Jackie & Dunlap’s Oscar picks for the 2010 Liberal Academy Awards. Ya’ll come see us now: www.redstateupdate.com www.facebook.com www.twitter.com

So about that transparency...

Rep. Pelosi Offers A Quote That Shall Live In Infamy

The Great Burger Battle

Insurance Companies - With Obama, It's a Love Hate Thing

The Religion Of Peace

When I say liberty…I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they wanted to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world… - Robert A. Taft

When, in the course of human events….

Let the Truth Be Told!

Scalia Can No Longer Call Himself an Originalist

Does anybody from Chicago really care about time?

Liberals Talking To Liberals

Every Republican candidate for President since 1936 has been nominated by the Chase National Bank. - Robert A. Taft

From SEC Employee Rick Bookstaber "We All Know Gold Is In A Bubble"

Will someone go buy Derrick Z. Jackson some Pampers please?

The American MAXIM

Great Fear | Great Hope

If the Policy Sucks and Refuses to Work, Just Change the Rules; That's the Obama Way

As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... Too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think it will give some comfort to the enemy ... If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and it will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur. - Robert A. Taft

Former Citizen from Soviet Bloc Schools Liberals

Pay cut for Congress

Thomas Jefferson’s Other Declaration

Freeing Louisiana Florists: Licensing Law is Blooming Nonsense

Obama Administration Tells Court Government-Run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Not Subject to Open Records FOIA Law

The only method by which people can be supported is out of the effort of those who are earning their own way. We must not create a deterrent to hard work. - Robert A. Taft

• Republican Infighting Part One
• Jesse Jackson
• Who is Conor Friedersdorf?
• American
• Pussy Galore

You can review Round 1 of the Conservative Blogger Debate on Sarah Palin here.

Don tackled the first question about Sarah Palin directly, saying in part:

As Governor, Sarah Palin continued her platform of smaller government and less taxation. She eliminated a personal chef position at the Governor’s Mansion, turned down $100 a day per diem checks for each First Family member – children included. Instead she accepted a $60 per diem for meals for her entire family. She slashed the state budget each year in office, eventually winning over the state congress and enlisting their aid in doing so. By eliminating the waste and pork in the state budget, she was able to increase education funding by one billion dollars, setting up “forward funding” so that local school districts knew how many state dollars there were for them to count on each year.

I would like to add too, that Palin showed a better grasp of economics than just about any other Republicann when she attacked the Federal Reserve and its role in our current economic debacle.

Maybe Palin's showing up alongside Michele Bachmann at Ron Paul's economics classes ... and yes, that would be good news!

T. Christopher, however, brings up a good point concerning Sarah Palin:

The body of evidence is simply too small folks, and that is why without further explanation from Governor Palin, I cannot allow myself to drink the Kool-Aid and believe she has any role to play greater than what is already behind us.

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows I like Sarah Palin. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But I'm also not going to pretend she's perfect.

Today, our country faces an enemy more dangerous than we've ever known ... a declining economy with a debt bomb about to explode! Because of this, every other issue pretty much takes a distant back seat (IMHO). A nuclear Iran couldn't impose as big a threat as the federal governments current insolvency.

So while she has a pretty good fiscal record and has shown intellectual integrity by attacking the Fed, she still ran for office with Mavericky "Bailout" McCain and has stumped for his re-election in Arizona. You can't have it both ways.

The reality of the different economic approaches of the Keynesians and Austrians, can be boiled down to communism vs. freedom. In other words, you can't be sort of Keynesian, anymore than you can be sort of a virgin.

In scoring the debate, the clear winner is Don. He answered the question directly and provided specific examples. But T. Christopher offered a valid rebuttal.

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I've seen the commerical, thought it was funny, never once did Lindsay Lohan come to mind. Talk about a frivolous lawsuit!

Lindsay Lohan E-Trade “Milkaholic Baby” Commercial Lawsuit

Ha! Lindsay Lohan has filed a $100 million lawsuit against E-Trade, because she believes that a milkaholic, boyfriend-swipping baby named Lindsay featured in their latest commercial
is a caricature of her, The New York Post has learned.

We know she’s hard-up for cash — and of course cocaine doesn’t purchase itself — but this is rich!

The Super Bowl ad — which debuted as part of the long-running series starring babies who play the stock market — features a boy apologizing to his girlfriend via video chat for not calling her the night before.

“And that milkaholic Lindsay wasn’t over?” the baby girl asks him suspiciously.

Lindsay’s attorney argues that ala Madonna or Beyonce, his client is famous enough to be known by just her first name — forget the other zillion and five Lindsays born between 1980 and 1990!

How pathetic.

Today's political discourse can be boiled down to the 3-word phrase coined by Irish Cicero - Bumper Sticker Politics. Issues now take a back seat to the advancement  of "team" talking points, and "gotchas" ... masquerading as debate.

