Collectivism - Bah, Humbug!

Conservative ideas are like fertilizer.
Spread them around to make things grow.

Here are a some recent new articles I've written in other media (spreading the joy around so to speak). 

1.  On Collectivism:  The Marxist/Socialist/Collectivists among us make me tired. So "What's Wrong With Collectivism?",  you ask.

2.   On Terrorism: Should We Give Evil People a Podium?

3.  On Conspiracy Nuts:  A Merrier World Indeed 

Finally, I want to thank my liberal and libertarian buds who harangue me constantly and in the process, do manage to give me plenty of stuff to write about.

Have a lovely weekend.

Tom King (c) 2013

Government Inherently Good? Are You Kidding Me?

Harry Reid says, "Government is inherently good."

Let's take a closer look at that claim.  Government is inherently good,huh?

• Tell that to the six million holocaust victims and six million German citizens exterminated by Adolph Hitler.
• Tell that to the 43 million plus victims of Joltin' Jo Stalin and the overall 62 million for the Soviet Union 1917-1987.
• Tell that to the 40-70 million executed, starved and worked to death by Chairman Mao.
• Tell that to the untold millions killed in the Hundred Years War, The 30 Years War, The War of the Roses, The Crusades, The uncountable jihads, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, the Gulf Wars, terrorist attacks and brush wars everywhere.
• Tell that to those who lived under Napoleon, who were slaughtered by Ghengis Khan and who died at the hands of twisted emperors like Nero, Caligula, Commodus, Domitian and Elagabalus. 
• The 75,000 Muslims massacred by Ferdinand Marcos
• The one million killed in Ethiopia by the Marxist Regime in the 80s.
• The 600,000 ethnic Chinese killed by the Indonesian government in the early 60s.
• The 2 million Cambodians murdered by Pol Pot in the killing fields.
• The 800,000 Tutsi and Hutu "dissidents" slaughtered by Rwanda's Hutu government in the 90s.
• The 200,000 Muslims murdered by the Serbian government in the 90s.
• The 2 million Armenians exterminated by the Ottoman Empire in the early years of the 20th century.
• The 10,000 people who hurled themselves from cliffs as ordered by Japanese Emperor Hirohito because he was afraid US forces would treat the so well after the conquest that it would be bad PR and lessen the "fighting spirit" of Japanese mainlanders.
• The 300,00 Chinese men, women and children brutalized, raped and murdered by Japanese troops in Nanking China.
• The 40,000 Frenchmen who died on the orders of Maximilien Robespierre.
• The 30,000 Iranians executed for having incorrect political opinions by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
• The 500,000 killed by Idi Amin Dada, the lunatic that ran Uganda for many years.
• The 3 million Congolese killed, maimed and tortured by King Leopold II of Belgium at end of the 1800s and early 1900s.
• Oliver Cromwell's extermination of one fifth of the entire population of Ireland.
• The 10,000 Romanians that Vlad III, King of Romania impaled for his amusement on large pointed stakes round his castle.
• The one thousand citizens of Novgorod who were daily executed in front of the castle while Ivan the Terrible and his family watched the festivities.  The people were suspected of being about to run away from Russia.
• Saddam Hussein's gassing and mass murder of some 600,000 Iraqi citizens.
• Kim Il Sung's genocide which took 1.6 million victims.
• And that's the short list.....

Now, once again, Senator, tell me again how a big powerful government is inherently good.

Tom King (c) 2013

The States Rights Myth Revived

I'm a proud Texan.  While I think Sam Houston was in many ways an egotist and a lousy general. His treatment of the heroic Texas Navy was reprehensible. His men forced him to fight at San Jacinto. He was something of a drunk.  But he was absolutely right about secession being wrong.

I used to have a Confederate battle flag and used to irritate my Yankee boss at summer camp by flying it all over the place as a prank. I never thought anything about it. I'm the furthest thing from a racist you'll ever find. To me the flag was a bit of Southern rebelliousness and I thought it was a pretty flag.

There has been an effort of late to argue that the Confederacy was all about states rights and not about slavery.  Well, certainly there was a lot of noise about state's rights in the early days of the war, but everyone, I thought, knew the fight was over slavery.  The states right the CSA particularly wanted was the right to own slaves.

In trying to make the argument that the Civil War was all about state's rights and had nothing to do with slavery, one of the proponents of this rehabilitation of the Confederacy disdainfully urged those who disagreed with him to "...study history before we say stupid things".

So I did.

First I read the Constitution of the Confederacy and found these passages:

• Sec. 2. (I) The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired. 

•  In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States. 

•  (4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

This was pretty mild language in the actual document, but it certainly legitimized slavery and enshrined that "peculiar institution" in law.  The rhetoric in the Confederate Congress was far less polite than the constitution was.  If you want a clear view of what the Civil War was about, read this excerpt of a speech given by Alexander H. Stephens, March 21, 1861 in Savannah Georgia.  Called the "Cornerstone Speech" it makes it quite clear that the patriarchs of the South understood that the founding fathers of the United States had never supported slavery and had always intended that it would eventually fade away.  His speech makes it clear that the founding fathers of the CSA were very deliberately fighting to preserve the institution of slavery.  Here is a refreshingly honest admission of this from CSA Vice-President Stephens. It's about all the history you'll need.  Stephens tried to back off some of what he said when he ran for Governor after the war, but he never backed off the idea that the negro was inferior to the white man. Never.  Here are his own words.

•  The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

• Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal. 

Okay, I studied the history.  The Civil War was most certainly about slavery and I can see why the Confederate Battle Flag, as beautiful as it is as flags go, is seen as a symbol of racism by black Americans.

That's why I hauled it down and raised the Texas Flag in its place.

Tom

A Merrier World Indeed.....

Is anyone else besides me a sickened by the wave of conspiracy nuts exploiting yesterday's tragedy; swarming on the Internet like so many locusts descending on the fields of Egypt.

In the wake of things like the Boston Marathon Bombing, after all the hysteria, name-calling, blaming and inflammatory rhetoric from both sides, it remains, int the end, when the dust settles, for men and women of good will and good sense to pick up the pieces and sort out the mess. How much better would it be for such people to take the reins in the beginning.  Listen to one another, work together and find what common ground there is and then search for workable solutions to real problems instead of building monuments to our own egos on top of every crisis and tragedy that scrolls across our TV screens.

Aren't we better than that - at least most of us.  As Tolkien observed in The Hobbit. “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world indeed."

These are the kind of people we should pay attention to and elect as our leaders, not that bunch of prancing egotists who post rivers of bile on the World Wide Web and who put themselves up for public office.

Perhaps all political negotiations should be potluck dinners, after which there should be singing. It might help attract a better sort of candidate.

I'm just saying.

Tom King (c) 2013

You're Money is No Good Here, Pardner!

Can you say "Mark of the Beast"?

 And so it begins.

I got a notice in the mail today.  My wife's HMO will no longer accept cash in payment for services.  Apparently it's a money-saving measure designed to reduce the insurance provider's costs.  When they doubled her premium in January, I called the customer service lady and asked about the higher bill.  She told me flatly that they had raised her rate.

"Is this some of that ObamaCare savings we've been hearing about?" I asked.  I heard a sound like someone dropping their coffee cup on the other end.

"Why no," she sputtered amidst the noisy shuffling of damp paperwork on the other end of the phone. "You see," she explained, "Your wife did use the insurance last year."

"Uh, huh," I shrugged.  You can't argue with logic like that.

Now her HMO will no longer take cash when you pay your copay at the doctor's office, lab or pharmacy.  They say it's in order to save themselves money.  You may only use a credit card, bank debit card or write a check which will be instantly verified electronically and debited from your account.  Of course that makes it difficult for anyone without a bank account.  I had that happen once when a client stiffed me for $1800 at a time I had no cash reserve.  It took me three months to find another project and pay back every cent that I was overdrawn at the bank.  The bank canceled my account and blackballed me so I couldn't get another bank account for the next 2 years and had to leave the state to do so.

"Ah, but never fear," says the HMO.  "We've thought of that."  All you have to do is go down to the Wal-Mart and buy one of those bill-pay debit cards and bring it with you to pay your bill. 

So let me get this straight. I have to take an extra trip to Wal-Mart, pay for a debit card that will necessarily be for more than my worst guess for how much my doctor bill will be and pay a fee for buying the card in order to pay my bill and save THEM money.

