Month: March 2017

Beautiful America: Our Moral Revolution

After a bloody war of independence, the Founding Fathers sought to let natural Liberty loose into spacious skies, across fruited plains, and from sea to shining sea.

A cherry tree blossoms in an effusive greeting of Spring, as at last the days grow slowly longer again. Birds, deer, and even the humble possums that wander around these parts have shaken off the timid quiet imposed by winter, returning to their business of survival. Winter clothes are packed away for another year, as lighter clothes fill closets and drawers. Men and women go to work, earn their pay, and come home to their families. The rhythmic dance of life proceeds apace. This is as it should be.

In a city far away from this particular cherry tree, another very different rhythm can be heard. A gavel falls, men and women in suits hammer across concrete and asphalt, and the drum of government, ceaseless and immovable, rumbles across the land. Here there is no concern for what was once free or what was once right, but they deem permitted and what they deem legal. Government’s job, as they see it, is to govern, and govern they do. As far as the men and women of this city are concerned, this, too, is as it should be. This, however, was not always the way of things here.

There was once a time in our country that people who held a very different understanding of the nature of government filled the halls of this old city. They knew that if the government had authority over their lives, then they did not. They understood that natural Liberty, like nature itself, can grow only where it may. This was a lesson that they learned from life in Europe, for untold generations, where natural Liberty could only grow in the cracks of tyrannical monarchies, there withering in the shadow of the hubris of noble bloodlines.

After a bloody war of independence, the Founding Fathers sought to let natural Liberty loose into spacious skies, across fruited plains, and from sea to shining sea.

“There’s a clear cause and effect here that is
as neat and predictable as a law of physics: 
As government expands, liberty contracts.”
-Ronald Reagan-

For the last thirty years, really since the last time an American president openly and clearly espoused the ideals of Liberty, we have witnessed a wildly swinging pendulum of electoral opinion from one side to another and back again, as the vast majority of Americans across the land have long since abandoned the idealism of the past. Broadly speaking, there three political factions in the United States today, but only two of these political factions possess any political power today. These two factions are spurred relentlessly on by a single, all consuming drive: greed.

One group of voters wants their government to create jobs, usually by taking from the “haves” and giving to the “have nots” (by in large, this is coincidentally themselves). Demanding government do everything from ending poverty to provide health care for everyone (though they actually mean health care coverage, but they’ve never cared about details), this group of typically younger voters energetically push for bigger government, believing, in their youthful ignorance, that they’ve nothing to lose. Their political class elites happily promise to fulfill their demands, if only these voters keep them perpetually in power.

The other group of voters wants their government to create jobs, by getting rid of regulations while simultaneously telling private companies how and where to base their operations, using the same taxation, subsidization, or brute force of law used by the previous administration. They busy themselves with flags waving, slogan shouting, and in all other ways confuse their blind nationalism with an actual informed ideology, while remaining blissfully unaware that blue collar manufacturing jobs were growing under the previous administration, despite the “evil globalist” policies. Their political class elites also happily promise all of the above, if only these voters keep them perpetually in power.

The devouring machine of government swerves aimlessly from left to right every few years, despoiling our country and its people, as the frothing partisans of each side take turns wielding the blunt instrument of government against their opponents in an endless cycle of score settling. Meanwhile, nothing changes.

“O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!”
-Katharine Lee Bates, America the Beautiful-

Standing apart from the empty grandstanding by the other political factions, there is a third faction, slowly growing in numbers and, with those numbers, voice. We, too, wish to gain control of the great devouring machine gorged on the grizzled blood of patriots and partisans alike. Our plan is simple: steer the evil machine right through the heart of Washington, D.C., stopping only when the Liberty killing machine crashes into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean where it belongs.

It is precisely because we wish to destroy their vile machine that the other political factions will stop at nothing to halt our new conservative movement. Without the government machine, the collectivist Left will no longer be able to enslave us all in chains of state imposed equality and bureaucratic red tape. Denied the government machine, the nationalist Left will no longer be able to enslave us all in chains of state imposed conformity and corporate duplicity. Without the government machine, Liberty will reign again.

Ours is a moral revolution, grounded in the conviction that We the People, not the government nor any other political institution, should adjudicate what is or is not moral amongst ourselves, and not to allow government to impose the moral and philosophical values of a few upon the many. That, fellow patriots, is all that matters.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

Shattering the Overton Window

As both the Democratic and the Republican Party are enslaved by their political apparatus, only a third party, free of major party establishment influences, has any hope of smashing through the Overton Window for liberty.

The American political landscape has been changed by over a century of Culture War with the Left, and, as more and more ground has been lost, the Overton Window has shifted further and further in their favor. Positions that the Founding Fathers fought and died to defend have long since been overrun by the hive minded locusts of Left philosophies and buried under meaningless buzzwords. Today, things that would have been unthinkable to the likes of Thomas Jefferson or James Madison have become totally normal.

For a century now, the American people have been offered the same two political choices: a Democratic politician or a Republican politician. Every election year, politicians of these two parties wrap themselves in the American flag, make moving speeches about civil necessity and freedom, all the while demagoguing their opponent over any and every minute moral failing and political inconsistency. Then, as soon as the votes are counted, they go right back to business as usual.

So bad is the cognitive dissonance among American voters that the political parties can totally change political positions in the span of a single election cycle, and their voters won’t even notice. For example, just 5 short years ago, the GOP presidential candidate brutally criticized then president Obama for his overtly friendly relationship with Moscow, while the Democrats accused Republicans of living in the Cold War past. Today, the parties have completely switched positions.

The voting public, much like Pavlov’s dog, is now driven to barking or salivating every election in time with the political beats of their party’s propaganda machine.

“Rursus prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur; sontibus
parent boni, ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor. (Once
again prosperous and successful crime goes by the name
of virtue; good men obey the bad, might is right and fear
oppresses law.)“
-Seneca the Younger-

We must face the desperate reality that the Republican Party is now in the same place philosophically that the Democratic Party was just 30 to 50 years ago, when the last of those who were recognizably conservative abandoned that party to the radical Michael Moore brand Left. While there remain conservative stalwarts holding out in the GOP today, the party of Lincoln and of Reagan is largely lost to a center left political machine.

As Reagan had to leave the Democratic Party to find a new fertile home within the Republican Party, so conservatives must find a new home or accept irrelevance. Unlike Reagan, however, American conservatives presently have nowhere to go but a fractious collection of politically irrelevant political parties in the shadow of radical Leftism (Democrats) and centrist Leftism (Republicans). If conservatism is to remain relevant in 21st Century American politics, it is absolutely imperative that we field a political party that meets the necessary 15% threshold.

Very simply, if the conservative movement is to achieve political efficacy in this century, the disparate political parties that by and large carry the banner of political conservatism must unify into a functional conservative political party. If “principle over party” as much as American conservatives claim it matters, then it’s time to abandon the factionalism that plagues our movement and pledge our time, energy, honor and fortunes to a unified political movement that represents what we believe and why we believe it. Literally nothing else matters.

So how do we get there?

“Ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est.
(When a man does not know what harbor he is making
for, no wind is the right wind.)“
-Seneca the Younger-

First, what we believe in is “limited government“. What does “limited government” mean? Believing in “limited government” means understanding that any government big enough to do good is also necessarily big enough to do great evil. Government, by its very nature, transgresses necessarily on individual liberty, and, in order to minimize this very real and serious threat to personal freedom, government must be limited in scope, those things over which it has authority, and in powers, those actions it is allowed to take on those things over which it has authority.

Second, why we believe in “limited government” is “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights“. Conservatives necessarily believe that every man, woman, and child that walks the Earth is entitled to the same moral equality and political rights as anyone else in the world. We know that it is government, often acting on behalf or because of a political elite, that violates both the equality and political rights of the people. We also know that the worst evils one man can do upon another pales in comparison to the evils that even well meaning governments have inflicted upon their people.

This is why we must always vanguard against those, who, in the name of doing good, recklessly seek to unleash government from rational and necessary limits. It is our duty to protect the liberties of not only ourselves but our desperately misguided countrymen in pursuit of illusory political altruism. As both the Democratic and the Republican Party are enslaved by their political apparatus, only a third party, free of major party establishment influences, has any hope of smashing through the Overton Window for liberty.

“Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem.
(I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.)“
-Thomas Jefferson-

Conservatives are losing the “Culture War” one election at a time. If you are reading this right now, then you get this. The time to count our life rafts is not when the bow of our ship strikes the iceberg in the middle of the icy Atlantic. It is now, when we have an opportunity to save the movement not only for ourselves but for our posterity. For Liberty’s sake, the time to move is now.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

Building a Nation

Should we stop to think about the underlying assumptions that we’ve made our entire lives or allow those in media, in movies, in music, in politics, and behind golden microphones to tell us what we should and shouldn’t believe and, more importantly, why we believe anything at all?

When is the last time you sat down and thought about what it would take to build a bare bones nation from the ground up? Would it surprise you in the least that the most obvious things needed for nation building are actually the least important? For the sake of argument, however, let’s go through the process. What’s the very first thing we’d need to create our nation-to-be?

The very first thing must be an astounding amount of dirt (everything and anything at about foot level and below, as well as all the stuff sprouting out of it). We’re already talking about an incredible amount of material, even for nations with geographically small footprints. This is an amount of “dirt” that, if it were delivered all at once to our doorstep one morning, would be more than most people could even comprehend.

The second thing our bare bones nation must have is people. This number can get amazingly small. We’re talking about a number of people that can fit into a modestly sized restaurant and still have enough genetic diversity to sustain the population. This number could be significantly reduced even more with a sufficiently liberal immigration policy. Suffice to say, with fewer than 200 people, we could have a functional population for our bar bones nation state.

We’ve got dirt, and we’ve got people, but we still don’t have anything that really defines a nation. Every nation in the world is composed of dirt and people. For the most part, people are just people, and dirt is just dirt. There is one more piece to the puzzle. The one thing that ultimately defines a nation, its people, and its culture.

“Ideology… is indispensable in any society if men are
to be formed, transformed and equipped to respond
to the demands of their conditions of existence.”
-Louis Althusser, Marxist Philosopher-

Who owns the land? Who owns the people? How do we decide? Do we get to decide at all? Were not many of these things decided long before we came along? Should we stop to think about the underlying assumptions that we’ve made our entire lives or allow those in media, in movies, in music, in politics, and behind golden microphones to tell us what we should and shouldn’t believe and, more importantly, why we believe anything at all?

It is ideology, not dirt and not people, that permeates a culture, defining who has power and what they can do with it. It is ideology, not dirt or people, that determines who owns the land. If the dominant ideology says that a king owns the land, then people will make sure that there is a king around to own the land. If the dominant ideology says that the state owns the land, then people will make sure that nobody but the state can own the land.

What about the people? Do we own ourselves? Again, this depends upon the dominant ideology. If the dominant ideology says that the king owns the people, then people will make sure that everyone submits to a king. If the dominant ideology says that the state owns the people, then people will make sure that the everyone submits to the state. Whether you are merely a subject of the nation of your birth or a free person depends entirely on ideology, not dirt or people.

In America, we once believed that people are free, because they were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights“. Do we still believe this?

“There exists in man a mass of sense lying in
a dormant state, and which, unless something
excites it to action, will descend with him,
in that condition,to the grave.”
-Thomas Paine-

The chief purpose Liberty is For the Win has pursued is to awaken what Thomas Paine called our “mass of sense” from its dormancy, to force those who read these many words into a sudden and painful waking state. I seek to rouse you from your sleep so that you can discover that your room is filled with smoke, and you have only this drowsy moment to recognize your dire situation and to decide what to do about it. The good news is that the fire hasn’t reached you yet. The bad news is that there is, in fact, a fire.

In such a moment, what you believe is more important than almost anything else. Your beliefs, not your wealth, not your property, and not your political party should guide your actions. Since we have this moment in which to gather our wakefulness, what do we believe and, much more importantly, why do we believe it? Do we believe that we, as individuals, are entitled to rights and privileges by fact of our creation or do our rights and privileges depend upon the existence of a government?

If the latter, must we not endure even the worst of transgressions against us by the government or risk losing our rights entirely? If the former, are we entitled to do as the Founding Fathers did and reject all bonds of servitude, even nationality, in order to assert our rights and privileges as individuals? Which do you believe? Why do you believe it? Who, my friends, do you listen to?

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

Health Care Reform: The Mouse Trap

The Republican Party has, at long last, revealed the final iteration of their grand health care reform plan to “Repeal and Replace” the failing Affordable Care Act.

The Republican Party has, at long last, revealed the final iteration of their grand health care reform plan to “Repeal and Replace” the failing Affordable Care Act. Listening to the Republicans trying to sell this reform plan, you can tell they’re playing a game of political cat and mouse, scurrying between hungry cats on the left that want Washington to do something to address the cost and accessibility of health insurance coverage and angry cats on the right that wanted to get Washington out of the health care business.

So, what will the Republican American Health Care Act plan actually do?

  • It eliminates the taxes and fines of the Affordable Care Act. Good.
  • It eliminates the ACA individual and employer mandates. Good.
  • It retains the pre-existing condition requirements for insurers. Bad.
  • Allows adults to stay on their parents coverage until age 26. Bad.
  • Creates a $100 billion political slush fund. Catastrophically bad.
  • Allots federal Medicaid funding on per capita basis. Better, but not good.
  • Changing tax law to broaden Health Savings Accounts. Better, still theft.
  • Create a tax credit that subsidizes insurance purchases. Bad.

So let’s break down the good, the bad, and the ugly of the GOP plan. The GOP plan will eliminate the tyrannical taxes and fines put in place by the Affordable Care Act. It will also supposedly eliminate the tax penalties for not buying health insurance for those that either do not want health insurance or simply cannot afford it. From a Liberty standpoint, this is a win for conservatives. Unfortunately, this is the last good news for conservatives in the plan.

The Republican plan will still prohibit insurers “discriminating” against individuals with preexisting health conditions and coverage for adult children up to age 26 on their parent’s plans. By eliminating the individual and employer mandates, as well as their punitive fines and taxes, there will be less revenue from healthy insureds needed by health insurance companies to counter balance the higher costs of insureds with preexisting conditions. Unless the federal government is going to pick up the tab for these higher costs, however, this necessarily means drastically higher monthly premiums.

One of the most questionable aspects of the GOP plan is the $100 billion fund that will be allotted to “design programs that meet the unique needs of their patient populations and help low-income Americans afford health care“. That sounds exactly like a federal slush fund or subsidy program that politicians will miraculously discover is inadequate to cover all of the costs and will become a political football in a few months, requiring constant cash dumps from Congress every year. There’s nothing for conservatives to be excited about here.

While “modernizing” Medicaid sounds great on its surface, and creating a per capita allotment will arguably be better for the federal budget overall, from a Liberty standpoint, the federal government will still be writing checks for a large and costly entitlement that Americans simply cannot afford. And while Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are also a great way of dealing with health care costs for middle income families, low income families will have zero use for it, because they have no savings to begin with. Further, the implementation of HSAs requires the continuation of government theft through personal income taxation.

Finally, the tax credit formula that the GOP is depending on to help offset the cost of insurance are meaningless. Low income Americans don’t pay $2,000 of taxes a year anyway. Only the middle class will have any use for such tax credits, and the vast majority of them will already have insurance coverage through their employer. This will largely only benefit small business owners, which was the target of the GOP plan, but only tangentially. It also means, however, lower business tax revenue for the government, which means larger deficits.

The final verdict for the GOP plan? Despite moving to repeal the most onerous parts of ObamaCare, the individual mandate and the tax fines associated with that mandate, the GOP plan fails utterly on the promise to “repeal” the ACA. What we are getting instead is an Affordable Care Act Lite, clinging to the popular elements of the ACA which caused the steep premium increases that consumers hated in the first place. Conservatives will hate it, because it doesn’t get Washington out of health care. The Left will hate it, because it got rid of their taxes, which was all they really cared about in the first place.

The Liberty answer to the health care problem remains the same but also remains politically unpopular. True political and economic freedom requires government inaction. The federal government should be kept out of the business of health insurance. Period.

Clearly, on this issue, we’ve a long way to go.

#RepealWashington

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW