Posted on 10/13/2002 1:17:32 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Liberals (by whatever name they're using today) go out of their way to paint everybody who shows the slightest criticism of our government as being extremists, conspiracy nuts, even traitors to all that is American. They commonly call anybody who insists that they follow the Constitution, something they have all pledged to support, "antigovernment But are we? For my part, I'm in no way "antigovernment" What I am is "anti-criminals running government." And that includes power seekers whose only goal in life is to enhance and increase their own power over the rest of us.
The Constitution is the thing that makes laws possible in this country. It is the basis for all our laws. It is the guide which we must follow in making laws. To call people who insist that we do this "Antigovernment" is asinine and is being used as a means to make others think that we are somehow opposing them from a different motive than to hold them to their oath to uphold the Constitution. Those who do that spark a certain distrust in how they govern.
WHY DISTRUST GOVERNMENT?
Should we distrust our government? And if so, does that make us extremists? The answer to the second question is, of course, no. One of the basic things on which this country was built is the concept that its citizens should have the right to not only distrust this government, but have the right to criticize it as well, without fear of punishment. The answer to the first is: a thundering yes! Why? Because this government has given us ample reason not only to distrust it, but to fear it. It has shown that it is a government out of control.
They've Conned Us From The Start: Here are some of the ways they've conned us over the years:
Let's look at just one area; regulation:The Federal Income Tax Con: They conned us into allowing them to tax our income by promising that the maximum tax rate would never be more than 3%, and that only the very rich would ever have to pay it. Today, you pay more than 50% of your income in all the kinds of taxes you must pay, with more than 40% of that being that income tax that was promised to be no more than 3%. As to only the rich paying it, consider that waitresses and cab drivers are being audited for their tips. But more importantly, this abomination has allowed the government the right to snoop unmercifully into our most private affairs, to steal our possessions and put us in jail without due process.
The Standard Exemption Con: In 1954, the Federal Income Tax Standard Exemption, which is that amount of your income which is not subject to taxation, was a whopping 57%. As of 1994, it had been reduced to only 25%. Your taxes had been quietly more than doubled by making twice as much subject to tax.
The Decade Of Greed Con: They have worked hard to convince us that the Reagan years were a decade of greed, and were bad times, all around. The truth is quite different, and here is only one figure: During the Reagan years, the top tax rate (the most anyone will pay, no matter how much they earn) went from 70% of income to 30%and the total tax take almost doubled. Reducing taxes does pay off.
The Social Security Con: In 1993, we earned, on average, 9 times more than we did in 1953. But during the same period, Social Security taxes increased more than 50 times.
It Ignores The Constitution: Our government has ignored its own Constitution almost from the beginning. The ancestor of the unconstitutional RICO Laws now in use; laws that allow them to rip us off at will is the Admiralty Law that allowed our own navy to pillage our own commerce and was patterned after those English laws that caused the American Revolution because the British were pillaging our shipping. Today, they call the Constitution a "fluid document" that is no longer relevant to condition us to allow them to more easily change it or to ignore it altogether with impunity.
It Ignores Our Rights: This government has shown a general disregard for individual rights in all it does. It interprets the Constitution and its own laws to suit itself and to decide for itself what powers it has.
It Steals Our Property: One the basic rights recognized by the Constitution is the right to be safe in our property, that it cannot be taken from us without due process of law. Making laws that are contrary to the Constitution which allow our government to confiscate our money and our property literally at will, just on the unsupported allegation of criminality is patent theft by the government and is definitely not due process. It is thievery, pure and simple, and any who cannot see that are fools and deserve to be fleeced. It can't happen, you say? It is happening. In Utah, they not only are able to confiscate your property at will, but in one small town, the cops who actually do the stealing get a cut of the spoils. In Florida, they stop people who look like drug dealers and rip off all the cash they're carrying over $100 as "possible" drug money. And they keep it, unless the victim can afford to go to court to get it back, at their own expense. They do this in Colorado, too.
Steal A Penny, Lose Everything: To prove that if you give a bureaucrat something to play with, he will make it bigger and bigger until it becomes ridiculous, let's look at the original intent of the RICO Laws under which this thievery has been practiced. The original reason given for passing these unconstitutional laws was to keep the drug dealers from being able to mount a serious defense when they're arrested, just because they've got millions of dollars at their disposal. The fact that to all intents and purposes this denies them the right to a fair trial doesn't seem to bother anybody. And don't argue that drug dealers should have no rights, because they aren't guilty until a court says so after a vigorous prosecution and defense. But, as expected by those of us who spend more than ten minutes a month monitoring what our government does, the type of crime now subject to the confiscation of property has become trivial. They can, and have, confiscated cars in which men were found to be having sex with prostitutes.
They Steal From The Innocent: In one celebrated Supreme Court case involving a trivial crime, a man who was caught having sex with a prostitute in a car jointly owned by himself and his wife lost the car. His wife lost her interest in the car, too. Never mind she not only didn't know about his crime, and would probably have been angry had she known. The Supreme Court held that there is nothing in the Constitution that says she should not lose because of someone else's (petty) crime. Is that right? What about the Fifth Amendment that says: "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Why should a layman such as I have to advise the Justices of the highest court in the land on Constitutional law -- and be right? And where is this going? That's obvious; Soon, anyone who steals so much as a penny will have all their possessions taken by the government. Think it's not possible? How long ago would you have insisted that you could not lose your property over such a trivial crime as soliciting a prostitute, even if you weren't the solicitor?
They Kill Us With Impunity: At Waco, Texas, the bureaucrats who make the decisions in Washington exacerbated a simple situation by putting out propaganda that David Koresh was a child molester (which might or might not be true), was stockpiling weapons (all legal), and could not be arrested without storming the gates (definitely not true). That this caused a bloodbath was not surprising. At Ruby Ridge, Idaho, they built the killing of a child, a dog, and the child's mother by conditioned federal cops into a bloodbath in order to cover their own actions. They did this by telling the bureaucrats they were being pinned down when such was definitely not the case. Ominous parallels could be seen in the situation in Montana in March, 1996, which could have easily lead to a bloodbath there. Every day in the papers and on radio and TV there appeared stories guaranteed to whip up a negative attitude toward the dissident Freemen, allowing another debacle. That no bloodbath occurred was not due to anything the feds did. No one in government was punished in any meaningful way (at this writing) for what happened at Waco or Ruby Ridge and if the Montana situation had resulted in a bloodbath they'd probably get away with that, too.
They Regulate Us Into Poverty: The entire reason for bureaucrats to exist is to rip us off. In one way or another, the government is constantly figuring out new ways to con more money out of its citizens, which it then uses to buy votes by giving the money to the drones of society -- who each have one vote -- and are much more numerous than are the rest of us.
The Clean Air Act requires small gas stations to install hydrocarbon vapor-recovery devices on every gas pump at a cost of $30,000.00 each and thousands of dollars yearly for maintenance. Auto body shops also are required to do this, at even more cost ($100,000.00). Furniture makers have to install incinerators to destroy their hydrocarbons at costs of up to $2.75 million each for even a small operation. Bakeries handle yeast, so they must install catalytic converters at a cost of up to $424,400.00, with $50,000.00 a year maintenance costs.I could go on and on about other draconian fines and assessments, fees and licenses our government uses to rip off business, but I don't have room here if I am to give other examples of why we just cannot trust our government to do what is best for us, rather than to rip us off and gain more and more power over us.
The Endangered Species Act is designed to prevent the disturbance of the habitat of the spotted owl among other things, restricting 4.2 billion acres of forest from development, which has cost 30,000 lumber-related jobs and the loss of 1.1 billion board feet of lumber every year. This has made homes cost about $4,000.00 more each to build. Why should the welfare of an owl be more important than the welfare of human beings?
