Playing Dice With Liberty (I): Questions to Our Leaders

A post under the title "Financial Journalists in Crisis: Did We Fail?" has been up on the main page for the better part of this week. It shows a video produced by the European new media service, EUX.TV.

It announces the upcoming convention "Covering The Crisis"  of the European Journalists Centre (EJC) to be held on November 9 and 10 in Brussels.  The aim appears to be a rare bout of professional introspection.

The matter struck me, because the press in general on almost every issue earned themselves a huge #fail tag for non-achievement over the last couple of years. But those members of the press corps, reporting on financial and economic issues are probably the least guilty of professional sell out. Nevertheless, it is them doing the self critique. Remarkable!.

Around the 1.50 mark the video shows an unspecified pundit stating:

"We've heard from every Head of State and Government Minister that we would reform Capitalism. This [speech] came from the persons who were responsible for this mess we're in."

The question who or what actually triggered the opportune crisis may never be answered and it is perhaps immaterial, given that the subprime mortgage situation was a bubble waiting to explode in our faces. But that's just one of the questions hardly ever posed, let alone answered.

Of course, as the journalist in the video states, we've all heard our respective Heads of State's and Government Ministers' comments, particularly in the run up to the last G20 summit in Pittsburgh, but perhaps we never took their assertions all that literally (unless you are a Socialist, in which case it must have sounded like collectivism come true!).

Nevertheless, the 800 pound gorilla this commentator set loose into the room cannot be whiped under the carpet.
 
Our leaders' comments to bring down - or "reform" - the capitalist system invite a very serious charge of treason against them. Of course most people are too 'ideologically evolved' to see the problem here, but it is nevertheless very fundamental (not to say, existential).

An exaggeration then? (Treason, indeed!) But here's the thing ...

Without going too deep into the field of epistemology, this is how the human mind works: concepts are formed from percepts, and concepts are expressed in words. Words are not rough approximations! A word has a very specific meaning. Language is not just a means of communication, it is also a convention which allows us to perform complex procedures, from neuro surgery to rocket science.

Technically, the expression of a concept into words is not the same as a definition, but the term will do for the moment to re-acquaint ourselves with absolutes. We need to get back using language with the respect it deserves! Find out the meaning of a word, before using it!

Reverting to cognition, this process is done by an individual. The individual is therefore the basic universal unit. It is the result of that natural process, derived from a higher power which we may call God, or Nature, if you are an atheist.

This is nothing less than the foundation of Western civilization: the all important primary, individual rights  derived from Nature, or bestowed upon us by God, who made us equal (it is no coincidence that it is individualism and reason that are most under assault!). This brings us to secondary rights.

On the political level primary rights lead to the rule of law and limited government in the service of individual voters whom they represent. 

Individual property rights, and rights to the fruits of one's labor form the economic basis of what Carl Marx pejoratively termed, Capitalism. 

To deny this system like collectivists and statists of various hue do, or to criticize it to the point of wanting to "reform" it, as our own leaders take the liberty to do, is not without consequences for our rights and how we organize the world.

A clarification would be in order before we embark any further upon this subtle shift from individual liberty to submission to the whole. What would this "reform" entail and from who or what do you derive the authority to do so? Furthermore:

- Do you still recognize individual rights? Or are you advocating collectivism under your leadership: special prerogatives and privileges for certain groups of people based on gender, race, religion or cultural identity, bestowed upon them by the Government?

- Are you still the servants of the people? Or are you a member of an oligarchy who know better what's good for us; and do we owe you gratitude for all the positive rights that you in your goodness, will bestow upon us through the Government?

- Do you still respect our economic rights to property, and mutually beneficial interaction and trade? Or will we keep a current account with the Tax Department through which you will determine the value of our labor and services under considerations of "social justice"?

To be continued. 

- Posters by "The People's Cube": Liberty and Tea Party Posters - Complete Collection - Free Downloads - 

The Brutal History of Rights

It cannot be reiterated and emphasized often enough what precisely is the nature and origin of the basic rights that many of us enjoy to this day! Few today appreciate their value and at what price they've come!

Sadly, over the last decades younger generations have been willfully indoctrinated with over abstracted and perverted versions of the basic concepts of liberty and individual rights. Some Americans hope themselves to be united in these values, but they should know these are emphatically not shared by those on the far Left side of the aisle.

- Caption: logo of the 912 Project based on "Don't Tread On Me" -

The purpose of postmodern 'interpretations' - usually a series of subtle shifts in definition until a word begins to mean its opposite - have always been entirely clear: to subordinate individuals once more to the collective and to the tyrants who take it upon themselves to realize their ideals - without fail in the name of a 'higher morality', the greater good, an illusionary common will, or whatever false ideal is brought to bear as a sad excuse on the road to hell.

Europeans have become so used to the reality of "third way" politics and mixed economies, that they firmly believe them to represent a fair balance between cut-throat Capitalism and benign collectivism. But sadly, what is experienced as a compromise is merely a brief stage in the transition process from less freedom to total tyranny.

Progress is not a timeline, but comes in loops, in cycles. Read all about it in a series of posts contributed to this blog some time ago by an author who is currently entrusting to paper his memoirs of the Korean War and must therefore be temporarily missed. Read "Understanding Change" by Dr Sam Holliday of the Armiger Cromwell Center.

Growth is the natural order of things. Survival depends on it. The same is true of corporations and governments. What starts out as an entity to protect the people's liberty - with no authority greater than the sum of rights held by the people they represent - if unchecked, the entity inevitably morphs into an autocratic Leviathan that dictates shopping hours at best and the content of our minds at worst.

One has to admire the wisdom and sense of realism held by America's founders; for instance Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that "the people cannot be all, and always, well informed", a prerequisite for democracy, which is not an end in itself by the way, but one possible aid in the protection of individual rights. He also asserted that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." (full quote)

Most may not realise it yet, but the gaping chasm between the understanding of those basic principles and the current postmodern interpretation of what constitutes freedom and government, has brought Western civilization to the brink of collapse.

Here's another great essay by Dr Sam Holliday, this time about the ominous parallels between our present time and the German interbellum, better known as the Weimar Republic: "Red Flags".

As the devastating results of the "Community Reinvestment Act" are suppressed, thanks to the spin that the current financial and economic crisis was only to be expected since 'greed' is inherent in the Capitalist system, some are already tentatively suggesting that the same dilemma is true as was pondered between the two world wars: namely that Capitalism has sadly failed us and that the only recourse is a collectivist system.

Back then the false choice was between Communism and Fascism: Left or Right collectivism. Things are not all that outspoken this time around: no right-minded politician or spin doctor would call these ideologies by their proper names.

Instead, while the global Obama honeymoon drags on and the pillars of the economy remain frozen like mesmerized deer in the headlights, a public discourse on such subjects fails to materialize and the financial crisis - too good an opportunity to pass up - is used as a leverage to implement the measures necessary for the establishment of a crypto collective.

The only question is in fact what its degree of malignancy will be?

Here's a reminder of the brutal history of our rights as promised at the head of this post. And here's the entire series. Let's see how we'll get ourselves out of this crap pit. I'd say - for starters - let's shock the silent majority out of their catatonic stupor! As usual the Americans are at the vangard while the rest of us very slowly catches on (but no guarantees there).

Cannot imagine who's copyrights that footage infringed on, but here are a few alternatives:





Boston Tea Party site

R.I.P. Parliamentary Democracy

To those who haven't noticed, to the dim of wit, the socialights, the evaders and the hard of hearing: WE ARE THROAT-DEEP IN HORSE MANURE, primarily because we are encouraged to voluntarily forfeit the faculty that makes us humans human: to reason, the ability to properly identify, to integrate concepts into a mental body of ideas that conform to reality. And then there's the inability to weigh the portent of a particular case. The march of the debilitizers rolls on.

Because of an uptick in both frequency and severity we yesterday felt the necessity to open up a new dossier on Articles named "Ruled by the Mob" (not to be confused with the tyranny of the majority, or mob rule). It consists in a political innovation (at least in our time), that is now temporarily culminating in a case in Britain: the criminalization of the opposition.

Thanks to the Obama campaign in the US - which was as close to total war as one can get without actual bloodshed - the dossier is already quite lengthy.

It occurred last Thursday November 27 when the anti-terrorist squad of the Metropolitan police arrested Shadow Minister for Immigration, Damian Green MP, while his private papers and computer files in his home and office in the House of Commons were ransacked and confiscated.

This violation against the state of parliamentary democracy happened on thinly veiled, trumped up charges of possible "intent to disrupt the visit of the Queen to the Houses of Parliament". What's next, one might ask: Jesuits thrown in dungeons for disturbing the peace in St Peter's? But that's not the point!

The following question is intriguing, but it also misses the essence: who has been infiltrating swathes of British society and has propagated to act over and beyond his or her authority? If the surfacing of the black hand of Common Purpose (CP) cabal is too contrived for you, try this.

Roger Kimball on his blog on Pajamas Media deals with the case in "How Democracies Perish, British Edition": "The Honorable Member’s offense? Embarrassing Gordon Brown’s government. How did he do this? By revealing in debate on the floor of the House of Commons and in various lapses, failures, and dirty-little-secrets about the government’s immigration policy (...) Mr. Green was doing exactly what a member of the Opposition should do: shedding light on the government’s failures in order to make it more accountable to the public."

Kimball goes on to quote Janet Daley in the London Telegraph:

"The object of the exercise seems to have been intimidation and the flaunting of power. Short of an outright, totalitarian suspension of democracy, this is about as serious as it gets. Freedom is under threat in ways that we would not have thought conceivable a generation ago. The threat seems to be coming in various forms from a government desperate to save its own credibility and to be so convinced of its moral righteousness that it can justify the most blatant abuses of what we had taken to be the fundamental principles of a free society."

Some of the comments to the post are worth quoting in full:

#7: “…it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect” --George Orwell

#8: "As Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, put it “This is something you might expect from a tin-pot dictatorship, not in a modern democracy.” Socrates would beg to differ. If you want to avoid going down the road that leads to this sort of thing, it helps to know how we got here in the first place. The Left’s substitution of “democracy” for freedom is a key first step to their overall goal of taking the shackles off government and placing them back on the wrists of individuals. What makes a society free is a limited government, not an elected one."

So much for Barack Obama and his contempt for negative rights, which he popularly described as "what government cannot do to you". Rather than suffering the horrors of neglect by the state, he prefers the positive rights that chain a free individual once again to the risk-free nursery of the tribal collective.

The case is also born out in an excellent article by essayist Fjordman on the site of The Brussels Journal: "The Importance of Cicero in Western Thought". It's lengthy, but worth reading in its full glory. Here's one excerpt from Hayek's work "Constitution of Liberty" that's relevant to the case in hand (p. 146):

- Caption: young Cicero, reading - mural by Vincenzo Foppa, ca. 1464 -

"Cicero indeed became the main authority for modern liberalism, and we owe to him many of the most effective formulations of freedom under the law (...) that we obey the law in order to be free (...) during the classical period of Roman law it was fully understood that there is no conflict between law and freedom and that freedom is dependent upon certain attributes of the law, its generality and certainty, and the restrictions it places on the discretion of authority."

Freedom, as well as free will are often confused with acting on whim - another case of wrongful identification - which is indeed associated with mob rule, or tyranny by the majority which is in fact democracy.

As Sam Holliday pointed out in a recent essay on this blog, "A US Weimar Republic? Red Flags: Our Republic": [America's Founding Fathers] "created a federal republic, and wrote the Constitution of the United States, based on the tenets of classical republicanism, which is dependent on sovereignty being held by citizens themselves. The Founders shared a fear of tyranny, either by dictators or Caesars, and sought ways to protect freedom; their solutions were decentralization and checks and balances. It was a remarkable compromise designed as a safe guard against mass emotionalism."

The Left and increasingly also some on the Right are blind to the perils of recent trends towards emocracy, collectivism, bailouts and nationalizations, corporatism, peace-offerings and libations to theofascists and now, demonization and criminalization of the opposition. The Government that perpetrated this abomination is - to this moment - in power.

We stand by what we concluded yesterday in a note on the precursors of censorship: "Tolerate it at your peril."

Update:

Times just reported that the police acted without a warrant and in the course of an investigation into a series of leaks traced back to the Home Office. We are not in a position to investigate, but will show no signs of surprise if Acting Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson or the directly responsible underling, as was the case in the De Menezes shooting, turns out to have undergone training by the nefarious Common Purpose (CP), "to act beyond authority" (see above). N.B. There was one (1) Labour MP who protested the matter during the Commons Debate. Kudos to him; the rest are too demoralized to compute the longer-term course of their ideas.

- Filed on Articles in "Ruled by the Mob" -