a huge part of his decision, since “taxpatriations” are now all the rage. See Celebrity Leavings: Bidding Stars Adieu. And that is perfectly legal. Tax avoidance intent when expatriating used to trigger tougher tax rules, but that changed in 2008. Tax motivation is no longer even relevant to the tax treatment of citizens or permanent residents who permanently depart the U.S. See Ten Facts About Tax Expatriation.

Inevitably there are tax issues on the way out. U.S. citizens or long-term residents who expatriate after June 16, 2008.are treated as having sold all their worldwide property for its fair market value the day before leaving the U.S. Although taxed as a capital gain, this “exit tax” is unforgiving. See Rich Americans Voting with their Feet to Escape Obama Tax Oppression.

Senator Schumer and his grim-faced co-author of the "Ex-Patriot Act" bill, Pennsylvania Democrat, Senator Bob Casey, are "globalists." That is, they wish to pursue "tax dodgers" beyond American shores with the full power of the Treasury Department to snare expatriate money squirreled away by its owners to protect it from evangelical thieves like Schumer and Casey and their ilk in Congress and the various Washington satrapies. The government has done this before with the same sanctimonious ballyhoo.

In 2008, a hearing by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, estimated that at least 19,000 US citizens were hiding “undeclared accounts” with the help of UBS bankers.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the committee chairman, stated that these accounts held "$18 billion dollars in assets that have been kept secret from the IRS." At the time, UBS was also being investigated by the IRS, the FBI, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

UBS stated that "undeclared" accounts would no longer be provided as a "service" and that they were planning to weed out those existing accounts; suggesting that they would reveal such account holders to authorities…Last year, The Swiss bank agreed to give U.S. tax authorities the records for more than 4,450 American clients. [Ernest] Vogliana is just one of the seven people that were charged by the U.S Attorney’s office last year. [80 years old, sentenced to two years' probation and fined $900,000 in penalties for depositing $4 million with UBS.]

Saverin's public statement about his citizenship was ill-advised. He should have simply vanished and have had nothing to say after Schumer's hue and cry. His renunciation was likely leaked to the MSM, which promptly took up its pitchforks and torches, led by Schumer and Company. They wish to bring an end to the Frankenstein monster of an evader of the capital gains tax. Schumer wishes to make an example of Saverin – as a warning to other Americans who want to escape servitude and the malignant psychosis of envy that governs the actions of creatures such as Schumer, Casey and their ilk. He has admitted as much.

Schumer called Saverin's decision "outrageous" and labeled his tactics a "scheme."

"Saverin has turned his back on the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him, and helped him become a billionaire," Schumer said. "This is a great American success story gone horribly wrong."

The only thing wrong with that "success story" is that the country did not keep Saverin safe, did not educate him, and did not help him become a billionaire. But then, according to Schumer's metaphysics, all good things pour from the cornucopia of federal largesse and legislation. No one could exist or save a dime unless Washington, like God or Allah, made it happen.

My point here is that Schumer and his ilk wish to cut off all escape for those who wish to protect their wealth by placing it in off-shore bank accounts. They wave the flag of "paying one's fair share" of taxes when they know damned well that if all the billionaires in America were tomorrow stripped of their wealth and saw all their physical and financial assets seized, and were reduced to sleeping in Zuccotti Park with the OWS, it would result in only a miniscule ding in the national debt while it continues to mount, thanks to legislation passed by Congress. A spitball launched from a slingshot will not pierce the hide of a rhinoceros.

Perhaps that's an insult to rhinoceroses. Again, think instead of Jabba the Hutt and the spitball embedded in his revolting epidermis.

I do not underestimate Senator Schumer's intelligence. He knows that this administration's economic and "social" policies have cooked this country. He knows that it's riding for a fall. He wants to make sure that no one escapes its fate. Schumer is a "humanitarian." A "progressive." A socialist. He doesn't want to die, but if he must die, he wants to ensure that his moral betters do not continue living. Whatever Eduardo Saverin's virtues or flaws, he produced something that Schumer et al. could never even imagine. Looters are not creators, except in the many ways to penalize success, such as the "exit tax" for anyone who renounces his U.S. citizenship. Again, as Kelly Phillips Erb of Forbes explains it:

The expatriation laws are a bit tricky. The basic rule is that, for purposes of the tax, any assets that you leave the country with are treated as though you had sold them on the date before you leave. Any gain which would have occurred had you actually sold those assets are subject to tax (with some exceptions). So Saverin doesn’t get a free pass. His assets are still subject to tax. Lucky for Saverin, however, the value of his assets pre-IPO are [sic] still considerably less than the value of his assets post-IPO. And by lucky, I mean absolutely planned.