It's sad.

Left vs. Right used to mean Big Government vs. limited government in America, but not anymore. Today, if you don't believe in Big Government dragged overseas via nation-building, you're automatically "on the left." Or if you're against socialized medicine, you get hit with nonsensical diatribes full of wild conspiracy theories that fall apart at the first glance. Not to mention claims that you hate children.

On both the left and the right, it's either accept the Hive Mind mentality or you're the enemy. Period.

Philosophy, history, and yes, nuance, don't matter. It's all Team Electoral Politics, Baby!

Thank You For Not Expressing Yourself

As it happens, I have myself sometimes been the recipient of such abuse: if, that is, one can be said to be the recipient of anything that remains in the virtual world alone. No subject is too recondite to provoke the insensate rage of those who disagree with the view the author has taken of it. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if fury leading to ill-mannered personal abuse and foul language is the predominant mode of disagreement in our society, at least among those who append their comments to an article that appears on the internet.

For example, I received unpleasant abuse for articles I wrote about Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw. I am the first to admit that what I wrote was not emollient, indeed it strongly attacked both these figures to whom some people are strongly attached. But while I might have been mistaken in what I wrote, I do not think I am being partial in my own defence when I say that it was at least rational in the sense that it was based upon evidence culled from what they wrote. I quoted them at some length precisely to avoid the accusation of quotation out of context.

It is not necessary to repeat here what I said about them, but I shall give just one example. I pointed out that George Bernard Shaw never believed in the germ theory of disease (possibly the greatest advance in medical science ever made), regarded it as a delusion, and called Pasteur and Lister – two of the greatest benefactors of mankind, if one is prepared to admit that there can be such – impostors and frauds who had no idea of scientific method, unlike George Bernard Shaw, presumably. This was a preposterous, but not untypical, misjudgement of his, and one which he never recognised as such. Indeed, he went on re-publishing his libels on their memory until quite late in his life.

From the quality of the replies that I received, you might have supposed that I had animadverted on the moral qualities of the mothers of Latin American sons. No one ever wrote a reply (on these subjects, at any rate) claiming that I had misquoted them, quoted them out of context, misrepresented the totality of their work, overlooked their good qualities etc. I do not think I did these things, but still such replies would have been reasonable. No; I just received abuse, some of it unprintable and quite a lot of it vile.

The insults and abuse did not come from uneducated people. This is not surprising, really, because uneducated people are unlikely to care very much what George Bernard Shaw thought of the germ theory of disease; most of them have other, more practical things to think about. You have to have read Bernard Shaw to care, and these days at least, I think only university types are likely to do that.

Indeed, much of the abuse, even the vilest, came from university professors. Almost to a man (or woman), they said that what I had written was so outrageous, so ill-considered and ill-motivated, that it was not worth the trouble of refutation. On the other hand, they thought its author was worth insulting, if their practice was anything to go by. I didn’t know whether I – a mere scribbler – should feel flattered that I was deemed worthy of the scatological venom of professors (not all of them from minor institutions, and some of them quite eminent).

What struck me most about these missives is the sheer amount of hatred that they contained. It was not disdain or even contempt, but hatred.

It was as if the writers had had an abscess waiting to burst, and it had burst over me. I was but the occasion, not the cause of, the discharge. But what was the cause?

If we've lost sincere political discourse ... we've lost America too. Similar Posts:

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Okay , it seems similar to a small people have been a small confused. I meant what is the magnanimous & regressive perspective on the cosmetic bottles used in the splash industry. Are conservatives understanding of bottled H2O or opposite it ? Etc.
iwasnotanazipolka is the usually one who answered the subject correctly. interjection to everybody who helped. =)

Very engaging discuss in between an Egyptian magnanimous and a english islamist. you can see for yourself how close disposed islamists are. KEEP FIGHTING!!! We’ll get them a little day!

Mises Daily: Monday, March 08, 2010 by Robert LeFevre

If the idea of owning property privately began as I have conjectured, then the self-identification of the individual as a unique center of consciousness not only assisted in orienting him to his surroundings, but awakened in him the recognition that he owned himself.

Each person grows to maturity, taking particular note of his own configuration, skin texture, features, appendages, and blemishes. Never will he know anything quite as well as he knows his own body. As he identifies himself with his physical structure, he will turn his attention within to note his own mental processes, and to wonder at this strange function of cognition and this utterly fascinating ability to think and remember and even to think about thinking and remembering. He develops cravings for food and drink and for other satisfactions, he experiences pain and joy, and centers himself in the property of his person.

If he does not formally think through the process wherein he recognizes that he owns himself, he nonetheless adopts all the attributes of ownership over himself. Doubtless, many early thinkers recognized the fact of man's ownership of his person, although no one phrased it better than John Locke:

Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a "property" in his own "person." This nobody has any right to but himself.

