Islamofascism is Islamophobic

If we are to ever stop the ongoing wars of the Middle East, we must have a term to describe the enemy we've been fighting in the region.

Personally, I favor the term "Islamofacsism." For that matter, I actually prefer the term to the more common "Radical Islam."

The term "Islamofascism" is based on the noun "Facsism." Facsism was a Western ideology that shared many of the totalitarian views as Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. The term says that we are fighting against a totalitarian philosophy that just happens to exist within an Islamic region. It does a great job separating our foe from Islam.

As fascism was a secular ideology. The term "Islamofascism" is not a de facto indictment of Islam as "Radical Islam" is.

The word "radical" means roots. It actually has a positive meaning in some philosophical systems where radical refers to a deep examination of the roots of one's beliefs.

In the modern world, radical often has the negative meaning of manipulation at a root level. With this second meaning, "Radical Islam" could simply refer to rogues manipulating Islam at its roots.

But, if one applies the traditional meaning of the term "radical" then the term "radical Islam" implies that their is something seriously wrong with Islam at its roots.

Using the term "Islamofacsism" to describe the radical movements of the Middle East places a greater separation between Islam and the terrorist groups of the middle east.

Sadly, our intellectual elite have made the term "Islamofascism" taboo. The progressive elite claim that adding the prefix "Islamo" to a word is unnecessarily insulting to Islam.

Anyway, I was reading a leftwing rant that labeled conservatives as "Islamophobic."

My heart sank seeing progressive spittle use the exact same word form to describe Conservatives that they will not allow for discussing the people who blow up planes, buildings and mosques.

Wondering why its okay to use a word form to attack Conservatives while the same word form is forbidden in discusion of international politics, I decided to do some research on word usage.

I discovered that Wikipedia and various dictionaries generally include warnings that label "Islamofascism" as pejorative or controversial. The definitions of "Islamophobia" concentrate on the faults of people who, for whatever reason, fear Islam.

A girl running away from a father wanting to do an honor killing is Islamophobic. The TSA removing a passenger from a plane for having Pepto Bismal bottle taped to a cellphone is Islamophobia.

Meanwhile, the progressives elite will not allow us a word to describe a person driving a carbomb into a crowded market.

Progressives are Radicals of the Worst Kind

This ongoing manipulation of our language by progressives at the root level is the ugly form of radicalism. Progressives systematically engage in the type of radicalism that results in deep divisions and destroy civil discourse.

Tweet Button: Tweet

Two Views of Civil Rights

One can radicalize any idea. In the 1960s, the left radicalized the Civil Rights movement.

Civil Rights prior to radicalization was dramatically different than it was after the radicalization.

Before radicalization, the Republican Party was the driving force behind Civil Rights. More surprisingly, Republicans were the liberals, while Democrats did everything they could to cling to the racist status quo.

After the movement, Democrats completed the capture of the term liberal and successfully projected the label "conservative" on Republicans.

IMHO, the dueling Beck/Sharpton 8/28 rallies did a pretty good job showing the form of these two Civil Rights Movements. The Beck show had people standing around talking about high-minded ideals with a discussion of both the challenges and success of our nation ... with an emphasis on the successes.

Al Sharpton's march was a watered down peoples struggle against Beck.

For years I held the high minded civil rights movement that ran from the end of the Civil War to the Sixties was all well and good, but that it failed in achieving the goal of granting Civil Rights.

Since the classical liberal approach to civil rights failed and the radical approach seemed to work, I bought into the notion that the radical progressive methodology was a better approach to getting things done.

I finally realized that this appearance might just be an illusion. Republicans had been supporting civil rights for almost a century. The radical Democrats of the Jim Crow era were the ones blocking progress.

By the 50s, the Democrats realized that they were stuck with a losing issue, and made the decision to change their position. The Democrats executed the switch to take place in the Kennedy/Johnson administration.

The Civil Rights Movement was a matter of Democrats switching from radical racism to radical anti-racism. It was not the case of an enlightened radical movement in struggle with a regressive conservative movement.

A higher percentage of the Republicans framed as conservatives actually voted for the legislation.

I wrote a longer piece about why I am now of the opinion that the high-minded Beck style rally is the better approach to long term social progress. I also explained why the angry peoples struggle by Sharpton is paradoxical and counter productive.

The longer piece was hard to understand without understanding the radicalization process.

Tweet Button: Tweet

Visa Violations and Deportation

The visa system is a program that helps people travel around the world. A visa is a contract made between an individual and state that outlines the form of a stay. Visas tend to have an entry date and duration that sets an exit date.