Even more interesting is an experiment Wal-Mart is conducting where you get these special bags and an electronic shopping card which you pay for with your debit card or you can use your debit card straight up and then you shop around, fill your basked and then skip the checkout. This machine up front scans your basket, automatically debits your card or bank account and hands you a receipt as you roll out the front door. You can refill the card next time, no cash needed. I don't know how it handles produce because I haven't tried the system yet.  Truth is, I'm a bit nervous about it.


I've watched too many episodes of NCIS. If Abby Scuito wanted to find a lacto-ovo vegetarian in the Puyallup area who has high blood pressure, wears contacts and spends a lot of money on antacids, she could hack into Wal-Mart's sales records and find my bank account number, address and be able to tell Gibbs I have dandruff and a medium-sized dog.

The technology already exists to implant an RFID chip into you with links to your complete medical record, bank account record and probably your criminal history which would be a handy tool for identifying potential shoplifters and enemies of the state. They've talked about planting it in two basic places - your hand and your head.  Someone suggested some place inconspicuous like your but, but some wag pointed out that you would probably have to call a CSM and pull down your pants in the Wal-Mart checkout line because the sensors had gotten dirty and weren't working right.

I know what they are planning. I worked with a tiger rescue group for a while.  We were talking about implanting such chips in tigers to track them anywhere by GPS and satellite tracking and to identify them, their birthdate, birthplace, medical history and DNA. Once we got the chips into wild tigers, we'd know exactly where they were at all times, where and with whom in the jungle they were having intimate relations. If you can do it with tigers, how long will it be before we get a chip at birth the way we used to be circumcised at birth (and I prefer the idea of circumcision).

I wonder if a tiger with a chip ate a man with a chip, how confusing would that be at the Wal-Mart checkout and would the tiger have to pay taxes?

Okay, I admit it.  I've read Revelation and it freaks me out a little.


I'm just saying.

Tom King:  ID# 41923-484tc89333-00y33

Person or Property - What's the Abortion Debate Really About?

Mom, Meghan and Dad three decades post-choice

A headline I saw recently announced that 694 anti-women's rights bills had been introduced in the past 4 years by evil Republican legislators.  You almost expect some bills calling for repeal of the right to vote or the right to drive cars or own property.  Every one, it turns out, is a bill seeking to curb abortions in some way or other.  Several of these "anti-women's rights" bills are about late term abortions, partial birth abortions or killing aborted fetuses that accidentally survive the procedure.

On the flip side of the debate, pro-lifers could say that 694 bills have been introduced to protect the rights of unborn children.

And therein lies the problem and the real core of the argument.  The problem with this whole debate is that it is basically a disagreement over a fundamental religious/philosophical belief.

When is it that life does begin? At what point does a newly conceived child get that "Get out of being arbitrarily killed" card.  At conception?  At six months?  When it shoves its head out of the birth canal successfully?  When it's two years old and can sass you  back as one NYSU professor has suggested.

It's a sticky debate and not quite so cut and dried as either side suggests.  Pro-life folk believe they ARE protecting rights when they support such bills.  Pro-choice folk believe they are protecting the rights of women to do what they want with their own bodies, especially where non-sentient bits of not fully formed human protoplasm are concerned.

If we were able to grow all of our kids in test tubes, so that reluctant mom's could hand them off to a lab somewhere and make them someone else's problem, things would be much easier.  Making babies would no longer have to impinge on the Mom's right to an uninterrupted career, to a stretch mark free abdomen, to avoid financial discomfort, to date guys without freaking them out or to avoid morning sickness.

Even the form of the debate is problematic. We're having a debate over what is basically a religious concept in a political forum and the loyal opposition doesn't want anything to do with religion. The trouble is that science will never be able to answer the question to anyone's satisfaction.  For all practical purposes, this issue is about when we say life becomes sacred.  God may have his opinions, but He doesn't shoot down flaming thunderbolts for individual acts that he considers evil.