The process whereby the child first becomes conscious of himself, and finally awakens in maturity to the recognition of his full self as incontrovertibly unique and separate from the rest of creation, is the process of maturing. There is no fixed time schedule for this maturation. Some develop rapidly and sense their complete control over their energies and facilities before they reach their teens. Others develop slowly, passing into the twenties and even the thirties until the process is as complete as it ever will be for them.

The parental task in raising children is essentially telescoped into the attainment by the child of self-realization and self-control. The more rapidly this can be accomplished, the more thoroughly the task can be done, the quicker the person can emerge as an adult, irrespective of his chronological age.

From man's recognition that he owns himself, and from the idea of private ownership which begins at this point, if not chronologically at least rationally, it is but a step to the creation of one kind of improper ownership the condition in which it is presumed that one person owns another.

If a man owns himself, why can't he own another? It would seem, superficially, that he could. Certainly, mothers and, later, fathers looked upon their offspring as chattels. Children were viewed as property and not as persons.

For centuries, women were treated as chattels belonging to their fathers, husbands, brothers, or uncles; they were never actually released into full adulthood as self-owning persons. The woman who, through circumstance, might find herself alone in the world and essentially unowned, was deemed either an evil person or the epitome of misery. Someone must assume responsibility and take her into a condition of ownership, through marriage or some other relationship.

The custom of one man owning another opened the door to long ages of slavery. On the field of battle, when the vanquished surrendered to the victor, it was presumed that he lost all rights to his life and hence all rights to any property. If the victor spared him, he was a slave, whose life was instantly forfeit at any time that suited the victor's pleasure. The concept of slavery might also have arisen through the generative process wherein it was presumed that women were natural slaves to men, or that children were the properties of either or both parents.

If one contemplates the situation, it will be seen that the slave relationship is wholly improper for it presumes to transfer the control of one living man into the hands of a second living man. The condition is contrary to nature and can only be maintained if both play their specific assigned roles. The slave must act as though he did not control himself, as though, indeed, the slave-master did control him. The slave-master must act as though he really could and did control the slave. But the slave always controls himself, even though he may do so in harmony with his owner's wishes. It is simply impossible for the owner to exert control.

By no process of the mind can the owner of the slave cause the slave to flex a single muscle. The only process open to the slave owner is to impose force or the threat of force. If obedience is obtained, it is because the slave elects to do as he is told. But he must be the actor in respect to his own energy. His owner cannot generate or control the slave's energy. A condition of slavery must be classified as one instance of incorrect ownership. In this condition, a man seeks to control another man as though he were a property and not a man.

A marriage relationship in which it is presumed that one spouse owns the other is equally fictitious. The same fallacy would appear if a parent or both of them presumed to own their children. The child is an owner of himself, from birth. The fact that he may not know this, and the fact that he does not have full control of his physical or mental facilities, in no way remove his ownership of himself.

An adult who is injured in some way, who may be ill or decrepit in old age, is still recognized as an owner of himself and his other properties. He may have to be waited upon hand and foot, yet his ownership of himself is not questioned, so long as he lives. The same realization should apply to all persons, infants included. I would set down as the fundamental instances of incorrect ownership the ancient practice of possessive marriage, possessive child-parent relationships, and control of the slave obtained in battle or in any other way.

This idea of owning another person is so prevalent that it is not unusual for employers to think of themselves as the actual owners of their employees and to act accordingly. Labor union leaders often act as though they owned their dues-paying members.

The difficulty here relates to contracts as property. For a contract to exist as property, each contracting party has a property interest in specific performance on the part of the opposing contracting party. But a property interest in specific performance is not a property interest in the person. The employer contracts with an employee for specific performance. The employee also contracts with the employer in similar style. Each has a property interest in the performance of the other, but neither owns the person of the other.

The labor union leader may obtain a member but he does not own the member, nor does the member own the organization or the labor leader. Each has contracted for certain specifics; the one for the payment of dues, the other for certain collective assurances.

Government officials frequently view the taxpayers as a kind of productive herd to be milked and controlled, just as the ancient slave-master presumed to control the person of his slave. The relationship between government and taxpayers is probably closest to the ancient idea of slavery. The relationship is hardly contractual, however one stretches the imagination.

For a contract to exist in fact, both parties to the exchange must voluntarily agree to the terms of the contract. When governments are imposed and the taxpayers placed under control, the consent of the latter on an individual basis has never been sought, so far as is known. Rather, governments are imposed in much the same way that the victor imposes his ownership over the man defeated on the field of battle. The victor has the power; the vanquished is helpless and must submit.

