Obama, Character, and Exceptionalism

Obama, Character, and American Exceptionalism

"This past week, Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign began doing what the [New York] Times failed to do: investigate the years-long association between Barack Obama and domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers. [ ] Instead of investigating, the Times’ writer hurls invective at the McCain campaign for having the nerve to bring up the unpleasant matter. Just minutes after the [2nd] debate ended [Tuesday] night, the New York Times projectile-vomited a load of anti-McCain-Palin vitriol disguised as an unsigned editorial. No wonder its author wished to remain anonymous: the editorial hurled unsubstantiated charges at the McCain-Palin campaign while purposely ignoring or covering up information that it finds unhelpful to its viewpoint." from DBKP http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/10/barack-obama-bill-ayers-ny-times-continues-to-whitewash-obama-ayers-connection/>

The idea of Barak Obama as President bothers me. If he wins, the entire world will have to wait-and-see whether his socialistic proposals go as far--or further--than anyone imagines, and whether Congress and the Courts will let him get away with what he attempts to do.

Being a Constitutional lawyer and law professor as he is, he will probably get away with as much as he wants to, in the Courts. This is because the Courts won't hear any cases based on Obama's socialist programs until they have been signed into law and libertarians and others bring suits. And Obama knows what the Supreme Court Justices would think of the various ideas he may try to implement.

Not that more socialism is going to matter. Socialism is now unstoppable. The conservatives are merely conserving that which has been a fact since the New Deal, conserving the idea that government can do some things that are socialistic for the public good, but for the time being it is not to the public good to do more; "Wait a while," they seem to imply, "then we'll see how much more we can go along with."

The obvious and very large recent departure from the conservatism of the Republicans came when they helped craft and then pass in both Houses the bank and mortgage bail out bill.

Socialism is a fact of politics in almost the entire world, and some nations have less socialism than America, the land of the free. It's coming, and it may be only a short matter of time, now, before John Galt begins to shrug. But he isn't shrugging yet, because everyone believes there may be a way back from the brink of European-type entitlements. But it is this very lack of our socialism not being on par with most of the rest of the world, that contributes to the new definitions of "American Exceptionalism." Alexis de Tocqueville defined it as our greatness. To many in this new century it means our apartness from the rest of the world; we are not "in tune" with it.

But what worries me deeply is Obama's apparent bad judgment about the company he keeps, and the company he once said he would make. His connection with Bill Ayer's may be severed now, but no self-respecting libertarian (with a small "l", which is most of America) would have had anything more to do with Ayers than accidentally winding up on one board or commission with him. That Obama served with Ayers, had to have been friendly with Ayers since they lived in the same neighborhood, and allowed Ayers, in his own living room, to throw him an election send-off event at the start of his Illinois Senate run, is not what I would have done. What would I have done? Keep reading.

"William Ayers, in the age of terrorism, will be Barack Obama's Willie Horton," said former counterterrorism official Larry C. Johnson. The Huffington Post Feb. 16, 2008.

So far that has not happened, and I will admit that maybe there is less to Obama's connection with the former member of the radical Weather Underground Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974, and who said to the New York Times in September 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough."

"President" Obama would not be the first President to have connections, tenuous but palpable, with members of the Weather Underground. President Clinton " commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001." Washingtonpost.com http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_weatherman_connection.html

But Ayers is Not the Only Questionable Connection Obama Has

There is, besides Ayers, Obama's "intimate and long-term association with the 'Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now,'" (Acorn.) [see "Inside Obama's Acorn" http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/09/god-belieforiginal-intent.html "Obama's ties to Acorn - arguably the most politically radical large-scale activist group in the country - are wide, deep, and longstanding. If Acorn is adept at creating a non-partisan, inside-game veneer for what is in fact an intensely radical, leftist, and politically partisan reality, so is Obama himself. This is hardly a coincidence: Obama helped train Acorn's leaders in how to play this game." Stanley Kurtz; nationalreviewonline http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=

Acorn is the successor to the 1960’s agenda of anti-capitalism, writes Kurtz. Acorn, he says, quoting Sol Stern’s 2003 City Journal article, “ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities," grew out of “'one of the New Left’s silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization.' In the 1960’s, NWRO launched a campaign of sit-ins and disruptions at welfare offices. The goal was to remove eligibility restrictions, and thus effectively flood welfare rolls with so many clients that the system would burst. The theory, explains Stern, was that an impossibly overburdened welfare system would force “a radical reconstruction of America’s unjust capitalist economy.” Instead of a socialist utopia, however, we got the culture of dependency and family breakdown that ate away at America’s inner cities — until welfare reform began to turn the tide."