Let's be clear about what we're arguing about.  We're arguing over when life begins. There is no consensus.  It's an important issue. For instance, if someone injures a pregnant woman and kills the child or "fetus" (if the idea of it being an unborn child makes you uncomfortable) then can that person be charged with murder or merely assault?  Does whether or not the murderer gets charged with murder depend on whether the woman says she wanted the child (fetus) or not?  What if she really was planning an abortion and didn't tell anyone and wants to make sure the blackguard pays the full measure of the law?  Should that power be given to one sex and one sex alone? 

If a fetus is not a person, then do men have the right to demand that a "fetus" which is half theirs be aborted if they do not want it. Do they have the right to withdraw their genetic material? It would seem that if indeed a fetus is an inanimate object and not a person, then that makes the whole issue a debate over right of ownership of the embryo. If so, then can a man prevent an abortion simply because he "owns" half the embryo? Are we prepared to go that far in depersonalizing unborn fetuses?

Sadly, this is one of those issues that God will have to decide and one issue which the side which

holds the minority opinion will have to live with when they are outvoted in this far from perfect world. I have a daughter (see picture above) that some panicked relatives told us we should abort because we happened to be in financial trouble at the time of her conception. I look at her face and am appalled that anyone could have suggested such a thing. It is why I will never be able to come to terms with abortion of any child who could have survived to become a Daddy's pride and joy. 

We have reached an impasse. In a civilized country we would vote and be done with it.  After all, there's no other way to solve the problem than to decide among ourselves what the law will be and then to live our lives and at the end to answer to God for our decision.

I, myself, choose life!  Always life if a life can be saved no matter how small. What God does with that life is up to him. My job is to cherish the life that has been placed in my care whether I was ready or not, comfortable with the responsibility or not.


I'm just saying.

Tom King  (c) 2013

 

Feminizing the Politburo - Obama Throws Like a Girl

This country's leadership has suffered an acute lack of testosterone in recent years. Congress has had it for far longer than the administration. The wimp factor is more understandable in Congress and probably a lot less harmful than it is in the presidency.   Leadership, no matter what gender the person in the main office is a masculine role.  There's a reason for that. Men tend to be goal directed problem solvers.Women tend to be conflict managers and nest builders.

A feminized approach to governance is necessarily a socialist approach.  Everything must be fair and by fair she means equal. No one must upset the social order.  There is a reason it was "Mother" Russia during the days of the Soviet Union.

The last high testosterone  president we had was Ronald Reagan and he scared the bejeebers out of the sissy pants diplomats in the Congress and even in his own administration.

Don't get me wrong - this is not some misogynist rant. Margaret Thatcher, who passed away today, had more leadership testosterone in her little finger than President Obama has in his whole cabinet. Women have a place in leadership.  Golda Meier was a tremendous leader.  There are plenty of other examples out there, but the point I want to make is that the style of leadership involved in mothering is different from that involved in fathering and not good will come of putting a mother of whichever sex in the big chair. There is a reason God set up families with male leadership.  The system works well. Dad's do well at driving the family agenda forward.  Mom does an amazing job of keeping the peace and soothing hurts and fixing boo-boo's. We need a government that leads like a father and governs like a mother.  Instead we have devolved into a nation that is led by Mom and governed by a cranky, paternalistic bureaucracy.

There is a reason God gave us fathers and mothers. The job of running a family, and - I maintain, a nation - requires both types of approaches.  They laughed at George Bush when he referred to himself as "The Decider", but he hit the nail on the head regarding what a president's job is. It is a matter of setting goals and achieving them. Such a task often requires upsetting people and even making them angry on occasion along the way to getting things accomplished that need accomplished. 

Lady Thatcher once said something to the effect that a nation that governs by consensus has no leadership.

The feminized diplomat worries about building consensus - making things fair and equal and preventing conflict.  When a hormonal North Korean Munchkin starts threatening to start a nuclear war, diplomats start waving their hands and running around squealing and in the process, may start pressing buttons in a panic.

Right now we need a steely-eyed, iron-nerved Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher.  Captain Prissy-Pants is just not to be trusted in situations where he doesn't have a teleprompter to instruct him. If the Munchkin does set off a nuke, the current bunch of little girls that make up our nation's leadership is far more likely to do something incredibly stupid in a panic. 

Where's a "Decider" when we need one.

Tom King -  (c) 2013

One More Time.....A History Lesson About "The Rest of the World"

More unmitigated crap from the hate America first crowd.