It is good practice to have some leeway in enforcing exit dates on visas. However, there is no reason for us to incur brain damage about deporting people who overstayed a visa.

The people who are traveling on visa are in the process of traveling. We are not uprooting people who violate the conditions of visas since their agreement says that they are in the process of traveling.

This game where the shrill left projects racism and oppression on the system that allows greater mobility is absurd. Deporting a person for a visa violation is not the case of the punishment not fitting the crime, it is simply the fulfillment of a contract.

Without a visa system, every single border crossing must be treated as if the traveler is emigrating.

BTW, if the left really strongly believes the visa system is wrong, then we should change the visa laws. But we need to quit this game where the enforcement of visa is framed as an act of oppression.

Call for Entrepreneurs

I'd love to see the Medical Savings and Loan made a reality.

Right now happens to be one of those rare moments in history where people are looking to restore a free market.

The mathematics behind the Medical Savings and Loan is solid. The business model is strong. It has substantially less risk for the entrepreneur than insurance.

States seeking to nullify Obamacare are actively seeking alternative health care models to help justify nullification.

All the program needs is a few entrepreneurs with business connections who want to make a significant improvement in their community by helping people take control of their health care expenses.

To start a Medical Savings and Loan, one would need about 3000 working adults who are interested in self-financing their health care. A group with a score of small businesses would have about the right number of policy holders.

The Medicals Savings and Loan would replace costly insurance. A small business that goes this route is likely to see a 10% to 20% drop in the cost of health care. I imagine that there are companies that would like to see a reduction in their expenses.

Once the business model proves out, I suspect that millions will drop their insurance policies in favor of the Medical Savings and Loan.

In the last post, I brought up the point that a system of accounts distributed across multiple businesses would be more secure than a single monolythic company.

At this point, I am thinking more in terms of creating a network of businesses than in creating a single business. A network avoids the problem of a single point of failure.

What I want is a system where independent businesses franchise the term "Medical Savings and Loan."

Right now the Medical Savings and Loan is a golden opportunity looking for entrepreneurs. Sadly, my two years of blogging and tweeting on the issue has failed to result in a single contact.

If there is a entrepreneur living in a state seeking to nullify Obamacare and who could drum up a few businesses (about 3000 policy holders), I would love to hear from them.

Avoiding Cloward and Pivens

The Cloward and Pivens Strategy is a method where one overwhelms social services with hopes that the disruption would afford an opportunity to grab power and affect change.

The Cloward and Pivens strategy is in vogue these days as people have finally come around to discussing the radical education of our current president.

I've been familiar with Alinsky, Cloward, Pivens and a whole slew of progressive thinkers for decades.

Figuring out how to over come Cloward and Pivens is the single biggest obstacle for a Medical Savings and Loan.

The MS&L helps people pay for their health care with a combination of health savings accounts and guaranteed loans. The money for the loans comes from the savings accounts. The loans are a money loser for the savings accounts. This loss is presented at the premium policy holders pay to have access to guaranteed loans.

Community organizers can overwhelm a Medical Savings and Loan by inducing people to take out large loans that they have no intention of repaying.

The surge in unpaid loans would dry up funds for the rest of the folks in the medical savings and loan and would lead to a business failure.

Community Organizers aren't the only ones aware of Cloward and Pivens. Insurance companies with political clout can engineer regulatory change in ways that make the market unpredictable for small insurance companies. Regulatory changes can allow them to off load high risk patients and structure the regulatory regime in ways that that swamp competitors.

The reason we see so little competition in the insurance market is because the big companies have been able to define the market in ways that drove out competition.

A primary reason that I never tried to set up a Medical Savings and Loan is that I am certain that any attempt to do so will be immediately faced with Cloward and Pivens style attacks.

My fears might be a bit exaggerated. Risks are relative. A medical savings and loaed is better prepared to stave off an attack than a similarly sized insurance company.

In pooled insurance, the insurance company owns the risk. With such a strategy, people place there money in a pool. A Cloward and Pivens attack exhaust the pool making the insurance company unviable. Policy holders simply see their insurance company collapse and they are left without coverage.

In the Medical Savings and Loan, the policy holders own the risk. The money for the loans coming out of the savings accounts in real time. A Cloward and Pivens attack would show in real time. The policy holders would see what is happening to their money and might confront the community organizers orchestrating the attack.

Assuming that knowledge is power, the policy holders of the MS&L would have more knowledge and might be more powerful.

It might be possible to structure the medical savings and loan in ways to reduce ill effects of attacks.

My original business model for the Medical Savings and Loan had one company maintaining both the savings accounts and loans. The single company business model creates a single point of failure.

The best way to solve this problem is to create a distributed model in which the savings and lending accounts are held by different corporate structures. The lending accounts could be held by a different company than than savings accounts.

The distributed model eliminates the single point of failure. Even if the medical savings and loan failed, the clients would have their money safe in a bank of their choosing.

The distributed model reduces the single points of failure. Of course, the Cloward and Pivens attack was designed as an organized systemic attack.

In the Cloward and Pivens attack against the mortgage industry, community organizers corralled a large number of banks into accepting questionable loans.

Although there is no way to stop a Cloward and Pivens attack, a distributed Medical Savings and Loan is better prepared to stave off the attack than a standard insurance company. The MS&L is relatively more secure than insurance.

TweetButton: Tweet

Unanimous Consent

A talking point of the current election is that evil* Republicans have been staving off the recovery by placing secret holds on legislation. (*in school I was trained to always use purr words for Democrats and snarl words for Republicans).

In the video below, Evil Republican Jim DeMint describes the evil secret hold process.

According to DeMint, 94% of the legislation that pass the Senate goes through a process of unanimous consent. With unanimous consent, bills pass without going up for debate, amendments or a vote.

During the health-care and finance-reform nondebates, we learned that few representatives read the bills. One can only imagine how few of the unanimous consent bills get read.

On occasion, an uppity Senator will rock the boat and place a hold on a bill to read it. This is the evil secret hold process.

[gasp]

Of all Republican evilness, this reading of bills numbers among the evilest.

Republican evilness has its costs. The talking point is that since only 94% of bills were passed with unanimous consent, then six percent were held up.

Since the recovery didn't happen, it is obvious that delayed passing of bills is the cause.

Don't see the evilness? Because evil Republicans were secretly blocking bills, what should have been The Summer of Recovery turned into a prolonged recession.

I accept that Republicans are evil and Democrats are fluffy bundles of undistilled wonderfulness. So, I thought I would take this post in a different direction.

My first observation is that the flood of legislation flowing through unanimous consent shows that Democrats and Republicans are far more alike than different.

My second observation is that this issue highlights an important aspect of politics and dialectics. A bill will only make it to the floor for public scruntiny if the bill is controversial. This filter means that the public only sees bills when they contain conflicts.

This filtering process over emphasizes the conflicts and creates an illusions that misled the public.

The dialectics creates a system where we see great conflicts on the surface, while the underlying currents wash us to ruin.

The video is worth a view, but I need a conclusion.

So, in conclusion. Republicans are evil creatures who lock Barbie Dolls in boxes with GI Joe action figures to compromise the doll's virtue.



Experimental TweetButton: Tweet

Is the Solution Political?

A few weeks back, when Congress was passing financial regulatory reform, I made the horrible mistake of trying to read the bill.

I was on page five hundred and something when Adobe Acrobat decided to download an update that froze my computer. As I was taking notes in Notebook, I lost half my notes and gave up on reading the rest of the 2000 page bill.

The part of the bill I read was primarily about installing political operatives at key positions in the financial system.

As far as I could tell, the driving assumption behind financial reform is the belief that the economy collapsed because Republicans are horrible creatures. Since Republicans are such horrible people, the key to prosperity is to place left leaning political operatives at key places in the financial system.

I am willing to buy that Republicans are horrible greedy people while Democrats are fluffy balls of wonderfulness. However, I hold that the shape of the economy is formed by the ideas of the society, and not the temperment of the leaders.

Both Democrats and the Bush era Neocons were feeding on the same set of technocratic ideas spewing forth from the same elite ivy league schools.

If it is true that our economy crashed because Republicans are horrible people, then an army of political operatives might help counter Republican evilness. If they assumption is wrong, then Obama's financial reform will probably just stifle economic growth.

The ad below by the DNC shows that the party will continue to drum the theme that our economic woes fall entirely on the horribleness of Republicans, and that prosperity comes from the fluffy-ball wonderfulness of Democrats. I happen to think the economy is driven by ideas and that this political narrative is a dead end.

Repealing Obamacare will be Labeled Reactionary

ObamaCare was an extremely bad bill that will harm both the economy and health of the people in this nation. To save our nation, we must repeal this bad law.

Unfortunately, few Americans encounter the classical liberal vision of our nation's founders in their public school education and do not understand how people in a free society work together to take care of each other.

Attempts to repeal Obamacare will likely fail as the mainstream media and schools will frame effort as reactionary.

To successively repeal Obamacare, Conservatives must first restore the vision of a free market approach to health care.

This is what I've been trying to do with The Medical Savings and Loan.

Rather than paying medical expenses from a group pool, as is done with insurance, The Medical Savings and Loans pays for medical expenses with a combination of savings accounts, interest free loans and grants.

As health is an attribute of an individual, changing the perspective of health care from the group to the individual makes a lot of sense.

A large number of problems with the current employer based insurance system vanish when adopting the Medical Savings and Loan. The MS&L restores the pricing mechanism as people spend wisely when they are spending their own money. The problem of people losing insurance when they change jobs goes away as people will have real money in a medical savings account. The problem of pre-existing conditions diminishes as people with such conditions will get loans and grants.

If the same amount of money went into the Medical Savings and Loan as Insurance, one would see a dramatic improvement in the quality of care.

The difference between insurance and the medical savings and loan is largely one of perspective. Insurance tries to fund health care on a group level. The medical savings and loan sees people as individuals and funds medicine on an individual level.

Those seeking to repeal Obamacare could increase the likelihood of success if they simply adopted the vision of the medical savings and loan.

The Medical Savings and Loan is not a totalitarian vision. It is simply an alternative mechanism for funding health based on free market principles.

The real advantage of the Medical Savings and Loan is that it provides a structure for discussing the vision of health care in a free society.

Arguing for a vision would increase the chances of repealing Obamacare than the current debate which is fueled by reaction.

Another Tweet Button: Tweet

Nullification is Reactionary

The book Nullification by Tom Woods is a great read (buy at Overstock.com).

Thomas Jefferson advocated that states react to unconstitutional laws by declaring them null and refusing to enforce the law. The logic is that laws cannot contradict the Constitution; therefore, an unconstitutional law is not a law and is properly ignored.

By its nature, nullification is a reactionary process. The states react to an unconstitutional law by refusing to enforce it.

A reactionary effort like nullification may have worked in the early days of this nation when people still shared the visions of the US Founders.

We live in a day when people have lost the classical liberal vision of the US Founders. It is rare for students to even encounter the thoughts of our nation's founders in their public school education.

As mentioned in the last post, Conservatives can no longer depend on reaction. To preserve the American heritage, Conservatives must find ways to restore the founder's vision.

It is likely that the call to nullify Obamacare will simply create a lot of noise that will backfire on the tea party.

I believe the thinking behind nullification is correct. To preserve the balance of power between the Federal and States government, the states simply must have a way to reject bad legislation.

Rather than reacting, states should have a proactive means to assert their powers.

I've suggested that states use modern communication technologies to create a Network of Legislatures that can set constraints on Congress and directly nullify laws that tread on state's powers.

To have a long lasting effect on American politics, the tea party needs to transition from a reactionary to a visionary movement, the vision being the revolutionary vision of the US Founders that created a free society with a limited, multidimensional governance.

Experiment with TweetButton: Tweet

From Reactionary to Visionary

The Founders of the United States created multi-dimensional yet limited government that allowed genearations to pursue their own visions of freedom.

Since the signing of the Constitutions, freedom lovers have fallen into the pattern of defending their freedom by reacting to encroachments on their freedom. Sadly, this method of trying to defend freedom by reaction has become the hallmark of modern Conservatism.

The primary goal of a reactionary conservate is to preserve the status quo. Conservatives have a horrible record of defending compromises of the past.

Following the lead of Hegel and Marx, the left has developed a machine that herds society by tweaking the reactionary impulses of Conservatives.

Reactionaries are quite easy to manipulate. One need simply create a series of crises. One takes two steps forward during the crisis, followed by a step back in the reaction. Reactionary conservatives then accept this new stance in the set up for the next crisis.

The entire ideology of progressivism is built around the predictable nature of reactionary conservatives.

A case in point is insurance. Employer funded insurance was the creation of progressives. Today, conservatives line up like clowns to defend an institution that has destroyed the pricing mechanism within medicine and systematically centralizes industry and impoverishes the people.

Progressives can bank on the reactionary impulses of Conservatives to create a one way political process that systematically destroys individual freedom.

To make matters worse, the Left has captured the schools, and has managed to distort the vision of freedom to the point where students come out of schools seeing government as the solution and freedom as the problem.

This is problematic as governments tend to be the source of problems.

Because the right relies on reaction, not vision, the left has been able to project the cause of modern day problems onto the free market. Most of the people I know are absolutely convinced that it was the unregulated free market that caused banks to make bad loans and not the regulations established by Fannie, Freddie and Community Reinvestment act.

Conservatives can no long depend on reaction alone as a mechanism to defend freedom. To defend freedom, Conservatives must find a way re-invigorate the vision of freedom.

Experiment with TweetButton: Tweet