Foreign Policy Ignorance & Hypocrisy

There is a large swell, especially amongst the Republicans, calling to shrink the size of the government; however, many are either simply ignorantly inconsistent or are hypocrites who call for maintaining a high-level of military presence overseas, if not actually increasing an imperial footprint. Among the presidential candidates, each one (outside Ron Paul and Gary Johnson) and epitomized by Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum and especially by Barak Obama of whom others have (rightly) criticized for his expansive use of military force.

Ron Paul, as of late, has been getting lambasted by the imperialists for not continuing the militaristic march toward inculcating ‘democracy’ and ‘defending American values’ from those who are not attacking the USA. The lambasting hasn’t just come from others seeking the presidential nomination; the continual droning of the same tripe has come from various media outlets who like an echo chamber, reverberate what others have spoken.

The major sticking-point most advance as the biggest example of Ron Paul’s ‘weakness on foreign policy’ is Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons. The drone goes: how could Ron Paul allow the terrorist state to get just one nuclear bomb, for then they’ll surely raze an America city. Therefore, we need a strong leader who will prevent such harm from befalling the US, someone who is willing to prevent Iran from achieving manufacturing nuclear weapons. Ron Paul states that Iran’s push to get a nuclear weapon is not a catastrophic event.

Does Ron Paul state that Iran getting nuclear weapons is a good thing?—no. He also states that if there was a credible threat, it would be up to Congress to make a declaration of war; the imperialists use the concern about Iran’s nuclear program to advance pre-emptive strikes, led by presidential action. Those who spout off a love for the Constitution, but call for the President to initiate an attack need to check their premises. The power to declare war isn’t intended for one man’s whim; it was to be intended as the great, grave measure it is, and decided by Congress.

What does presidential action without a declaration of Congress look like? It looks like Vietnam, Korea, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Bay of Pigs, etc; keep in mind, Usama bin Laden was trained in a similar vein as the Bay of Pigs plan – by the US, to be against someone else we didn’t like. How did each of those turn out for the US?—poorly. Recently, the majority of politicians denounced the ruling party’s actions when their own party was not in the majority; Democrats denounced Bush for Iraq; Republicans denounced Obama for Libya. Where many Republicans and Democrats are in unison are calls for the president to be strong against Iran. Old national habits die hard. Only Ron Paul and Gary Johnson seek to break the national habit.

Some then advance: what about Israel? About Israel: Prime Minister Netanyahu himself, in a speech before Congress, stated Israel can take care of itself.

Lastly, what we need is a look at the presence of the US around the world, and its possible consequences. On top of the billions of dollars in aid going to various countries, some with propped-up, corrupt regimes, there are around half-a-million troops stationed in more than 100 countries around the world, as part of a department that cost more than all other military departments around the world, combined. Questions that should emerge from our presence: why are we in so many countries, with so many troops; what is the cost of having that presence (not just dollars, but definitely including the dollar amount)?

It is not a popular stand to make, to say that American presence and influence may engender hostility against us. After all, we’re the ‘good guys’ trying to help and ‘spread democracy.’ But, that’s still something we need to look at.

There is an objective moral value in a culture. By that, I’m referring to the advanced moral system within a culture and how truly moral it is: the culture that enforces moral codes by law and represses women for being women, stones homosexuals and places numerous restrictions on what may be said/examined/advanced, is not as moral as the culture that embraces liberty as long as individual rights are not violated. With that said, individuals and groups still generally embrace their own culture, and growing in it, or just embracing it, see their culture as the proper one; even if it entails curtailing certain behaviors by the threat of force, for in their culture that is acceptable. Those in or embracing their culture do so, and in seeing their culture as the proper one will resist outside forces trying to impose changes.

These changes may be not through using (direct) force such as aiding and propping up a regime (Hosni Mubarak), or using direct force (Moammar Gadhafi or Saddam Hussein). Either situation, there was a conflict and conflicts have at least two sides; one gets helped at the expense of the other, and with US intervention it is done by a third party either harming one’s cause or assisting one’s enemies. Much argument was made with the notion of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque,’ but how about if it was directly, and openly funded by Iran, from where they had their military stationed, were completing military actions and refused to leave?—would that engender US opposition against Iran?

Now, who are the ones who seek to have a weak US? The ones who seek to keep expanding imperialistic goals, to police the world, to spend vast sums of lives and dollars fighting against those who are not threatening our own safety, or propping up those who see the US as just another tool, a means to an end of their own power; are they the ones who stand for a strong country? Or is the one who stands for a strong country the one who doesn’t seek to police the world, but encourages trade and follows the rule of law set forth in the Constitution that our Founding Fathers created? The choice is clear.

In Memoriam

Hitchens, then Havel... world lost courageous, bright minds the past couple days.

Hitchens "The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks."

Havel “All important events in the world—whether admirable or monstrous—are always spearheaded in the realm of words.”

Some scribbling, with a message.

What would YOU do if you saw someone sick, or …

As a way of trying to lead someone into either being painted as an uncaring, mean-spirited rube or to bolster the position that there is a need for free health care is to ask: what would you do if you saw someone without funds, sick or dying. It has been asked numerous times, especially with the push for Obama’s health care law, justification for Romney’s MA health coverage, and beyond to the importance of health care as a topic in the Republican nominee for President debates.

The very verbiage of the question (by intent) sets up a mutually exclusive response: either the one asked must agree that the State must be allowed to come in and save the infirmed, or the infirmed will suffer and die. This dichotomy is false, and used as it is, a shameful ploy; by saying that we are not for the State to use legal force against one to help another by no means that we are for the infirmed one’s suffering.

If any one of us sees someone sick, or potentially dying on our front yard, we have one of three responses to make: 1) ignore them, which is total irresponsibility (responsibility here as taking direct action with a specific focus) on, and won’t deal with the issue; 2) kick them off the property, which is responsibility on the expulsion, but just pushes the issue away; 3) assist them to the extent one thinks and feels is right, which is the beginning of taking care of, taking some responsibility and alleviating the issue.

Which option is it when the State is to take care of the infirmed? It is, in actuality, option 1. It is ignoring self-responsibility when confronted with an issue, wanting to have the State come in and take over. This doesn’t take care of the issue, while it doesn’t force the issue away; it just enables one to look away with a clear conscience. A system will be created that someone, somewhere will take care of the infirmed, somehow.

Notice, the first action is diverting responsibility. It is an embracing of a ‘We’ve thrown money at it, and that’s enough’ mentality. If one was actually interested in the health and well-being of the infirmed, they wouldn’t just pass on the responsibility, but make sure the care received was timely, appropriate and economical: timely, to address urgency; appropriate to deal with the actual infirmity; economical for time and money are limited, so those resources could be maximized. A couple key points (among numerous other points) to focus on with universal coverage, or any other form of State-covered/assisted care: 1) it doesn’t increase the suppliers of health care, but does increase the number of people going to those suppliers; 2) with the coverage/assistance, it will prompt the larger pool to use it more often. Flooding demand, and not increasing supply will not make care more timely, appropriate or economical. Or, in other words it will be health care ‘tragedy of the commons.’

With the dichotomous manner the [State-covered or infirmed die] question asked, the best option is ignored: individuals taking the initiative to help: charity. This is in both areas of individual acts at the moment (helping someone who fell get back to their feet), and in organizations others may come to (individuals volunteering and forming groups): offering a hand directly, or pooling resources to create a charitable organization/medical service. Its psychological fact, the less direct responsibility one has to something, the less one feels vested into that something; this is in both closeness (proximity) to that thing, as well as when one is blended in a crowd (anonymity) – someone, somewhere, somehow. Privately, and voluntarily, there is a direct investment in whatever charitable offerings that may be made. Instead of the throwing money at a problem attitude, there will be actual oversight to make sure care is timely, appropriate and economical.

The aforementioned is on a pragmatic consideration; there are also moral issues to consider. Some will state the moral issue is about leaving the infirmed alone to suffer; that is following their lead in their false dichotomy. There are other moral issues to consider. Like most other aspects in politics, the goal may not actually reflect one’s values and moral positions as much as their plans of implementing those goals. It isn’t just about wanting to help the infirmed, but how to help them. How does the State assist the infirmed?—through laws. Laws mean that through the legal use of force, those who managed to create and earn wealth will have it taken from them. That wealth will then be put into a system where there is a high degree of indirect responsibility and little oversight. The end is to give the wealth to those who need help and aren’t able to afford things themselves; through force, wealth to pay for services is taken from those who have and given haphazardly to those who have not. Where is the morality in the use of force to take wealth?—the use of force to throw money at a problem?—the use of force to acknowledge someone needs help, and to put them into a system that is flooded, meaning they cannot get timely, appropriate or economical care? There is no morality in any of it, and illness does not justify theft or enslavement.

The proper way of answering the question is to turn it around. When I state by turning it around, I mean by instead of allowing the asker to lead us into their false dichotomy, to ask them what would they do, for they see the infirmed in order to direct us to allow the State to take our means of sustaining ourselves in order to help that infirmed one. “What will YOU do?-you who also sees someone who needs help.” And, continue “I advance private, voluntary help, not the threat of force that doesn’t directly assist, but indirectly helps through the direct threat of force. Don’t just state someone (else) or something (State) will step and take responsibility for you. What will YOU do?”

The free market and free people help others in ways that are more timely, appropriate and economical. The State is a way to humor oneself that something is being done to benefit the infirmed, while what is mostly being done is the easing of one’s conscience. If the goal is helping those who need it, the way to do help is by private, voluntary actions, with local implementation. It isn’t legal or moral for anyone to take a gun and rob another to take their wealth to pay for any bills; it isn’t something that can be made moral through numbers voting on it. Get the State out of the way, and stop it siphoning the limited resources and much more can be done, and done morally.

Morality first; pragmatism second.

'The Land of Opportunity'

America is often called ‘the land of opportunity.’ But, what exactly does it mean to say that America is the ‘land of opportunity?’ That saying is a colloquialism summarizing that each individual has the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ But, of course, that itself needs to be examined. (This will be outside due process in criminal investigations).

What is the right to life? Simply, the right to life is not to be murdered. This is different from being killed, for killed may include accident, sickness and age and there is no such right or possibility to protect one from each of those situations; only certain types of accidents may be criminal. Murder brings with it, its own context through a willful, intentional and unlawful killing of another.

What is the right to liberty? Simply, the right to not have undue restrictions placed upon one.

What is the pursuit of happiness? Simply, in following one’s right to life, and with the liberty to act, one chooses the path that is seen best in life to each individual. There may be nature and nurture influences, and those may be embraced or rebelled against, but the emphasis is the choice in/on that pursuit.

Who has rights?-a collective of any size (family, community, corporation, State) or the individual? The options here are mutually exclusive, for if the individual has rights then the collective may not impose upon or sacrifice the individual; if the collective has rights over the individual, then regardless of individual desires, they may be positioned or used for collective ends.

Regardless of the type of collective, and regardless of any size of a collective, it is nothing more than a collection of individuals. Individuals who have something categorizing them together, regardless whether it is meaningful or superficial, inherited or willfully joined in to, make up a collective: e.g. blondes, family a religious/political group.

Any grouping by its increased number doesn’t gain extra rights. Just because one may be in a larger group doesn’t negate the rights of the smallest group, or most importantly the individual. If 99% decide they don’t like the 1%, they don’t have any more authority, with their numbers, to murder, enslave or steal from the 1%.

So the individual has rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If the individual has the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, what does the State, or collective have to give the individual?

We must first make one more distinction, and that is between collectives, for not all collectives are equal. There are two types of collectives: the State, that has the force of law behind it: all others that do not have the force of law behind them. This is the difference between someone (or group) legally being able to force another to obey or punish according to any law that they may enact, contrasted with any group where though in a collective, the punishments (outside of voluntarily entered into legal contracts) are not punishable by law. One may leave the dictates of a private collective while one cannot walk away from the dictates of the State.

Returning to the question of what the collective is to give the individual; the aforementioned difference must be examined. Is it up to the collective to assist the individual with their respective rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? As private collectives are willfully joined, they may assist their members, but the State as a public collective cannot assist people with those rights. The State is to protect through enforcing the laws the individual pursing their rights, but not to assist them in achieving those rights. If the State did assist one in pursuing rights, what would it look like and why would it be wrong for the State to act as such?

A couple examples are needed to show why the State collective is not to assist. The first amendment right to free speech is a specified form of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as speech is an extension of thought, speaking one’s mind is an act of liberty and pursuant to one’s goals. Each individual has the right to speak. What is it to assist an individual with their right to speak? A private collective, being willfully belonging to, may through those voluntary actions as a whole assist anyone. FOX, CBS, Discovery, OWN or any other television channel may offer someone an audience through giving time, or selling time on their broadcast. The State is funded by taxes, which are taken by force, and it doesn’t own these networks. To assist people in speaking, to say as broadcasting their speech, the State could only force those who can broadcast to give access to their networks. That violates the rights of those broadcasters on who they choose to allow to assist in broadcasting their speech.

On a more general level, there is no way to assist in the right to life. There are ways of assisting various facets to preserve one’s life, such as with food, housing and healthcare. Private collectives may offer one assistance in these various facets, which are implemented voluntarily. The State giving any of these is by force. The State doesn’t grow food, build a house or offer any health services outside of what it has taken away by force from someone else.

In order to ‘give’ away anything, the State must first violate the rights of another. This isn’t equivalent to where each member of society contributes to that which enables the State to work in areas that it should be active in: e.g. military, judicial system. The giving away of goods is through the act of legal plunder, the taking away from those who made wealth, in order to give it to another; the one who produced the wealth receives no benefit from having the wealth taken.

There is no such thing as free wealth; it may be free to the receiver, but that is because someone else already paid the cost. Whether it is food, health care or some other thing that was produced, it was done by one who vested their own wealth (financial and labor) into the production of that good. As they live their life, through their liberty to act as they pursue their happiness, they create. As they created, it is up to them how to sell, or give away their creation. Private collectives, being voluntary may receive donations or discounts (or not) that may be offered to their individual members. The State doesn’t ask; it mandates. The State through legal force takes the wealth, depriving the liberty and pursuit of happiness of the producer.

Some will state: what about the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of those who receive the ‘free’ goods? We must see the common link in those rights: they are from the individual to act on their own in society; they are not guarantees that are to be given, that is first stolen from another to be given to a second. There is no right to violate the rights of another. No one comes into existence holding a claim as a master over another’s life; the State cannot offer someone a whip in order to take something from another.

This is the land of opportunity. The land of opportunity is of the individual to pursue his own life, liberty and happiness. This includes those who work to create a better good, or help those who are not able to help themselves through voluntary interactions. The land of opportunity is that where the individual may make a life as big as he can with what he can create, but not by forcing another to be the tool to assist him. There are other restrictions in life and they are inevitable; one may not be as strong, smart, be born in the wrong area, among various other factors that may hinder attaining one’s goal. But, these hindrances have a possibility to be overcome; the State’s hindrances are legal restrictions upon the individual who may be fined or imprisoned for violations. Not everyone will succeed, or can succeed. The opportunity is not freedom from the restrictions life and nature create, but from undue restrictions man may create. The land of opportunity is where anyone may have the chance, that is the opportunity, to try.

Book edit addendum

Confirmed with my publisher: the electronic format has already been updated, and the hardcopy format will be finalized next week. Orders afterward will have the corrections.

Barak Obama’s ‘faith’

A concise definition of faith: 1: confidence in the value or truth of a thing, idea or person; 2: belief that doesn’t rest on logical proof or empirical evidence; 3: loyalty to a thing, idea or person; 4: body of a religion or set of beliefs.

When one is speaking off-the-cuff, their values come to the fore as they advance those values without a conscious filter. However, there are two sides to the value ‘coin’ as there is the side that one sees – the explicitly declared values – and there are the implied values that show one’s base value system that the conscious and explicit values are based upon. To say that any given thing is ‘good,’ that good is based upon something.

Most politicians speak of goods, but leave them undefined: what exactly ‘affordable housing, health care’ or what is ‘fair’? Those ideas are the seen side of the coin; the manners by which those goals are to be achieved constitute the hidden side of the coin. What methods are to be implemented to achieve the undefined affordable whatever, or fairness?

Obama’s faith can be seen in two key exchanges, both widely televised, but not much connected. The two exchanges involve when he was campaigning and he spoke with Samuel ‘Joe the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher, and in a debate moderated in part by Charlie Gibson.

With Joe the Plumber, after Obama talks [rambles] about justifying progressive taxes, he then makes the (in)famous ‘spread the wealth around’ comment. That comment was important, but more relevant and showing was in the democratic debate when he was asked about the capital gains tax (when rates decreased, revenues increased; when rates increased, revenue decreased), Obama’s response was that “I’d look at raising the capital gains tax, for purposes of fairness…” Two separate comments about the goal of fairness; two separate comments implying his real value of fairness was redistribution through force – by legal plunder.

Fairness is never defined, it is just left floating around so that any politician may come along and try and blow it in the direction they desire for the time. But the hidden values of legal plunder comes through. Even with the premises that revenue goes down when the taxes were raised, and revenue rose when taxes were decreased, Obama still wanted to increase taxes for fairness, that is plunder the wealth from some to give to the others, and that is to punish the more successful for their success.

This is Obama’s faith. It has nothing to do with religion, outside of the religion of the State to rule as a god, with the arrogance and false belief that they can command the laws of nature and economics. There may be some religious base to how he forms his ideas, but in action Obama’s faith calls for the sacrifice of value of the wealthy (notice how wealthy isn’t clearly defined so it can be changed), to be given to others. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t even financially pragmatic, for he didn’t contest the premises of the negative relation of taxes and revenue; for the purposes of his faith, value must be plundered from those who worked for it, and handed out to those who didn’t work for it. This doesn’t mean that people don’t work, for many do. But hard work isn’t enough. Obama’s faith doesn’t care about that, though. It calls for others to sacrifice their value.