Bent Notes

Honduras pulls out of the OAS.

A lengthy and important Neoneocon post about trying to reserve judgement of a set-in-stone degree about TCM, but finding, after a few months of truly alarming initiatives, that that is called for - and seeing liberal friends come to much the same conclusion and dealing with their buyers’ remorse.

She correctly points out that we conservative bloggers don’t, with this medium, reach nearly enough of those who need to be reached.  It’s important for us to know we are a community based on a love of freedom, and that there are many of us, but it’s more important right now to find a way to reach those Americans who occasionally look up from the minutiae of their daily lives, work and amusements to exclaim, “Hey, I don’t like this (or that) development at all!”  We need them on board if we are to resuscitate what those  gathered in Philadelphia signed into being 233 years ago.

Another concept I’ve put forth that I’ve subjected to self-questioning, as much like hyperbole as it sounds on first encounter, is the notion that the United States of America may be a thing of the past.  Alas, three Pajamas Media writers have Independence Day columns up today in which they wonder the same thing.  You can find them here, here and here.

These writers share my concern that we have irretrievably lost sight of that which made this nation free, strong, righteous, inventive, vibrant and unique.  Our enemies sense it.  Our friends and allies seem to sense it as well, given the rightward direction of recent elections in Europe, South Korea and Israel.  They’re starting to question the wisdom of sitting idly by and waiting for a hyperpower to have their backs.  In fact, that kind of assumption on the part of the individual citizens of this country has a lot to do with what got us to our current distressing juncture.

Any road back will not be a matter of business as usual, of putting up the same old kinds of hopeful figures to be put through the same old political hoops.  If the United States of America can be brought back from its flatline status, it will be by heroes and visionaries with entrails on fire.

No aspect of my polemical writing - in particular, my BN blogging - brings me as much castigation as my use of the term “freedom-hater.”  I’m frequently accused of casting my lot with those who are coarsening public discourse and engaging in superficiality.  I’m sometimes told that the term is clearly just a means for venting hate, and makes me no different from the average Kos blogger who sees Republican politicans and corporate executives and evil, greedy or stupid.

Here’s the difference.  The term “freedom-hater” is quite specific in what it characterizes.  Here at BN it gets applied to those who would limit individuals’ choices in the free market, try to set up moral equivalency between Western nation-states and its enemies, and use the courts to legislate.  If asked to do so, I can provide substantiation for my application of it to any person.  I hope there’s nothing unclear about why TCM, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, The H-word Creature, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, George Soros, the editorial board of the New York Times, Greenpeace, ACORN, La Raza, Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chavez and the Iranian mullahs fit this label.  They are all on record as having advocating the curtailing of freedom in one of the three ways enumerated above.

I carefully thought about this term before starting to use it some time ago - its cadence, its accuracy, whether or not it encompasses all I felt it needed to encompass, whether it reflected marurity on my part of not.  I decided it was spot-on and have no qualms about using it frequently.

After all, on this 233rd Independence Day, it’s questionable whether the first nation to be founded on the idea of freedom still exists.  And that’s because those who hate freedom have mainstreamed their way into the highest echelons of power.

I get the sense from a particular frequent commenter here at BN that he would like to put this question to me:  Come on, now, haven’t you ever come across people who consider themselves primarily business people, as opposed to makers of some product, practitioners of some particular technology, or craftspersons of some sort, who were pushy, aggressive, thoughtless and shallow?

The answer is yes.  I’ll even go so far as to say I’ve met lots of them.  In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that the field of business per se (again, as opposed to those who consider themselves to be primarily, say, metal stamping experts or independent record label owners) has more of such type than other fields, such as the arts or the clergy or some esoteric type of scientific research.

But therein lies the beauty of the free market.  If you find such a personality type distasteful, no one is forcing you to deal with those who embody it.

Can you completely avoid contact with them?  It’s doubtful.  As I said in the post below, the free market is based on a fundamental truth: All life is a trade-off.  There will be instances in which you’ll hae to decide whether the extent to which you need or want a particular good or service is such that you will tolerate contact with boneheads.  Freedom is a function of the real world, after all.

Not only in the comment threads here at BN but also in plentiful supply in the media and society generally we see supposed substantiation for arguments in favor of collectivist economics and against capitalism.  The three main areas where this crops up these days is when the conversation turns to health care, banking or energy (although a recent comment thread here also brought agriculture into the proceedings.)

The basic argument is that corruption and greed are inseperable from the profit motive.  What I feel is important to point out is that examples that are cited to bolster this notion generally have to do with people and institutions that got busted for laws that are already on the books.  In other words, we have legal safeguards in place in our society to prevent and / or stop any unethical manipulation of the free exchange of goods and service by free individuals freely forming various types of associations.  In short, to point out something that Enron or Bernie Madoff or Lilly got in trouble for proves nothing about the viability of a particular economic system.

Now, although it should be unnecessary to do so due to the irrefutable obviousness of it, I will assert afresh the basic principle that profit is the key to a healthy society and the advancement of human well-being.  Profit is what’s left over after a business enterprise has covered all its costs.  It can be saved, invested in other enterprises, distributed to shareholders, used for research into new and improved products, made available to increase the pay of staff members, or all the above.  It is how an individual or organization knows whether it is succeeding or failing.

As for this matter of greed, I will once again point out the fallaciousness of the idea that it plays some kind of important role in a free market.  You can’t ask more for your product or service, whether you’re selling a business’s product or negotiating pay for a job you seek, than the market will bear.  The party in a postion to cut you a check will say, “This doesn’t meet my needs and expectations” and go elsewhere.

Does one party in an economic exchange have to swallow hard sometimes?  Of course.  This gets to the even more basic level of truth about reality upon which economic principle is based: All life is a tradeoff.  No one in the world can guarantee you all your fondest wishes and grandiose dreams.  You must, in an economic trasaction, find that point at which cost and benefit seem like something desirable to you.

Any alternative to this brings in some third party besides buyer and seller.  We all know what that party ultimately comes down to: the coercive power of the state to distort this arena of freely arrived-at agreement in the name of some kind of phantom “fairness.”

North Korea sends what has become a customary Independence day greeting

Sarah Barracuda resigns as Alaska governor.

One reason it will be interesting to see what the deal is is that it sure does the opposite of bolstering GOP morale or shoring up the party’s organizational strength.  Not a good time for this either, as the Freedom Haters are firing on all cylinders with their Marxist plans for energy and health care.

Unemployment clocks in at 9.5 percent, a 26-year high.

Dandy economic climate for enacting cap-and-trade and socialist health care, wouldn’t you say?

 . . . North Korea test-fires four more short-range missiles.

The CPUSA.

The retail giant gets behind TCM’s socialist health-care plan.

The Minnesota Supreme Court decides for Al Franken for the Senate seat.  The program director for the failed Air America network and former Saturday Night Live writer puts the Freedom Haters over the top at 60.

The grim reality of totalitarianism is upon us.  The internal front in the current world war just became a whole lot harder for the forces of freedom to wage battle on.

That doesn’t mean we give up.

Sanford has reached that point in a scandal cycle at which he compounds the self-embarrassment with each utterance.  Goopy group-therapy-speak and detailed discussion of his feelings (his fling was “a love story” but he’s “trying to fall back in love with his wife”) and further revelations of his barely containable horniness.  And, of course, some God talk.  (What was supposed to be the breakup ws “chaperoned” by a “spiritual advisor,” but then he subsequently went to Buenos Aires to see her again).

Tell it to Oprah, pal.  On second thought, please don’t.

Doesn’t he have a really close friend who can get through to him and tell him to resign, shut his pie hole and do his puking all over himself in a counselor’s office?

One thing I’m glad about is that this came to light before the 2012 election cycle got underway.

Sen. James Inhofe calls for an inquiry into the EPA kibosh on Alan Carlin’s report concluding that carbon dioxide isn’t harming the atmosphere.

TCM has a lot on his plate, but he’s never too busy to tell Americans what kinds of light bulbs they will use.

An important Washington Post editorial entitled “The Debt Tsunami.”

The only comment I’d make on the editorial itself is that the last paragraph smacks of the chin-rubbing east-coast mentality for which publications like the WashPo are famous.  This isn’t just a case of TCM failing to get serious about debt in the same manner as previous debt-incurring presidents.  We’re talking about a president who, in six months, has blown all previous debt records out of the water, with more wacky schemes coming down the pike seemingly by the hour.

It’s a failure on the chin-rubbers’ part to see that TCM is up to something else entirely besides presiding over what we have all known as the United States of America.

He gets paid the big bucks because it’s his job to put the gooey “compassion” spin on TCM’s promise-breaking - such as the pledge not to increase taxes on those making under $250,000 a year.

When it’s in defense of the Honduran president, who tried to unconstitutionally hold a referendum on his continued rule.  This puts the TCM administration, by the way, on the same side of this situation as the Castros, Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez.

Could TCM want to see this kind of tactic legitimized in case he needs to use it at some point?

And when is he not cool with meddling?  When it might interfere with his messianic fantasies of charming a similar regime in Iran into giving up its nukes.  Axelrod says talks with the blood-stained mullahs still possible.

The Supreme Court oveturns the Sotomayor appellate court’s decision in the case of the New Haven firefighters.