…Saverin’s advisors are pretty savvy: Singapore is a terrific choice because it does not have a capital gains tax. It’s also no stranger to expats from all over the world because of its favorable tax laws.

Saverin, age 30, was also moved to renounce his citizenship because Singapore does not recognize dual citizenship beyond the age of 21.

Also important to note is that the U.S. is now violating the sovereignty of other nations by conducting raids on those countries' banks and financial institutions in pursuit of wealth that will not ameliorate the government's debt. These are vendetta raids moved by a malice for the "rich" that knows no bounds – except when it comes to speculating on the net worth of individual Congressmen and federal executives and other czars, and then the drawbridges of privacy are raised to block invasive inquiries. Schumer's press conference was a vote-garnering public relations ploy to assuage the fictive envy of an imaginary citizenry whom he and Congress presume wishes to send the rich to an auditor's guillotine. The New York Times reported in 2011:

The penalty [on foreign banks] stems from the violation of a rule known as Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, or Fbar(pronounced EF-bar), that requires American taxpayers with overseas bank accounts and foreign assets to file a special disclosure with the Treasury Department each year. The top penalty for failing to file the disclosure is 50 percent of the account balance for each year of violation, a level that can leave tax evaders owing multiples of what their accounts hold.

Now the Justice Department, which is conducting a broadening inquiry into Swiss and Swiss-style banks, including Credit Suisse and HSBC, according to court papers and statements by the banks, is exploring how and whether it could apply the penalty to the banks, should it find that they violated American tax laws, according to two persons briefed on the matter. The persons, one in government and the other in private legal practice, spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

The malice does not end with punishing U.S. citizens. The Treasury and Justice Departments also penalize those foreign banks for "abetting" tax evasion. This is intended to frighten and discourage foreign banks from offering succor and security to American depositors. Of course, the MSM applauds that move, as well. But the federal government throwing its weight around is not nearly the eye-candy of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. Imagine now Jabba the Hutt doing the Twist with one of his slave girls.

Complementing the spectacle of the federal government going on pillaging Easter egg hunts overseas, is the proposed surrender of U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations in a bewildering array of concessions to that looters' club of dictatorships, theocracies, tyrannies, and one-man régimes. Call it a kind of political schizophrenia. Only when the U.N. and the European Union impinge on Congressional power will one hear Congressmen cry foul. However, if the power violates the sovereignty of individual Americans and subjects them to the ukases, mercies and injustices of foreign politicians and bureaucrats, that is only fair and proper for the greater good of global amity. Canada Free Press reports:

Last week, the Senate gave…a clear and unmistakable illustration of why we need to sack all the Democrats, and a bunch of the RINOs, too. They voted down not one, not two, but five budget bills, four of which would actually have done America some good. This comes as we move into the fourth year that the Senate has failed to do its duty by passing a budget, leaving the country economically adrift.

That great patriot and Swift Boat Hero from his four whole months in Vietnam, John Kerry (R-MA), has vowed to get them onto the Senate floor for votes as soon, he hopes, as this summer. They include:

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS or LOST, “Law of the Sea), which cedes control of all the world’s oceans and their contents, including our territorial waters, to the U.N.; The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, aka, Small Arms Treaty, that would virtually outlaw privately owned firearms or ammunition of any sort; he United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which takes away parental rights to raise their children as they choose, and gives them to the U.N.; The International Criminal Court, which allows foreigners to have Americans arrested and tried in kangaroo “international” courts, using foreign law; The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which destroys, among many other things, marriage; And a host of outrageous environmental treaties that would doom most of the world’s people to Third-World level poverty in a world-wide police state.

Our omnivorous (and carnivorous) Congress wishes to nail American taxpayers coming and going, and even when they stay put, susceptible to arrest by the U.N., the OIC, and the European Union. Who could have guessed a hundred years ago that Congress would make the surrender of the sovereignty of one's own life to both the parasites of the welfare state here and abroad a measure of one's "patriotism"?