Fred has a donor link called "Feed Fred" - Don't!

My good buddy, the Ron Paul Libertarian keeps sending me links to articles he thinks will convince me to support legalizing marijuana, bringing all the troops home and admitting that I should have supported Ron Paul after all.  This time it was an article by Fred Reed on the ever-doofy Lew Rockwell website. I should have known better.

Fred Reed comes off arrogant and elitist, looking down his sunburned nose at the rest of us from his hideout in Mexico.  I've read his stuff before and it's nothing but isolationist drive.  I have zero respect for him.   I won't include a link to his stuff.  You can find it easily enough, but I'd hate to be responsible for wasting your time that way.  Fred moved out of the United States and now lives in that bastion of freedom - Mexico, a fact that reveals a lot about how much common sense his writing is likely to contain.  His articles have this sneering tone of moral superiority common to Ron Paul libertarians.  The article this time was about how the United States is responsible for all its troubles with the "rest of the world".  Fred's position is like Ron Paul's (and Barak Obama's for that matter) is that it is bad that the world hates us so much.  We should, he opines, withdraw our troops from everywhere and squat behind our borders being nice to everyone since it's arrogant of us to suppose that we're the best place in the world to live.

Meanwhile Fred sits on his veranda in Mexico, living off money he makes here in the States writing anti-American drivel and calling those who pay for his cheap vino names. 


I could care less what the rest of the world thinks about us here in the United States.  If we're so bad, one wonders why the actual citizens of the "rest of the world" want to get here so badly they are willing to smuggle themselves across the border to do it.

There's a reason why America has done so well.  It's because we're NOT like the rest of the world.  We've looted the best and the brightest from all those so-called civilized countries in the "rest of the world" because they were pretty much crappy countries.  They were dictatorships, monarchies and repressive societies.  Britain had a worldwide empire and still hangs on to a large chunk of their old empire, but if you weren't part of the gentry, you had little opportunity to rise in the world.  The Brits exploited everybody they conquered and felt they were perfectly justified, as did France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and God help us, even Belgium, which took a crack at empire-building.  Even Argentina tried to pick a fight over land with Britain because they looked at them with that Latin macho eye and though that with that Thatcher woman in charge, Britain looked soft.

The Muslems have repeatedly tried to conquer Europe.  Turkey sided with Germany in World War I and the Muslims were great admirers of Hitler back in the day.  India tried her hand at conquest as did China, The Soviet (We will bury you!) Union and even several African nations tried their hands at it.  Syria, Jordan and Egypt tried to overrun Israel several times in the past 60 years and got their fuzzy butts kicked for it.  They blame us for providing Israel with weapons.  Sure they are mad at us.  Fred's right about that.

Despite the mess the rest of the world keeps trying to make of things, the United States has kept its hand remarkably out of the nation-conquering business.  We've protected our business interests as in "to the shores of Tripoli" where we cleaned out some pirates with the old "big stick" - in the early 1800s and again under Teddy Roosevelt when they decided to start up their nonsense again.

Yeah, they hate us.  We took their best people and created the richest, most powerful nation on the planet.  We don't understand what the REAL world is like, Fred says.  True.  We've never had extermination camps, gulags and musical governments.  Why would we even WANT to understand that.  We make all those movies and the "world" thinks they know us and so they hate us.  And Fred thinks we ought to study the rest of the world so we understand them.

Why should we work so hard to understand the rest of the world when they exert so little effort to understand us? We're wealthy and in "the rest of the world" you get wealthy because you cheated or stole or exploited someone.  So they assume we must have gotten wealthy the same way and so they can safely hate us. Besides it helps distract the attention of the masses from the fact that they are being exploited by their own governments and elite classes.

We have big guns and big ships and nobody gets to mess with us.  If most of them had big guns and big ships, they'd be off on wars of conquest, but they can't because we keep getting in the way with our bigger guns and planes and ships.  Now we've even taken to stopping nations from running over each other and supporting folk who are attacked.  I think that's a GREAT thing.  If we aren't the world's cops, who will be.  Russia?  China?  Hell, I wouldn't trust Britain or France with the job (the foreign legion ain't what it used to be).

