The Pollyanna Follies

“Freedom Follies” often take the form of “Pollyanna Follies,” when the issue of individual liberty is center stage in the American political drama.  The crucial importance of preserving personal freedom from the ravages of government is currently being upstaged en masse in the United States of Americana by those individuals  who adopt a kind of idealistic “pollyannaism.”  Individuals who manifest this overly glowing attitude toward the  “Promised Land” of “Hope and Change,” that was previously promised by the current occupant of the Oval Office, remain blind to the reality of the clear and ever increasing threat, not only to personal liberty, but to the survival of Constitutional government bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers.

The oft-used term, “Pollyanna,” derives from the best-selling, 1913 novel (Pollyanna), by Eleanor H. Porter, now considered “a classic of children’s literature” and the basis for the Disney movie of the same title.   “Pollyanna” is:

A person regarded as being foolishly or blindly optimistic.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. 

Arguably, a prime example of a “Pollyanna” in the political realm is, Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain when Hitler was threatening Europe (1937-1940).  Chamberlain will be forever known for his policy of “appeasement.”

The main purpose of this policy was to avoid war at all costs. Chamberlain once said that “in a war, no matter who is victor, no one wins, everyone loses.” He was thus determined to avoid war in Europe, even if that meant making certain concessions to the dictators. Chamberlain believed that he could appease Hitler and escape military confrontation with some concessions and man-to-man dialogue.

I submit that a modern day example of the Pollyanna character is very likely to be found in Dan Boylan, Midweek columnist and University of Hawaii, West Oahu professor of history, as well as  sometimes commentator on local television stations during election seasons.  Professor Boylan, it seems, is a quintessential example of an “intellectual  Pollyanna,”  judging from the fact that he shows week after week that he cannot see the forest because he is blinded by the gleaming trees of liberal wisdom that he beholds.

In his most recent column, “America As The World Sees Us,” Boylan writes admiringly of the Swedish sociologist, Myrdal, and in so doing, appears to inhabit a “World” that is limited to European, or at least Western, values, because he conveniently ignores the less than glowing perception of the U.S. in other parts of the planet.  Myrdal, he asserts:

…examined the great contradiction of egalitarian America in the mid-20th century: The failure of the United States to fulfill the promises of its founding documents and the Civil War.

Myrdal wrote about persisting racism in the United States, which, it is certainly true, conflicts with the U.S. Constitution.  However, Boylan’s liberally-biased belief system, which, ostensibly, regards “group rights,” rather than “individual rights” as guaranteed by the Constitution, directs his attention away from the massive violations of civil rights that have been visited upon ALL American citizens, regardless of race, since at least 1913, when the American public was bamboozled into believing that they were required to pay an income tax by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, an interpretation that is still taken as the gospel truth today, despite the fact that no one has ever been able to produce corresponding legislation that mandates that one must pay a direct, unapportioned tax on personal income.

Boylan’s idealistic “Pollyannaism” leads him to seeming disbelief regarding “the shrill criticism from some quarters of President Barack Obama.”  He reveals his wide-eyed infatuation with his “favorite son” in describing his befriending of a couple of German tourists and giving them his “25-cent tour of Honolulu,” which as the state capitol  has been overwhelmingly dominated by the Democratic political machine for almost fifty years.  And, should the near existence of total legislative control continue for another two years, and there is no compelling sign that it will not.  If so, then “Hawaii Five-0,” the police drama of the 1970s, which “showcased the nation's 50th state and attracted millions of tourists to its shores,” will be imbued with a new, prophetic meaning.

Boylan describes stopping to drink German beer and highlights the conversation that ensured with his enamored companions. “We don’t understand it,” said the husband. “Europe loves him. In Germany, hundreds of thousands turned out to hear him speak. Our German politicians these days are not very exciting. If you don’t want Obama, send him to Germany. We would make him chancellor immediately.”

“Sadly,” Boylan muses in the article, “some of my countrymen would be happy to do just that.”

Sadly?  Is this a chink in Pollyanna’s armor?  Or, is it, rather, a reflection of the partisan myopia that leads Boylan to have, ostensibly, little, if any appreciation of the constitutional issues that the Obama administration has thrust in the faces of the American people time and time again over the past ten months?

I suggest that it is the latter explanation that obtains.  It is the idealistic, progressive perspective that structures Boylan’s perception of the situation in American political culture.  He is the intellectual observer at the Emperor’s celebratory parade who cannot perceive the raw nakedness of the political forces that make up his entourage and which seek to co-opt increasingly more power for the central government of the United States and transmute the constitutionally structured federation of independent states into an all powerful national government that has absolute authority and domination over the American people, not unlike the domination of the Democratic machine in Hawaii politics.

Boylan speaks of the United States as “the world’s most egalitarian society,” and then he  appears to lament, as pointed out by Myrdal:

…the great contradiction (sic) of egalitarian America in the mid-20th century: The failure of the United States to fulfill the promises of its founding documents and the Civil War.

Boylan might well turn his skills as an historical scholar to the roots of egalitarianism in Paleolithic hunter-gatherer groups and the way in which they developed “leveling-down mechanisms” to keep leaders in check.  We need this evolutionary wisdom today to keep Presidents and legislators in check.  But, this part of the forest, Boylan has not seen while enamored with the “Towering African Blackwood Tree,” which grew prodigiously out of nowhere during the last national election season.  It is rather ironic that this tree is threatened in Kenya, President Obama’s country of original citizenship.  An omen, perhaps, for the future of its political "incarnation" in America?

Technorati Tags: freedom,follies,Pollyanna,pollyannaism,liberty,constitutional,government,idealistic,Founding,Fathers,Eleanor,Porter,Disney,movie,excessive,optimism,naivete,Neville,Chamberlain,Hitler,war,appeasement,Dan,Boylan,Midweek,University,Hawaii,West,Oahu,professor,history,forest,trees,liberal,belief,system,Myrdal,Swedish,sociologist,liberally-biased,group,rights,individual,Constitution,1913,16th,Amendment,income,tax,United,States,American,citizens,direct,unapportioned,President,Barack,Obama,Honolulu,Democratic,political,machine,Five-0,German,myopia,Emperor's,parade,entourage,nakedness,federation,states,national,absolute,domination,politics,intellectual,leveling-down,mechanisms,Kenya,African,Blackwood,evolutionary,legislators,election,egalitarian,society,check,leaders

Government Involvement in Health Care: Evidence of Adverse Effects

In the preceding post, I spoke of the justifications offered by those who would legislate federally regulated health care. What these justifications lack is that they give no consideration to factors that have been driving the cost of medical care through the roof for decades and to the very curious fact that, of all of the powers that Congress has chosen to appropriate unto itself, through distorting the original meanings of the “Welfare, Commerce, and Necessary and Proper” clauses of the constitution, it has steadfastly refused to assume the power under the “Commerce Clause” to trump state laws and mandate that insurance policies can be bought across state lines. Such competition would go a long way in driving down the cost of health insurance.

Mandating that everyone participate in the government’s scheme is purportedly necessary, according to national health care proponents, in order to keep costs down. However, a very careful, empirical study of this issue, published back in 1991 by researchers at Bentley College, now Bentley University, did not find support for this purported necessity.

To determine the effects of government on the performance of the health care sector, the researchers studied differences in infant mortality rates in 20 countries that belonged to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) during the six adjacent half decades from 1960 to 1985, using highly technical analyses involving multiple regression. [Note: infant mortality rates were chosen for this international study, which included the U.S., for very specific, reasons, the rationale for which the authors spell out carefully in the article. Regarding their research purpose, they write:

This paper examines government involvement in health care from both a theoretical and empirical standpoint. From a theoretical perspective, government involvement in health care matters may have an adverse impact on the quality of care. Numerous analyses of other sectors of the economy have found that both the quantity and quality of output suffers from public intervention and regulations. In particular, analysts use the postal system, local schools, rent control laws, and the pre-deregulated transportation sector as prime examples of areas in which government enterprise and regulations have inhibited efficiency….Moreover, Canadian policymakers have recently begun to question the desirability of their own health care delivery system….

They write later:

Indeed, the theory of public choice…[and] the theory of government enterprise…and the theory of economic regulation…all suggest that more government involvement is very likely to have an adverse, rather than a beneficial, impact on the performance of the health care sector....

After analyzing their data, the Bentley researchers found that

“The empirical results suggest that greater government involvement has no impact on infant mortality….Clearly, the results lend no support for the point of view that greater government involvement reduces mortality, at least not among infants....

“The results [also] fail to support the basic hypothesis that greater government financing leads to a lower level of health care spending.”

The researchers, thus, concluded:

Our results raise serious doubt about the desirability of a national health care program in the United States. Evidently, government is unable to influence infant mortality or control total health care spending. But what about other roles for government in the health care sector? [Emphasis added.]

Perhaps government can indirectly improve the performance of the health care sector by creating an environment that allows the macroeconomy to function properly. Our results indicate that infant mortality is greatly influenced by higher levels of real GDP. The more favorable socioeconomic conditions associated with higher levels of income apparently lead to better health care outcomes. If so, ensuring macroeconomic growth is a good strategy for lowering infant mortality.

Alternatively [they suggested], from a microeconomic perspective, the government might encourage the allocation of inputs to the medical services industry. Our empirical study also finds that more abundant medical services cause infant mortality to decline by a substantial percentage. Certainly, the government should not adopt regulations that negatively affect the quantity and quality of medical inputs….

And, they had one additional suggestion to offer from their data.

From a slightly different microeconomic perspective, the government can help foster better health through education. The results suggest that better educated populations are associated with lower infant mortality rates. Indeed, the recent campaign to wipe out illiteracy in the United States could, if successful, have a tremendous impact on infant mortality. Furthermore, local schools might devote more resources to health education.

Of course, more studies are needed before any empirical generalizations can be made and policy implications can be safely drawn. Our suggestions for an appropriate government role are cautiously prescribed, and we eagerly await other opinions. Future studies should attempt to untangle the effects of government financing and production on the performance of the health care sector. Providing free access to private medical care, as does the Canadian health care system, may have an impact different from that of the national health care system of Great Britain, where production is nationalized. In our study, we were unable to separate and measure the differential impacts of these two kinds of health care programs. It is hoped that other researchers will pursue that fruitful line of inquiry.

It should be noted that since this study was published nearly two decades ago, the relative standing of the USA in the world regarding infant mortality has declined even further. In 1990, the U.S. ranked #23 among the countries having the lowest infant mortality rates. This standing had declined from the #12 position in 1960, a drop of eleven rank positions in 30 years. But, the drop in the past 19 years has been precipitous, declining to #44 (about three times as rapid as the decline in the preceding 30 years), as estimated by the CIA’s World Factbook in 2009. This is after dropping to the 30th rank in 2005, which represents almost a ten-fold increase, since 2005, in the rate of decline in infant survivability, relative to the 30-year interval between 1960 and 1990.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website states: “Infant mortality is an important indicator of the health of a nation….” And, it further indicates that “Much of the high infant mortality rate in the United States is due to the high percentage of preterm births.”

About 8 years ago, I did an analysis of data supplied by the CDC, correlating the percentage of a state’s water supplies having fluoridation and infant mortality in the state. I found a positive, statistically significant rank correlation of about 0.53, which indicated that the higher fluoridation level in the state, the higher the infant mortality rate. This was a surprisingly high correlation, given the crudeness of the measures. Other studies have found similar results, including a very recent one.

But, the CDC has steadfastly promoted public water fluoridation as one of the ten top medical achievements of the 20th Century, despite an ever increasing body of evidence which shows that this position is that of the waxing ecstatic over the “Emperor’s New Clothes.” Even after a indicting report by an investigative committee for the National Research Council (NRC), they have remained in denial. Thus, this federal agency remains committed to policy that is damaging the health of the citizenry by coercive control of one of the most fundamental requirements of life—drinking water. This is a clear insult to the Constitution and a travesty for each and every American, who is taken in by the mantra, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”

Another federal agency, the EPA, has played its role in the “Freedom Follies” to which we are all spectators. The EPA sets Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) for pollutants in drinking water. It has set the MCL for arsenic at 10 parts per billion (ppb). It has set the MCL for lead at 15 ppb. Now, fluoride is more toxic than lead and only slightly less toxic than arsenic, so at what level do you think the EPA has set the MCL for fluoride in public drinking water? Logically, it should be somewhere in between the levels for arsenic and lead and closer to the level for lead, right? Maybe 11 or 12 ppb?

WRONG! Take a wild guess at where it has been set now for many years and even several years after the NRC report recommending that it be lowered. Try 4,000 ppb!!!

Now, is it not folly to trust anything the federal bureaucrats tell us? Obviously, there have been payoffs by corporate lobbying interests.

In the following video interview…

“…Christopher Bryson, an award-winning journalist and former producer at the BBC, discusses the findings of his new book The Flouride Deception. EARLY REVIEWS of The Fluoride Deception: "Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride?s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people. The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate." -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

 

So, we’ve been had, folks, as we have watched the federal government’s ongoing performance of the FREEDOM FOLLIES, in each episode of which we have been led, insidiously, to believe that we are being protected and that our freedom is being ensured. Nothing could be further from the truth. NOTHING!

Is the Health Care Bill Constitutional?

Asking if the Health Care bill, recently passed by the House of Representatives, by the narrowest of margins, is constitutional, is like asking “Does the Bible say that God created both Adam and Eve in his image?”  No matter how much you may desire to promote the equality of women in the cosmic scheme of things, the answer to this question is NO! 

The Bible tells us that God made Adam first and because Adam was presumably lonely, he made a companion for him from Adam’s rib.  So, Eve was essentially made in Adam’s image, that is to say, she was a poorly cloned copy of Adam, and by inference, of God.

Likewise, no matter how much you may wish to promote the equality of opportunity for all people to have affordable health care coverage, the Constitution does not give the Federal government the power to require  that everyone purchase health care insurance in order to insure that there is “social justice” while each person carries his/her fair share of this “tax burden.”  And, the way the bill is structured, it really is a health care “tax” that we will be coerced into paying, whether we wish to buy the proffered insurance or not.

The health care legislation crafted and pushed through the House by the Democratic majority is based on a Constitutional interpretation that creates, as in the purported creation of Eve by God, a very poorly cloned image of the Constitution as it was carefully and arduously crafted by the Founding Fathers.  This cloning error is cogently revealed in a very careful analysis of the “General Welfare” Clause of Article 1 of the Constitution by the respected Constitutional scholar, Robert Natelson, a professor of law at the University of Montana.

Congress, following key Supreme Court decisions that have imperfectly cloned the original Constitution, and proceeding, as  if it were operating appropriately within the limitations of the original document, has basically assumed carte blanche power to control and regulate whatever it chooses for whatever purpose.

The Democrats, when confronted with the constitutionality of federal health care reform, typically resort to justifications deriving from the presumed power given to Congress in the “General Welfare Clause.”

Prof. Natelson’s aforementioned paper shows the invalidity of such justifications.  In an excellent, scholarly work, he looks at the evidence as to the intent of the Founders from two perspectives.  One is the perspective of Textual Analysis.

Textual analysis is defined as:

“Using specific evidence from a text to rationalize a claim made about the text.  More specifically, textual analysis weighs and considers the meaning of individual words and phrases in an effort to discern the intentions of a poet or author.”

There are a number of "textual difficulties," according to Natelson, "involved in construing 'to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare' as an affirmative grant of power" given to Congress. I shall only highlight a few examples.  He points, out, for instance, that:

Several items in the Article I, Section 8 enumeration are powers that rather clearly anticipate congressional spending, especially when coupled with the Necessary and Proper Clause.  If the words 'to provide for the common Defence and general Welfare' give Congress power to spend money on the common defense, there is no need for a separate clause authorizing Congress to 'support Armies,' [to] 'maintain a Navy,' purchase 'Forts, Magazines, [and] Arsenals,' or 'punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high seas--all of which Congress could do under the General Welfare Clause.  Similarly, if the General Welfare Clause grants an independent, largely unqualified domestic spending power, then there is no need for separate grants of spending authority to 'establish Post Offices and Post Roads,' 'constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court,' or purchase 'dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.' "

He also calls attention to another difficulty revealed by textual analysis.  This difficulty…

…can be understood through knowing the subtle, but interpretively critical, differences between modern and eighteenth century English:  one might argue that the verb "to pay" suggest and immediate power of payment--hence, a spending power.  However, the Clause states that taxes will be levied "to pay the Debts" but “to provide for" (not "pay for") the common defense and general welfare.  The significance of the change of verbs seems to have been lost on courts and commentators unfamiliar with the founding generation's Latinate English.

Today, we usually employ the verb "provide to mean "to give," as in "she provided him with cash."  That was not the usual way the term was used in the eighteenth century.  Then, the term usually had aspect of futurity in it suggested by its Latin forbear, providere, meaning to look ahead or predict--and still captured in the modern English term "provision," as in "he is making provision for the future."  In Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of 1755, the first definition of "to provide" is "[t]o procure beforehand; to get ready; to prepare.  Although something closer to the modern usage appears in a secondary meaning, this was notably not true of the specific phrase employed in the Constitution--"to provide for."  That meaning was always one of making provision for the future, as “[t]o take care of beforehand" or "to provide for the coming winter."

....Whenever the verb "to provide" appears in the Constitution, it embodies an element of futurity inconsistent with immediate spending or appropriation....The verb "pay" was used , not for future debts arising under the Constitution, but for debts already incurred by the Confederation.

Natelson concludes after many more detailed analyses that…

…the best textual interpretation is that the General Welfare Clause limits the purposes for which taxes can be levied.

Then, he turns to the history of the adoption of the Constitution

…to see whether it corroborates or conflicts with textual analysis, and if it corroborates textual analysis, to determine the nature of the limitation imposed.

I shall give only two of a great many issues and facts which Natelson reviews.  The first example, however, overlaps with textual analysis.  He writes:

It may be significant that Alexander Hamilton's proposed frame of government--the ony proposal to grant Congress plenary [absolute] authority--did not include "general welfare" language.  The reason is simple: words of limitation did not belong in a proposal that would empower Congress to "pass all laws whatsoever."  Hamilton wanted the national legislature to have power to legislate on matters of local and private as well as general welfare.

This brings up the issue of “general” vs. “local” welfare.  Natelson demonstrates that the use of the term, General Welfare” in the Constitution is intended to refer not to the individual welfare of citizens, as many politicians today presume, but, instead, to the general welfare of the federal government in contrast to the welfare of the states, i.e., states’ rights.

After discussing the historical material relating to ratification of the Constitution, Natelson concludes:

In summary, the ratification debates support the conclusion that the General Welfare Clause grants no independent authority to Congress, to spend or otherwise.

Professor Natelson then concludes with the following:

The current Supreme Court interpretation, the Hamilton-Story view, stands the original meaning of the General Welfare Clause on its head.  The Clause was not a qualified grant of spending authority, as Hamilton and Story claimed.  Nor did it merely point to other powers, as Story understood Madison to have said.  On the contrary, the General Welfare Clause was an unqualified denial of spending authority.  It did not add to federal powers; it subtracted from them. [Emphasis added].

[Note:  Joseph Story (September 18, 1779 – September 10, 1845) was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1811 to 1845.  He is best known for his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (3 vols., 1833).]

Interestingly, it seems that the general public has recovered from the “Yes we can” mantra of the 2006-2008 election years and  is not buying the constitutionality of the proposed, government-run health care program either.  A recent Gallup Poll suggests that:

More Americans now say it is not the federal government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage (50%) than say it is (47%). This is a first since Gallup began tracking this question, and a significant shift from as recently as three years ago, when two-thirds said ensuring healthcare coverage was the government's responsibility.

No Compassion Through Coercion, #3

This is the final installment of a 3-part post to the blog referenced in the preceding two installments:

I wrote in conclusion:

What gets lost in the "General Welfare" [reference to U.S. Constitution] discussion is the obvious conclusion that the Founding Fathers would not have gone to the bother of enumerating the seventeen, limited [arguably, twenty-two,], delegated, and discrete powers of the Congress, leaving all the rest to the States and the people, if they, in fact, intended to give the Congress carte blanche power to pass whatever laws it deemed fit to minister to the "general welfare" of the people.

In the following video Judge Andrew Napolitano comments on these specific, enumerated powers delegated to Congress.  In summing up his commentary, he asks: "Is freedom a reality or a myth?  Wasn't the Constitution written to define and to restrain the government?"  And, he goes on to say, "We now have a federal government whose only self-acknowledged limitation is whatever it can get away with."

In another video, Judge Napolitano commented on the question: Is it constitutional for Congress to regulate health care?  He says, "When I put that very question to Congressman James Cliburn, who is the #3 ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives...he said to me, 'Most of what we do down here isn't even mentioned in the Constitution, but we do it anyway.'  Unfortunately, that is the attitude of so many members of Congress.  It is not constitutional.  Health care is not mentioned in the constitution.  The Congress will claim that, when you go to your doctor to have a pain looked at in your belly or to take medication for your blood pressure, that that's commerce, that that's a commercial transaction...as opposed to the practice of medicine.  So, the Congress will say that just as the Commerce Clause was written so that Congress could make sure that goods could get from New Jersey to New York without New York imposing a tariff on those goods, we can regulate health care.  It just doesn't fly." [Emphasis added.]