November cannot come too soon. It may be too late for Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg, but Senator Schumer and his looting gang must be shown the door as finally as Jabba the Hutt met his end before they do more damage to America. Perhaps, for starters, a charge of treason for not abiding to their oaths of office to preserve and protect would be entirely and legally appropriate.

Alias Marx and Alinsky

Calling socialists liberals is as deceptive as calling goose gizzards foie gras. It fools no one but the epistemologically blinkered. The term liberal allows liberals to pose as concerned, generous and forward-thinking individuals and to act under what was once an honorable term for anyone who advocated or endorsed liberty. And as any well-read American knows, liberals do not advocate liberty. Quite the opposite.

The subject here is the devolution of the term liberal, not its evolution.

Even out-and-out communists are called liberals. President Barack Obama is called a "liberal." The late Senator Ted Kennedy was called a "liberal." Barney Frank is a liberal. Obama's cabinet is largely staffed by liberals (unless outed, as self-confessed communist Van Jones was). Communism and socialism still carry a bad reputation, so everyone, including the Main Stream Media, and even well-intentioned pundits and commentators friendly to liberty, use the term liberal. The MSM, however, does it to dodge the reputation. Others use it from habit or ignorance, or because calling liberals socialists or communists in drag might open a can of worms they couldn't handle. This is courtesy carried to a fault. Underlying the fault is a fear of the inevitable clash between those who advocate freedom, and those who do not.

Obama's campaign slogan, "Forward," is simply a Progressive marching order. "Forward" to what? To socialism. To communism. To a command economy and a slave state, one half governed by bureaucrats, the other half by an alliance of Islam and quivering religionists of various stripes, willing to pay jizya to Islam in order to be granted their "religious freedom."

The Washington Post trumpeted "Forward" with no reservations or even curiosity about its Communist and Nazi origins. But then the Washington Post has been in the Saul Alinsky camp for over a generation.

One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky.

Agnes Meyer personally wrote a six-part series in 1945, praising Alinsky's work in Chicago slums. Her series, called "The Orderly Revolution," made Alinsky famous. President Truman ordered 100 reprints of it.

In 1989, The New York Times waxed poetic about Alinsky's powerful friends, and also provided some important information in the course of a review of a biography of Alinsky by Sanford D. Horwitt:

By the end of World War II Alinsky had won a measure of national renown. His ''Reveille for Radicals'' (1945) hit the best-seller list, and he secured the fervent support of important liberals like Agnes E. Meyer of The Washington Post and the retail magnate Marshall Field 3d. Though it undercuts his larger portrait, Mr. Horwitt shows that much of Alinsky's acclaim rested upon his promise that social reform and a democratic revival could take place through what Meyer called an ''orderly revolution,'' which would bypass the new power of the unions and reject the growth of an intrusive New Deal state. Thus ''Reveille for Radicals,'' which ostensibly celebrated social conflict, was panned by most of the left but acclaimed by Time, The New York Times and other mass circulation publications.

Neither Time, nor the Washington Post, nor the New York Times has changed its tune. If anything, they have grown more shrill from the standpoint of endorsing not just Alinsky but socialism. But they repress that term socialism, and deny they are of the Left. They'll admit only that they're "progressive" because, you see, they're "humanitarians." Well, so were Pol Pot, and Mao, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Hitler. So are Robert Mugabe, and Hugo Chavez, and Ahmadinejad, and all the Kings of Saudi Arabia.

But, what are uncountable millions of dead of humanitarianism, when "progress" has been made, and man has been nudged "forward" into impoverished, straight-jacketed societies?

Let's set the record straight. Liberals are fundamentally collectivists. Specifically, either socialists or communists. Their policies and programs are demonstrably socialist or communist, whether one is speaking of Social Security, Medicare, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and innumerable regulatory and confiscatory programs and policies, practically every bit of legislation that has been entered into The Congressional Record and The Federal Register for the last one hundred years. The term liberal should be retired, put out to pasture, and substituted with the appropriate and correct terms.

Here is a sampling of definitions of the term liberal:

1. Having, expressing, or following political views or policies that favor civil liberties, democratic reforms, and the use of government power to promote social progress….3. Of, designating, or belonging to a political party that advocates liberal social or political views, esp. in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company) 1985. (This is the first definition. Root meanings connected with generosity, open-mindedness, tolerance, etc., follow it. This is a significant order.)

6a. Of, favoring, or based on the principles of liberalism. 6b. Of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism; esp. of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated with ideas of individual esp. economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reform designed to secure those objectives. Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (G. & C. Merriam Company) 1967. (Meanings connected with generosity, tolerance, etc. precede the political meanings.)

II. 1. Any person who advocates liberty of thought, speech, or action; one who is opposed to conservatism: distinguished from radical. 2. Liberal Party, a party in English politics formed by the coalition of the Whigs and Radicals about 1830: opposed to Tory. The Practical Standard Dictionary of the English Language (Funk & Wagnalls Company) 1939. (Meanings connected with generosity, etc. precede the political ones.)

And finally:

3. (Polit.) Favorable to democratic reform and individual liberty, (moderately) progressive (the Liberal Party). The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Sixth Edition, 1976. (Here, too, meanings connected with generosity, etc., precede the political definition. This is an acceptable condensation of the term from the two-volume Compact edition of the OED, 1971, whose entry is about half a foot in length in very tiny print, most of whose information is not relevant to my purpose here.)

Notice that the older the dictionary, the more liberty-linked the definition is. The American Heritage definition marks the end of the road for the term liberal, stressing the use of government power to promote social progress. Social progress is a catch-all euphemism for the collectivization of society and the assumption of more and more power by the government. It does not mean the liberation of men from other men's alleged needs or claimed "rights," but the forced or legislated chaining of all men to each other's alleged needs or alleged, government sanctioned "entitlements." It is the devious and misleading byword for incremental socialism, or Progressivism.

You will never hear Brian Williams of NBC or Bob Schieffer of CBS counter George Will or Charles Krauthammer with a statement, "But, we the Left don't think that's a good policy…." You will never hear them admit that they are of and for the Left. That would be "telling," as a con artist's "tell" is a warning that he's about to scam you.

One could say that today's liberals are the true conservatives, that is, those who wish to preserve the status quo of the welfare state and government power over individuals and their property, and any and all socialist programs and policies now in force.

And what do the designated "conservatives," or the "right wing," stand for today, that is, those who identify themselves as Republicans? Nothing, except for a watered-down version of what Progressives, socialists and communists have created over the course of a century, most often accompanied by an appeal to "tradition" and religious faith. All Progressive legislation is altruist and collectivist in nature. Conservatives have never challenged the moral foundations of Progressivism. They can't, because they subscribe to the same morality. They will never confess that Progressives have elevated the state to take the place of a deity, and that men should live for the secular deity's moral code of self-sacrifice and obedience to the state's commands. Also known as The Ten Thousand Commandments .

Social progress implies there are social problems to be solved and overcome. What are the problems? In the beginning, it was a concern – and not an actual problem – of working conditions at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Reformers wailed over the fact that factories employed children and women, neglecting the fact that children and women would otherwise have perished in poverty and disease at the outset of the Revolution, and in fact did perish in the centuries preceding the Revolution. By the millions.

The Abolitionist Movement identified slavery as a major social problem. The result was the Civil War. But the "problems" were numerous, and continue to be numerous and otherwise fictive or imaginary. In search of the City on the Hill, or Utopia, or a "just and fair" society, problems are naturally endless. The sole alternatives as the means to correct or ameliorate them have been: voluntarism or force. Progressivism chose force, because too many people thought the problems were not problems at all. Force bypasses volition or voluntary action.

Successes were many, beginning with the Interstate Commerce Act (1887), and the Sherman Antitrust Act 1890). Progressives never spoke with one mind and differed sharply over the most effective means to deal with the ills generated by the trusts; some favored an activist approach to trust-busting, others preferred a regulatory approach.

A vocal minority supported socialism with government ownership of the means of production. Other progressive reforms followed in the form of a conservation movement, railroad legislation, and food and drug laws.

More recent social "problems" led to the endless "war on poverty," and the "war on drugs." Having nearly exhausted the major "social problems," Progressives or socialists are reaching deeper into the bottomless pit of "problems" and coming up with concerns with "wars" on obesity, salt, sugar, smoking, gender inequality in the workplace, in insurance, in the military, on incandescent light bulbs, sexism, ageism, and so on. Name a norm established by men without government supervision or guidance, and Progressives are against it. They immediately wish to abolish the liberty, or subject it to controls, regulation, and licensing. All for the sake of one's "fellow men," in the name of that prettified version of mob rule, "democracy."