When somebody gets big and bad and starts threatening or actually attacks their neighbor, who do they call?  When Cuba decided to take over Granada, who did the Carribean nations call to liberate Granada?  It sure as hell wasn't Brazil or Venezuela or France. We get called on to play cop because we have a nice, rich stable country (and it's rich because it IS stable) and we can afford to play cop.

But nobody likes cops unless they are in trouble.  And cops don't like to go back to the station house and let the bad guys run amuck until things get so bad we have to go clean it up.  We've taken to pre-emptive patrolling and intervening earlier and harder than we used to.  People in the rest of the world don't like that because in their own countries, powerful nations always want to take over less powerful nations.  They are suspicious of our motives so they hate us.

But every time someone else actually does attack them, who does the "rest of the world" call?  When Iraq and Afghanistan began threatening their neighbors, nobody liked that.  Saudi Arabia about crapped its pants when Saddam overran Kuwait.  And who did they call.

Ruyard Kipling wrote a poem about soldiers.  The chorus went something like this....

O, it's Tommy this and Tommy that

And chuck him out the brute.

But it's "Saviour of his country"

When the guns begin to shoot.

They all hate us the way people hate cops, occupying soldiers and big brothers.  They hate people who are stronger than they are.  They see us through their own filters, their own paradigm.  They assume that we are like them, despite evidence to the contrary.

Well, I don't give a damned what the rest of the world thinks.  I don't care if they like us. We can take our toys and go home like the Ron Paul people believe we ought to, but that will not relieve the hatred. Nobody's going to love us for that.  When it all goes to hell, they are probably going to hate us even more for abandoning them.

If we retire from being the world's cop, the world will just find a new cop, and pay that cop whatever it's asking price is.  And we probably one we won't like the new cop because whoever it is probably hates us if you believe the Paulestinians.

What the folks that run the "rest of the world" really want is to have what Pope Benedict called "a world government with teeth" that can chain up the big dog (us) and make him obey.  The Old World wants to call the shots once again.  They have not forgotten that they once had empires and they are jealous and suspicious of any nation with as much power as we have who doesn't go out conquering.

Europe hasn't had a nice all out war since 1945. These are people that once had a war that lasted 100 years.  Thirty years was a piddling little spat.  The reason the Europeans haven't had a major squabble since is because American soldiers are sitting in the middle of Germany with nukes and the American guard dog kept the Soviet Union at bay for the better part of 4 decades.  The Europeans really don't want us to go because then they'd have to pay for their own defense and they aren't sure Russia is really tamed and the Muslims are making jihad noises these days.  The Japanese and Koreans enjoy a busy world trade and even China has been pretty peaceful and content to let the US patrol the waves and protect trade. 

When the Somali pirates started raiding, everyone expected the US to go in and fix the problem but with our hands tied behind our backs.  Even the Russians have been enjoying not having to have all that massive military - spending their money on MacDonald's franchises instead of leaky submarines.

You want to see it get violent in short order out there in the "rest of the world", go ahead and turn the cop duties over to people for whom war is a blood sport.  Without America the teacher in place, the nukes would eventually fly and fallout doesn't discriminate - it goes wherever the wind blows and the currents flow.

America was settled by intelligent, hard-working peace-loving people looking for a chance to live in peace and prosperity.  We did it too - made a prosperous home for ourselves and went a long way toward creating a classless society.  Now we've got Americans longing for European style everything - military, government, economic system.  Well let 'em go live out there in the real world.  And when all hell breaks loose and you call for help, never fear.....America is here, ready, willing and able to cover your lily white arrogant, elitist, racist, egalitarian, socialist butts.

And yes, the United States picked a war with Mexico.  Fred Reed is right about that. A century and a half ago we fought a war that we shouldn't have.  It was unjust.  When it was over, we took some of their land which had been ruled by the Dons and upon which the peons were worked brutally by the rich nobles. 

And we PAID FOR the land they ceded us and turned them into states and made free American citizens of the peons.  I know we still hadn't quite beating up on the Indians, but then, they weren't always very reasonable either.  The English may have invented scalping, but the Indians made it an art form.  And we feel terribly guilty about beating up on native Americans - so much so that hardly a spending bill gets passed these days without substantial earmarks for the tribes in it.

