Old Glory

Old Glory

Objectivism & Libertarians
The Philosophy of Freedom & Its Practitioners
Commentary
Updated January 16, 2003

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The commentary and opinions herein are either mine or are thoughts with which I agree expressed by others eloquently enough that I respect their judgement enough to post them here. When the opinion I post is not mine, I make every attempt to correctly attribute credit where it is due. I may err at times and I apologize for that. In case of error, I will correct it when notified. It is neither wise nor ethical to claim credit for another's efforts; just ask Senator Joe Biden! He can at least address the first part of my caveat!

Two-party system Crime and Punishment
The Career Politician Rush Limbaugh
Clinton's Legacy Taxation
Clinton on Honesty The 'War on Drugs'
Counterfeit Rights
America's Two-Party Political System (Republicrats and Demopublicans)
Here, unfortunately, is a truly tragic misnomer. For all the posturing and political blustering about party differences between the Republican and Democratic parties, there are no substantial differences in principle between the two parties. Both enact laws virtually prohibiting other parties' competition in elections, both parties pass legislation and regulations further abrogating the freedoms supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution, and both parties support policies which are destructive of the freedoms so long cherished by Americans.

The Republicans (who predominantly call themselves Conservatives) have abandoned (if in fact, they ever held) the belief in freedom of the individual as espoused by the founding fathers.

The Democratic Party is effectively the American Socialist Party or the American Communist Party. Over the past hundred years or so, they have become more and more of the position that the individual is incompetent and helpless in the financial arena and therefore it is the responsibility of the government to confiscate the property of the successful and give it (with, of course, a sizable commission) to those who have not earned it. The Republican party disagrees with the Democrats vociferously but if you listen carefully, they are not disagreeing in principle that every individual is responsible for his own support, but in fact are quibbling over the degree to which government should continue this confiscatory activity.

The Republicans, who tout their belief in and support of individual rights draw a very hard line when it means allowing the individual citizen to make certain decisions regarding his own life. They are staunchly against your right to consume certain substances; e. g., marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. These drugs are evil and cause 5,000-10,000 deaths per year (this is a figure for those who die of consumption; it does not include the other thousands who die from the open thug warfare in the streets because of prohibition). Methadone is okay because they've passed laws allowing physicians to prescribe it. Alcohol is okay, as is nicotine, which together are responsible for approximately 500,000 deaths per year (actually, the nicotine doesn't kill; it's the myriad of poisons in the cigarette smoke that does the damage; nicotine is the agent that is habit forming (addictive?) that keeps you using the tobacco). Indeed they are looking out for your welfare by trying to keep these horrible killer drugs away from you.

So, in reality, drugs are okay with the Republicans (conservatives) if you choose the right drug! But if your choice of drug does not match theirs (i.e., is not politically correct), look out! You're going to jail! But don't worry, they're doing it for you own good! I think that's what Adolf promised, too, wasn't it?

Now, Clinton's position on drugs is interesting one. He's really behind the "War on Drugs"; a very interesting position since his campaign was partly funded by some of the richest drug dealers in the world. They were actually seen on video tape at White House dinners and you don't get invited to the White House by the Clintons unless you can afford a serious "donation".
Career Politicians
Here is another plague visited on the American people. Career politicians have one primary objective; to remain in office, somewhere, somehow on the public payroll where they control their own salaries.

Witness the debacle of the U. S. Congress just a few years ago when pressured to give up the lucrative honoraria. What was their solution? Well, of course, the only thing to do was give themselves a 50% pay hike (at taxpayers expense) to compensate themselves for this loss of income! Try doing that for yourself! Nice work if you can get it. Don't these clowns have enough of a lucrative position already? I mean, $120,000+ per year for a part time job! And the ONLY retirement system FULLY funded (out of the taxpayer's pocket, of course)! This despite the Constitution stating that legislartors shall receive compensation for their services in Article I Section 6:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. ...

But once they leave office, how do they justify continuing said compensation? At the point when they are not serving, however, they have demanded and awarded themselves continuing compensation at least equal to the compensation they received while serving.

They have demonstrated time and again that they will say or do anything to remain in their position of power once they achieve it (Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton is the consummate example). Obfuscation, outright lying, intimidation; whatever it takes. Why were there 1,000+ FBI files in the White House? and under whose control?; and at whose direction? There are no answers forthcoming from the Administration, which, in 1993, at its inauguration made the declaration of showing America the most moral and honest administration in recent history. It seems two important prefixes were omitted from that declaration; im- and dis-! And the application should be to ALL of American history, not just recent.

For all of Clinton's I feel your pain lies, this jerk has never worked to support himself in his life to my knowledge. He went from college to the public dole and was governor of Arkansas until they got smart enough to dump him on a dim-witted electorate who wanted to punish George Bush for lying about a tax increase. With the help of that moron, Perot, Clinton got elected and showed what it means to lie in a big way! I don't have a clue why Perot wants to see America destroyed but his support of Bill Clinton certainly leaves that as a reasonable conclusion. Maybe he figured, if I can't be King Ross I, I'll show you how bad it can get!

Local politics has become the training ground for the career politician. Those most ambitious, corrupt, and vicious progress from the local to the state to the Federal level leaving a swath of destruction in their wake for which they skillfully blame others.

For example, San Diego city politicians have saddled the local populace with a no-win deal on the local sports stadium with the San Diego Chargers. Now they seek to expand that obligation by saddling the taxpayers with yet another burden of a new stadium downtown. I only hope that people are intelligent enough to wake up and vote down still another fundamentally communist idea.

Well, unfortunately, the voters of California have proven themselves to be either stupider or more gullible than I had hoped. These morons actually elected the Clinton lapdog, Boxer, to the U. S. Senate for another six years! They elected a Democrat (read socialist) for governor! They apparently passed (though just barely) the idiotic socialist program conjured up by Rob Reiner which steals another $0.50 per pack from cigarette smokers (I'm still hoping the few left ballots to be counted kills this shameless power/money grab)! Sadly, the reign of stupidity continues; with all the votes counted, these fools passed another "steal them blind" piece of idiotic legislation (the smokers' tax extortion measure).

The fools in San Diego passed this pro baseball stadium ripoff proposition and BILLIONS of dollars in theft from taxpayers for school building repairs and constructions. Where did the politicians squander the billions of dollars appropriated before for similar projects? No accounting for that!

The only sensible thing they did pass was the Indian gaming initiative. For those who oppose it, I have one question; why is it proper for government to promote and operate gambling establishments (since the politicians declare gambling such an evil endeavor) but not appropriate for private enterprise? Because the words politician and hypocrite are synonymous!
"Clinton's Legacy"
The most unprincipled, corrupt and dishonest presidency in the history of the United States. It is a national disgrace to have the American populace show itself to be so lacking in character and morality as to elect someone so totally unprincipled as Slick Willie to the office of the Presidency.

Hillary is either his accomplice (or perhaps pulling the puppet strings behind the scenes) knowing exactly what she married or is so completely stupid to not know that she would be a truly pathetic figure if the latter is the case. Thus, she deserves absolutely no sympathy since I sincerely believe she is not that stupid; no one could be and still remember to breathe!

The only member of the first family who deserves any sympathy is Chelsea who had no choice of parents; it was simply her great misfortune to have drawn these two losers. Unless she has inherited their quality of shamelessness, she must constantly be in dread of the next scandal and in a perpetual conflict of trying to love and respect parents who have earned only disdain.

As an update, having read the information published by Judicial Watch (see link on main page), there is substantial evidence to support the case that both Willary & Hillary are co-conspirators in much of the sleaze surrounding this administration. After reading this little gem of a court case (which is still pending), I find many of the stories coming out of Arkansas about the Clinton's involvement in drug trafficking, extortion, intimidation and even murder not merely believeable but highly probable.

Judicial Watch has uncovered mountains of evidence and has credible suspicion of the destruction of much more showing that the Clintons and their cronies on the White House payroll have committed crimes including bribery, intimidation, extortion, and treason. It amazes me that there are still people stupid enough to believe the media hype that the impeachment effort (which will probably die following the election debacle) was ever about sex! From the information presented by Judicial Watch, it is my opinion that this criminal bastard should be impeached and moved from the White House to the Big House to continue his living off the public dime for the rest of his sorry life!
Clinton's Commentary on Honesty: Isn't it interesting how one's own words come back to haunt them?
Quoted from the ARKANSAS GAZETTE, 1974

FLIPPIN -- United States Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison is wrong in opposing President Nixon's resignation and is wrong in questioning whether the president has committed an impeachable offense, Bill Clinton of Fayetteville, Hammerschmidt's opponent, said here Wednesday.
    In the wake of the president's admission Monday that he had lied about his role in the Watergate coverup, Hammerschmidt said, "We need to do our duty as quickly as possible. We should have done it a year ago."
    "I don't see how in the world he can say that when a year ago he was saying we should forget about it and he voted against giving funds for the House Judiciary Committee staff," Clinton said.
    Hammerschmidt flatly opposed resignation.
    "I think it's plain that the president should resign and spare the country the agony of this impeachment and removal proceeding," Clinton said. "I think the country could be spared a lot of agony and the government could worry about inflation and a lot of other problems if he'd go on and resign."
    Hammerschmidt said after the president's revelations Monday he was not sure whether Mr. Nixon's actions legally were impeachable.
    Clinton, a law professor at the University of Arkansas, said there was "no question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI and the CIA is an impeachable offense."
    Hammerschmidt's statement "puts him out of step with all the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who voted against impeachment" before the Monday revelations and now are "calling for resignation because of clear and direct evidence of an impeachable offense," Clinton said.
    Clinton said he was campaigning hard across the Third Congressional District and was "pleased with the response I'm getting."
    Although it's "hard to raise money in July and August for a November campaign, especially after the very expensive primaries," Clinton said, "so far I've made all my expenses and our planning is going along well."
   
Reprinted from the Arkansas Gazette, Aug. 8, 1974
   

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Arkansas Gazette closed Oct. 18, 1991, and its assets were acquired by the Arkansas Democrat, which began publishing the next day as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

This article was published online on Friday, August 21, 1998

Read it for yourself
Counterfeit Rights
Since I deal with the world from a rational perspective, i. e., reality vs. fantasy, and intellectually, right is a term applicable only to an individual, not a collective (or group), I am routinely bewildered by the ineptitude of mentality that allows the perpetuation of such ignorance and evil as the ideas of Gay Rights, Disabled Rights, Women's Rights, etc. If these people are human, then they have the same right as everyone else. The fact of certain biological configurations, choices, genetic inclinations, physical anomalies, etc. does not make them superior and thus more deserving of life, liberty or freedom than any other human.

What the supporters of these myriad of other rights are in truth doing is espousing privilege for those groups. This pursuit is an effective means of clouding the true meaning of the term in its proper usage and application and thus is a convenient means of distorting and denigrating its proper meaning and value. It is in essence, a veiled attack on the concept of rights in the legitimate sense seeking to bestow political privilege on the few at the expense of the many and is a pernicious threat to the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
Crime and Punishment
Just a few questions I've pondered for years. Being not particularly gifted, I marvel that no one in the political or philosophical arena has chosen to address these ideas with any public exposure of significance. But then what should one expect of leaders? After all, many people refer to Bill Clinton as the leader of the free world; this they say of a man who decides when to go to the john by reading poll results!
Murder - Our leaders politicians have devised a system of varying degrees of murder. Recently, the politically correctness morons have lobbied to have a new category called hate crime defined.


My first question is with regard to the degrees of murder:


And finally, with regard to hate crimes:


It seems obvious to me that in reasonable terms, the victim is dead. There is no degree of deadness, i. e., the victim is not less dead simply because the murderer was in a violent rage than is the victim whose murderer was very calculating and deliberate. Conversely, is the victim more dead when murdered by some nut out of hatred than a victim who is murdered by a loved one?

Why is the death of a human legally passable simply because the perpetrator lacked the intent to murder? Is the victim less dead? Do the survivors of the victim suffer less? I doubt it.

It is this type of irrational premise that contributes to making the justice legal system look ridiculous; this and lawyers like Johnny Cochran and fools like the OJ jury!

Attempted Murder - Here's another bit of lunacy concocted by politicians and lawmakers. The idea that an attempt to murder a human being is less serious than the accomplishment of the act defies rational explanation. Why should the would-be murderer be rewarded (receive a lesser punishment) simply due to his incompetence? In light of the idea of intent (as noted above), should he not receive a more severe punishment as in the case when a murder is accomplished with intent?
Rush Limbaugh
One of the most vocal Conservative Republican spokesmen. Rush characterizes himself as a proponent of individual rights and freedoms. Yet he agrees with Justice Scalia of the Supreme Court and oddly enough Slick Willie that laws are the source of rights while at the same time lauding the Founding Fathers and their beliefs and intentions yet ignoring their statement in the Declaration of Independence regarding the source of rights. He is marvelously successful with his audience who seem oblivious to his ideological dichotomy.

He succeeds with his listeners who by and large grew up in a society where they were taught to not think; to accept, to believe, to not question. They do not realize (or perhaps choose to ignore) the reality of the fact that he deals with concrete, discrete events and ideas and thus he is able to appear consistent in the face of his philosophical dichotomy. But when one looks carefully at the underlying principles which connect some of the concretes with which he deals, the dichotomy becomes clear when he supports one action and opposes another and both are examples of the same principle.

For a man who claims to believe in individual rights and freedom, he certainly advocates a great deal of government intrusion into the private life of the American citizen. Yet he touts himself as the defender of individual rights with absolutely no realization that the term individual rights is redundant.

Another of the points Rush repeatedly makes is regarding political advertisements propagandizing outright lies, e. g., the Democratic Party political ads regarding the proposed budget cuts of the Republicans following their sweep of both houses of Congress in 1994. No budget cuts were ever proposed but the media reported it as such and the Democratic party and their lackeys in the labor unions lied in their attempts to defeat what in reality were attempts to reduce the rate of growth of the federal budget, i. e., reduce the rate of growth of the JFK/LBJ/Jimmy Carter/WJBC/HRC Socialist Welfare State's spending pattern! He says that these lies are protected by first amendment free speech provisions.

Well, if that's the case, why are their any truth in advertising laws at all? Are politicians privileged to lie when businessmen are not? That's an obvious YES from Rush's perspective considering his advocacy for protecting this outrageous practice under the guise of First Ammendment freedom. What double standard does he espouse here, this self-described icon of virtue who advocates the capitalist system of economics? And where does he see a capitalist economy, i. e., an economy free of government intervention and control, by the way?
Taxation
One of the Founding Fathers said "Taxation without representation is tyranny" (my historical memory is slipping so I don't remember the author).
Some one put on a bumper sticker "Taxation with representation ain't so hot either".

Both are true statements. But the more fundamental truth is that coercive taxation is a criminal act; in the legal code, it is equivalent to extortion. It is property taken by the government under threat of reprisal or overt force of arms, i. e., seizure through the courts.

The only person who is not victimized by the government in tax collection is the person who would pay the same amount were they notified that the same payment was due and NO REPRISAL would result if payment was not received.

To illustrate the arrogance of politicians with regard to taxation, California's thugs in the state house have devised the means to collect sales tax on money you don't even spend!
The War on Drugs
The war on drugs has made the drug trade a hazardous business in the United States. As the business has become more hazardous, the price of the drugs has gone up substantially. The result? More competitive spirit in the marketplace for the entrepreneurs who pursue this endeavor for the enormous profits it brings.

This more competitive spirit means that to keep their territory for their own trade, these businessmen are arming themselves admirably and taking the streets by force. Competitors are intimidated when feasible and simply murdered if intimidation does not work. The result is the open warfare in our streets between the gangs of thugs who run this business.

The government's moronic War on Drugs is what keeps the price of drugs high with the enticing profit motive what it is and is in fact an assault on the ideas of freedom in America. It has also made very rich some very despicable people!

It seems that politicians make a career of never learning from mistakes of the past. Otherwise, the utter failure of Prohibition (the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States) would have taught them the futility of the present day prohibition on drugs! But then, it's not really about drugs anyway! It's about the elite ruling body (politicians) exercising a greater degree of control over the private, personal lives of the minions citizens.

What did Prohibition accomplish? Well, it made Eliot Ness a national hero! It also made Al Capone and many of his compatriots VERY RICH and powerful. They lived well while American citizens were intimidated, assaulted and murdered for the silence and compliance so Al and his buddies could continue their illegal pursuits.

During Al's heyday, Chicago had some of the best politicians and police money could buy! But Al and his buddies didn't mind the price; with their profit margin, they could afford it. And since it was illegally acquired income, the Fifth Amendment meant they couldn't report it as income so there was no income tax to pay. I can only wonder if we have much of the same thing today but with electronic banking and offshore accounts, those who choose this route are much harder to trace (unless, of course, there's a political vendetta to be served)!

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