Time to couch health-care issue in morality

I sent the following letter to the editors at the Wall Stree Journal today after seeing yet another editorial by them on the utilitarian necessity of no public health insurance.

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The Journal has thus far been brilliant and befuddling in its columns and editorials on the public health-care issue.

It has been brilliant in its utilitarian explanations of how any government intervention will be economically disastrous. But it has been befuddling in its ubiquitous silence on the morality issue – wherein lies the only true long-term defense of private health insurance – or any private business activity.

The short term on health insurance is lost to the confiscators, as the Journal hints at in its July 9 editorial. Government interference is a fait accompli. So now is the time to place the debate squarely where it morally belongs: individual rights. Humans in America have the right to run their own lives unequivocally, which includes health-care workers, health insurers and patients. There is no right to health care or health insurance any more than there is a right to car care or car insurance – or strawberries, for that matter.

If we Americans are to win our rights to our lives, we (including the Journal) must immediately begin couching the health-insurance debate (and all similar debates) in the words of Ayn Rand. We can begin with her comments on rights:

“A ‘right’ is a moral principal defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right … a right to a man’s own life. … It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.”

Yes, there is that favorite Obama administration word: coercion. Let’s begin stamping it out now. Our children will surely thank us.

At least people are reading my blog -- even Crazies

I Googled my name and words related to my recent column on the eradication of "public schooling" and got a few tasty morsels, including this one: Blog Walk in Brain.

Hey, the worst thing than people talking bad about you is nobody noticing you, eh?

And on the topic of crazies, it recently was recommended to me to become a member of an unschooling group by "free thinkers." After one week of reading their posts on "syncretism" and other such mystical nonsense, I can only assume that "free" is referring to "free from rationality."

Man, are there ANY sane people out there? Hello?! Hello?! Some of these people make even Dead Eyes seem sane. ... Uh, OK, I get carried away sometimes.

Dead Eyes backs the wrong coup d'etat

I wrote the following letter to the WSJ concerning two recent coups and how Obama Dead Eyes responded to each.

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If you wish to gauge where our current president stands on freedom, look no further than his actions regarding coups.

When the Iranian clergy performed a coup d’etat after their recent charade (election), President Obama said he didn’t want to “interfere,” fearing how his words would be portrayed. But when the Honduras military ousted their president, President Obama (and most of the rest of the world’s leaders) issued ultimatums.

The Iranian clergy appear to have stolen the presidency and negated the will of the citizens. The Honduran military appear to have ousted a man who wished to undermine the Honduran Constitution. The jury is still out on the latter, but what is clear is that the Neville Chamberlains of the modern world (liberals, including our president) wither before fascist charades (Iran) and prance around in unctuous pride when Chavez-worshipping dictators are “illegally” removed from office.

One can only wonder what President Obama would’ve said (or not said) when America’s Founders performed their coup d’etat.

Lowly and wretched Wal-Mart makes deal with Devil

Newspapers across America reported today that Wal-Mart has formerly backed Dead Eyes' demand that businesses across the country carry health insurance for their employees -- which would considerably raise the costs of business and therefore the costs of products for all of us, not to mention immorally intrude on a business's right to govern its own company. I wrote the following letter to the editor at the Wall Street Journal on the subject.

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So Wal-Mart wants to make a deal with the devil on the immoral mandated health-insurance coverage by employers?

OK, from this second forward, I refuse to buy my daughter’s clothes or anything else at Wal-Mart. I am also driving in a few minutes to turn in my Business Plus card at Sam’s Club, where I purchased supplies for my small business.

After that, I’ll be emailing the 50+ businesses I work directly with to attempt to persuade them to do the same with any excrement that makes deals with fascists.

Dead Eyes will never be a dust-buster

The Wall Street Journal printed a column today by one of its regular writers on how Obama Dead Eyes isn't dealing with "realism" on Iran, so I took it a step further in a letter to the editor below.

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Bret Stephens’ skepticism of President Obama’s “realism” hits the nail on the head.
But to understand Mr. Obama’s Neville Chamberlain approach to dictators, we must dig further into morality and philosophy – and, hence, make a more biting judgment of Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats.

The Democrats and their president suffer from the moral relativism that the philosopher Ayn Rand correctly identified a half-century ago in American politics. This aversion to absolute right and wrong belies a philosophy of skepticism of human efficacy and hegemony that is the foundation of individual rights, thereby leading the Democrats to foster statism at home and subconsciously sympathize with its brethren, extreme statism, abroad. How can any rational American expect a president who commits grand larceny of citizens for “bailouts” or attempts the overthrow of laissez-faire in industry to be amendable to the desires of liberty-seeking citizens in Iran?

This skepticism of citizens’ fundamental rights leads to a crippled judgment of despots and to such inanities as “we are for democracy in Iran,” instead of an authoritative and decisive, “The Iranian leaders have shown themselves to be murderers and gross violators of individual rights.”

The U.S. has bombs gathering dust, and ilk like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are smirking with the knowledge that the dusty U.S. Democrats have no plans to learn and practice a philosophy of dust-busting absolutism.

Dead Eyes should use active tense for what he's doing to liberty

The Wall Street Journal's resident liberal columnist, Thomas Frank, penned his usual drivel today. The subject was how Obama Dead Eyes and his ilk should start using the active tense instead of the passive tense in marketing their fascist regulatory designs. So I jotted off the following letter to the WSJ.

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If Thomas Frank were Rip Van Winkle, perhaps we could forgive him his statement that the recent financial disaster was “brought about in no small part by either the absence of federal regulation or the amazing indifference of the regulators.”

Must we really rehash for Mr. Frank the eloquent explanations in the Journal’s pages over the last year on how regulations fostered, promoted and demanded irrational exuberance on the part of lenders and others for years? That is the nature of regulating invisible hands. As we have seen for more than 100 years in America, regulations never stop bad people from being bad; they stop good people from being productive.

All that said, I must finally find myself agreeing with Mr. Frank on one point: President Obama and the rest of his ilk should begin using the active voice instead of the passive voice in promoting their regulatory mindsets. After all, such regulation actively abridges the right to liberty in business that our Founders desired almost without exception. If Mr. Obama wishes to destroy, he must remain active.

There are two reasons, however, why Mr. Obama (and anyone else, for that matter) uses the passive voice: It subconsciously reflects a sense of immorality and/or mental lassitude; or it attempts to smudge lipstick on unpalatable oppression. I will not pretend to know which best describes our current commander-in-chief.

My long column on eradicating "public schools" is printed

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed a long column by me on the need for eradicating "public education" and honoring children's free will. I mention home-schooling and unschooling in the column. The editors printed every single word of it without one change.

If you like the column and don't mind taking a few minutes to write a letter to the AJC at letters@ajc.com, I'd appreciate it -- because the "public education" lobby will no doubt be lobbing bombs at me. :)

Size doesn't matter when it comes to liberty

I had the following letter printed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday and it was given top billing on the opinion page. It was my response to a long article in the WSJ stating that the current violations by our central government in D.C. could be alleviated or fixed by simply allowing states to secede and letting "regions" be autonomous, thereby allegedly catering to a more local populous.
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With "Divided We Stand" (Weekend Journal, June 13) the Journal again bravely broaches a subject that few, if any, other major publication have attempted. However, the two main points of Paul Starobin's article concerning self-determination and "size matters" are right and wrong, respectively. Yes, regions wish to govern themselves, free of a national government. No, this hasn't historically been precipitated primarily by overcentralization.

The primary cause of the downfall of republics is the betrayal of individual rights. In a true land of liberty, no region has cause for rational separation -- though some, such as the South, will find cause for irrational separation. When liberty is honored, the central government stays out of people's business, allowing them complete autonomy over their households and business. There is no cause for bloodless or bloody rebellion.

The beginnings of the betrayal in contemporary America lie in President Abraham Lincoln's many violations of rights during the Civil War, continuing with the "progressive" movement of the late 1800s and the follow-up garroting of the Constitution by the Sherman Antitrust Act, the creation of the Federal Reserve, the 16th Amendment, President Franklin Roosevelt's abhorrent New Deal, the abolition of the gold standard, the institution and expansion of "welfare" programs under President Lyndon Johnson, the aggrandizement of eminent domain by the feckless Supreme Court, the immense grand larceny of the current administration, a perennially corrupt Congress and much more.

If we were to grant Mr. Starobin the conceit of "size matters," then we must carry it to its logical conclusion: Every region would itself eventually be a "central government" with factions (regions) wishing to opt out ad infinitum, as we have seen countless times. The only solution to avoid this is a Constitution that clearly defines individual and property rights, ensuring that our relatives in Texas remain our compatriots.

Can you kill your children? "Well, that depends."

When first wading into the waters of unschooling as a parent, I made an assumption: I am about to make a lot of friends with parents who are unschoolers because they understand the importance of autonomy in youth and adults.

Gawd, was I mistaken! What I found instead was a sea of moral relativists almost without exception. Here is their paradigm: "There are no rules and there are no 'shoulds' and there is no right and wrong. Kids should be able to do ANYTHING they want because the old idea of dictating to kids was destructive." So, I guess, that's the rule, eh? No rules?

I've already been kicked off of a few unschooling and homeschooling Internet lists for saying such things as "you should outline rules for children" and "there are objective rules" and "there is objective right and wrong" and "'shoulds' are a necessary part of living."

And so I just got off the phone with a bright and unusually pleasant unschooling mom with whom I'm considering starting a Sudbury School in my area (the school is more of an unschool). We were talking about rules at the school. She made the comment that there shouldn't necessarily be rules. We got into a philosophical discussion about unschooling and parenting. She said she had no rules in her family.

So I asked if honesty was a rule. She said it's not a rule; it's more a "preference." So I asked if she said something to her son if he was lying, and she said she would try to find out why he was lying. I asked her why she tried. She paused and then laughed nervously and said, "Well, because we have a preference for the truth." (Unschoolers will go to travel to the ends of the Earth to avoid "rules" and "shoulds.") She then bragged about how she will talk with any parent about how they raise their kids and not judge them.

"So, is there any kind of parenting that is wrong," I asked. "No, she said." I said, "Can a parent beat a child?" She said, "I wouldn't, but some parents do." I said, "Can a parent kill a child?" She said, "Well, that depends on what their preference is."

???????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Do you hear what you just said?" I asked. "Do you hear how far you've gone to hold onto your belief that nothing is wrong and that there are no rules?"

"We're different, David," she said. "You have your philosophy and I have mine."

Indeed. It reminds me of one of many such conversations with unschoolers (who are essentially hippies without the "high"). One noted unschooling leader in Georgia told me on a list that "we don't use 'shoulds' on our list." My response to her was, "You mean, we shouldn't have 'shoulds' on our list."

She did not like that, and neither did the rest of the simperers on that list. At the time, I was still learning what kind of black hole I'd jumped into. And, my friends, it is deep and labyrinthine.

I have very little contact with these nuts now -- many of whom are your garden-variety recyclers, greenies, anti-capitalists, etc. The men, in fact, are worse than the women. It took me just 6 days to kicked off an unschool list for dads. Believe it or not, I had been quite diplomatic in tone and understanding (stop laughing!). But these hippies have a nose for my type, so the weenie-daddies through a snit and got back to knitting.

Ah, such is life in a confederacy of cowards.

No, you can't have your diploma. Sit down!!

A high school student starts walking across the stage during graduation to get his diploma. Halfway across, he bows and waves to his mother, and he throws her a kiss.

When he gets to the superintendent of the school in middle stage, she reminds him that there was to be no "showboating" during the ceremonies. She tells him to sit down. He did not receive his diploma and still doesn't have it. He and his mother are furious.

Check out the video of what happened HERE. This is what you get from "public education": dictators who demand your obedience and then at their pleasure they summarily withdraw what you have spent 12 years in labor camp to receive.