Smoke and Mirrors

Like a sleight-of-hand-artist on a busy street with a briefcase that turns into a table, three walnuts shells and a pea the perpetually re-elected and their town criers in the Corporations Once Known as the mainstream Media appear to be perennially able to fool the perpetually distracted by pulling a metaphorical quarter out of their ear.

I know a professional revolutionary. We grew up together. He has correctly diagnosed America’s disease as a corporate cult in a symbiotic relationship with a corrupt government. He deftly outlines the general theory, although not the specifics of how crony capitalists and political hacks have crafted a system wherein money laundering has become national policy. The political hacks fleece the sheeple through taxes and inflation. They give the money to their accomplices in the flimflam corporations who funnel huge chunks of cash back to the hacks for re-election. Every few years the sheeple rouse themselves out of their media induced coma long enough to be herded to the polls to vote for more of the same.

Yes, the professional revolutionaries and their government educated followers have correctly diagnosed the disease. However, they have prescribed poison instead of medicine. Their answer to the curse of Corporatism’s National Socialism is less nationalism and more socialism. Since corporatism has built a coffin our body politic cannot seem to claw its way out of, he prescribes cutting out the crony capitalists and giving the whole operation to the political hacks. In other words if the black shirts have ruined the country let’s try the reds. That would be as transparent as fighting the most horrendous war in human history because Hitler attempted to pull Poland into his freedom smothering embrace and then giving Poland to Stalin.

Headlines and talking heads scream for days, “The Super Committee cannot fail or the sky will fall!” Endless hours in the 24 hour news cycle are devoted to debating, “Will the Super Committee succeed or will they fail?” Meanwhile most of the sheeple are consumed with concern about the NBA strike, a celebrity drowning thirty years ago, or was Kim’s wedding a set-up all along. Then we’re told he Super Committee failed accompanied by endless squabbling about who caused the failure.

It is all nothing but Kabuki, a form of Japanese drama based on popular legends and characterized by elaborate costumes, stylized acting.

Remember how the Super Committee became so super? It didn’t come from another planet with a red sun and lower gravity. It was instead the Frankenstein created as the cover for another rise in the debt ceiling. The Tea Party had just made a Herculean effort in the 2010 elections and achieved an historical sweep of the House of Representatives. Over sixty newly minted congressmen owed their seat at the table of plenty to the greatest grassroots movement America has seen in generations. They had campaigned on changing the culture of corruption in Washington, stopping the deficit spending, severing the cord to the crony capitalists, and paying down the national debt.

Before they could even arrive the Republican leadership colluded with a recently humiliated inexperienced president and a recently repudiated Democratic leadership to extend the Bush tax cuts in exchange for more spending in the lamest of all lame duck sessions. Then as soon as the fresh troops arrive they raise their hands in salute to the same old Republican leadership, renew the patriot Act, pass a series of continuing resolutions allowing the drunken sailors to continue spending, and then vote to raise the debt ceiling by another few trillions. Oh but they fought! They wrangled and they refused to give the Spender in Chief more trillions of our great grandchildren’s money unless he agreed to a Super Committee backed up by automatic cuts and automatic tax increases in future deficits totaling trillions of dollars in cuts. This was drama worthy of As Washington Turns. If it was joke it wouldn’t be funny.

To begin with the Super Committee wasn’t filled with deficit hawks and balanced budget advocates. It was instead filled with the most partisan members from both wings of the Party of Power guaranteeing there would be no settlement. Obviously the plan all along was for the automatic cuts and taxes to come into play, over the next ten years. In other words the spendaholics of this Congress are going to place limits on the credit card of following Congresses who have the ability to vote away the limits any time they want to. How could that ever fail?

The smoke and mirrors of political theater is meant to hide the fact that all they’re arguing over is reducing the yearly deficits way off there in the future somewhere. All they ever discussed was slowing the rate of increase. Even if the most draconian plan so far introduced by the young firebrand Representative Ryan had been adopted the budget still went up every year, and the national debt still grew every year. And though there would have been more and more spending with no end to the red ink in sight Ryan was portrayed as pushing Grandma off the cliff and a large percentage of the population believes it. This is baseline budgeting wherein the proposed budget becomes the base for what is cut. In other words our leaders can cut all day and the spending still goes up.

It is time to tell our hypnotized fellow citizens to take the blinders off. Wake up! The house is on fire and the firemen are pouring gasoline on the flames.

The system is broke and it is becoming very clear that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put this thing together again. The spending goes on every second of every minute of every hour of every day. The tax code that ostensibly is designed to pay for it all is in reality a bewildering maze meant to trap those unsophisticated enough not to hire an army of tax lawyers and accountants while legally recognized persons such as GE file 57,000 page tax returns on fourteen billion in profits and pays no tax at all.

While the hemorrhaging of our descendants wealth goes on night and day we are being set up for the next battle to raise the debt ceiling, the balanced budget amendment. Even if this long threatened turkey could finally make it to the block what good is a balanced budget amendment? The spendthrifts we call a government can still spend all they want as long as they raise enough money to pretend to cover at least the on budget portion of the swag. And where do you think they will raise the money? They will either raise taxes or print money. Either way we pay so they can play. What we need is a spending amendment that limits spending to a prescribed percentage of the GDP.

At one time the best tongue in cheek advice for coping with the policies of the convention of confidence men masquerading as the American government was get a government job and study Spanish. Now the situation has descended even beyond the black humor of that cynical joke. Today the best advice may be to hunker in the bunker, store food, and learn enough History so you can tell those who come after what America used to be.

Last year I thought it was time to take the gloves off and tell America the emperor has no clothes. To do so this advocate of the Constitution and limited government wrote The Constitution Failed. A book which places current events in a constitutional and historical context proving that while our nation was founded upon a document meant to limit government we now stand face-to-face with an unlimited government. I believed it was time to sound the alarm. I thought people were ready to admit the terrible truth; our government does little more than tip its hat to the Constitution while doing whatever it wants. The first step in solving any problem is admitting you have a problem. The second is recognizing what that problem is. My hope is that The Constitution Failed will help people recognize and identify the problem so that we the people can reach a solution.

As one who has been pounding this drum and singing this song for fifty years all I can do is wonder, will the drowning Lady Liberty finally see the life preserver as she goes down for the last time? Will she finally grasp the Constitution as the only thing that has ever guaranteed limited government, personal freedom and economic opportunity in America? Will she remember her past and save her future or will she sink beneath the waves of government regulation and drown in the red tape of an all-powerful central government?

I wrote The Constitution Failed to make a difference. I wrote it because I see my beloved country walking off a cliff into the abyss of socialism and I am compelled to throw out the life line.

If you want to read The Constitution Failed send me an email with your address and I will send you a complimentary copy. I want to see the re-birth of limited government. I want to see personal liberty and economic freedom continue to exist in this: the last best hope of mankind. And I’m ready to put my money where my heart is, limited government, personal liberty and economic freedom.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2011 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Organized Anarchy Leads to One Last Question

In the topsey turvey world of 21st century America those who live by the kindness of strangers wish to dictate how much kindness they deserve changing the strangers from benefactors to victims. We have reached a point where our national motto should be “Stand and Deliver” as a runaway government devours everything in sight in an effort to satisfy the growing demands of their pre-programmed supporters.

America has taken such a bizarre turn that oxymorons are the only things that make sense any more. Organized anarchy has exploited militant apathy to create regulated liberty so that producers must provide for slackers and the informed must follow the dictates of the willfully ignorant. You can’t fix stupid but there is a cure for ignorance. If we could just get these products of public education and sports hypnosis to take off the blinders long enough to understand the meaning behind the matrix perhaps we could garner one more electoral victory to stop us before we step off the cliff. Except of course the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media are working as hard as they can to make sure our choice comes down to Tweedle De and Tweedle Dum.

Our Progressive era seeks to change the old adage, “Those who refuse to learn from History are doomed to repeat it” to “Those who refuse to learn from History doom the rest of us to repeat it.” The patients have seized control of the asylum. The land of the free and the home of the brave is transforming into the land of the free lunch and the home of the knaves. Symbiosis is the living together in more or less intimate association or close union of two dissimilar organisms as in parasitism. What we are witnessing today is symbiosis on steroids wherein the parasite isn’t merely along for the ride but instead demands the driver’s seat.

Looking at the almost bewildering explosion of reality we call today our minds behold the organized anarchy of the occupy everywhere movement that is spreading around the world. We are now witnessing a government supported revolution akin to Mao’s Cultural Revolution. This isn’t a revolt of the 99% seeking to devour the 1% it is the 46% that pay no federal taxes seeking to increase the production from their 54% milk cows. To call forcing one segment of the population to work to support another segment of the population paying your fair share makes theft a contribution and bondage a responsibility.

The people involved express a variety of causes. They want a bailout for home owners who are upside down or in foreclosure. At the same time they want those who accepted the bailout on Wall Street prosecuted. They want student loans forgiven, wars stopped, big corporations downsized, and an end to capitalism. Many politicians and their major media publicity machine have embraced the movement labeling it the Progressive version of the Ta Party. This is a window on the future. Showing the silent majority what is to come: a shabby world where the Lilliputians have not only bound Gulliver they have harnessed him to the cart and forced him to be their beast of burden.

By seeking the destruction of capitalism instead of seeking to break the umbilical cord between the crony capitalists and their bought and paid for politicians what they really seek is to force us to worship the myth of free enterprise as we sacrifice the energy and inventiveness of the productive on the altar of the indolent.

It is time to lay our cards on the table. It is time to call a spade a spade. Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined by competition in a free market. Socialism is an economic characterized by collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. Fascism is an economic system that exalts the nation above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government with severe economic regimentation. Essentially fascism is socialism pretending to be capitalism since private ownership exists in a government straightjacket.

Which of these systems do we have? Which of these systems is staring us in the face every day?

I challenge anyone and everyone to take this test. Watch the stock market for one month. Watch its ups and downs. What you will see is that the market does not move because of innovation or production it moves in response to government actions, statements, and policies. While we still have private ownership the government is increasingly regulating and controlling the economy. Take the test. Review the definitions above and you decide. Which of these systems do we have? Or does it have us?

America has never experienced a truly capitalistic system. We were born under mercantilism. We grew to power under Henry Clay’s American System of nationalistic paternalism. We have flirted with socialism in a mixed system since FDR reshuffled the deck and institutionalized the New Deal. And now we struggle to maintain some visage of freedom at the edge of a crony capitalism whose Progressive public-private security blanket has become the pillow that smothers all incentive. We have morphed from a representative republic operating on democratic principles into a state wholly owned by a good old boy coalition composed of the perpetually re-elected, the unions, and the crony capitalists: the Outfit.

The over educated under informed lemmings that call themselves the 99% are being duped by the Outfit. They are a collective battering ram assailing the last remnants of American individualism. They are using the threat of social unrest to demand the final triumph of “I want what I want” over “I get what I earn.”

What’s the cure for the Great Recession? Is it more government spending and more government control as the Outfit and their 99% fellow-travelers tell us? Is it “Drill baby drill” and a return to a golden-age of pure capitalism that never really existed?

First we must understand our situation. What is the cause of the chronic state of our anemic recovery? Is it as our president tells us and the world: Americans are soft, arrogant and lazy? Or have we finally reached the tipping point? Have we finally reached the point where all the Peters being robbed to pay for Paul’s vacation have decided to change their name to Paul? Is this a recession or is it a strike? The central planners look at the wreckage of a once great economy that their programs have gutted and say, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.” They should be asking “How many omelets can they make if the goose doesn’t lay any more golden eggs?”

Which leads to one last question: “Who is John Galt?”

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2011 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens