Posted on 07/17/2002 7:04:56 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Diogenes, the story goes, spent his life in a futile search for an honest man.
He never made it to Washington, which is a good thing, because based on what you see on the news or read in the papers, his search wouldn’t have ended there.
Nor would he have found honesty in America’s corporate suites. Nor Hollywood, the manufacturer of dreams and illusions which have no basis in truth.
So where is honesty? Does it, in fact, even exist?
Good question. Not one, however, with an easy answer.
“Chase after truth like hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat-tails,” said Clarence Darrow who, as a lawyer, knew first hand that truth seldom mattered.
Author Edith Sitwell said “the public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth,” a belief that drives most elected officials.
Early in our lives, we are taught that “honesty is the best policy” and then we immediately forget it as we lie to our parents about where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to or lie to teachers about whether or not we really read the assignment.
We learn there are “degrees” of truth, that “little white lies” are not as bad as big, bad, blatant misstatements. As kids, we worry about getting caught when we lie. As we get older, the lies get more complex but the worry subsides in an environment where truth is an expendable commodity.
A Gallup Poll in 1998 showed 60 percent of married men and 52 percent of married women admitted cheating on their spouses at least once (and that’s assuming they were telling the truth about when and how often). The same poll said 66 percent of Americans regularly cheat on their taxes.
In 1992, an Ohio State Trooper pulled me over for speeding just outside of Cleveland.
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
“Yeah, about 75.” I was more pissed at not noticing him behind me than in the fact he caught me speeding.
“Well, today’s your lucky day,” he said. “I have a rule that when a motorist is honest with me, I only give them a warning. I don’t give out many warnings.”
In Washington, the truth gets lost under a pile of spin and political rhetoric designed to put an elected official in the best light even when the facts say otherwise.
When is the last time you heard a member of Congress admit he or she was “wrong” or admit they lied about a past action? Can’t remember? You’re not alone. Does this mean all members of Congress are honest? Not bloody likely.
Bill Clinton stood up before the American public and lied outright when he claimed he never, ever, had sex with “that woman…Ms. Lewinsky.” It took several months and a DNA test on a semen-stained dress for him to finally, hesitantly, admit he lied.
Clinton isn’t the only President to lie to the American people. Ronald Reagan lied about Iran Contra. Richard Nixon lied about Watergate. Kennedy and Johnson lied about Vietnam. Even Jimmy “I’ll never tell you lie” Carter lied when it served his political purpose.
Yet apologists for all these men offered hollow excuses for the lies, saying they were in the “national interest” or, in Clinton’s case, were a futile attempt to “avoid embarrassment to his family.”
What normally happens is that the lie, in the end, turns out to be the biggest embarrassment of them all, a lesson that none of us ever seems to learn.
Journalists claim to be on a search for the truth, yet we print the obvious lies of political spokesmen every day. Watch any of the Sunday talk shows and you will see all the political hacks offering up the party line unchallenged by the talking heads who host these vehicles of misinformation.
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes,” Mark Twain said.
But it may have been a communist who best understood the real role of truth in modern society.
“A lie told often enough,” Lenin said, “becomes the truth.”
On second thought, maybe Diogenes should have come to Washington (had Washington existed during his ancient search).
He would have taken one look around, shaken his head, abandoned his search for truth and gotten on with his life.
Early in our lives, we are taught that “honesty is the best policy” and then we immediately forget it as we lie to our parents about where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to or lie to teachers about whether or not we really read the assignment.
Parents and adults lie to innocent young children in the name of "having fun". Young children look up to adults, especially their parents for help in confirming whether the child himself has accurately identified reality. Surely parents and adults don't intentionally try to derail the child from developing a rational conscious mind. Yet from a very young age parents do derail the young child's quest to develop into rational conscious individual -- a most admirable character development that all other character development will be grounded in and flourish from. ...If the child succeeds in his or her quest.
Thwarting that all important quest are lies about flying reindeer with a jolly old fat man in tow. Besides the primary concern that the blatant lie is clearly refuted by laws of physics, fat and old are not the benefits an innocent child would rationally seek. Also in the name of "having fun" are the tooth fairy and Easter bunny further thwarting the innocent young child on his or her most important quest for developing a rational mind and thought process.
When is the last time you heard a member of Congress admit he or she was “wrong” or admit they lied about a past action? Can’t remember? You’re not alone. Does this mean all members of Congress are honest? Not bloody likely.