Also, when we bought New Mexico, Arizona and California, the Mexican government at the time really needed the money.  Also we drove the final nail in Santa Anna's career and by all accounts, he wasn't through beating up on Texas yet despite having signed a treaty to save his worthless life.. 

And Texas had every right to rebel.  The idea that Texas is stolen property is balderdash.  The colonists began by demanding only that Mexico abide by its own 1824 constitution that the colonies had been established under instead of under the repressive new government that Santa Anna established to tax the crap out of Texas for his planned wars of Central American conquest. 

Running that evil little man out of office was NOT a bad thing in the same way that running Saddam Hussein out of office wasn't a bad thing.  Probably the only way to settle the issue was to win a war with him decisively.  Santa Anna had no intentions of ever giving up his dreams of conquest until he was thoroughly beaten. And beaten he was and by an army less than a third the size of his own.  Scared the hell out of him and he was peaceful ever after.

I'm glad Fred Reed likes Mexico, though.  So long as he doesn't piss off any drug cartels by telling them he wants to kill their business by legalizing drugs in the US, he should be okay.  Mexico is the perfect place for someone like Fred.  Servants are cheap, prostitutes almost free and eventually your immune system gets strong enough to handle the dysentery.


And they've done it to me again.  Pissed me off and got me to waste an hour writing all this stuff in answer to someone who thinks I'm an idiot and is so firmly wedded to his ideology as to be hen-pecked by it.

God save us from the intellectuals......

Tom

The Bigger the Government, the More Petty Its Tyrannies

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Paul Gleiser, owner of KTTB radio in Tyler, Texas wrote an interesting piece in his regular column "You Tell Me Texas" about the petty tyranny of big government.  Paul experienced the joy of getting past customs officials and talked about how everyone submitted to delays and officious behavior from officials whose sole job was to check your papers and stamp your passport so you could get on to your connecting flight. When someone started to complain everyone hushed him up lest the official punish the whole group for its insolence by making the line go even more slowly.

I've spent nearly 4 decades in the nonprofit sector working in education and mental health. It was my experience of government during that career that turned me into a small government conservative.  I can't tell you how many times I've witnessed petty bureaucrats playing the game of "officiousness" with citizens they were hired to serve. 

You go to a desk or window, behind which sits a sour-faced career bureaucrat whose entire job is to take a piece of paper that you fill out and process it, add a stamp or something and tuck it into a file drawer somewhere.  With the advent of the computer, it's only gotten worse because now this bureaucrat has to type your form into a computer before he can file it.  They often leave you standing there waiting impatiently while they slowly and carefully type the entire form.  They do not dismiss you until they are done with the retyping the form and it has been accepted by the system. If some tiny little thing is wrong with the way you filled in the little boxes, you will likely be treated to a lecture regarding your weakness of character in having written out the full name of your state in line 22, paragraph 3, subsection 255A, when Section III, subsection 2, Line 5 of the "Instructions for Filling Out Request for Department of Administrative Affairs Approval to Install Widgets on Websites with Links to Official State Archived Documents" clearly states, "State names shall be entered on line 22, paragraph 3, subsection 255A as two letter United States Postal Service standard state abbreviations in all capital letters"

AND You will not be released to return to your actual real life until you have made the required obeisance to this priest of the temple of government bureaucracy and satisfied his lust for relevance. They do not like it when you laugh or sneer at them or express your frustration or anger in any way and can and will find a thousand ways to punish you for any perceived disrespect.

In a sane world, bureaucrats would soon become an endangered species.

Tom King

Legalize Pot - I'm Finally Convinced

(c) 2013 by Tom King

The Ron Paul people have finally convinced me {insert snort of derision} that legalization of pot is good for capitalism.  I even have a slogan for the campaign.

Legalize Pot 

Weed out the competition!

or this:

More Pot

Fewer dimwits in the workforce!

or this idea for a campaign name:

Mothers for the Legalization of Weed!

Bring our boys home 

(We have empty basements.........and pudding)

or this:

Make Pot More Expensive 

Nationalize the Marijuana Industry

or this:

Let's Put Pot Under Obamacare

Raise the price, reduce availability and destroy 

the marijuana industry all in one fell swoop!

Next time I'm asking the Bus driver to roll down the window....

I have a headache.

Tom