All this goes on, and has been going on, more obviously, since the late 19th century. But Progressivism, a.k.a. socialism, has been advanced by intellectuals and writers ever since, say, Rousseau and his contemporaries in the 18th century. It has been disparate in means and ends ever since, but during the 19th century coalesced into a behemoth of an ideology posing as a love for the poor and other alleged victims of freedom. It no longer asks men to "love their neighbors"; it commands that they fetter themselves to each other in the name of "social progress."

Progressivism inculcates in its minions an obsessive-compulsive psychology. Just as Muslim men are obsessed with sex because Islam, on the one hand, hates women, and on the other, targets them for unrestrained and permissible abuse in the way of ownership, rape, enslavement, beating, and "honor-killing," Progressivism requires that all men answer to and be accountable to the state. The state establishes criteria of what is good and what is bad when addressing men's actions and values. It is a prescription for ownership and enslavement, as well. The key to the success of Progressivism is to ensure that a habit of dependency on statism is bred in men.

As the narrator of "If I Wanted America to Fail" notes:

…I'd demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.

But first, demonize individualism, independence, and living one's own life, so that men will not miss what they once had, because submission to government controls is so much easier.

This has been, briefly, an account of the devolution of "liberalism." Progressive, liberal or socialist rhetoric is tailored for public consumption, usually innocuous and goose-feather pillow soft, so as not to alarm the public. The title of this column is frankly a parody of that successful TV Western, "Alias Smith & Jones," about a couple of outlaws promised amnesty if they "reformed." I could just as well have parodied the films, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" or "Bonnie and Clyde," for all three "entertainments" portray outlaws as basically nice people who mean well and just happen to commit crimes and who otherwise might have been your next-door neighbors, ready for a barbeque and a round of poker.

In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits, and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.

So, the radicals cut their hair, donned suits, hunkered down to win those Ph.D's, and infiltrated academia, for one thing. And here's the tip-off about the altruist nature of Progressivism and socialism, and their link to government force:

In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti – Al Capone's second-in-command – gave Alinsky clout on the street.

Just as Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky have wielded clout in political thought and in "practical politics." They, too, "meant well" and were otherwise forgettable souls whom one might pass on a street.

It's time for liberals to "man up," drop the demure veil, or take off the smiley mask, or come out of the totalitarian closet. It's time for them to stop the charade and confess their collectivist allegiances, and for their opponents to call them what they are.

Then we'll see some sparks fly, instead of the dissembling back-and-forth rhetoric between the Republicans and Democrats.

Gunfights, anyone?

Objectivist Round Up - May 10, 2012

Welcome to the May 10, 2012 edition of the Objectivist Round-Up.
This week presents insight and analyses written by authors who are
animated by Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. According to Ayn
Rand:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of
man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of
his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and
reason as his only absolute.



"About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix.

So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up:




Welcome to the May 10, 2012 edition of objectivist round up.



Josh Windham presents The Conservative War on Sex | The Undercurrent posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "Josh Windham weighs in on one of the profoundly anti-life positions of the religious right."




Josh Windham presents Hate Crimes Legislation Unmasks Blind Justice | The Undercurrent posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "An argument in favor of objective law and against the "hate crime" classification."




Josh Windham presents All Entrepreneurs are “Social” Entrepreneurs | The Undercurrent posted at The Undercurrent, saying, "An exploration of the newfangled concept "social entrepreneurism.""




Edward Cline presents The Peril of "Hate Crimes" posted at The Rule of Reason, saying, "A totalitarian anti-concept of "justice" has been gnawing away at objective law without correction or opposition, and making rapid progress in a judicial system that has steadily abandoned reason and the protection of individual rights: hate crime" 



Paul Hsieh presents Linking Licensure to Mandatory Service posted at We Stand FIRM, saying, "A new way for the government to extort "free" labor from lawyers. Will doctors be next?"




John Drake presents 5 year goals update posted at Try Reason!, saying, "An update on my 5 year goals. Why should you care? To see intergration in action."




Diana Hsieh presents ATLOSCon 2012 posted at Philosophy in Action, saying, "I'm excited to be speaking on "Forgiveness, Redemption, and the Virtue of Justice" at ATLOSCon this year!"




Darius Cooper presents The men who caused the Great Recession posted at Practice Good Theory, saying, "Look who were supposed to save the world.



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That concludes this edition of the round-up. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Objectivist round-up using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.