Fines And Other Direct Theft: And let's not forget the direct theft of money through fines and assessments for noncompliance. Business regularly has to pay draconian fines for simply failing to file paperwork required by the bureaucrats. We're talking about fines of many thousands of dollars -- and in some cases, jail time for failing to file required forms. Forms that are sometimes so obscure that the defendants did not even know they were supposed to have been filed. Of all the OSHA violations in 1994, a full 25% were paperwork violations. Being the government is a good racket to be in.
The Conflicting Regulations Scam: One of the reasons why government agencies have regulation books that number thousands of pages, and that to comply with regulations of one agency, you are often violating those of another is simple: that's how the racket is set up. If you cannot avoid violating their regulations, they can rip you off at will. The State of California's environmental regulations alone are so complex that Touchstone Environmental, Inc., of Oakland, California, publishes a simplified guide to help small business owners understand them. This guide alone is a 1,200 page, two-volume report that only costs $266.00. Think how extensive are the regulations it covers.
The Hidden Taxes Scam: All these fines are, in fact, hidden taxes business owners are forced to pay in order to remain in business. They're much like the protection racket payments businesses must make to hoods to keep them off their backs. The only difference is that these hoods carry badges and work for the biggest organized crime group in the country, the government.
They Promote Altruism: One of the most evil concepts ever to be foisted upon man is the altruist concept that it's OK to rip off the fruits of his labors from the achiever and give them to those who have not earned it. Our current government is pushing that concept hard.I don't have enough room here to list, let alone detail all their crimes against us, but I will list a few more: They've agreed to surrender the very independence we fought to establish in the American Revolution and cede our sovereignty, bit by bit to an international organization run by admitted socialists (The United Nations, for those who don't pay attention). They have effectively destroyed the American economy with their drunken sailor spending and have rendered our money worthless by eliminating the gold standard and printing worthless paper money not backed by gold, silver, or anything else inherently valuable. They've adopted a hostile attitude toward religion, the traditional family, our basic values, and morality. They are practicing racial politics and have allowed the criminal justice system to degenerate into failure with no punishment for criminals -- and now they want to disarm us to provide more unarmed victims. There's a lot more, but there's just not enough room.They Promote Class Warfare: Where is it written that people who work hard and become rich have taken something from those who have not worked hard and become rich? The idea that the rich have automatically done something bad in becoming rich is an idea that the altruists in our government are also pushing. Sure -- there are people who have not earned, but have inherited their riches (most are liberals). But their numbers are small in comparison to those who have used the Hewlett-Packard Factor where you start something in your garage that becomes big, making you rich. The biggest percentage of today's Fortune 500 are such. Those who have become rich in their own lifetime by doing something other people want to buy.
They Allowed Socialism To Take Root: I believe that the altruists have committed a gigantic crime by working diligently to allow socialism (the philosophy of altruism) to take root in this country and grow, while all over the world countries that have been socialist for years are abandoning it because it not only doesn't work, it is a crime. Socialism and altruism, its parent, is an abomination For our government to promote it is also a crime.
Claiming Nonexistent Rights: I believe one of the best ways to erode real rights is to claim the status of rights for things that are not rights. A right is something that is ours by birth and does not require that others be forced, against their will, to provide it for us. In other words, if the government decrees that we have a right to a good-paying job, someone else must provide it. The cost of that job, if you're not really needed, must be taken from someone else so as to provide that "right".
Teaching Altruism In School: Today, altruism, and therefore socialism, is taught as an ideal in our schools. Children's minds are, from the earliest ages, being conditioned to accept these abominations as truth. This is being done at a time in their lives when their minds are not capable of rejecting such a ridiculous notion, since they have no contrary information to use in refuting it.
Dumbing Down Our Schools: To my own mind, one of the most egregious crimes committed by our government is their effort to destroy the learning base in our schools. To dumb-down the curriculum so as to turn out graduates who cannot even read their own diplomas and are thus not smart enough to know how bankrupt is their socialist contention. This began when they formed the so-called national teacher's union called the National Education Association. This organization has never been, and is not now a union for the betterment of teachers. What it is, is a massive lobbying organization for altruist (liberal) causes, one of which is to turn out graduates who aren't smart enough to realize that socialism is wrong, and is, in and of itself, a crime against humanity.
They Use Student Protests To Promote Their Agenda: For many years, this government has been promoting the use of student protests as a means of utilizing the Hegelian Principal of pressure from below to force pressure from above. Does anybody really think that all the student violence in recent years is something this government is actually against?
They Use Terrorist Acts To Advance Their Agenda: What about terrorist acts such as the Oklahoma City bombing? I'm not saying this government itself promoted such things (although that has been suggested), but I am saying that they are shamelessly using such things as a lever to get legislation passed that we would not have allowed them to pass without the prior conditioning these acts created. One recent example is the Terrorist Bill that will allow government agents much more free rein in snooping into all of our private business and in holding us without charges, and without telling our families where we are. This bill was all but dead before Oklahoma City. But with this government fanning the flames, it took on new life.
They Use The Press: If anybody believes the press isn't in the pockets of liberal politicians and bureaucrats, think again. There is ample evidence that this is true if anybody has the guts or the initiative to look for it. It's rare that anything deemed unsuitable will ever appear in the press because most of the people who do the writing are altruists and those who make the publishing decisions are, too. Why are they? Because that's what they've been taught to be from grade school, and especially in college and in journalism school. Furthermore, the people in charge will not allow anything to appear in print which has not been approved at the highest levels. Do you doubt me?
Let's hear it from top newspeople:
Richard M. Cohan, Senior Producer of CBS political news: "We are going to impose our agenda on coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with."
Walter Cronkite, a national news anchor, said: "News reporters are certainly liberal (socialists) and left of center." This from a liberal socialist who is left of center, even though he vehemently denies it.
Barbara Walters, known as the "$5 Million Dollar Newswoman," contends: "The news media in general are liberals (socialists)."
John Swinton, former Chief of Staff for the New York Times, said it best in a toast made before the New York Press Club in 1953: "There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it will never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
"If I allowed honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." This wasn't given "big play" in the press even though all the top newspeople were in attendance. I'm sure you can figure out why.
These words come from people who have been in the news business all their lives. These aren't words from some obscure right-wing writer. They're words out of their own mouths. They must be believed if you are not a fool who will let your government lead you to the slaughter while they tell you it isn't a slaughterhouse, that you're just going to the showers, the way Jews were led to the gas chambers in Nazi Germany.
THEY USE OUR OWN MONEY TO CONTROL US
They don't want your money at all, except as a means to the end of being able to control your every action and even your every thought. You don't have to own the money if you control, absolutely, how it is spent. Money is not the motivator for these people except that control of the money gives them control over you. Mayor Amschel Bauer, once the Godfather of the Rothschild Banking Cartel of Europe said: "Give me control over a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." In 1957, the then U. S. Senator from Nevada George W. Malone, said: "I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election. It adds up to a preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of the United States."
HOW ABOUT IT?
You answer for yourself. Is it right to distrust the people in our government who are daily ripping all of us off and who are working like beavers to take complete control over us? Or are those of us who are aware of what Congress has done to us over the last 49 years, and beyond, merely extremists who only get in the way of good government? You must make up your own mind. Then only you can decide what you must do about it. The answer is investigation and exposure. Their schemes can't survive if we are all aware of what they're doing and resist en masse. Take the time and spend the money to inform yourself so you may be able to make informed decisions.
If nothing else, write me and let me know what you think, pro or con.
"The Federal Income Tax Con: They conned us into allowing them to tax our income by promising that the maximum tax rate would never be more than 3%, and that only the very rich would ever have to pay it."
The concept of the government having a claim on one's income was accepted under the guise of sticking it to the other fella (the rich). That generation bought into the class warfare con and now there is probably no way to get out of the mess.
Your response -- being anti-collectivist, and that it's not your fault if that is indistinguishable from anti-government -- is the most succinct and powerful refutation to the anti-government label I have come across. Kudos to you muir_redwoods.