"Acorn" is, as of today, under investigation in ten states for voter fraud.

In my lifetime we have gone from the 1950's industrial/military-complex mentality, through the scarriest decade in Amerian history, the 1960's, wherein all factions of our society were fighting each other, sometimes literally, and then wound up where we are. There were racial riots that burned Los Angeles and Detroit, along with other racial events, 26 of which are chronicled in the PBS series Eyes on the Prize.

"The Watts riot of 1965 will become the best-remembered urban black uprising of the Sixties, but summer 1967 brings an explosion of tensions around the country. For five days in July, Detroit, Michigan descends into chaos. [In the] economic boom...and urban renewal...blacks have been left behind. [ ] The 95% white police force, notorious for brutal and arbitrary treatment of black citizens, raids an illegal after hours club and draws an angry, frustrated crowd that quickly turns hostile.

"...Governor George Romney calls in the Michigan National Guard..." Nearly 7000 people will be arrested by the third day, mostly are young and black. "Police and guardsmen shoot at will...Romney asks President Lyndon Johnson for federal help and by Monday afternoon 4700 U.S. Army paratroopers have arrived, under orders not to use live ammunition. A combined 17,000 law enforcement troops suppress the riot. After five days of anarchy, more than 40 people are dead, hundreds are injured, and damage estimates hit $50 million."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/13_detroit.html [includes videos of riots and burning]

I grew up 153 miles away from Detroit and was as familiar with it as a twelve year old could be who had most of his relatives living there--on the right side of 8 Mile Road, as my grandmother would later tell me. I also grew up 154 miles away from Chicago, another hotbed of racial unrest. I remember seeing our soldiers in the VietNam war and we were not accustomed, as are the youngest of children today, to seeing violence on TV. The war was frightening because it caused groups like the Weather Underground, caused riots during anti-war demonstrations, and caused the killing of four innocent students on the campus of Kent State by National Guardsmen. [Watch this chilling video with the lyrics to "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVi-DXOfnAM]

It was the most freightening period of my life. I would like to say that period ended with the only resignation by a President in our history, Nixon, but even that was not an ending. Since no President had ever resigned before, America was nervous about what was to come. And that was not the end of the left-wing agenda. The war had gotten it started; now other things needed to be addressed. Today, one of those is American Exceptionalism.

I grew up in the decade with domestic terrorists who bombed federal buildings. I met one in high school before the war ended; he was politely invited to speak to our class by a leftist who was one of my friends, he was barely older than we were, and the teacher did not condemn him. I was outraged, at both the idea that he could be so freely invited to my school and my class; and that he had (allegedly) commited the crimes he said he had. He had not been caught, so he had not been convicted. But the tone of my voice made it clear that I, for one, did not approve of his actions in spite of the left-liberal atmosphere of the times. Today I would report him for his actions. Then, I was fearful of pissing off the left-wingers, and about one third of all my friends, including my first girlfriend, were leftists.

It was the very-left-leaning-liberal educators of the day who were setting the agenda, because by 1971 it was evident that the military had lied many times to us, that Nixon had lied, that Johnson had lied, and that the anti-war protesters might actually have right on their side. But 99 44/100% of protesters did not bomb government buildings, incite riots, or kill innocent people.

American Exceptionalism

All of this eventually led to a mentality that would allow politics to swing so far to the left that a man like Obama, declared the most left-wing sitting Senator, could now be our next President. He may turn out to be a boogie-man candidate and actually become a fine President. He may rid our nation of some of the "American exceptionalism" (AE) that we often demonstrate to the world, "exceptionalism" that is taken by others in the world as an elitist attitude.

"[A]t bottom, AE refers to the apparent departure of the United States from certain assumed historical norms or laws of development, but AE definitely is a double-edged sword. [O]n the one hand, the 'good' side of the double edged sword promotes, 'Egalitarianism,' ie, equality of opportunity, the idea that in America, anyone can become president. [O]n the other hand, the 'dark' side of the double edged sword promotes, violence, brutality, hatred, cruelty. [S]ince the 1930s, what had once been a debating point for left-wing intellectuals has entered the mainstream of academic controversy." [italics added] from american exceptionalism

But one of the left-wing debating points about any elitism as seen by the rest of the world, that sets America apart from the rest of the world, is this, according to "american exceptionalism": "For one reason or another, so the notion goes, the United States has failed to produce eversharper antagonisms between capital and labor (as measured, most commonly, by the rise of a viable socialist movement). Hence, it appears that America is an exceptional historical case, quite different from other capitalist nations." [italics added]

In other words because it is true that we have "failed" to produce "antogonisms between labor and capital," we are exceptional where "exceptionalism" is taken to mean that we hold ourselves apart from other nations, striving not to be fractional so as not to have to produce antagonisms between labor and capital. Any such antagonisms America has had were those caused by interests who could be served by such antagonism. That is certainly not the labor class nor the management class. In America, both sides know they need each other. Those who have an interest in "eversharper antagonisms," must then be the socialists who desire it and see our scorn of it as elitist.

But exceptionalism also refers to the egalitarian, justice-oriented America. "In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville discussed American exceptionalism in 'Democracy in America', and he is still correct. There was then and there continues to be now in this country a remarkable commitment to liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, and laissez-faire values."

These are not the values of the Muslim world, whose men treasure Sharia law; nor are they the values of the murderous Islamic radicals who are no different than our own domestic murderous radicals: they want to change the world through the initiation of force, changing it into something they would rather see and live with than what they do see and must live with.

But when they have achieved their goal, there will be only another tyranny of power mongers who will do to them who won what the winners did to the losers. The next tyranny will tyrannize them who won against the elitism and exceptionalism they thought they saw, who won what was not theirs to win if it had to be by force and coercion. It will be never ending if allowed to continue.

Barak Obama may be a President with a greatness unequalled in modern history. He may be able to bring opposing forces together if he really can "cross the isle," if he really can work with dictators to make them step down from their posturing and their aggressive behavior. I would truly like to see that, and I don't know that John McCain can do that.

"At least one of Senator Obama's leading foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power, wants to recapture that interventionist spirit.

"'It's going to take a generation or so,' she told Newsweek senior editor Michael Hirsh in an article for the Washington Monthly, 'to reclaim American exceptionalism.' Power lamented that Americans were 'neither the shining example, nor even competent meddlers' in the world's problems.

"Is that what Barack Obama offers the electorate — to be a more competent meddler?" Globalist; Christopher Preble; http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8380

I rather think that the world will be so much more accepting
of "President Obama" than anyone else who has/had a chance at it, including
Senator Clinton, that he either will be a "more competent meddler," or a
"shining example" of how to give away American pride--by offering to the world
America's humility, it's "we-are-the-same-as-you" egalitarianism--and he will
either on the one hand be thought of a great President when it comes to foreign
policy, or a fool.

We have become so accepting of the anti-individualism rampant in much of the world that our next President may be the one who stamps out our American individualism, our American identity, for an identity that is closer to the prevailing world-view of capitalism as a tool for government, rather than as something to be protected by government. That would be Obama, not McCain, and that would make Obama the fool. But like the left-wing activists of the 60's who were followed by another generation of activists, of whom Obama is one, his legacy whether he becomes President or not will be to inspire yet another generation of left-wing policy wonks and activists.

But Obama will not be thought of as a rescuing Knight in shining armor on the economic front, because of what socialism is: capitalism turned into the tool of governments that wish to entitle everyone with costly "rights" as the "responsibility" of government. Just ask Obama, who, not to mention all the other "capital investments" into the American financial infrastructure, wants to push $100,000,000,000 in ten years into our economy to make it fully self-sufficient for energy.

How long at being entirely energy self-sufficient will it take to see a return on that one-hundred billion dollars?

Curtis Edward Clark

mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of the

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.

The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM, The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

How Do We Learn to Identify Natural Law and Ethics?

How Do We Learn to Identify Natural Law and Ethics?

Naturalist ethics could not have devised such a convoluted law as that "father's rights" legislation that makes him claim responsibility for a pregnancy before the pregnancy is known--if he wants any rights.

"Natural law" is based on what are posited to be the characteristics of human nature qua human nature. The fundamentals are applicable to any tribe or any modern civilization that aspires to that standard. It is the details above and beyond the fundamentals that are ever-changeable and which are designed by a civilization specifically for that civilization.

As "the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts," we are necessarily brought to the subject of what is right, meaning "good." Is something good for its own sake (inherent); good by some subjective standard (perspective); or good by an objective standard? Aristotle formulated the idea that things are good which are good for the species involved, (species qua species,) so therefor they are not inherent and not subjective, but objective. What is poison to a human is, in some cases, very nutritious for certain flora and fauna, like rotting meat. It's a great fertilizer and some birds won't eat meat until it is good and rotting. So in that case, the "good" is good by an objective standard.

Which bring us back to "right and wrong." For the same reason as objective standards in "good," they exist in "right and wrong," but now it comes down to "context." If you shoot a good guy, the context is wrong because you shot the wrong guy and that is not is not good for the survival of the species, to be shooting the good guys. But if you shoot the bad guy, then shooting is not wrong, it is right. Every thing is objective, but sometimes the objective is contextual.

Lysander Spooner, nineteenth-century lawyer, abolitionist, entrepreneur, legal theorist and political radical, was elegant on the subject; elegant, yet as clear and as black-and-white as any individual could be on the nature of what constitutes the "good" and the "just" for the species Man, which means he found, in contextual terms as uniquely American as the Founding Fathers' concept of "individual sovereignty."

Natural law, according to Spooner in his work, "Natural Law,": "is the science of all human rights; of all a man's rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..." [and] "which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person."

These are the political standards of Man qua Man, and are the fundamentals which ought to be codified, and nothing less than this will do as a basis. But it becomes the terrible duty of any legislative or judicial body to determine what those are. I say it is terrible because, to continue with Spooner:

"[F]irst, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.

"The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another."

The terrible duty of legislatures and judicial bodies is be certain that individual sovereignty is found in every letter of the law, because it is only in the protection of every man's sovereignty that he is protected in his political ability to give up some of his sovereignty to the common sovereignty. It is common sovereignty which gives us the practical means to implement "government by the consent of the governed." The consent comes when all individuals who wish to be Citizens relinquish their right to be judge and jury, or to make law without being elected to do so, or to do anything which a just and limited government is duty-bound to do for the protection of all "man's rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," while at the same time preventing him from infringing in any way upon the rights of any other person.

How is any ethical decision made in a society as large, and technical, as educated and progressive and advanced in knowlege as ours is? When it gets away from the fundamentals that are required as the standard for the just protection of Man qua Man, and instead becomes the bullying IRS or the Patriot Act that can jail American citizens for telling their parents or children or neighbors that the government is investigating them, in other words, for taking advantage of the First Amendment;

when a government instead becomes the possessor of every individuals right to his rights as is the case with the Fourteenth Amendment creation of a new legal entity, the "citizen of the United States," a citizen entirely beholding to the Federal government for whatever "privileges and immunities" he or she is "allowed,"

then, such a government is not natural, is not the protector of individual sovereignty, and is in effect endowed with the first "right of refusal" when it comes to taking or allowing privileges and immunites. The first "right of refusal" justly belongs to the individual, who before the Fourteenth Amendment was a Citizen. Not since the passage of that Amendment has any American been a Citizen. We have all been citizens. The word is no longer capitalized except by those who do not know the history of the usage of the word in this great nation.

We have been demoted from Citizen to citizen, by law, by an Amendment, and it because our Citizenship has been taken from us and given to the Federal Government, which makes the Government of the United States of America the defacto National Government of the United States of America.

No longer are we the United States of a nation called America. Where once we were States united under a common government by the consent of the States, and which were States by the consent of the governed Citizens of those States, we are now one large government like a hollow oak tree with so many large branches that it can no longer support its own weight.

The socialistic nationalism of the mortgage markets and the banks that control them; the federal funds needed for a mis-managed "war on terror,"--necessary but mis-named and thus mis-managed--and the budget necessary for FEMA, Social Security, medical welfare, food stamps, and other federally funded infringements of individual sovereignty, are the indicators of an un-natural state of affairs in the ethics and the laws of the Citizens of the United States of the nation called America.

We now know what "natural law and ethics" is not. It is for tomorrow's blog to determine what "natural" is.

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of the
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM, The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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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]