Austerity Measures and Decline

Europe is trying to throw off its economic slump through austerity measures, and the plan simply is not working.

The failure of the austerity measures is not surprising.

In a socialist society, the government is the engine of growth. When one tries to impose austerity measures on a socialist society, all one gets is more economic decline.

The United States seems doomed to follow the same path. Conservatives have convinced themselves that our economic decline is the result of losing our "conservative values."

Rather than nominating a candidate interested in restoring a free market system, Republicans nominated the progressive Mitt Romney who has vowed to impose health exchanges at the state level and is dedicated to kicking down all talk of free market health care reform.

Groups like the Sutherland Institute are absolutely punch drunk with the idea that they will be able to use State run health exchanges regulated by an unelected Health Compact.

Rather than discussing ways to restore free market health care, the severely conservative right is set on the course of actively suppressing debate while drooling over the concentration of wealth and power that will take place with the Health Compact and socialized Health Exchanges.

The combination of "conservative values" and socialism pushed by Sutherland is a very ugly thing.

Let's look at the ugly: Conservatives love to point out that Nazism and Fascism were socialist economies.Such conservatives fail to acknowledge that fascism is a socialist state run by social conservatives.

Yes, I know, there are some "conservatives" who want to conserve the principles of the US Founders. But the term "conservatism" is not a synonym for the socio-economic system of the founders. The term "conservative" means a person set on preserving the current social order.

When social conservatives get their hands on a overbearing state, their native impulse is to use that overbearing state to impose their values. This is why the right is almost as bad as the left at expanding government power.

Conservatives wave images of the Founders when they are out of power, but then work to centralized and consolidate the nation when they are in power.

Conservatives are not the founders of this nation, they are people who use the images of the founders to grub power.

The Founders of the United States had a liberal arts education. They applied classical logic to the question of liberty (which they saw as self-rule). They fought a revolution to liberate themselves from the crown and drafted a Constitution in an attempt to preserve the freedom they gained.

The Founders were driven by ideas about liberty. These guys were classical liberals. They were not conservatives.

The conservatives of 1776 were called "Tories." Tories were royalists who fought against the founders and who wanted to restore the social order of the ancient regime after the revolution.

Conservative slave owners in the south wanted to conserve the peculiar institution of slavery and spewed forth with complex arguments (rife with logical fallacies) in favor of slavery. This will come as a complete shock to many, but conservative slave owners will not all that keen on the liberal talk about liberty.

Conservatives of 1776 wanted to preserve the ancient regime.

The ancient regime (feudalism) was a society built on social order. The kings ruled through a network of local Lords and Ladies who imposed local control through  a tight political hierarchy.

Feudalism was a system with a centralized king and order imposed locally (Feudalism is exactly the ideal of the Sutherland Institute).

The Lords did not own the land. They gained their position by ruling over the serfs. The serfs owned nothing and depended on the bounty of their local lords for their benefits.

Supporters of the ancient regime were not without reason. They claimed the order was endowed through an ancient covenant stretching back to Israel. The king saw himself as a grand patriarch who showered the benefits of the state down upon the undeserving peasantry.

The people of the ancient regime were flowing with "conservative values" but the serfs lived pathetic lives in abject poverty.

Classical Liberals (including the US Founders) began toying with the concept of widespread ownership. Adam Smith argued that owners seeking to maximize the return from the stuff they owned would increase the wealth of the nation.


The Kings of England were German and sponsored German Universities. After the US and French Revolution, German Universities set to the task of reframing the ideals of the ancient regime. It was clear that the serfs suffered under the yoke of feudalism. But, imagine a feudalism in which the lords and ladies kept to their promise and showered the people with benefits.

The arch-conservative Hegel created a new modern logic in which he pulled every fallacy and paradox in an attempt to rework the ideals of feudalism in a favorable light. Hegel was clearly right wing. The Young Hegelians (eg Karl Marx) framed the who set up as revolutionary left.

Communism was born of this radical effort to reframe feudalism as progressive. The key difference was that socialism de-emphasized the social order and promised to actually shower people with benefits.

Don't you see? Socialism was born of an effort to attack the liberal notion of a society built on ownership and revive the ideals of the ancient regime which was a society based on power and social order.

Socialism is an idealized version of feudalism in which the government keeps its promise of showering benefit on the people. The ideal was born of a conservative philosophy. Hayek called this process the Road to Serfdom. The Left uses revolutionary rhetoric on a path that will achieve the conservative goal of restoring the feudal social order.