As the author of [another] blog referenced in Part 2 of this commentary wrote:

"Let’s review the general welfare clause: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

"First, notice it says PROMOTE. It doesn’t say provide. There is clearly a difference between promote and provide. If politicians in Washington had the keys to the case the Constitution sits in, they would have already gotten the White Out out and reworded it for their convenience....

"...Thomas Jefferson, who had a little to do with the creation of this country once said, a government that is powerful enough to give you everything is also powerful enough to take everything from you. Knowing this very quote alone, should be enough for the McCaskills who work from Capitol Hill knowledge [that] the general welfare clause isn’t permission by the founding fathers to provide every service they can to get people through their lives" [Link added].

Marsha [author of referenced blog], you wrote, "Though the goal may seem good, trying to compel others to live humanely won’t work. One of humanity’s most treasured gifts is our power of choice and free will – to take that away would make us less.”

True, indeed, and I would submit that, in supporting big government programs and ignoring the Constitution, advocates for "social justice," are supporting coercion that would force all of us "to live humanely" and thus would take away "One of humanity’s most treasured gifts (which) is our power of choice and free will."  And, such advocacy, does, as you so well observe, "make us less" as human beings.  Much less. 

As you point out, "we can’t create a humane world by forcing people to comply with something they haven’t freely chosen."  Or, alternatively, as you say in the title of your post, "There is No Compassion Through Coercion."

Technorati Tags: General,Welfare,Constitutional,enumerated,powers,Founding,Fathers,restrain,Congress,federal,government,Andrew,Napolitano,freedom,myth,James,Clyburn,Commerce,Clause,McCaskill,big,social,justice,free,will,compassion,coercion

No Compassion Through Coercion, #2

This post is a continuation of my recent, 3-part commentary to the blog referenced in my previous post:

As one blogger recently asserted , "No two words [reference to “General Welfare” in the U.S. Constitution] have taken greater abuse in our country, and it has become a ticket for federal politicians to exceed the limits placed upon them by the very Constitution [in which] these words are found."

Now, mind you, I am not advocating the ostensibly, partisan view of the foregoing blog, because I am opposed to "we versus them" partisanship and opt for a more holistic and "humane" politics that synthesizes the wisdom inherent in human beings and that so often gets expressed in fragmented, divisive fashion.  Thus, I would encourage educational programs that facilitate our children's integrated use of mental and emotional capabilities and sensitivities, devoid of implicit, and often unrecognized, political agendas.  To seek to gain political power as a way of bringing about a change in undesirable social conditions, is to unleash "King Kong," the "Federal Enforcer," whose limbs are the IRS and other coercive, federal agencies.   To turn this bureaucratic monster loose to force people to "do the right thing," even if this coercion violates the Constitution and infringes the personal freedom of others, is to support the "compassion through coercion" idea (which you rightly reject) on a massive, federal scale [The last two links do not appear in the original post].

The author of the foregoing blog goes on to say:

"The federal government, especially the Democrats, have been successful in redefining welfare over the last 60 years. They have discovered welfare is a vote machine that encourages minorities to stay down on their luck in exchange for a vote. I ask what have the Democrats really done for blacks in this country other than encourage them not to lift themselves out of their tragic conditions that welfare created. Do you really believe this is what our proud founding fathers believed the general welfare of the people should be—crumbling housing projects in bad neighborhoods with bad schools incapable of lifting most out of the conditions they face? There’s no welfare in that.

"I had to endure Senator Claire McCaskill tell a group at a town hall meeting in September, that she believed the general welfare clause gave her the right to provide welfare to the people. She’s another politician obviously brainwashed by the Democratic party over the last 60 years with no real knowledge of what the founding fathers meant by general welfare.

[Link to the foregoing .pdf document and the following commentary do not appear in the original post; see especially, pp. 54-55, viz., “The current Supreme Court interpretation, the Hamilton-Story view, stands the original meaning of the General Welfare Clause on its head.  The Clause was not a qualified grant of spending authority as Hamilton and Story claimed.  Nor did it merely point to other powers, as Story understood Madison to have said.  On the contrary, the General Welfare Clause was an unqualified denial of spending authority.  It did not add to federal powers; it subtracted from them.”]

"General welfare doesn’t mean make the people dependent on a government. That creates oppression....If the idea of the Constitution is to limit government and keep the government from being intrusive into a citizen’s life, which is one of the earliest facts you learn about the Constitution, how to [sic, "do"] politicians like McCaskill with any honestly believe the general welfare clause provides enough elasticity to rob freedom of the people by providing federal babysitting services.

"You can’t simply have a government program for every pain Americans face from healthcare costs to food safety without giving the federal government power beyond the limits placed in the Constitution. Our founding fathers were smart enough to look across the pond and realize with power comes corruption and oppression."

I think that we need to listen when individuals speak out, especially when they passionately take positions opposite to our own passions.  I don't support the use of ad hominems to attack the opposing side, but I think that we need to work toward educating children to assess situations with their whole minds and not with fragments of them created by the inculcated belief systems of their parents, teachers, or religious leaders.  Education must be politically neutral or it is not education, only brainwashing.  A respect for reasoning and intuitive sensitivity must predominate in any process of nurturing young people.  Otherwise, they will never be able truly to think for themselves in a critical and sensitive manner.

(To be continued in the next post)

Technorati Tags: freedom,education,brainwashing,belief,systems,general,welfare,clause,Founding,Fathers,critical,thinking,Constitution,Senator,Claire,McCaskill,coercion,holistic,politics.

“No Compassion Through Coercion”

Technorati Tags: partisan,progressive,Constitution,education,critical thinking,brainwashing,coercion,freedom,federal government

Recently, I happened upon a blog that caught my interest.  The post that I read was entitled:

"Just a Little Nudge? There is No Compassion Through Coercion."

http://humaneconnectionblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/just-little-nudge-there-is-no.html

I was intrigued by the phrase, "compassion through coercion," in the title of the post, so I read further, and decided to comment.  My commentary was long, so I broke it into three parts.  In the first part, the shortest of the three by far, I wrote:

As your post so nicely illustrates, there is a very strong tendency for those, whose moral values place humane ideals in a preeminent position, to want to exert such coercion, i.e., to give people that "little nudge onto the 'right path.' To 'help' them change their minds through sheer force of one’s own mental will."  But, is so often the case, this desire to "nudge" other people becomes unfortunately transformed into partisan, political activism in which noble values become conflated with a divisive "we vs. them" mentality. 

And, so often, those with the lofty and noble desire to better the human condition and to stop "all the suffering and injustice and destruction in the world" get caught up in "progressive" group causes.  Such partisan, political causes reinforce automatic belief systems that dictate thought, feeling, and behavior.  These folks, accordingly, end up accepting the premise that the federal government is the instrument through which to implement their nudging on a grand scale.  Lost in this compassionate, coercive shuffle is the recognition that, to advocate such federal intervention into the realm of moral values is not only not permitted by the Constitution, no matter how much our elected legislators wish to stretch and distort the enumerated powers granted to the federal government, but no amount of political posturing and justification can bend the "General Welfare" clause to support "social justice" or "welfare" programs.

(To be continued in the next post)

A Crumbling Citadel of Freedom

Technorati Tags: freedom,beliefs,computer programs,irrational belief,Andrew Napolitano,nation of sheep,Constitution,federal government,health reform,House of Representatives

I have spoken of the illusion of freedom in previous posts.  The average U.S. citizen naively "believes" that we live in the world's quintessential citadel of freedom.  Note the emphasis on "believes," for our beliefs are all powerful.  They operate behind the scenes, much like computer programs that run behind the screens which we are viewing on our computers.   These mental programs are, indeed, automated.  They automatically determine what we think and what we perceive.  They act like filters or templates that determine and structure our conscious experience and thus dictate how we will tend to behave. 

The belief that we are free in the USA is increasingly becoming an irrational belief as more and more of our personal liberties are taken away and unconstitutionally controlled by the federal government.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent passage of the Health Reform bill in the House of Representatives by the slimmest of margins.  Judge Andrew Napolitano, a constitutional expert, who has written a number of books on the erosion of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, including, A Nation of Sheep; The Constitution in Exile; and Constitutional Chaos, has sounded a clarion call to constitutional arms for those who have not been totally lulled to sleep by their beliefs in the indestructibility of freedom in the United States of America (with an emphasis on "States"). 

In the following video, Judge Napolitano, discusses The Constitution in Exile, and he highlights the development of the U.S. Constitution as an attempt to limit the role of the federal government and to preserve the independence of the individual states.  This independence has been eviscerated, time and time again,  as the Judge points out, by Congress, the federal courts, and the Executive branches of the federal government. 

In the next video, Judge Napolitano speaks out regarding the most recent end run around the Constitution and tells us what we need to do now to prevent the demise of the Republic.

Is Freedom Only an Illusion? – Part 2

Technorati Tags: freedom,illusion,self mastery,Epictetus,Stoics,Victor Frankl,response vs. reaction,autopilot,beliefs,automatic thoughts,internal vs. external control

So, what is the freedom that comes with self mastery to which I alluded in the previous post? The following is an excerpt from an article describing the philosophy of Epictetus, one of the ancient Greek Stoic philosophers.

Epictetus (50 A.D. - 125 A.D.) was a freed Roman slave. According to the Stoics, one can be enslaved on the outside, "externally" (have one's body in chains) and be free "internally" (be at peace with oneself in aloofness from all pleasure and pain). Dualism of mind (soul) and body: the inner realm is a realm of freedom (unless we let externals affect us or let events disturb our thoughts); the outer realm is a realm of determinism (things outside of our mind, including our own bodies, are determined by factors beyond our control). We have control over our thoughts and our will, but we do not have control over external fortune. [Emphasis added.]

Or, to put it in more modern words, Dr. Victor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived the Nazi Death Camps, wrote:

“Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.”

So, we must be ever mindful of what we control and what we don’t control. Other persons and external forces can control our bodies, but they have no control over our thoughts unless we give them this control.

But, this is only a part of the total picture. Much of our thinking and feeling is automated. It is carried out on autopilot. So, we can think that we are acting freely and choosing, when in reality, our choices are dictated by the autopilot. It is only when we take ourselves off autopilot, voluntarily, that we can freely choose by responding to situations thoughtfully rather than reacting to them automatically in knee-jerk fashion. Note that the root of “responsible” is “response.” Thus, we are responsible when we respond to situations rather than reacting to them.

I would venture to say that our mental activity is predominantly generated by the autopilot. And, the most important determinants of this automatic activity are our beliefs. Thus, we become creatures of our beliefs. It’s not “What you see is what you get.” It’s “What you believe is what you get.”

Our belief systems determine what we think (automatically), which in turn determines what we perceive. Environmental happenings serve as prompting events which are automatically interpreted in terms of our belief systems. Thus, two people can view the same event and come up with entirely different perceptions of what happened. Is it no wonder that judges often pull their hair out when confronting conflicting testimony of witnesses in court?

Liberals and Conservatives perceive situations, often quite rigidly according to their political belief systems which keep their autopilots churning away and enslaving their minds, and thus destroying their personal freedom.

So, even in the best of political worlds, where every effort has been made to ensure and preserve freedom for citizens, as the Founding Fathers endeavored to do, human beings typically fall victim to their own enslavement and become imprisoned by their automatic thoughts.

Photo Credit: Cult Gigolo (Flickr.com)

Is Freedom Only an Illusion?

So much has been written, of late, regarding the continuing loss of freedom in the U.S., as big government has relentlessly assumed more and more control over our lives. The Bush Administration's assaults on the Constitution and personal liberties, following in the wake of 9/11 and the resulting inception of the "War on Terror," however, pale in comparison to the Blitzkrieg waged by the Obama Adminstration under the banners of Economic Stimulation, Climate Change, Health Care, Social Justice, and Redistribution of Wealth, just to name a few of the battle fronts.

The Obama campaign has triggered a furor and counter-furor rising up from the ranks of partisan liberals and conservatives. There have been cries of the erosion of free speech and privacy countered by antiphonal cries of the desperate need to insure health care for every citizen as well as the life of the planet, which is, purportedly, in imminent peril, if governments do not band together and prevent the impending environmental holocaust. More government controls are advocated, even the formation of a world government to intercede on behalf of the floundering geosphere. There is more, but it would take us too far afield of the primary purpose of this post.

Photo Credit: Nati (Flicker.com)

We must ask a critical question. Even if we could turn the clock back and undo all of the assaults on the Constitution and individuals, even if we could be assured that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution were alive and well, would we really be free?

The ancient Greek philosopher, Epictetus, put the matter succinctly:

"No man is free who is not master of himself."