Of Great Social and Political Import

A stopped clock is right twice a day...

American Exceptionalism, Individualism, Mutual Help will restore us.

The progressive peddlers of programs and tea party tinkerers of taxes are locking horns in Washington DC and personally I don't subscribe to either major political party's agenda. My belief is neither side is acting in the best interest of the American people but merely serving their own purposes. I keep hearing a variation on the statement "they are trying to drive us back to the pre-Depression era." 'They' being I suppose that enigmatic collaboration of tea party, Republicans and conservatives and the complaint coming from liberals who have redressed themselves as progressives. My first thought is I wonder if anyone has considered that the programs of the Great Depression may be what got us into the Disruption Depression we are in today? That and consumerism.

There is a ridiculous headline in the Wall Street Journal "Slow Growth Stirs Recession Fears." Recession? What!? A recession implies a bump in the road and what we're experiencing is far larger than a recession. Statistics can be manipulated anyway someone wants but the reality is our credit rating will be downgraded regardless of any machinations of the Administration, US Treasury, Congress or Wall Street. There are two systemic problems that cannot be ignored by printing money. We are overleveraged as individuals and so is our government and additionally unemployment has become structural. Therefore if people are not able to productively earn money then debt cannot be paid off and will be repudiated.

We never pulled out of the recession in 2009 as some economists would have us believe, merely suspended it. Paul Krugman of the New York Times can rename this the "Little Depression," after all the damage he has done promoting the excessive printing of money, but the bottom line is we are heading for a long decade of economic restructuring and rebuilding. We will have both stagnation and hyper-inflation more endemic than the US in the seventies and Japan in the nineties. If you take the political and bureaucratic classes in DC and the financiers in New York seriously and rely on them for a solution then the joke is on you. They don't have a clue or care about anything west of I-95 and are concerned only with protecting their own self-interests.

In the long term I believe American Exceptionalism and Individualism is alive and well, although buried just beneath the surface, it is burgeoning resurrection. That ideal will be the ultimate resolution to the death of consumerism by technological and economic disruption and is a great thing. We will relearn and return to what it means to be innovative and creative and produce unique and valuable goods that are useful for the new era. It will take time and hard work. The sooner people recognize that reality we will be prepared to move forward. What our government is doing now is pure folly and nonsensical and you can't make sense out of a nonsensical situation. They are postponing the inevitable by trying to revive a dead concept, the old economy.

The American people must relearn to work for themselves. If it is for an employer they need to embrace the concept of being a free agent and not love an employer because they won't love you back. Americans should accept we are not entitled to anything except what we create by reinventing our lives and subsequently recreating the country. It is about our individual responsibility to take care of ourselves and mutual help with each other. The government cannot simulate or stimulate real people doing real things only real Americans can do that.

American Exceptionalism

Basis for reemergence from economic disruption...

How our current government and political system became a bastard.

Despite the disparaging attitude self-named Progressives (Social and Liberal Democrats) hold toward the concept of American exceptionalism, it is the primary factor that will cause the United States to resurge after an extended period of economic downturn and political disruption. A case can be made that the underlying real reason for the current problems we are now experiencing is the Federal government acting outside of the US Constitution. The background for this conjecture is based in history from the beginning of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century, which is rooted in communism and socialism, to today when progressive concepts have seeped into American government. The movement crept into our system after the WWI, reinforced by FDR's New Deal programs, illegally created through Executive Orders rather than constitutional means, further buttressed by LBJ's Great Society programs. Corporations and so-called Conservatives (Corporate Republicans) are not without blood on their hands in this inadvisable folly, since they willingly went along with distortion of the true intent for the United States in the US Constitution, that made this country exceptional.

The year 1913 is significant due to the 16th Amendment creating the authority to collect income taxes and the 17th Amendment allowing the direct election of Senators. Both of these amendments go directly against concepts of the Founding Fathers intentions and the ideals that influenced them. They were ratified when the Progressive movement was at its height being passed off as Populism. The distorted form of the Federal government of today has also been reinforced by the US Court system acting in ways that it was never intended to and misuse of Executive Orders by Presidents of the US. Although a case could be made that this illicit form of governing began with the Civil War, our situation today springs more from the early 20th Century. To state it succinctly, the Progressive movement with the aid of Populists was the root and cause of the federal government acting extraconstitutionally through their infiltration of bureaucratic agencies. We are still operating under those rules with complicit acceptance by both major political parties.

Our government is unconstitutional therefore unlawful.

Then by default this makes our current Federal Government and Congress an illegitimate government operating outside the boundaries laid down by the Founding Fathers in the US Constitution. They established those foundations for a reason, to avoid the type of surreptitious government illegally governing the country today.

Ignorance of history and the founding of our nation is the enemy.

One of the biggest shifts after WWI that the progressive movement and populists advanced was the notion of shifting economics and therefore law, away from the power of the Industrialists, who were also operating extraconstitutionally and not in true laissez-faire capitalism as the Founding Fathers intended. They had conspired with politicians to pass laws in their favor, distorting true free market enterprise, creating a response by the progressive and labor movement to shift legislation and by default bureaucratic agencies to the consumer and worker. At first glance this may not seem like a bad thing. The difficulty lies in that both sides deformed the values that made the United States of America an exceptional nation through legislative arm twisting. Although the progressives are the most covert of the two, the industrialists who are now contemporary corporations, are just as guilty. They are co-conspirators playing a sham game of good versus evil which is apocryphal and beguiling.

The shift in emphasis to the consumer and worker away from a true free market of entrepreneurs and producers with buyers was the beginning of regulated market modern day consumerism. Consumerism is the root cause of our current economic and political situation. It is an economic way of life that must be perpetuated in order to be maintained and ultimately must end up in self-immolation by its very nature. Everything else from fiat money inflation, political bastardization, debt overhang, unemployment, is the aftermath of construction of an economy built on over-consumption of consumer goods. There is nowhere to go any more with this mode of economic madness and no matter how much has been puffed into this style of living globule it is doomed. There have been outliers shouting this in the wilderness for decades but they have been largely ignored in the pale since the crash was not imminent. Now it is here. Any thinking person recognizes that somehow, sooner rather than later, in our lifetime, in the near future, the consumer economy will in the end be dead on arrival. It is this force that will ultimately cause the social, economic and political downfall and disruption of our current system.

America is exceptional due to its original ideals and the people.  

It is not the end but the catalyst for a revival of the America Way. America is a unique nation, founded without a long history of an inherited class structure, flavored with a variety of immigrants and based on principles of liberty, individualism, equality, freedom, laissez-faire, justice and organized in a thoughtful deliberate fashion by a document that is the US Constitution. It is with these assets this country will revive and restore itself. This American exceptionalism, closely aligned with Manifest Destiny, has been trampled on, scoffed at, denigrated, disparaged and degraded. Still, it
lives in the minds and hearts of many, regardless of over a century and generations of reeducation to try to stamp it out of existence. For every person that never came unstuck from the American Spirit that it is inherent in the American character, now is the time to rise above and bring out the very best qualities that live within us. It is these qualities that make us exceptional, which will allow the country to be rebuilt anew based on the enduring principles upon which it was founded. This is the basis for the reemergence from economic, political and social disruption that is plaguing our country and in a cataclysmic way will be cast out, while we simultaneously refashion what we already have that is worthwhile keeping and start creating new accomplishments again.

SB1070 Revisited: One Year Later

The challenge goes on...

Memorial Day weekend last year was marked by the anti-SB1070 law protest against the law passed by the Arizona State Legislature and signed by Governor Jan Brewer that took a strong stance against illegal immigration from Mexico. What has happened since then?

According to a study by BBVA Bancomer Research published in November 2010 there are 300,000 less Hispanics in Arizona since the law went into effect. Also the amount of money transferred from Arizona to Mexico is substantially reduced. Since then it is very likely many more have left and the flow of money out has also depreciated. Anecdotally in the central Phoenix area where I live there are far fewer people of Mexican descent evident than a year ago and relationships are changed. It is difficult to quantify how communication is different but interactions between Whites, Blacks (who are allied on this issue) and Hispanics are modified now, not necessarily hostile or suspicious but definitely cautious. This is in everyday interactions ranging from personal to work to public places.

From a legal perspective US District Court Judge Susan Bolton issued an injunction the day before the law was to go into effect stopping major parts of the law. An appeal to the notoriously liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was refused stating that the federal government is likely to be able to establish the law is unconstitutional. In the interim between the two decisions, Obama's US Justice Department sued Arizona to block the law, stomping over the state's rights. This was predictable considering the Statist condition of the United States which is totally against the principles and ideals of America. [See: "This Is Not America | It is now merely the United States..."] Governor Jan Brewer is challenging the 9th Circuit Appeals Court ruling directly to the US Supreme Court, a considerably more conservative body.

Everything has changed but nothing has changed.

On a more practical and realistic level the fact remains that Arizona still has the most porous border of all of the Border States. Although the law caused illegal immigrants from Mexico to become less evident they are still ever present. In actuality the money is now flowing northward in the form of people and drug smuggling and the southern counties have more of a problem than ever. While the counties of Pima and Yuma conveniently choose to ignore the problem, the county directly north of them, Pinal, does not since the situation is now even worse for them.

A recent non-scientific poll by the Arizona Capitol Times asking the question "Should Gov. Jan Brewer use her new authority to call up a volunteer state militia [granted by the State Legislature] to bolster the efforts to stop illegal border crossings" had three choices of answers. The majority response was "Yes. The sooner the better." This is indicative of the overwhelming sense among most White and Black Arizonans that the federal government has done nothing, as promised, to help solve our border problem.

While what I have written may seem that I support SB1070 in totality, let me clarify my position at this juncture. My thought is there is at least one part of the law I specifically do not like and it is the "show me your papers" provision, which smacks right up against the American tradition of our ability to move about freely, which is a constitutional right. There are other provisions I find questionable also. The spirit and intent of the law, to force the federal governments hand out of the states right to defend itself from intrusion, does appeal to my sense of rejecting the unconstitutional encroachment of the federal government. If you question that, study the history of the US since 1913 and the Sixteenth Amendment to discover what is meant by that statement.

Federal Government now is Unconstitutional Centralized Government.

I am satisfied that the entire set of "Birther" laws was quashed by the sensibilities of the new State Legislature, rightly slapping the hand of State Senate President Russell Pierce (author of SB1070) and State Senator Ron Gould. The message of the voters and other legislators to them and their ilk was clear. "It's the economy stupid!" The state had achieved what it needed to do and that was challenge the federal government, particularly this administration, on their overreaching into a centralized government which has been entrenching itself in this country for decades. It is now working it's way through the system via our rule of law. This continues in another form, the Medical Marijuana Act passed by Arizona voters. Now the Obama Administration and Justice Department are threatening to sue state employees who engage in issuing licenses and pursue individuals for lawfully conducting business in what citizens clearly stated they wanted through a legal election process.

What this all really boils down to is that Arizona is an active microcosm of sentiment that is present all across this country. We represent the macrocosm attitudes and views that are growing across this nation that the government and major political parties are out of control. While SB1070 has not yet accomplished solving our illegal border crossing issue, it has set the stage for a showdown against the US Federal Government and the embedded Political Class that reinforces it. The challenge is far from over.

http://youtu.be/kPjR_eQ63gc

Jante Law

Groupthink squashing Individualism...


from A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks
Aksel Sandemose 


Sandemose in his 1933 novel formalized a set of laws that had been a sociological form of behavior in the Scandinavian world for centuries. They are important in the United States, especially in the upper midwest states, because they still heavily operate in that region where many Scandinavian immigrants settled. As these immigrants migrated across the country in the 20th century, they brought these traits with them, permeating local culture, integrating the concepts of collectivism and socialism and enforcing these social behaviors and political beliefs into American society.

They are antithetical to Individualism, Freedom of the Individual, Entrepreneurial Enterprise, Creative Expression and defeat positive thinking ego in the worst possible way. To me they are essentially anti-American because they are based on conformity and discourage originality, open discussion, creative thinking or anything "outside the box." Regardless, they are widely accepted as the norm in many communities, influencing our social, economic and political culture, destroying the potential of creative minds and new ideas.

The chief principle to all of them is: 


Don't think you are anyone special or that you are better than anyone else.


The rules are:


1.   Don't think that you are special.
2.   Don't think you are of the same standing as others.
3.   Don't think you are smarter than others.
4.   Don't fancy yourself as being any better than others.
5.   Don't think that you know more than others.
6.   Don't think that you are more important than others.
7.   Don't think that you are good at anything.
8.   Don't laugh at others.
9.   Don't think that any one of us cares about you.
10. Don't think that you can teach others anything.
11. Don't think there isn't anything that we don't know about you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybWrY0venT4

Congressman Paul Ryan advances "A Roadmap For America's Future"

A time for choosing...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G6yITxq4as

http://www.youtube.com/AmericanRoadmap

http://www.americanroadmap.org

Text of video:

"Are we going to reclaim the American idea - an entrepreneurial economy where you make the most of your life, you can maximize your potential; reinvigorate the principles of liberty, freedom, free enterprise - and defend its morality - or - are we going to abandon the American idea, and become a stagnant European-style cradle-to-grave welfare state, where we drain people of their incentive and will to make the most of their lives, and become more dependent on the government? The President and the people that run Congress are dedicated progressives. They believe that we ought to have the government so much more involved in our lives, with the government - not ourselves - as the determining factor of our destiny. The country must answer the question: do we want an entrepreneurial society that gets the prosperity turned back on in the 21st century, where individual merit and entrepreneurial activity defines the American economy - or - are we going to have more and more people dependent on the government for their livelihoods? That is the fork in the road - and the urgency of the time for choosing is being precipitated by the current direction of our government and the looming debt crisis, driven by the explosion in entitlement spending. We must decide what kind of a country we are going to be in the 21st century."