Why politicians and bureaucrats eschew admitting their errors.
An eye-opening identification of the real reason why self-proclaimed authorities avoid at almost all cost admitting their own errors.
Not only is it in their eyes a sign of weakness to admit their own errors, they eschew demonstrating a demarcation point wherein an observer can delineate that the person does in fact have honor and integrity to act honestly.
The importance of that is overwhelming. Once a person has shown that degree of maturity -- that degree of honesty and integrity -- it is expected that they will continue to demonstrate a similar high degree of that character trait.
Thus, it is not a one time event of showing weakness they most fear, rather, it is an ongoing condition of honest charter development that they fear the observer will hold them to.
They -- parasitical politicians, self-serving bureaucrats and other high-profile self-proclaimed authorities -- know how often they intentionally deceive, and to demonstrate a rational and honest character trait of freely admitting one's own error would thwart their future deceptions. ...They would be called to the matt -- their feet held to the fire -- to again demonstrate mature character development to acknowledge/admit their error. For the alternative is far more destabilizing to their authority (which is really just their self-proclaimed authority). Destabilizing for them to defend their argument, to defend an argument that is indefensible. So they avoid at all cost demonstrating a mature character trait that the vast majority of adults take for granted in themselves. They fear being held accountable to a valid and real character trait that is respected by virtually every person.
Also, a person over time can admit to only so many errors before they become discredited. Admitting errors and positioning oneself as "everyone makes errors" only goes as far as people make a few errors, not several errors in their field of expertise. So they can't take that route either.
In effect, self-proclaimed authorities chose to pigeon hole themselves into continued irrationality that leads them to deceptions and dishonesty. All in effort to support their "authority" status. Which again, is merely their self-proclaimed authority status.
Bottom line, they have sullen self-esteem and envy others that have earned their self-esteem based on rational, honest and mature charter development. Those positive charter traits are the properties of the value creator -- the workers of the world that create the goods and services that increase the well-being, health and prosperity of self, others and society. They hold real and valid power. They create the sustenance for enhancing human life. They are the envy of self-proclaimed authorities.
The above identifications encompass -- to one degree or another -- all self-proclaimed authorities and especially politicians and bureaucrats with their supporting/complicit media and academic "authorities".
Journalists claim to be on a search for the truth, yet we print the obvious lies of political spokesmen every day. Watch any of the Sunday talk shows and you will see all the political hacks offering up the party line unchallenged by the talking heads who host these vehicles of misinformation.
How mainstream media reporters and journalists fit into the big picture.
"They demand strict accounting regulations to prevent billion dollar business frauds while they evade responsibility for a trillion-dollar government fraud," he added.
He said it's ironic that no one in Washington is demanding an end to Social Security. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
It's only ironic if the person thinks the government has high standards of ethics, integrity and honesty. Or, ironic because that's the image they want people to perceive. That's where the mainstream media and academia join the party -- a government party. Honest, hard-working citizens need not apply.
Reporters are too lazy to put forth the effort. They choose to open doors wherever possible and keep them open. The very people the media should be reporting as crooks, criminals and scoundrels are the ones they praise.
What a colossal hoax it is. For of course the interviewee -- the bigger the better to which politicians and bureaucrats are among the biggest with academics and "specialists" bought by the media mantra of open all doors coming in right behind -- those people (hidden crooks) being interviewed would never open the door if he or she knew that the reporter intended to expose them as frauds.
Put rhetorically: Do you really think a politician or bureaucrat would welcome an interview conducted by a reporter or journalist knowing that he or she was going to expose their participation in government fraud? Do you think mainstream reporters and journalists would expose the politicians and bureaucrats for their frauds knowing that they'd be shutting the door to any future interviews with that politician or bureaucrat and his cronies?
Conversely, there's a large and growing cadre of articulate, well-thought-out writers on the WWW. They are the opposite of the lazy reporters that rely on the easy-to-open doors of covering for crooks. In essence, they are unreal easy-open doors that can slam back shut in their face.
For the articulate writers on the Web, their open doors are among themselves, and their readers. Their essence is that they have to honestly earn an open door policy with their interviewees and they welcome their readers feedback. Often looking for other articulate writers of integrity and honesty among the feedback they get from readers.
That the mainstream media is liberal biased is not a reflection of congress or the alphabet bureaucracies. It is with both Republicans and Democrats that the government is what it is. The whole good-guy-bad-guy betwixt political parties is a ruse. For voting for the lesser of evils still begets evil.
As Mr. Brown used to jokingly ask us neighborhood kids, "Do you want a fat lip or a busted eyebrow?" That was not lost on me. From Democrats you get one, from Republicans you get the other. There are no winners and losers in politics for they (reps and dems) are two sides of the same coin. The only losers are the citizens, their prosperity and well-being which is mostly represented by the business community. The only winners are parasitical politicians and self-serving bureaucrats. ...Hot on their heels the mainstream media and academics catering to government crooks.
The Genie is Out of the Bottle.
Congress has created so many laws that virtually every person is assured of breaking more than just traffic laws. Surely with all this supposed lawlessness people and society should have long ago run head long into destruction. But it has not.
Instead, people and society have progressively prospered. Doing so despite politicians creating on average, 3,000 new laws each year which self-serving alphabet-agency bureaucrats implement/utilize to justify their usurped power and unearned paychecks. They both proclaim from on high -- with complicit endorsement from the media and academia -- that all those laws are "must-have" laws to thwart people and society from running headlong into self-destruction.
Again, despite not having this year's 3,000 must-have laws people and society increased prosperity for years and decades prior. How can it be that suddenly the people and the society they form has managed to be so prosperous for so long but suddenly they will run such great risk of destroying their self-created prosperity?
The government is the all time champion of cooking the books and it has the gall to point fingers at the whole business community because of a few bad apples. The entire business community and employees that support it should stand tall against a government feigning to protect the little guy from organizations that cook their books.
If there was ever a prime example of the fox guarding the hen house it is the government claiming to protect the little guy from organizations that cook their books. President Bush will have to militarily smash down terrorism. For that is his job. It's not the President's, congress' or the government's job to manipulate the economy.
The business community with their employees will have to stand tall against the PC-status-quo fox -- self-proclaimed authorities claiming/feigning they'll use the government to protect the little guy and a complicit media and academia that supports them; for they are all the fox -- to regain their rightful place as the champions of honest business that has always increased the well-being of people.
The government, having already manipulated the economy to almost no-end, President Bush can play the unbeatable five-ace hand of replacing the threat-of-force IRS and graduated income tax with a don't-pay-the-tax-if-you-don't-want-to consumption tax. For example, implement the proposed national retail sales tax (NRST). Not only would that win votes for Bush and republicans in congress it would boom the economy.
Where will it lead?
War of Two Worlds
Value Creators versus Value Destroyers
Politics is not the solution. It's the problem!
The first thing civilization must have is business/science. It's what the family needs so that its members can live creative, productive, happy lives. Business/science can survive, even thrive without government/bureaucracy.
Government/bureaucracy cannot survive without business/science. In general, business/science and family is the host and government/bureaucracy is a parasite.
Aside from that, keep valid government services that protect individual rights and property. Military defense, FBI, CIA, police and courts. With the rest of government striped away those few valid services would be several fold more efficient and effective than they are today.
Underwriters Laboratory is a private sector business that has to compete in a capitalist market. Underwriters laboratory is a good example of success where government fails.
Any government agency that is a value to the people and society -- which there are but a few -- could better serve the people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.
Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.
* * *
After all, in calling for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commissioner Harvey Pitt, McCain declares, “Government’s demands for corporate accountability are only credible if government executives are held accountable as well." Does that mean U.S. senators? Congress, Accounting, and the Free Market (McCain is grandstanding again)
"Too often, we have cooked the books, exploited off-balance sheet accounting, fudged budget numbers and failed to disclose fully the nation's assets and liabilities. If we in Washington are to have credibility in the public eye as we address the corporate accounting mess, we must reform our own fiscal practices," said McCain. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
Prove it first. It's not like it's a new discovery or problem. It's a seventy-year-old problem. It's just that now politicians and bureaucrats have trapped themselves and the general public is becoming increasingly aware. They've been caught and McCain is getting interview time to peddle gussied-up compassionate government.
"Allowing Americans to invest responsibly a small part of their payroll taxes will not only save Social Security, but will provide them with greater retirement income than those who no or will soon depend on Social Security checks," said McCain. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
Notice McCain so readily wants himself and government to allow Americans to invest part of their own money. But he has a condition; it most be done responsibly. And who decides what is responsible? Certainly not the all-time champion, cook-the-books bureaucrats and snake-oil-salesmen politicians.
They -- self-proclaimed authorities -- are running citizens and society headlong into destruction.
The shame!!/sarcasm
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