Socialists use heavy taxes and debt spending in attempts to build their fantasy of a feudalism that works. They soon exhaust the treasury and swamp the engines of commerce.

When conservatives step into impose austerity and conservative values on the top-down socialist state, they complete the circle and force us back into a feudal order. It is not surprising that fantasies about an idealized feudal order in up back in the oppressive state of a real feudal order.

The left puts us on the Road to Serfdom with the promise of a socialist state which showers entitlements onto the people who own nothing. Conservatives stand in the wing ready to put the shackles back on mankind after the socialists squander the treasury and force the imposition of austerity measures.

Sadly, the only way out of the trap is to reject both the left and right and to campaign for the classical liberalism based on an ownership society. This is a difficult game opposed by both left and right.

Conservative Socialism

Most self describe Conservatives these days self-identify with Reagan, Goldwarter or William Buckley. This Tea Party definition of conservative is relatively new.

The Reagan definition of Conservatism is relatively new. There are many older definitions.

The heart of Conservatism is a desire to conserve a given social structure. The former Communists ruling Russia are Conservatives. The Taliban wants to conserve their ideals of an Islamic state. Slave owners in post Revolution America wanted to preserve their peculiar institution. Slave owners saw themselves as wonderful people and praised themselves for the meager care they gave to their slaves.

Royalists in England and Tories in the states wanted to preserve the social order of the monarchy.

The royalists had a vision of the feudal order that is different than we have today. They saw the kings and lords as monuments of virtue that showered bounty upon the undeserving masses. They saw the kingdom as the state as the owner and the bounties of the state flowing through the royalty and lords to the people.

The royalists despised the classical liberal notion of a society built on self-ownership. They believed that people belonged to a social order. The Lords and Ladies of Feudalism did not gain their position by owning and investing, they gained their position from ruling over a region.

The serfs, of course, owned nothing. They toiled through the day and owed with livelihood to their Lords and Ladies. Yes, many serfs adored their lords.

The classical liberalism of the US Founders was a foreign ideology that came from the merchant class. This middle class gained their position through ownership. Merchants, factory owners and professionals would re-invest the gains from their efforts in their business.

Royalists, who dreamed of a return to the social order of the ancient regime, despised people who made built their status through ownership and spared no invective in their scorn of the merchant class.

After the US Revolution, there was a massive religious revival. During this period people seeking shelters from the uncertainties of the business world sought to create Utopian societies.

The Mormon Church appeared during this revival. In In No Man Knows My History (buy at Overstock.com) by the apostate Fawn Brodie puts forward the thesis that the Smith family was most likely Tories who were forced from the city to the frontier after the Revolution to brood in silence.

The Book of Mormon seems to reflex the thought of the 1800s. People wondered about the origins of the native Americans. The pseudo scientists of the day assumed a young earth. Joseph Smith wrote a story on the speculation that the Native Americans were descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel.

The Native Americans had a conflict driven history (See Hegel's philosophy of history) that reached its climax when King Benjamin (no relation to Benjamin Franklin) granted the people a Democracy. An evil group called "Lamanites" formed a voting block and won the election that led to a big war.

God was displeased and smited the Nephites and turned them into red savages.

On publishing the Book of Mormon, Smith hooked up with Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon who had congregations that experimented with building utopian societies. This conservative movement was using a radicalized religion to built a utopian society that harkened back to the ideals of feudalism.

In early American history, the concept of ownership was considered liberal. Conservative slave owners in the South sought to deny blacks self-ownership. Utopian societies of the north created utopian societies that harkened back to the ideals of the ancient regime.

The early utopian societies tended to build on radicalized religion. A "Young Hegelian" named Fueurbach realized that one could use radicalized anti-religion to the same effect. Another Young Hegelian named Karl Marx figured out how to use the dialectic to frame socialism as revolutionary.

Legislating Morality

I am stuck in Utah and have to drive thousands of miles to talk to a human. I read the Sutherland Institute Blog simply because they are part of the State Policy Network. I've traveled to Denver to talk to the Independence Institute and Phoenix to speak with the Goldwater Institute in my desperate attempt to find people interested in free market health care reform.

In every case, I am referred back to Sutherland Institute because I suffer the misfortune of living in Utah.

The Sutherland Institute is not a free market organization. If anything it is the opposite leaning more to fascism than to freedom. Hell will freeze over before these clowns will ever spend a second in serious consideration of free market health care reform.

The group takes money claiming to support the free market then does inane things like dismiss an argument because a women has a hyphenated name!

I am writing this post simply to make a place to post the following gem from Paul Mero today:

"Let me remind my conservative and libertarian friends that the whole purpose of law is to legislate morality. The whole intellectual and logical framework of law is to address the everyday realities when two or more humans interact and what is best for people as human beings and best for them when they interact. "

Is this guy smoking pot, or what? The law cannot see our intentions it can only see our actions. No matter how complex one makes the law, there will always be cases when people commit immoral acts which are legal, and people breaking laws to commit moral acts. Most laws have nothing to do with morality. There is not a moral imperative dictating that we must drive on the right side of the street. Traffic laws were designed to reduce accidents.

The Founders realized that all the well intentioned attempts in history to legislate morality failed. The classical liberals realized that law should be limited to those areas necessary to prevent civil breakdown.

The Left makes the mistake in believing that we realize morality through the largess of the state. The Right plays the same game.

I am not a big fan of the drug legalization movement. The tragic history of both Prohibition and the War on Drugs seems to show that attempts to legislate morality have a very deep cost.

Anyway, the only reason for this post was to cut out this gem from a group that takes money from the State Policy Network with claims they support the freedom movement.

They don't.

Sublation of Liberalism

Modern political terms are absurd. Conservatives claim to defend the tradition of liberty while liberals adore an increasingly oppressive totalitarian state. How did this happen?

It appears that the muddling of terms happened during the reaction to the American Revolution in the early 1800s.

The US Founders had a liberal arts education. The applied traditional logic to the question of liberty which they saw as self-rule. The founders fought a war to liberate themselves from the monarchy and created a constitutionally limited government to preserve liberty.

The US Founders were LIBERALS. They simply had a different definition of "liberty."

The US Founders fought a middle class revolution for freedom. They were seeking liberation from a corrupt ruling class. They were not seeking to impose social justice on their enemies. The founders had a deep distrust of the rabble and mob rule.

The Founders saw liberty as self-rule. They saw the failure of free societies in the past and realized that to stay, people needed to be of strong character. The founders promoted a set of virtues and values that they saw as necessary to maintain freedom. This set of values is similar to what Modern Conservatives claim to be "Conservative Values."

While a strong value set is necessary to maintain freedom, Conservative Values do not, in and of themselves, bring freedom.

The serfs in feudalism had "conservative values" and lived in abject poverty. Radical Islam has "conservative values."

Nazism and Fascism were socialist states which promoted strong "conservative values." The guards at the death camps did not have liberal values. If they had liberal values, they would have opened the gates to liberate people. I imagine it required great moral fiber to guard a death camp. I couldn't do it.

The founders were liberals who had a value set similar to "conservative values." This does not make them "conservatives."

The Conservatives of 1776 were called Tories. The Tories were royalists who supported the crown during the War. The Tories lost the war and had to cope and adapt.

Yes, I know. How could the royalist philosophy be written in German? It is not as if the English Kings came from Hanover and were jointly kings of England and a large section of Germany (Hanover). It is not as if English Kings were the primary patrons of German Universities such as Gottingen.

Wait a second. It says here Hanover is in German. How did that happen? Holy cow, the Kings of England were fundamental in setting up the German University system. If this is the case, then Hegel and friends were deeply and directly influenced by royalist thought. Go figure?

The royalist adaptation to the US Revolution was encapsulated in the works of Hegel.

A primary interest of Hegel was change. He advocated a dialectical view of history with the world spirit evolving through conflict (like Fox News). Hegel also studied the way words changed (sublation) with a specific interest in the master/slave relation. Hegel had a large number of examples of how freedom becomes slavery and slavery freedom.

The Conservative/Royalist view of the 1800s was encapsulated in the works of Hegel.

In philosophy, the term "modern" applies to the branches of philosophy that appeared post Kant (1724-1804).

The US Founders despised the factionalization they saw in Europe. Modern conservatives thrive on partisanship.

The US Founders saw "Machiavelli" as an evil word. Modern Conservatives bow in worship of Machiavelli.

A case in point is the way that Conservatives have deluded themselves into believing that ObamaCare is communism and RomneyCare is free market ... when they are essentially the same program!

Speaking of Communism, Karl Marx was a young Hegelian. Marx took the ideas of the arch conservative Hegel and reframed them as revolutionary and progressive.

Communism is simply the monarchy reframed. There is a direct chain between the conservative royalist view to the communist view. Socialism is a top-heavy statist philosophy that has been framed in a manner appealing to people with liberal leanings.

Now, I don't hate "conservatives." For that matter, I've been a big supporter of the Goldwater and Buckley branch of the conservative movement. However, my support for the freedom coalition in the conservative movement has not closed my eyes to the troubling fact every bad thing that exists on the left also exists, to some extent, on the right.

As the Conservative movement drives its freedom coalition underground, we will see all of the negative aspects of conservatism emerge.

If You Vote Third Party, You're ...

I am amazed at the large number of Republicans who claim: "If you vote third party, you are voting for Obama."

No, the truth is, if you vote third party, you are voting for a third party. If you vote for Gary Johnson, you are voting for Gary Johnson. If you vote for Virgil Goode, you are voting for Virgil Goode.

If you look at the two candidates, find them both lacking and vote third party in protest; you are actually saying out loud: "A pox on both your houses!"

There are only a few swing states in play. For most of us, the vote we cast is just a statement. A Democrat who feels let down by Obama and votes Green or Libertarian is not voting for Romney anymore than a Tea Partier who votes Gary Johnson.

A vote for third party is not a vote wasted. Political pundits have been obsessing over polls throughout the year. They will obsess even more over the vote count. A large third party vote would show extreme displeasure with the state of the debate.

Good will come from a sizable third party vote.

IMHO, the worst possible outcome is Romney winning the electoral college while Obama wins 50% plus of the vote. In this case, Democrats will rail that Romney was an illegitimate president. A massive third party vote will temper this claim.

If Romney wins in the face of what he perceives as a massive voter defection from the Republican Party, Romney would be forced to listen to the much maligned libertarian vote.

No matter how you go about it, voting third party is not a wasted vote but a loud statement against the corrupt and captured parties.

If you vote third party, you are neither voting for Obama or voting for Romney. If you vote third party; you are making a statement against the political machine. As political pundits will obsess over the election return, your vote for a third party will be heard and will affect the structure of the political platforms for 2016.

Royal Hubris

The US Founders had a conflict with the monarchy and royalist.

Back when I was researching the US Founders I decided that, to understand the Founder's side of the conflict, I also needed to read articles supporting the royalist perspective. (Please Note, the Tories and Royalists were the first American Conservatives. They fought against the US Founders.)

Apparently, the royalty of old saw their kings, queens and lords as monuments of virtue who had an ancient covenant with God. Royalists saw the the king (i.e., the state) as the fountain from which the bounties of the kingdom flowed outward to the people.

The royalty had great contempt for the serfs who they they saw as needy, greedy subjects who weighed upon the resources of the kingdom.

In feudalism, the king was the central legal authority. This authority was imposed on the local level through a hierarchy of Lords and Ladies.

Most people in feudalism were serfs. Serfs worked long hours toiling away for their lords upon whom they were dependent for food and low quality health care. Most serfs had what Sutherland Institute would call "conservative values."

There was a growing middle class. The middle class owned property and had a small amount of autonomy. Classical liberal thinkers latched on to the idea that property rights and ownership were key to prosperity.

The American Revolution was inspired by classical liberal thought. They created a limited government set on protecting property rights.

The royalists (aka the conservatives) did not disappear. They simply spat venom at the liberal US Founders who they saw as treasonous vermin.

The Hanoverian Kings of England were German. The Hanoverian Kings funded German Universities. German scholars, like Hegel, wrote philosophies sympathetic to the Germany Royalty (who just happened to rule England).

Hegel was a Conservative who adored Napoleon and wanted a restoration of a top-down empire or monarchy. Hegel spoke how the Germanic people the chosen of the World Spirit to lead a new world order and other nonsense.

Hegel was fascinated with sublation. Sublation is the tendency of words to change meaning with time. Often words would turn into their opposite. The arch-conservative Hegel hated the Classical Liberalism of the US Founders and wrote a number of arguments that turned freedom into slavery and slavery freedom.

The Young Hegelian (Feuerbach, Marx, etc.) took Hegel's dialectics and reframed the ideals of the monarchy as new, left wing and revolutionary.

Through the process of sublation, Hegel and Marx managed to make the monarchy appear to millions as radical and egalitarian.

Interestingly, the radical left seems to have kept the same intellectual hubris of the monarchy.

NEWSFLASH: Woman With Hyphenated Name Claims To Be LDS

NEWSFLASH: Paul Mero of the Sutherland Institute reports that a woman with a hyphenated name claims to be LDS. Mero reports:

"In the Deseret News, a woman with a hyphenated name defends LDS Democrats by arguing, 'We believe it is the Democratic Party that best meets our values.' "

What about "sealed for eternity" does this woman with a hyphenated-name not understand? There are no hyphenated names in the Heavenly Kingdom.

In related news, a spokesman for the Utah Democratic is a homo! Paul Mero of the Sutherland Institute Reports:

"All of this cheerleading comes on the heels of a year-long effort by the homosexual, former Mormon chairman of the state Democratic Party to try to win over Mormons into the Democratic fold.

To complete the scandal. Democratic Members of the LDS Church have a caucus, while Republican Mormons who have a super majority in the Utah Legislature don't. What's this with having caucuses outside the super-majority?

I mean, it is not as if Thomas Monson, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, sent a letter "(to be read in sacrament meeting)" that beseeches members to actively engage in caucuses.

The letter clearly says "both parties." Surely, the head of the LDS Church was not telling its members to vote as a block for Mitt Romney during the Republican campaign.

The Sutherland Institute is a group that takes money claiming to support free markets, then doesn't.

Partisan Prayer

Dear Lord, Please vanquish my partisan foes this election ...

I can't believe it! After the Tea Party and protests against PPACA (ObamaCare), all conservatives have come up with is feeble talk about returning to the gold standard and a prayer rally.

Sorry, but praying to defeat a partisan foe in an election is something that is simply too cynical for my taste. Praying that someone else loses is just plain wrong.

Anyway, it appears that FreedomWorks is planning massive partisan prayer rallies to defeat the hated Obama. If I understood the commercial right, the prayer rallies are being organized in swing states on the site freePAC.com. This site says:

At FreePAC you'll discover the technologies and strategies that we can use to turn back the Progressive agenda.

This approach to restoring the American Experiment in self-rule simply won't work. It is very easy to see why by examining the word I emphasized: "progressive."

What exactly is "progressivism"? Progressivism could be described as a collection of technologies and strategies to move our nation to an unstated goal of "socialism."

The activists on the right are trying to beat a strategy with a strategy. Each time conservatives attempt a new strategy, the progressives counter. Attempts to fight strategy with counter-strategy leads directly to a world ruled by action and reaction and a loss of targeted goal of restoring freedom.

A government ruled by action and reaction invariably grows as it responds to each crisis.

Now, there is a place for strategy in politics. However, the best path toward beating "progressivism" is for the champions of liberty to state their end goal (freedom) and call out the progressives for their end goal of socialism.

The Tea Party and Conservative movement are failing because the leaders and activists in these movements have focused too heavily on strategies and counter strategies and have failed to engage the American people in a discussion of the goals of the campaign.

I contend that it would be easy to defeat PPACA (ObamaCare) if a group of free marketeers got together and discussed substantive free market health care reform (Insurance is not free market health care).

Instead, Conservatives concentrate exclusively on strategy. For example, the Sutherland Institute advocates regulating Health Exchanges through a State Compact instead of the Federal Government. This is simply a strategy. Health Exchanges regulated by a State Compact is of the same basic form as Health Exchanges regulated by the Federal Government.

Because Republicans refuse to discuss ideas, the advocates of the American Experiment in Self-Rule are systematically losing the war of ideas.

I find it pathetic that the once proud Tea Party movement has been reduced to holding partisan prayer rallies in swing states as a political strategies to vanquish a partisan foe.

Prayer has its place but, in my humble opinion, a partisan prayer against another partisan group is a base and cynical act. I will not pray against my fellow man, I will pray that someday, somewhere a group of patriots builds up enough courage to actually discuss free market health care reform.

Although, I suspect that it would take a miracle beyond the capability of even the Heavenly Father for a Conservative to grasp the point that insurance (group funding of individual consumption) is not free market health care. Free market health care is individual funding of individual consumption ... with individuals helping those who cannot help themselves.