When "altruism" is mandated, it ceases to be altruism. It is then slavery. People don't get that often. People who genuinely care about other people and would give of their time, money, etc. on their own often fail to make that connection. I know several people like that.
Another great point brought up on this thread...Kudos to you too MichiganConservative.
I have been making this point in several recent discussions with friends who mistakenly think in this same way. They think that people will never give of their own time and money to help people, so they are comfortable when the government does it for them. Again, as mentioned in the article, this is because people are lead to believe that it is someone else's money going to pay for all of the government "altruism." People who don't think altruism exists are either victims or products of class envy themselves.
Ideally we would cut the government's income by about 2/3 and have the government engaged only in constitutionally authorized activities. With all the "extra" wealth people would have - they could afford to donate their time or money to truly altruistic ends. I am told though, that people will not do this because they are greedy. It's the government bureaucracies that are greedy...
"The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!" -- Frederic Bastiat
“The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” -- Frederic Bastiat
You must make up your own mind. Then only you can decide what you must do about it. The answer is investigation and exposure. Their schemes can't survive if we are all aware of what they're doing and resist en masse.
"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." -- Victor Hugo
The definition of altruism varies with what the person using it has as an agenda, and which one is the true form of altruism. To quote Webster:
Main Entry: al·tru·ism
Pronunciation: 'al-tru-"i-z&m
Etymology: French altruisme, from autrui other people, from Old French, oblique case form of autre other, from Latin alter
Date: 1853
1 : unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others
2 : behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species
What is flexible to interpretation is the motivation behind such an “unselfish regard”. For some, it may be the achievement of a socialist paradise, while for others it is simply following God’s orders. For yet others the façade of altruism is just a means of persuading average schmoes to sacrifice their well-being while getting nothing in return. Obviously, all three of these are very different, and have very different results.
Personally, I am not an atheist, but I do not think there is anything wrong with honest egoism (I think that is what you meant to say, as egoism = “a : a doctrine that individual self-interest is the actual motive of all conscious action b : a doctrine that individual self-interest is the valid end of all actions” whereas egotism = “a : excessive use of the first person singular personal pronoun b : the practice of talking about oneself too much 2 : an exaggerated sense of self-importance”). Just as altruism can be perverted to fit the technical meaning while totally ignoring the intention behind it, the same has been done to egoism time and time again. A true egoist understands that only those who succeed on the fruits of their own labour and thought can be honestly happy with their lives, and that the consequential aiding of others that one finds deserving is a most acceptable and good use of the profits. Private charity is not ruled out by egoism, just coerced charity by the state or a similarly force-based inititiative.
I don’t know the extent of your familiarity with Hume or Voltaire, but I have studied them both at great length, and I would be profoundly interested in seeing what parallels you draw between them and Marx, Engels et al. Personally, unless I were dividing thinkers by those that adhere to Christian orthodoxy and those that don’t, I would find almost nothing in common between them, beyond Hume’s persuasive dialectics establishing before the existence of Darwin’s “Origin” that to be an atheist was not an irrational position, but also not necessarily a correct position. In particular I think you do Voltaire a grave disservice…he may have been far from perfect but his writings are that part of the enlightenment that advanced Western thought rather than setting it back. Perhaps you meant the reprehensible Rousseau, the father of Socialism and the Societal Will?
If you are really interested in the Liberal abuse of language, I highly recommend Friedrich Hayek's brilliant chapter on what he calls "weasel words" in his book "The Fatal Conceit". I think it might also give you a very interesting viewpoint on the nature of the human delusion that reality is subject to our fancies.
Conservatives don't like the unions that control our public schools (and our kids while they are in school) — so the Liberals filled the void and they have almost total control of our public schools.
Same thing for labor unions, social programs, etc, etc, etc.
Let's call it Right Flight, aka "ignore it and it will go away," aka "run away and then whine about it,".....
"As government expands, liberty contracts."
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