Here a mystique has been created which supposes that a few men may, by right, impose governmental controls on all with consent of a majority or even a plurality. Usually, those imposing such controls do so after a war in which the vanquished, utterly without the means to resist, are tossed into political serfdom, bound to obey the new state, rather than being claimed by individual warriors as the personal property of the winner after a passage of arms. This practice is so common that few detect in it any form of slavery; most presume that their political control by a party of strong men can be equated with freedom.

Whatever is to be said of this practice of installing political vassalage on whole populations, any effort on the part of one person to own another, and all practices wherein this type of ownership is assumed, lead into much of the sadness and unhappiness that mar so many human relationships.

However, the fact that an improper ownership condition may occur does not justify abandonment of the ownership concept, as many contend. Rather, it behooves us to understand the nature of ownership, to recognize that it is so fundamental to man that it cannot be swept aside, and then to institute self-disciplinary procedures wherein incorrect ownership conditions are not attempted.

Ownership can be said to begin with an effort of will. This can occur when man views himself as the exclusive owner of himself and realizes that decisions to be made affecting his person must invariably be his own. Whether he begins with the recognition of himself as his first property, every property he will ever own will require an act of will. He wishes to possess something — a piece of land, a house, clothing, a tool — as an exclusive owner. A property he acquires, either through original claim or through subordinate claim, becomes an actual extension of himself by this same act of will. Thus, a trespass against a property that is owned, either by theft or some type of vandalism, is actually a trespass against the owner of the property in the same way that a trespass against the person of the owner would be.

All through his life, each person establishes thousands of property relationships and many other thousands of relationships which involve property owners but do not involve the acquisition of property. To converse with others, associate with them, shake hands with them, or even to experience such intimacies as a sexual relationship, does not constitute a property relationship, but rather a relationship with a property owner.

The idea insensibly arises through the marriage contract that a sexual partner is somehow a property of his opposite number. This is not the case. Each person owns himself and all of his functions, including those of sex, digestion, cognition, and so on. Among the greatest satisfactions available to human beings are those which recognize other persons as equals in the property ownership of self. Although a man may wish an exclusive association with a particular friend, and while it may be possible to contract for such an exclusive relationship, the fact remains that each party to any association always remains the owner of himself.

Self-Ownership

Robert LeFevre ran the Freedom School and Rampart College, founded in 1957. He had a legendary impact on a whole generation of libertarians. LeFevre's complete audio archive is available in Mises Media. See Robert LeFevre's article archives.Similar Posts:

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Experiencing irrationally exuberant technical difficulties ... So in the meantime, here's some stuff for you to check out until I get the connection issues resolved!

Lack of Consent

Marc Faber: Buy Some Gold Every Month 'Forever' (VIDEO)

“Gold is not the liability of someone else…its quantity cannot increase at the same rate as you can print money, which will eventually…weaken the US dollar,” Faber told CNBC on Thursday in a live interview.

“I’m not saying that the dollar will go straight away down because other currencies apparently like the euro are even worse than the U.S. dollar at the present time,” he added. “But eventually if you print money, the purchasing power of money will lose [value] and what will happen is stocks will adjust on the upside...if you believe in equities, I would rather buy Vietnamese shares than U.S. shares because I can make the case that the economy there will grow much faster than in the United States, from a much lower level admittedly” Faber said. “Or I would buy Indian, Chinese, Malaysian shares. I think there are better alternatives than U.S. stocks,” he added.

Algore wants you to live in Green Poverty.

Carbon Market Collapse Brings Gore Out Of Hiding

We should ignore Al Gore’s bizarre Op-Ed in, where else, the New York Times, but it needs analysis because it includes all the standard errors that entrap and confuse most people.

It also exposes him as a real hypocrite in his own words. The title “We can’t wish away Climate change” illustrates how little Gore knows or understands. No, we can’t wish it away because it has and will always exist.

‘Irrational Anti-Science Lunatics . . .’

Kathy Griffin + Levi Johnston = ?

The Global Debt Crisis

With all the attention being focused on whether or not there will be a sustainable recovery in 2010, the potential for a wave of sovereign-debt crises following the wake of the global recession has just recently started to appear on people's radar screens. Yet, such a wave should not be surprising.

As historical research conducted by University of Maryland economist Carmen Reinhart and Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff shows, financial crises are usually followed by government-debt crises. This starts as private debt is shifted onto the balance sheet of the government, through bailouts and purchases of toxic debt. The government-debt problem is then made worse as the economic downturn leads to an increase in expenditures in the form of unemployment benefits and stimulus spending, coupled with a decrease in tax revenues.

Not only does this historical trend align with the American experience in the aftermath of the financial crisis, but it is being replicated in Europe and Asia too. It makes us painfully aware of some of the costs of Keynesian fiscal stimulus, and it clearly displays how a short-run fix turns out to be a long-term problem. The Keynesian long run will dawn upon us much sooner than mainstream economists believe.

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