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McCain Is the Last Chance for the

Greatest Generation to Effect "Change"

If John McCain is not elected President come November, his generation will go out like old, toothless lions with their heads down and their tails dragging the ground. It may or may not be his fault. The Maverick is not known for a cool head, is not the long-awaited elequent public speaker that his rival is, and had admitted some of his own drawbacks. But he does have the experience in foreign polic that Barak Obama does not; he has shown the ability to work both sides of the isle, which Obama has attempted but has no real track record on, and he won't effect the kinds of wide-sweeping social and military changes that Obama has promised.

It may or not be McCain's fault if he loses, for the reasons listed, but it may be that Obama has enlisted and engaged too many liberal and socialistic followers, as well as people too unaware that Obama is socialistic, for McCain to win.

There will never be another candidate from McCain's generation who will get to try to correct their world before they are gone forever. McCain was born in 1936, too early to be a "Baby Boomer," but too young to enter World War II. But no one from his generation will likely get to run for President again; the youngest would be 68 years old in 2012, and by then I think it certain that the younger generations, who will themselves be 67 years or younger, will have wondered what the world would have been like had they elected Barak Obama. Or they will know it and possibly approve.

I don't like the far liberalism and the socialism of Obama. But there are things about McCain I dislike equally as much. Both have their strengths; both have their weaknesses. Obama might actually be the better President if what America is worried about is its "world image." [See "The Libertarian Case for ObamaSeven potential upsides to a hope-monger presidency" http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/09/unusual-headlines-saturday-musings.html

I am not saying McCain ought to be given the chance to redeem the entrenched "old ways," to play the centralist-Maverick he has always been in spite of the left-wing verbiage against him. McCain even managed to frequently piss-off his mentor, President Ronald Reagan. Don't let the liberals tell you he isn't "maverick."

I might seriously vote for the far-liberal, socialistic Obama, myself. Perhaps it is time for America to gain a new "world image," while maintaining the sovereign protections that Obama promises he will uphold. If Obama didn't understand the worries the Right had about him on that subject of America's sovereignty, he does now, and has stated so.

I don't like socialism, but I don't like "old warriors" either who may actually have "old warrior ideas" that get in the way of constructive changes. The world operates at the speed of the Internet; citizens from all over the world talk and chat with each other in real-time. McCain has said he does not know how to operate a computer. How could he ever had a real-time conversation in a chat room with people from all over the world in one place at the same time? In a secure conference room McCain has all the experience he needs with diplomats from the world. In the world of a more youthful, internet-oriented youthful world which shares ideas in real-time between average people, I think he hasn't got a clue as to how the world perceives us.

The world wants to like us. It is American Exceptionalism, the concept that American ideals and ideas that have nothing to do with anything but our own self-interests ought to be the deciding factor in our relations with the world, that Obama might be able to dispell. "American Exceptionalism" does not include the protection of democracy, or helping to protect the sovereignty of our allies from aggression; it does not include the promotion of laissez faire capitalism, or at least the closest thing our mixed-economic system will allow.

"American Exceptionalism" does include the haughtiness that everything must be done to our standards, and policies that are more hand-off-the-other-guys oriented would do much to make us look like the true promoters of self-autonomy. I'm truly sorry if most Arab nations treat their women badly and wrap them from the ankles up so the "natural animalism" of the male will not be aroused by the sight of skin. America was once quite like that: it was a scandal when women in America began showing their ankles.

But righting such cultural wrongs in other nations is not the job of the American government. It is rightly the job of social activists. The proper job of the government of a free people ruled by the principle of "common sovereignty" is nothing more than the protection of the rights of its citizens.

Maybe someone like Obama can actually get North Korea to agree to the nuclear investigators, and get Iran to forget nukes and nuking Israel. Maybe he can actually get bin Laden under arrest or dead. Those kinds of things are within the scope of the American government's lawful powers.

Maybe McCain can get those things done as well. The failure of the Bush/McCain era in the current economic debacle is that they did not cry wolf loudly enough. It is a fact that Bush began crying wolf in 2002, and McCain shortly thereafter. It is also a fact that Barney Frank and 100% of his collegues voted two years ago against any interference in the events that were plaguing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Barney Frank said they were "sound."

It might be that they did not cry wolf loudly enough, or long enough, to over come the perception that they let it happen in spite of the override by the Democrats. This election campaign is so hard to judge, and the election itself so impossible to comprehend, that a majority of the House of Representatives may lose their seats.

That means, if it happens, that the Republicans may take back the House. Then, if Obama wins, he will have a very difficult time proving he can cross the isle. But it will be a trek he must make and he must make it with great diplomacy, or the Republican majority will not allow him any part of his socialistic agenda.

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American Socialism Is Upon Us

"Capitalism and markets [ ] are all inherently about self-interest and the pursuit of profit," said Dr. Yaron Brook. "Capitalism encourages and enables selfishness, and as long as our culture looks at profit and self-interest as vices, [ ] big government will always be preferred to free markets." [italics added] "Why Big Government Is Back, and How to Shrink It to Its Proper Size"

http://www.aynrand.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=41441&em_id=44383.0&JServSessionIdr001=efh7ehivs1.app7a

This might be a surprising perspective to many people. But it really is surprising only to capitalists who simply want to earn a living--perhaps a big living, but a living that is ruled by nothing but proper market ethics and proper ethical treatment of his or her consumers. And I am one of those to whom it is a surprising perspective.

I should not be surprised. I know full well that the market situation we are currently in was caused by zealous, not ethical, pursuit of the dollar. There is a difference. We expect the neighborhood butcher, farm co-op, or shoe store to treat the community with a high standard of ethics. To do otherwise would be to risk negative letters-to-the-editor in the newspaper, and maybe an investigation by the local TV affiliate, if the situation warrants it. Consumers who feel bent out of shape by the way they were treated locally often sue.

But on the larger scale, in the bigger market places, we all know that ethics tend to become fuzzy, or even misplaced once a rule of ethics is broken the first time and not caught. The big markets can usually fend off attacks by angry customers, unless the business is WalMart or something similar. WalMart is expected to be all things to all people; that is how it grew to be so large. Big selection plus big inventory equals low low prices; that is what constitutes "all things to all people" most of the time.

But Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, explained why the reasons for the resurgence of big government are due, "not to any alleged failures of the market, but to a longtime cultural hostility to its moral basis: the selfish pursuit of profit."

We as Americans have lived with the idea of socialism long enough that most of us do not see how its operating principles-if they can be called "principled"--have crept into our nation's politics, policies, and regulations. In the Treasury Department's U.S crazy scheme to save Wall Street but they included this in big, huge piece of socialist nationalism in section 8: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." [emphasis added] [see The Last Nail in the American Fascist Takeover ]

John McCain may not be the best candidate for President. He may not make a good President if he wins. But he was calling for an investigation of the Wall Street/bank/mortgage situation since 2004. President Bush, believe it or not, had been calling for an investigation since 2002, sensing trouble along the way, and McCain and a few others saw it too.

Barney Frank and other Democrats refused to see it, and Frank specifically stated that all was fine and dandy, there was nothing wrong with the bank/mortgage markets, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sound as a whistle and there was no need for any investigation.

Literally every Democrat voted against such an investigation, and virtually all Republicans voted for such an investigation. Now that the Democrats want to go tripping merrily down the lane hand in hand with the Treasury Department and the Fed, and the Republicans have rightly condemned such methods as "socialist."

"The free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America," said Sen. Jim Bunning, (R) Kentucky. "The action proposed today by the Treasury Department will take away the free market and institute socialism in America. The American taxpayer has been misled throughout this economic crisis. The government on all fronts has failed the American people miserably." McClatchy http://www.mcclatchydc.com/244/story/52804.html

"A new chapter of the presidential legacy of George W. Bush has now become clear: He, of all people, will inevitably go down as the president who brought socialism to the citadel of capitalism -- Wall Street." seattlepi.com http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/380223_schramonline24.html

On the other hand, Stephen Griffin of Balkin.com wrote: "'State socialism' implies a one-party state, and is not democratic. 'Democratic socialism' assumes multiple political parties and thus electoral democracy, although such a state may be 'corporatist' in assuming that economic policy should be determined through bargaining among bureaucrats and organizations of labor and capital." http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-bailout-isnt-socialist.html

So much for logic on the other side of the philosophical isle. "Socialism" is defined as government control of privately owned property, whether market-oriented or of private orientation, such as home ownership.

Not important "in such a process of transfer is the traditional terminology of Law," wrote Ludvig von Mises, the Austrian economist, in 1922 in his book "Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis." It must be stated that economic terminology has changed since this was written. He said in his book, "It is the aim of Socialism to transfer the means of production from private ownership to the ownership of organized society, to the State." However, this is now the definition of Communism, since the Soviet system demonstrated such ownership to the world. But what von Mises describes further is exactly what has been "creeping" into our nation's economy, sometimes more, sometimes less, than in other so-called capitalist nations.

"Ownership is power of disposal," he further wrote, which is the purposeful end of the Treasury's proposed legislation, "and when this power of disposal is divorced from its traditional name and handed over to a legal institution which bears a new name, the old terminology is essentially unimportant in the matter. Not the word but the thing must be considered. Limitation of the rights of owners as well as formal transference is a means of socialization." [italics added]

So according to von Mises, Stephen Griffin is dead wrong. The power of disposal is the name of the game, not the fact that some "democratic" means was used to divorce the power of disposal. Democracy without absolute protection for individual sovereignty in a nation where the power is invested in government through the use of the transference of individual liberty to what is called "common sovereignty." No individual was ever asked within the boundaries set by the Constitution to give up so much of his/her own sovereignty that "common sovereignty" became democratic socialism.

"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day." Joseph J. Ellis http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

"Dr. Brook also made the point that capitalism has always been defended pragmatically, on the basis that it creates wealth and economic growth--which it does; but it’s time, he said, to defend capitalism on principle, on the basis of its morality, on the basis that it protects the rights of individuals to pursue their own values and allows them freedom to act in their own self-interest."

And we must, at the same time, prevent lobbyists from donating any money or goods or services to any legislator, and at the same time hold all corporations and other businesses to a standard that prevents profit and self-interest as vices.

Every small business owner understands that the economic need for profit, and the same economic as well as psychological needs for self-interest, do not allow for the disintegration of ethics.

Neither does the actual disintegration of ethics give cause or proper power to legislators to reduce individual sovereignty in the name of common sovereignty.

No American ever voted to change the name of this nation to the People's Republic of the United States of America.

[Dr. Brook’s talk is available for free at: http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ls_big_government]