Theft and Civilized Society

Many cultures of people across the face of the Earth have rules which generally apply to the keeping of a civilized society. In Christianity there is the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” If you are a Scientologist you have in the thirteenth Way to Happiness, “Do not Steal.” One of the disciplines of Hinduism is, “No desire to possess or steal.”

While there are many other religions that have incorporated within them this idea that it is wrongful to steal the possessions or money of other people it is not just a religious concept. Almost every country, state, province, municipality, or any other division of government with a functional legal system across the face of the Earth has very thoroughly incorporated within it laws designed toward the prevention of theft.

It is a logical underlying principle of all laws, secular or non-secular, that in order to be enforced the terms of the laws must be defined and understandable by those who are expected to follow or enforce them. I could at this time write some fifty or sixty thousand words of examples of this directly taken from many various legal codes throughout the world but that would be unnecessarily pointless and complicated. So in my own typical writing style I will create an example of what I’m talking about that everybody can understand. That way in a layman’s philosophical terms we will all know what we are talking about.

Let’s say I need some money and I know you have some. In knowing you have some money I decide to walk up to you and politely ask you for it. In your kindness and generosity you ask me what my need for it is and upon agreeing with my need you give your money to me. Is this theft? No. Of course not.

Okay, now let us assume you again have money and in the keenness of your perception you see my need without asking and again with your kindness and generosity you just decide to walk up and give it to me. Is this theft? Again, no. Of course not.

Now let’s suppose I need money and I know you have some. I, in my need, walk up to you, punch you in the face, knock you down, kick you and take your money. Is this theft? Yes. Of course it is.

Again let us suppose I need money and I know you have some. I, in my need, walk up to you, and simply threaten to knock you down, kick you, and take your money. And you believe I could accomplish the task, so rather than having me beat on you, you give me the money. Is this theft? Yes. Of course it is.

And just one more time, let’s suppose I, in my need for your money, get a bunch of people to surround you, threaten you somehow, and take your money, instead of just doing it myself? It this theft? Yes. Obviously.

So from these five examples we can derive for ourselves, for the sake of discussion in the philosophic sense, what theft actually is. Theft, simply put, is the transfer of money or property from a donor to a recipient, under force or threat of force, against the will of the donor. That last part is bold in italics because it is the most important part of the sentence. In determining theft it is the will of the donor of the property or money that decides the issue. You cannot steal something which is willingly given. And you cannot call something charity that is taken against the will of the donor.

Just for the fun of it let’s see if there is a way around this “will of the donor” thing where we could possibly fool ourselves into believing we aren’t just taking someone else’s money.

Let us suppose I need money and I know you have some. I, in my need, walk up to you, abduct you, and lock you in a small room until you decide to give me the money I want. Does this get me around the idea that I’m taking your money against the will of the donor? Nope.

How about in the same scenario as the latest above I simply threaten to abduct you and hold you in a small room until you, in the belief I could do it, give me the money I want. Nope. It’s still theft.

Hmmm … What if I am not taking the money for myself? What if I need the money for someone else? What if my father has been sick and I need the money to pay for his medical bills, so I come over to your house with my gun and threaten you until you give me the money. Certainly because compassion for the needs of my father is involved, you would not consider it theft. But nope. It still is, by definition above, theft.

Well what if I, before going over to your house to threaten you and take your money to pay for my father’s medical bills, go around to every neighbor on the block, explain the situation and take a vote as to whether I should go to your house and take your money? You vote no and everybody else votes yes. I show up at your door, threaten you with my gun and take your money. Am I still taking money from the donor against his will? Yep. Is it still theft? Yep.

Okay, maybe that’s too direct. What if I do all of those things in the last paragraph but instead of me showing up at your door to threaten you and take your money I hire someone else to do it for me? That person can just take what I owe him for the task—seeing how I have no money—directly from the money he takes from you and give the rest to me so I can pay my father’s medical bills. Would I still be taking money from the donor against his will? Yes. Is it still theft? Ummm … yep. It is.

Maybe that’s still too direct. What if I get together with the rest of the neighborhood and elect someone to hire someone else to go to your house with a gun and threaten you and take your money and give it to me to pay Dad’s medical bills? Am I still taking money from you against your will? Yep.

Well then, how about if, instead of sending someone to your house with a gun the first time, we first send someone without a gun to threaten you with abduction until you pay? And then, should you be unwilling to cough up the cash, we send the second person with a gun to lock you in a small room until you change your mind about the situation? Is that still taking money against the will of the donor? Yep.

What if I do all of the above paragraph but instead, send you a threatening letter saying how you should give me your money, then send the first guy, then the second? Or better yet, I could send you a letter that if you don’t sign it admitting you owe me the money, I will send the first guy without a gun, then the second guy with the gun, then put you in a little room until you give me the money you owe me? That way when you accuse me of stealing money from you I would be able to present the court with a piece of paper that says you owed me the money. Is that still taking money from an unwilling donor?

What if we elect a bunch of people to decide your money should be taken from you to pay for my father’s medical bills, and those elected people hire someone else to send you letters, threaten you without guns first, then if you are unwilling to pay they hire someone with a gun to threaten you, and still unwilling to pay they slap you in restraints and haul you off to a small room until you decide to change your mind about the situation? Is that still taking money by force from an unwilling donor? Yep. It is.

So what if I say that instead of using the money to pay for only my father’s medical bills it is to pay for everybody else’s medical bills, plus ten thousand other things you may or may not approve of,  too? We then elect a bunch of people to decide your money should be taken from you to pay for everybody’s medical bills, and those elected people hire someone else to threaten you without guns first, then if you are unwilling to pay they hire someone with a gun to threaten you, and still unwilling to pay they slap you in restraints and haul you off to a small room until you decide to change your mind about the situation? Is that still taking money by force from an unwilling donor? Yep. It is.

Now what if we take this entire assembly of elected people and the people they hire to threaten you, take your money, and potentially incarcerate you, all against the will of the donor and call them a government? And what if we infuse into the population the idea that the people are all one and any one is all? And what if we fill their heads with the rather arrogant thought that they, as one person in concert with a simple majority of other people, and against the will of the minority of people in opposition, can somehow speak with authority about what other people should be forced to do with their money? For example: “I think we should spend money on people’s medical bills,” in spite of the fact that it, strictly speaking, is not money you’ve earned for yourself, and have that concept legally binding on unwilling donors forced with threatened incarceration to give up their well earned funds. Is this still taking money from people against the will of the donor?

Well what if while doing all of that we say that those people who have a lot of money have no real right to it anyway? What if without any evidence whatsoever, we simply accuse them of stealing it from someone else and have the government take it from them to pay for everybody else’s medical bills? What if we accuse them of being greedy? What if we say they have the responsibility to pay for the needs and arbitrary desires of everybody else, for the good and “General Welfare” (which can mean anything to anybody) of everybody else? What if for no reason whatsoever, based on a purely arbitrary standard, we say it isn’t fair that they have so much and we so little? Are we still taking money by force from unwilling donors? More than that though, at that point aren’t we also saying that there are no individual rights to property or money?

What if we say the poor are weak and the rich are strong so the poor have every right to fulfill their needs by taking money from the rich? Yes, again we are using the threat of force to take money from unwilling donors. But more than that there is the fallacious idea that the poor are somehow weak; while as a majority of people somehow still possess enough power to take what they want from the rich.

Socialism is the consideration that large groups of people have the right to take what they want from small groups of people. Theft is the taking of money from one person for the use of other people against the will of the donor. It does not matter who justifies it or how it is justified. It is still the idea that it is somehow a right of yours to take what was earned by, and belongs to, someone else. It is also the idea that somehow your majority rights matter and the rights of the minority of donors don’t.

In spite of whatever illusion you throw up in front of yourself to justify it and appease your guilty conscience, by taking money from unwilling donors, whether it be for someone’s healthcare or PBS, you are participating in a culture that will sooner or later experience the uncivilized attitude that the rights of individuals and minorities don’t matter when the interests of the masses are concerned.

Your consent to pay more taxes is just as irrelevant to the people who take the money as the lack of consent on the part of the people who voted against them. They're gonna take the money whether you want them to or not.

And in that light I would also ask you if it is  truly a civilized society when that society can justify, directly or otherwise, the threat of the use of guns and incarceration to say that you must share your wealth?

Socialism is Simple and Predictable

It is said in certain philosophical and scientific circles that you are on the path to truth when you can reduce the subject under study to its most simple form. The expression of this idea is the very definition of Ockham's Razor. This level of thought is where axioms are formed, answers to problems occur, and things become really obvious. Over the years I've given some thought to the philosophical principles of socialism and all that it implies. The reasons for this, given the current path of the United States, should be clear. Also for the sake of clarity, what I'm talking about is the idea, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," and all forms of government that form around it.

Socialism is simple and predictable.

No matter the country or the specifics of the form it always requires four things. The first is the consideration that it is perfectly okay for large groups of people to take what they want from small groups of people. The second is a promise of financial equality between economic groups and thus everybody will be taken care of between the classes of people. The third is a government, with power over the lives of the people, to enforce the first two by law. The fourth is a population gullible enough to believe that if they give power over to someone else, they themselves will benefit from it.

The predictability of the eventual outcome lies in the simple facts of human nature. People—while having equal rights—are not equal in talent, and thus resent the enforcement of equality, and so when confronted with it will just stop trying to excel or support the system with their inherent abilities. People also naturally resent other people who wield power over them. Additionally, no matter how sincere the expressed efforts of the government promising financial equality and care for all, sooner or later some real tyrant will gain control of the power over the people and take advantage of them. Thus two things will almost always happen sooner or later. First, the government will be unable to provide what they promised, leading to huge social upheaval. Second, a lot of people will die in the social upheaval.

All conversations regarding socialism, or redistribution of wealth, or fairness, or leveling the playing field, or taking care of the poor, elderly or children, or any of the resulting consequences, fall somewhere in those two paragraphs. The first paragraph, regardless of the specifics, is how and why a country adopts socialism. The second paragraph, regardless of the specifics, is how and why it always results in the same thing.

You could break it down as thus and call it the Ten Principles of Socialism:

1) The consideration that it is perfectly okay for large groups of people to take what they want from small groups of people.

2) The promise of financial equality between economic groups and thus everybody will be taken care of between the classes of people.

3) The government, with power over the lives of the people, to enforce the first two by law.

4) The population gullible enough to believe that if they give power over to someone else, they themselves will benefit from it.

5) The predictability of the eventual outcome lies in the simple facts of human nature.

6) People—while having equal rights—are not equal in talent, and thus resent the enforcement of equality, and so when confronted with it will just stop trying to excel or support the system with their inherent abilities.

7) People naturally resent other people who wield power over them.

8) No matter how sincere the expressed efforts of the government promising financial equality and care for all, sooner or later some real tyrant will gain control of the power over the people and take advantage of them.

9) The government will be unable to provide what they promised, leading to huge social upheaval.

10) A lot of people will die in the social upheaval when it all goes wrong.

So there you go. Right there are the ten principles of socialism. There is nothing more to say about it because there is nothing else that can be said about it. Anything a person thinks is an exception to any of the above, or anything supposedly new about it, is merely regurgitating one or more of the above in different words.

Don't trust me on this. Look at any conversation regarding philosophical socialism and see for yourself that all that can be said about it falls under those ten things in some way or another.

Moron Rights

Oops! Did I just mis-type the title of this article? What I meant to call it was "More on Rights" because I write about rights a lot—and I would never suggest that people who don't agree with me about the subject are morons!

Okay, now that I've gotten that bit of sarcasm out of the way I can write a very serious article about the definition of rights. It frequently crosses my mind when I talk with liberals that what they understand rights to be is drastically different than what I understand them to be. I guess for future reference I could qualify their concept of rights with some descriptive and colorful adjective to separate it from what I mean, just for the sake of clarity. So I guess I'll call them...hmmm...okay, "moron rights." That works well enough.

I don't mind paying taxes for things like the military, police and even things such as roads as long as the money is used with expected efficiency. I can use those things and benefit from them, as does the rest of the society. The kinds of taxes I don't like paying is anything that comes from me, because it is somehow their "right" to receive my money, and spend it on something that benefits only them.

I was talking with one of my more respected liberal friends the other day and have a bit of the conversation sticking in my mind. She said she didn't mind paying taxes that go to the benefit of other people for things like healthcare and welfare and the like.

Okay. Far be it from me to tell people what they should or shouldn't mind. I've read enough about slavery in the American South to know that some people didn't mind being slaves either. The point is, I think, that whether you mind it or not, you still don't have a choice.

Anyway, their "right" to receive my money and spend it on themselves for things like food, housing and healthcare, is a leftist concept of rights which I will now separate into a different class. "Moron rights." Now I have to be clear what I'm talking about here. Food, housing and healthcare are rights, if subjected only to my choice and I pay for them myself. That's not what they are talking about though. They are talking about using my money for their food, housing and healthcare as being their right. I suppose I could call them something more politically correct like, "grossly misunderstood rights," but that doesn't exactly flow from the tongue. It's not a very good pun either.

Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ...."

So why is there so much contention on the simple subject of rights?

The problem for this country begins with how liberals have re-defined the words of Thomas Jefferson.

President Reagan's First Address to Congress: Constitutional Score, 74.1%

I occasionally take a lot of critical fire for being so hard on President Trump for his seemingly unconcerned stance regarding his following of the Constitution. To date I’ve rated and published three expressions of his policies and positions according to my current understanding of the Constitution; Trump's First Address to Congress, Trump's First Inaugural Address and Trump's First Hundred Days Plans. None of these rated particularly high; 52.6%, 36.2% and 51.5% respectively. The method of scoring is included in the links above.

Please understand that these efforts are not for the purpose of attacking the president. This is not a personal thing against him. I simply regard it as my duty as an American citizen, sworn to the support and defense of the Constitution, to know when our political leaders are feeding us lines intended to subvert it.

In the interest of fair comparison and logical evaluation it becomes necessary to compare these numbers with the numbers of other presidents in similar circumstances. The only president which I’d ever done something similar was Abraham Lincoln, and even that wasn’t a rated evaluation.

So in the interest of providing comparisons I decided to do several other president’s speeches, starting with Ronald Reagan’s First Address to Congress on the 18^th of February, 1981. I also intend to do at least one of President Obama’s just to get the radical left wing comparison.

Trump's First Address to Congress: Constitutional Score, 52.6%

Sigh. This is the kind of article no author ever wants to write. With that said, I am a man who is committed by oath to the defense of the Constitution, thus there is no escaping it.

Let me say at the outset of this review of President’s Trump’s address to Congress that I’m am not necessarily a Trump supporter. Neither am I particularly against him. In fact, I’m quite happy and relieved that he won over Clinton. President Trump is neither conservative—meaning small government—nor concerned with the Constitution in spite of his recent oath to uphold it. Where he does score high with me is that he tends to make liberal’s heads explode. Anybody who can make Chuck Schumer cry is deserving of some credit.

While I could never vote for him I am not a Never Trumper because such people, mostly establishment RINOs, would hate him even for the things he can do right. I am not a Democrat; they would hate him—in spite of the fact that I think President Trump most properly would be a Democrat—for the unforgivable sin of putting an “R” next to his name and beating Hillary. I am a Constitutional Conservative which means ONLY two things; small government, under the Constitution. If you have to categorize me in hash tag terms I am most properly defined as #AlwaysConstitution. In this I guess you could call me an extremist; so be it. I once volunteered my life in oath to its defense so I might as well defend it.

The Axioms of Government

A number of years ago I wrote an article for my blog called, “The Rules of Money,” which covered in my mind a set of my own axioms regarding how I think of money and the ways in which it seems to work. As fate would have it, it is my most popular article.

I think that liberalism, for most people who adhere to the modern big government philosophy, is composed of large sets of misunderstandings of the nature of just how certain societal level systems work. Among those is, of course, a misunderstanding of what money is. Another major flaw in the understanding of those who would support big government is the true nature of what government is. To them, they support it because it has presented itself as a system of providing benefits to the People. In spite of this apparency nothing could be further from the truth as far as its actual nature is.

So in the same spirit as my axioms regarding the rule of money, I most humbly offer my rules of government. It should be noted that these axioms are more of a commentary on the way things are, rather than the way things have to be. I do this in the hopes that in pondering these points I will disabuse a few liberals of the supposed benefits of giving any group of people the power to control us all in everything we do.

I’m fairly certain that some are going to think me rather cynical in my viewpoint of the government as represented by these axioms. The thing is I can think of many examples where the government has behaved exactly as these rules say. Furthermore I can think of almost no exceptions to them.

What do You Want the Government to do?

I consider myself to be somewhat of a professional troll hunter. Why I do this is more complicated than I have the time or inclination to explain here. So for now, it is what it is.

However today I don’t wish to talk about trolls. I’m going to talk about people whom I love and respect, who just happen to be somewhat liberal.

I have always maintained that there are two types of liberals.

There are those behind the liberal-progressive-socialist-communist, or whatever they call themselves today, movement, who can’t openly say who and what they are, because they are so evil society would reject them. This kind of person wakes up in the morning and their only thought is, “everybody dead, then I can be safe.” They are the driving force behind genocide, which incidentally never happens by accident. Their goal looks like power or money but is not complete unless you take into consideration what they would do with that power. The answer to this question is simple and obvious, yet very difficult for anybody who possesses even the slightest nugget of sanity to confront. They want you dead. Period. There is no reason for this other than the fact that you exist outside of their own will. They are quite insane, sometimes very clever, and very covert in their methods. They can smile at you with seemingly obvious sincerity and tell you that what they are doing is “for your own good.” They are “trying to help make society better” but somehow it just doesn’t work out that way—so you should give them more power, so that they can be more effective at changing things for the better.

But like I said, I do not wish to talk too much about that.

The second kind of liberal is really not a true liberal at all. Vladimir Lenin reputedly referred to this kind of liberal, rather insultingly, as “useful idiots” who would put the chains of slavery around their own ankles. It’s not that they’re bad people, they want to help, it’s just that they’ve bought into the wrong concept of what help is. Particularly when it comes from organizations wielding huge amounts of political power. They don’t view power as something that can be used with hostile intent, because they wouldn’t use it with hostile intent themselves; and after all, it is the People who wanted them to have that power and they can just vote them out and take it back. Right?

As a result they look at anybody who thinks political power may run out of control, to the People’s disadvantage, with suspicion of paranoia. That things like war, deliberately inflicted poverty and starvation, not to mention genocides, have been the lot of mankind’s history never really crosses their minds. Why? Simply because that’s not what they would do if they had political power. They’d use it to fix things the way they should be—of course—because that’s what anybody would do.

The propaganda line espoused by the modern “political scientists,” that “right wing” means fascism rather than limited government, has been very well played and effective at scaring off the so-called liberals who have good intent. To them, “right-wing” means Hitler, and really, who wants that?

You’re looking at people who have been told since birth that if the government doesn’t provide it, you’re against it. If you don’t support the Department of Education, you want people to be ignorant! If you don’t support the National Endowment of the Arts, you hate artists! If you don’t support SNAP and school lunch programs, you want children to starve! If you don't give them your money to support these kinds of things it is you that is greedy and not them for taking it because they want it for such good causes.

It is only natural that they would not be on your side. But it isn’t natural because they are evil or stupid. It’s natural because that’s the information that they have been given. As such, they are acting on bad information. They are dancing the liar’s dance. They have fallen into Lucifer’s Pocket. They truly believe that those wielding government power are only doing it for their benefit, for the good of all, and can never have it used against them.

This makes things complicated for those on the conservative—and by “conservative” I mean small and limited government—side of the argument. The evil liberals say they want to help. The good “liberals” say they want to help. And the conservatives want to help. It’s kind of universal, and thus very difficult to tell them apart. Add to that that both sides say the other side is lying, and the field of Political Science always keeps things in such a mess that nobody can tell anything from anything, and there are people on both sides who are so confused about what side they are on and why that you get the current mess we are in.

It is for these many and complex reasons that I resort to simple and observable, demonstrable axioms. For those of those who may not remember from high school what an axiom is, from geometry, it is something that you can just see for what it is which requires no proof. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, or any three points can be contained in a single plane, are examples of axioms. Any sane observer, regardless of personal preference, can just look and see the truth of axioms.

Politics can be reduced to such axioms. I like this approach because it dumps all of the arguments of the many confusing issues that the different sides of politics takes, and gives you a single stable point from which to view what then becomes obvious.

As an axiom, to debunk the modern political scientist’s point of view that “right-wing” means fascism and “left-wing” means communism, I rather sarcastically suggest that the only practical difference between fascism and liberalism is that a liberal would shoot you with environmentally friendly bullets.

See that? It’s true. Fascism and liberal-progressive-socialist-communism, whatever they go by today, have both been big government efforts to exterminate large numbers of people, supposedly in the name of making things better for them. For all intents and purposes they are the same thing. It’s an axiom that big governments, no matter the specifics of the form, are susceptible to the perpetration of violations of human rights up to and including genocide.

But I digress. It’s difficult to talk about one without explaining the other. It’s difficult to talk about those who want to help, compared to those who want to help who you think are misguided, compared to those who want to harm while pretending to help, without describing each of the others.

There is a quote, widely and incorrectly attributed to George Washington, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence—it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

Regardless of who actually said it, it is philosophically correct, and a very usable, undeniable axiom. Government is force. Initially government, as defined by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, are people who are authorized by the People to use force against other people who are not willing to comply with the laws necessary to our security, so that we may be free to exercise our own rights. “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” They don't do that so much anymore as they have now been charged with providing anything we whimsically define as our "rights" directly; all subject to their rules and regulations.

Now we have people authorized with the use of force for non compliance providing educational standards; holding people to that standard for their right to practice their trade. The fundamental question is, "What does force know about education?" Apparently nothing. But such is the cost of taking money from people under the threat of sending nice people with guns, backed by the authority of the People, to back their policy.

I’m going to do a very rare thing here and throw the Constitution completely out of my arguments. Set aside all constitutional specifications on limiting the government and look at the underlying principles and see why they are there.

You wanted the federal government to provide money for education. You asked for that when someone whom you trusted was in office. Now you complain because you don't like who is heading the department and you don’t trust this president. Well here’s the axiom that applies to what you missed; any power given to one president is inherited by his successors, who will then use that power the way they want it, or abolish it entirely. It follows that the axiom, government is force, will follow naturally from that. Now instead of doing what a former president whom you supported was saying he wanted to do with that power, you have what the current president whom you don't support will do with that power.

If you give power to any president that you support, his successor is not going to use that power to do what you want him to do. He’s going to do what he wants to do.

Regardless of all the who’s and why’s of all government programs the bottom line is that the reason the current president is such a threat to so many people is because they have given the government power over all things important to them; thinking that someone like him would never be in charge of it. Had they not given the government the power they are now worried about him having, they would not feel threatened in their areas of interest by him.

But instead of thinking it through they decided they wanted what they supposed were the benefits of big government, without giving consideration to who might be in charge of it next. The president is a threat to you specifically because you gave him the power to be a threat to you. Congratulations. You’ve created Frankenstein’s Monster. Now he is in control of your, life, your health care, your art, your retirement, and everything under the sun you think the government should do.

In light of these axioms; government is force and any power given to one president is inherited by his successors, who will then use that power the way they want it, or abolish it entirely—it is necessary to ask a question of my fellow Americans. What do you want the government to do?

You could request that a government do anything and everything for you and certainly you could come up with a lot of well reasoned arguments to give them such power. Just keep in mind that any answer you give to this question will be by definition the area of authority they would have to use force against you when the next president is in control of your life—I mean those powers.

President Trump's First Inaugural Address: 36.2% Constitutional

Well I've taken my post election break from all things political and now it's high time that I write an IWFTCP review of President Trump's First Inaugural Address.

I have done this kind of thing before on this blog and the rules for my scoring are explained here. But just for the sake of this article, red is constitutional, blue is unconstitutional. Also, as I have explained in other posts, I have no personal like or dislike for Donald Trump or any other politician. My sole interest is in almost all political conversation is the Constitution of the United States, which I have sworn with my life to defend. Try as I might it is my sincere effort to not make personal comments for or against the politician in question. Regarding President Trump, I think he is a better choice than Obama was or Clinton would have been, but that does not give him points for understanding or following the Constitution. He's a businessman, and thus understands money, which is something we need in this unit of time. However, long-term, with regards to the rights of the American People and the responsibilities of the presidency under the Constitution, well, you'll see...

At the outset I'm going to give the score as only 36.2% of the things he said having anything to do with the constitutional power of the federal government; assuming I counted correctly.

And don't get me wrong here; there are a lot of things in this that I've colored blue, as unconstitutional, which would be good for the American People, particularly businessmen, to do. It's often not the thought that these things shouldn't be done. It's just that they shouldn't be done by the president of the United States or the federal government.

So here it is. President Trump's First Inaugural Address...

Nice Men with Guns

I have a friend on Facebook who said this to me this morning; "I would like to support a constitutional government but at some point you are going to have to deal with mean people that do crappy things to other people through threat of violence and intimidation."

While that statement is true it got me thinking. Look at this; the threat of violence and intimidation is the only thing the government has to use to accomplish anything. No matter what it is that the Big Government wants to do, no matter what benefit they say it would be to everybody involved, the threat of violence and intimidation is the only tool they have to get it done. And how often is it that the mean people who are doing the crappy things to other people, are in the Big Government? That's what despotism is. You want to limit mean people that do crappy things to other people using such tactics? Then the first thing you have to do is limit the power of the government. Tyranny IS the threat of violence and intimidation.

Now I am not saying that there should be NO government. Brett's rule of debate #1 is; just because I don't agree with something does not mean I endorse what you conceive to be its most radical opposite. Just because I don't support absolute government does not mean I support no government. No anarchy for me please. As a the grandson of a nice man with a gun I have to say right here and now that I have the greatest unqualified respect for the police and the government within their proper function. There is a time and place for police as well as other government functions.  It's just that we are becoming far too accustomed with the idea that the government is supposed to provide us with everything, without understanding the nature of the consequences. If they provide everything, they control everything, even when they don't make sense.

There is a rather famous quote attributed to George Washington, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." I believe based on any research I've done, that Washington was not the original author of this quote. But really, whoever said it, no matter who it was, it is still the truth.

As a nation We the People have lost sight of something valuable. We have become dependent on Big Government to give us things without seeing the inevitable consequence that everything we allow the government to do to our supposed benefit, authorizes them to use the threat of violence and intimidation against us in that area.

Do you want roads? It's kind of nice to be able to get on I90 in Toledo, Ohio and drive all of the way to Seattle, Washington isn't it? Well where did the funding for that come from?

Somebody, somewhere, made that money. At some point the people who made that money had to fill out some tax forms and report their financial information to the federal government, along with a check for some number of dollars. Now some people would say, "Yea! Tax dollars for roads so we can drive across the country!" But the fact is undeniable to those who pay the taxes that failure to do so would result in a visit from Guido and Vinnie, the IRS agents. If you think for a moment that a visit from Guido and Vinnie is not intimidating you have never received a letter from the IRS. That is all there is in one of those letters. Unveiled, obvious threats of the things that will happen to you if you don't cough up the cash. Should the taxpayer decide he does not want those roads, or to give up his hard earned cash, Guido and Vinnie will fill out a warrant and nice men with guns will kindly show up at his door, incarcerate him and take his stuff.

So what about the land that the highway is built on? The federal government wants their road. Most of the time they would pay for the land for this kind of cause. What happens when the owner decides not to sell? Well, there is precedent for this. President Grant had a unique solution. He ordered General Sherman to kill all of the Indians along the route of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Genocide is a pretty crappy thing; usually done by mean people to other people. But it did give us the Transcontinental Railroad. Who did it? Well, the federal government of the United States.

Now, because of that sort of precedent, the owner of the property where I90 is supposed to go, knows he stands no chance. The best he can do is make as much noise as possible on the way out. One side will label him as a radical. The other side will label him as a hero or a victim.

Either way, that is the use of threat of violence and intimidation against us. Either way the right of property is being denied to the person who worked and owned that land. This is the naked truth of the situation before us in this country today.

The formula for passing something of this nature has to include some supposed benefit to "everybody." That they make it sound like something good, that everybody needs, and that they are the only beings on the planet who can get it done, is a con game. Sugar coated crap is still crap. Sugar coated force is still force. Anybody who disagrees, because the act of passing things of this sort has some supposed benefit to and unspecified generality known as "everybody," is labeled an anti-social radical. Swept under the rug is the fact that those people who owned the land and made the money have individual rights to their property too.

Here's the operating principle. Write it down so you'll remember it later. Every single time you grant the government the authority to do something on your behalf, you are also granting them the power to use the threat of violence and intimidation against you so that you will be forced to comply.

You want welfare? Nice men with guns will take your money and give it to someone else. You want government healthcare? The IRS—nice men with guns—has the authority to use the threat of violence and intimidation to insure your compliance. You want government Social Security? If your employer doesn't pay it nice men with guns will arrest him and thrown him in prison. The threat of violence and intimidation is all they have to use on anybody who does not comply with their wishes. And if you think that these things are not threatening, just fail to pay your taxes, once, and wait and see how threatening and intimidating the federal government verses YOU, can really be.

All you need after that is mean people who do crappy things to other people in the government and voilà!, tyranny and oppression. Something of a note on human nature is that mean people who do crappy things to other people have a tendency to be drawn to power like a moth to flames.

A limited federal government does not mean anarchy. It just means less threat of violence and intimidation from the federal government. The idea of a well regulated government is to assign only the appropriate level of the threat of violence and intimidation to the level where it belongs, and use that power only where it is absolutely necessary to preserve the peace and freedom of the people in the area where that power applies.

Let's say that a country called "Dumbcrapistan" decides to bomb Toledo, Ohio. National threat, right? Then the national government, under the direction of the Commander in Chief, gets involved and uses the threat of violence and intimidation against Dumbcrapistan to protect the People of the great state of Ohio. That's the appropriate level of government using the appropriate level of threat and force to protect the people of Ohio and the country. Under this protection the people of Ohio, and the United States, can get on with their lives.

Let's say that Brett catches the flu. Now we have a national government, capable of bombing Dumbcrapistan, wielding an incredible amount of threat and intimidation, through Vinnie and Guido who are nice men with guns who work for the IRS, being used against you, toward the effect of paying Brett's doctor bill. This makes the president of the United States of America directly and personally responsible for my health, and you being personally responsible for paying it. I ask you, is this the kind of force, and purpose, you want to have used against you for my benefit? Setting aside completely that there is no way to make any organizational sense out of it, is this the appropriate power to apply to the problem of my personal health?

Philosophically speaking, the definition of a useful tool would be one that provides or conducts the right amount of force, to the right places, to the accomplishment of a desired task.

Would you expect Michelangelo to carve David with a jack hammer? Well, with the federal government of these days it would be more like trying to carve David with dynamite. Just as dynamite is a great tool for certain jobs, it is just as much the wrong tool to carve David as it would be to use the power of the federal government to cure Brett's case of the flu—at least as far as Brett is concerned.

Just as you would use the right tools to employ the appropriate force to carve a statue, so should you choose the right force of government to resolve problems; never letting that force exceed the necessity of the task.

With regards to the principles of the Constitution, it all comes down a question of which things you want the government to be able to employ the use of force against you. In other words; which things do you want nice men with guns to force you to do?

Rights and Responsibilities

I would like to stake a claim towards being a dedicated supporter of human rights but I'm a little (okay, a LOT!!!) apprehensive about it. Being misunderstood bothers me sometimes and I want to be very careful about being taken in the same light as the Generation Snowflakes that are currently falling throughout the country.

Where the current crop of Snowflakes have it wrong is they have no understanding of what rights really are and their relationship to our responsibilities. From my own point of view I can’t see how it would ever be possible to have rights as a human being here in our world without the corresponding responsibilities. There seems to be a lot of muddled thinking on these lines, some of which comes from both sides of the isle and all points in between.

By analogy you could say that it is yellow snow which I refuse to eat.

Don't Fight the Power, Question It

I had a curious—and very short—conversation on Twitter last week. You know, sometimes it's just the little things that bother me, and sometimes those little things that bother me stick to me for a really long time, particularly when the little thing is connected to a gigantic principle.

The question I asked was; "Under what clause in the #Constitution is the authority for the president to do anything about jobs?"

The reply was; "There is none Brett. However, the Constitution does not restrict the president from doing things to help either. Are you anti-Trump?"

You see what I mean here? Every president and smarmy politician in my fifty-four years of life has been talking about jobs, jobs, jobs. Every. Single. Effing. One. Of. Them. They have failed so dismally that it is a wonder more people don't tell them to mind their own job instead of all of ours...but I digress.

Okay, I get it. Donald Trump won. He's in the limelight, and honestly, I'm very relieved that Clinton lost. I know the guy who responded to my tweet doesn't know me personally, but for all the noise about the federal government trying to create jobs, I still find it alarming to have someone jump immediately to the possibility of my being "anti-Trump," especially when I didn't even mention him.

The simple Twitter answer for me was; "I'm pro Constitution. If Trump follows it, cool. Although the 10th amendment means POTUS doesn't have that authority."

But I think a more in-depth answer to that question of possibly being anti-Trump is called for, so I will just go ahead and write one.

The premise of the question of my being for or against Trump is completely wrong. I just don't think in terms of support for or against any politician. Ever. And I would encourage you to do the same.

There are two problems in my Twitter follower's question to me.

The first is that anything not listed specifically in the Constitution as a federal power, is unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment for the federal government to engage in. That's what it's there for. The Tenth Amendment is specifically designed to protect the American People from special interest group's influence on them. Big Labor and Big Business, for example, are special interest groups. Having a president, any president, getting involved in creating jobs makes him susceptible to the influences of Big Labor and Big Business. It is thus that the job of a president, under the Constitution, is not to create jobs. The president's duty is to follow the Constitution. Under the Constitution it is his job to keep the federal government out of the way of the People so the People can create their own jobs without the corrupting influence of Big Labor or Big Business. That's the constitutional system.

Another example of this principle in operation would be Big Oil and Big Environment. How does the president become susceptible to the influences of Big Oil and Big Environment? Simple. Ignore the Tenth Amendment, which says it's none of his business anyhow, and start getting involved with the country's energy policy. There is no constitutional power for the federal government to do anything about energy and its uses by the People, or the environment.

There are hundreds of things this could apply to but the principle is exactly the same in every single one of them. Ignoring the Tenth Amendment not only makes Washington DC susceptible to lobbyists and special interest groups, it creates them through giving power to the federal government, over our lives, that they are not supposed to have in a free society.

It is not the point of the American federal government to have a president, acting as king, fixing everything the way he and his supporters want it. The point of the president of the United States is to keep the federal government running under constitutional limits, so that everybody can fix everything for themselves the way they want it.

Okay. Back to Joe Biden's three letter word, "jobs." Neither Donald Trump, nor any other president, past, present, or future, should be creating jobs. To do so is a violation of the Tenth Amendment. To that degree and on that subject I oppose them.

That's the first problem with the premise of this particular Twitter follower; that the federal government can stick its nose in anything they want, for any reason, without restriction, for the supposed good of us all.

The second problem is a bit bigger and ventures into the very nature of tyranny itself. Tyranny depends, surprisingly enough, on the support of the people of the country. It is not intuitively obvious that it is so, so I shall give an historical example.

There once, not too long ago, was a leader of a country who became a tyrant. (This tyrant shall remain nameless for the purpose of this article because I don't want people screaming, "He's comparing Trump to ____________!!!!" The point is to explain the nature of the people who follow a tyrant, not the tyrants themselves.) In order for those people to support him, they had to make one assumption above all other considerations. They assumed that the unnamed tyrant was GREAT!!! Following immediately under that consideration was the firm conviction that anybody who did not see or understand his greatness was somehow inferior, insane, or mistaken. See? He's GREAT!!!. Therefore everything he does is great. It "proves itself."

The unnamed leader that I speak of—and really, you should know who it is—through the unquestioned thought of his GREATNESS in the minds of everybody who should have known better, gained total control of everything in the country. Nothing he did was ever questioned, because it was so obvious he was GREAT the idea of questioning him on things that didn't really seem to make sense never crossed anybody's mind.

This extended to the degree that on making military decisions, when he issued orders to his generals, and they didn't understand the point of them, they just assumed he knew better than all of them combined, and they were just "too stupid" to understand his brilliance in military strategy and tactics. That's how far above them he really was—they thought—so they couldn't question him out of fear of looking stupid. When the orders turned out to be wrong and the battles, and eventually the war, was lost, the generals, true military experts who should have instantly spotted the supreme leader's incompetence, took the blame upon themselves. Why? Because they thought he was so unerringly GREAT that normal rules did not apply to him.

In other words, his cult of personality was so very strong that the people of his country were willing to follow him without question. And follow him they did. Straight to their deaths. Tens of millions of people who never questioned him, who may have lived full and prosperous lives had they bothered to simply understand and ask, wiped out simply for the fact of taking for granted that their leader was GREAT. Towards the end anybody who did question his judgment was summarily executed.

It is for this reason that I never, ever, EVER!!!, think in terms of supporting or opposing any politician on a personal basis. The Constitution is my only standard at the federal level. I only approve or disapprove of any politician relative to their exact job descriptions provided under it.

There is no other standard. I don't even bother to like them or dislike them because to do so is to risk our country and its people. And really, I don't know them personally so how could I rationally like or dislike them personally? The instant you begin to travel down the road of liking them or disliking them on any personal basis, you begin to make yourself vulnerable to the cult of personality at the risk of the constitutional system.

I don't care if the president is King Solomon and his decisions are directly from the wisdom of God Himself. I don't care if he is King Midas and everything he touches turns to gold which he promptly credits to my own bank account. Conversely, and to a certain sarcastic, joking degree, I wouldn't care if the president was filming porn, in the Oval Office, on the Resolute Desk, as long as he was following the Constitution while he was doing it.

None of those kinds of things are my standard. I don't care, on a personal basis, about any of them because we can never afford to just take for granted the decisions of any politician, or president, without looking at them and questioning them relative to the supreme law of the land; the United States Constitution.

This is how my support is determined. The same principle of evaluation would have applied to Clinton had she won. Because of this I am very glad she lost. But just because Clinton would have been a terrible president, especially under my exacting standards, does not—emphatically—mean that everything Donald Trump is proposing to do is automatically and unquestioningly great, beyond any reasonable need of logical and constitutional evaluation. That he is a competent businessman is completely beside the point. Because some people like him and think him to be a wonderful guy doesn't even register in my mind. That his support is growing to gigantic proportions is so far outside my scope of acceptance or caring that it was difficult for me to even type this sentence. The same principle applied to Obama. The same for Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, etc., all of the way back to Washington. And every single one of them without exception, did something as president, that was not, strictly speaking, any of their freaking business.

There are many things a president can do that would make the country prosperous which he would have no business doing under the Constitution. Every one of them that I can think of would involve some special interest benefiting some people and harming other people. Therefore and for this reason it is essential for the president to keep the federal government out of the way so we can get on the business of living our own lives for ourselves.

Don't fight the power. Question it. If you do, honestly, there would never be any reason to fight it.

The Worst President Ever (It's not who you think it is.)

It is said in some circles of philosophy that any person really only begins to decline when he abandons his principles.

It is also said that there are certain underlying principles which have to be maintained or freedom can't exist. You have the right to associate, which means for it to be a right, you also have to have the right to disassociate. What freedom could you possibly have if once you decided to join up with somebody for any noble purpose, when that purpose is abandoned, you can't sever the ties to them?

The fundamental principles of slavery are that you can't leave when you wish and the fruits of your labors are taken from you, against your will, for the benefit of someone else.

The United States was founded on the principle that the people's of the States could join or not, of their own free will. The Constitution did not have to be ratified because there were the guns and bayonets of General George Washington's army pointed at the people. The Framers of the Constitution debated exhaustively and formed a government which was voluntarily consented to and contributed to, by the People. It is the only time in human history that I'm currently aware of where this has happened.

In the 1860's several States decided to declare their own independence. Whether we agree with this decision or not is moot. They have the same right to leave or not leave the Union, based on their own integrity, as any wife has to leave any man whose marriage is no longer suitable to her. They have the same rights as any person who has ever left the partnership of a company. They have the same rights to leave as any individual or anybody who has ever left any friendship or employment. They have the same rights as anybody has ever had to leave any political movement with which they no longer agree.

Without that basic right, to sever the ties that bind you to any other person or group of people, freedom cannot exist. From the moment military force becomes involved you are chained by force to whatever they decide, no matter how disadvantageous it may be to your own existence.

I submit to you this basic principle: You cannot free slaves by enslaving the masters.  This is not to be understood as my saying that I agree with the Confederate States having slaves. It was wrong for them too. It is also not to be taken as my support for any of the reasons for their succession.

Since the first shots were fired over Fort Sumter on April 12th, 1861, the United States has been held together by military force, thus violating its basic principle, freedom, which is the natural birthright of not only every American, but every living being on the planet. Right there, without another word, we have violated the first rule of the fundamental principle of slavery. Rightly or wrongly we, as States, cannot leave, under the potential threat of our own destruction.

Now what of the second principle of slavery? The fruits of our labors taken from us against our will for the benefit of someone else? The current (as of this writing) government of the United States sucks 3.8 trillion dollars out of the American economy per year and nobody seems able or willing to stop it. If you doubt for a second that that money is not taken by threat of force, try not paying sometime and see how quickly the nice men with guns show up at your door. I cannot pretend to be arrogant enough to decide for you if that is money you wish to give for causes which you support. In the recesses of your own mind I also hope you will consider that to the same degree that you disagree with the taking of your money, or the spending of it, you are in every meaningful respect, a slave to the federal government of the United States of America, not as it was founded but as it currently is.

We are held to comply, as citizens of States, to every unconstitutional edict proclaimed by the federal government by military force, whether we agree or not, whether it benefits us or hurts us. We are held to comply to every crappy and smarmy federal politician who can bribe or threaten, through the potential loss of our individual sustenance owed to the federal government of the United States, the votes of enough people to win their office in Washington DC. We are held by military force, used to deny us the right to decide that enough is enough, having our basic rights as human beings destroyed. We can no longer choose not to participate against our will. We exist as the People of States bound to a federal government run out of control because the best means of correcting the actions of the federal government and bringing it back within constitutional limits has been taken from us.

Here is the man we have to thank for it and we have only to do so because he abandoned his principles or never really believed them in the first place.

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." —ABRAHAM LINCOLN, JANUARY 12, 1848

I think that it was the ultimate spit in the face to the men who risked their lives by signing the Declaration of Independence for Lincoln to "preserve the Union" in the manner which he did. The men who wrote this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness..." would most certainly have disapproved. They would have done so because the manner in which the "preservation of the Union" was accomplished was at the expense of its primary fundamental concept.

It was not the action of a wise statesman but that of a brutal barbarian to use force to hold a voluntary association of States together. In doing so Abraham Lincoln cast himself as the same sort of character as King George III. Everything that Lincoln did to preserve the Union or free the slaves could have been accomplished by a wise statesman without the dreadful cost of war. Without that use of force in United States history any president or federal congressman would not have nearly as much power to annoy us as they currently have.

Therefore I very firmly believe that Abraham Lincoln was the worst president of the United States because the fundamental principle of the country was destroyed the instant he allowed combat to begin at Fort Sumter.