There is a simple way to get corporate money out of politics: Get the government out of our lives and economic affairs. If government has no favors to sell, no one will spend money trying to win them.
“If government has no favors to sell, no one will spend money trying to win them”
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“There are two views of man, and each of us must choose which kind he’ll be”
When men claim independence, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes….”
So said certain Americans of 1776, reflecting such high regard for the dignity of individuals as to believe them both worthy and capable of freedom.
Contrast that appraisal of man as a self-respecting and responsible being with the very dim view taken by modern “liberals” who demand government aid and control in nearly every aspect of our daily lives.
If it’s true that millions of adult American citizens are incapable of caring for and supporting and educating their own children, incapable of providing their own housing and their own medical care, incapable of paying the full costs of their bus and train and plane fares or the costs of highways and parking spaces for their own cars, incapable of meeting the expenses for light and heat and water and recreational facilities, incapable of operating their own farms or businesses without price support or tariff protection or “urban renewal” or other subsidy, incapable of looking after their own interests in job negotiations without a special grant of monopoly power from government, incapable of providing for themselves in periods of temporary unemployment or in their years of retirement — if it is true that so many American citizens are improvident and irresponsible, incapable of earning their own living and unable to survive except as wards of society — is there any reason why they should be permitted a vote or have any part whatsoever in governing society?
Isn’t that the logical next step in the regression from citizenship to serfdom? Or, as one of the “liberal” professors has revealed, “Ours is not a government by the people, but government by government.”
So, there are two views of man, and each of us must choose which kind he’ll be:
- Man, as responsible and worthy of freedom, or
- Man, the weakling, whose life depends on the state’s permission or sufferance.
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North Koreans in shock as cash is ‘banned’
All cash transactions in North Korea have been frozen after the Government’s shock decision to revalue the won currency in an effort to crack down on the country’s burgeoning free-market economy.
In the capital, Pyongyang, today only the few shops and restaurants permitted to trade in foreign currencies, patronised by the privileged elite and the city’s small foreign population, were open for business.
All other enterprises and services based on cash, including markets, long-distance bus services, barbers, saunas and bath houses, have been suspended until the revaluation is completed next week.
There was confusion after the announcement of the measure, which requires North Koreans to swap existing won notes with new ones at an exchange rate of one to 100, knocking two zeroes off their value. There is a cap of 100,000 won (£419) per family, which means that anyone with significant holdings of cash will have their savings wiped out.
“Loud sounds of weeping in every house have not ceased since the news was released,” one South Korean news website quoted an inhabitant of the city of Sinuiju, near the Chinese border, as saying. “Weeping and fighting between couples has not stopped anywhere. The atmosphere of the city is terrible now.”
The website, the Daily NK, citing similarly unnamed sources, said that one elderly couple had killed themselves in North Hamgyong, a province adjacent to the Chinese border across which much illegal trading is carried out. It also reported anxiety among local officials that the currency revaluation would provoke civil unrest.
But a western diplomat in Pyongyang said that, apart from the closed-up shops, the announcement had had no visible effect on the city. North Korea is one of the world’s most tightly controlled and brutal totalitarian states and public dissent is almost unknown.
The announcement was made on Monday via a closed cable broadcasting system which is piped into all North Korean homes, and reserved for public announcements and state propaganda.
It has not been reported in the state media, but it was confirmed the following day in briefings to foreign diplomats in Pyongyang who were summoned to the country’s foreign ministry at 20 minutes’ notice.
“It came as a great surprise to everyone,” one western diplomat in Pyongyang told The Times. “Everything literally closed – no notice given. When we made enquiries we discovered it was because the currency was no longer valid. It’s really quite dramatic.”
Posted in News Tagged banking, economics, economy, entrepreneur, finance, government, inflation, intervention, money, policy, socialism Leave a comment
“Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become”
Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become.
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Why Do You Have To Criminalize People To Coax Them Into A Plan That’s Fabulous?
Rep Roskam on why 5 years in jail and $250,000 in fines for not getting health insurance is in the bill passed by the house.
Posted in Video Tagged force, freedom, government, healthcare, law, liberty, market, principles, regulation, socialism Leave a comment
“Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism”
“There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism — the inviolate sanctity of man’s soul, and the salvation of one’s soul as one’s first concern and highest goal; this means — one’s ego and the integrity of one’s ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one’s soul — (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one’s soul?) — Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one’s soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one’s soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one’s soul to the souls of others.
This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men’s natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war — both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man’s soul).”
from a letter to Sylvia Austin dated July 9, 1946, in Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 287
Posted in Quotes Tagged collectivism, god, ideology, individual, morality, philosophy, principles, religion 1 Comment
Gun Control: What Is the Agenda?
New York state senator Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed robbers. In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan’s outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks, and daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims.
The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier.
As the first successful gun control advocates were criminals, I have often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and propagandistic gun control organizations and their donors and sponsors in the US today. The propaganda issued by these organizations consists of transparent lies.
Consider the propagandistic term, “gun violence,” popularized by gun control advocates. This is a form of reification by which inanimate objects are imbued with the ability to act and to commit violence. Guns, of course, cannot be violent in themselves. Violence comes from people who use guns and a variety of other weapons, including fists, to commit violence.
Nevertheless, we hear incessantly the Orwellian Newspeak term, “gun violence.”
Very few children are killed by firearm accidents compared to other causes of child deaths. Yet, gun control advocates have created the false impression that there is a national epidemic in accidental firearm deaths of children. In fact, the National MCH Center for Child Death Review, an organization that monitors causes of child deaths, reports that seven times more children die from drowning and five times more from suffocation than from firearm accidents. Yet we don’t hear of “drowning violence,” “swimming pool violence,” “bathtub violence,” or “suffocation violence.”
The National MCH Center for Child Death Review reports that 174 children eighteen years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2000. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports that 125 children eighteen years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2006. In 2006 there were 77,845,285 youths in that age bracket.
In 2006 violence-related firearm deaths of eighteen year olds and under totaled 2,191. A large percentage of these deaths appear to be teenagers fighting over drug turf.
According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, drugs are “one of the main factors leading to the total number of all homicides. . . . murders related to narcotics still rank as the fourth most documented murder circumstance out of 24 possible categories.”
According to the National Drug Control Policy, trafficking in illicit drugs is associated with the commission of violent crimes for the following reasons: “competition for drug markets and customers, disputes and rip-offs among individuals involved in the illegal drug market, [and] the tendency toward violence of individuals who participate in drug trafficking.” Another dimension of drug-related crime is “committing an offense to obtain money (or goods to sell to get money) to support drug use.”
Obviously, decriminalizing drugs would be the greatest single factor in reducing incarceration rates, the crime rate, and the homicide rate. Yet, gun control advocates do not support this obvious solution to “gun violence.”
Those who want to outlaw guns have not explained why it would be any more effective than outlawing drugs, alcohol, robbery, rape, and murder. All the crimes for which guns are used are already illegal, and they keep on occurring, just as they did before guns existed.