On March 30, 2007, during a fundraiser he said, “I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president [George W. Bush] I actually respect the Constitution.”

Well now; he has never been a constitutional law professor, and he clearly does not respect the Constitution.

Apparently he thought that padding his resume by claiming a history that is untrue would be something nobody would check.  He was a “senior lecturer,” not a “constitutional law professor.”  If you think there is no difference, just refer to a full professor as a “senior lecturer” and see what happens.

Mr. Obama thinks the U.S. Constitution is a flawed document because it “is a charter of negative liberties.  Says what the states can’t do to you.  Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted…” and the U.S. Supreme court, “…didn’t’ break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution…”  Clearly it is his desire to overthrow the Constitution.

He hates the fact that the Constitution tells the government exactly what it can do, and that all other powers belong to the states or to the people.  He hates this because he wants to exercise the powers of a dictator in order to make America in his own image.  His presidency is defined by his use of unconstitutional powers.

The Preamble of the Constitution begins, “We the people…” If the Constitution is to remain the people’s document and not to be turned into an interesting but out dated artifact of history, we must fight against the attempt by anyone to ignore, flout, violate, or overturn our Constitution.

The Obama administration – aided and abetted by the Democrat Party is openly engaged in the greatest theft of constitutional liberty in history.  If our constitution needs to be changed, “we the people” have the power to do it; we have amended it 27 times since it was ratified in 1788.

Our current dictator chaffs at his constitutional limitations; so he ignores them.  He has no desire to encourage the people to amend the constitution because he knows we don’t want to do it.  This must not stand, or our liberty is gone forever.

Below I offer four examples of the illegal exercise of powers he is forbidden from exercising in the last 3 years.  This should not surprise us given Mr. Obama’s Marxist ideology,  and here, and here.  Marxism is the organizing principle of Barack Obama which is why he wants to redistribute your wealth, and why he hates the limitations of the Constitution.

After his election and five days prior to his inauguration Mr. Obama publicly announced his intention to ignore the U.S. Constitution

“We are five days away from fundamentally changing  the United States of America,” he said.  A “fundamental change” is certainly more than signing legislation that operates within the Constitutional parameters; it is something more than that.  Mr. Obama has not proposed one amendment to the Constitution, so it is clear that he planned from the beginning to make “fundamental” changes in the United States through the exercise of powers he is forbidden to use by the Constitution.

Mr. Obama publicly announced his intention to violate the Constitutional limits on appointments

He stated that he would appoint a high official while the Congress was in recess.   The Constitution requires that all such officials be ratified by the U.S. Senate.  A president can make a “recess appointment” to keep the government running if necessary when the Senate is in recess.

The problem is that the Senate was not in recess, so Mr. Obama cannot make a recess appointment.   Rather than follow the Constitution, which told Mr. Obama “no” to this appointment, he said, “I refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer, I’m not going to stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people that we were elected to serve.”    He may not like it that a minority in the Senate uses “party ideology” as a stumblingblock to his plan, but he cannot ignore the Constitution.  That is, he cannot unless we let him.

Mr. Obama is Attempting to use the Commerce Clause to force you to force you to purchase a product he wants you to buy

I have written about it elsewhere  and the campaign by the Democrat Party under the leadership of Mr. Obama continues to try to use the Constitution as a means of forcing you to make purchases of things you may not want and if you refuse you will be fined.

His plan to create socialized medicine in America as it exists in Britain and Canada was forced through the Congress by Democrats who announced that they had to pass it so we would know what was in it.

A part of ‘Obamacare’ is a mandate that everyone in the country purchase health insurance.  If we don’t we will have to pay a “tax” (previously called a fine).   The communist leaning Democrat Party wants to justify this by the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution which says, “The Congress shall have Power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.”  Only a “constitutional law professor” with a political agenda could interpret this to mean that you have to purchase health insurance or be fined.

By simply declaring the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance to be  a matter of interstate commerce – which it clearly is not – the dictator in the White House usurps your constitutional freedoms in order to “fundamentally change the United States of America.”

It this is permitted to stand, there are no limits to what the government can require you to purchase.  They will require you to purchase specific kinds of food given that diet is intrinsically tied to our health that the government will now control.  Expect hamburgers to be outlawed.  The can require you to purchase a gym membership because if you exercise it will lower the cost of government healthcare.  It could require you to purchase only electric automobiles made by General Motors, or purchase only clothes made in America.

Mr. Obama has publicly misappropriated Government Money in Violation of the Constitution

Mr. Obama arranged for $17 billion of TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money to go to financially bail out General Motors as part of his campaign to keep UAW union jobs which will help the Democrat Party in general and Mr. Obama in particular.

This is in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution Article 1; Section 9:  “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”

That is, no money from the accounts of the U.S. government can be spent on anything, “…but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law…”  That means that the legislation providing TARP funds can only be spent on what the legislation specifically stated the money could be spent for.

I will use a few quotes regarding the purpose of the TARP legislation:

The purposes of this Act are—

(1) to immediately provide authority and facilities that the Secretary of the Treasury can use to restore liquidity and stability to the financial system of the United States; and

(2) to ensure that such authority and such facilities are used in a manner that–

(A) protects home values, college funds, retirement accounts, and life savings;

(B) preserves homeownership and promotes jobs and economic growth;

(C) maximizes overall returns to the taxpayers of the United States; and

(D) provides public accountability for the exercise of such authority.

Note that there is absolutely nothing in the stated purpose of the law that would permit it to be spent on an automobile manufacturing company – General Motors.

But there’s more!

(9) TROUBLED ASSETS- The term ‘troubled assets’ means–

(A) residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages, that in each case was originated or issued on or before March 14, 2008, the purchase of which the Secretary determines promotes financial market stability; and

(B) any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability, but only upon transmittal of such determination, in writing, to the appropriate committees of Congress

(Read the whole text of the legislation here.)

General Motors is a manufacturing company, not a bank, not a mortgage holder, is not a financial instrument; and so there is no way it qualifies to receive funds under this legislation.  Any money given or loaned to GM constitutes an impeachable offense because it violates the Constitution.

The Obama administration gave GM $17 billion in money they borrowed from China and others while guaranteeing that you would pay the loans back with your tax dollars.  Mr. Obama clearly engaged in a criminal violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Mr. Obama has violated his oath of office by refusing to insure domestic tranquility or provide for the common defense

The Constitution prescribes the oath every person assuming the Presidency must take: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The preamble of the Constitution says, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In violation of the purpose of the existence of the government of the United States, Mr. Obama and his administration used Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) gun running campaign called Fast and Furious  to justify more gun control which is another violation of the Constitutional Second amendment:  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

These circumstances are absolutely disturbing.  A bureaucracy of the government, the ATF Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms), devised a plan to prevent gun shop owners from complying with U.S. law in order that sham gun purchasers could illegally buy the guns that our government wanted to be delivered into the hands of violent, criminal citizens of a different country to be used for illegal purposes against the U.S.

They had no plan to follow the guns or trace them nor did they make any attempt to do so.  IN other words, the plan was to enable illegally obtained guns to travel from the U.S. to Mexico without being traced; they had no intention of capturing the criminals who obtained the guns.  Our government under Mr. Obama wanted violent criminals to obtain illegal weapons in order to dramatize the importance of more gun control!  This is a clear violation of the whole purpose of the U.S. government to, “…establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”

Mr. Obama has also violated the Constitution by presiding over this program that clearly is not intended to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” or to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

These are presented as economic theories because people simply do not have the courage to publicly admit they want more of your stuff. Envy and greed are unseemly and vulgar; on the other hand, socialism, economic justice, and income redistribution sound trendy and intellectual.

Socialism – by whatever name it uses – is the impossible dream that invariably turns into a bloody nightmare.  Just witness the burning streets in Athens and Oakland.  For that matter, consider Cambodia under Pol Pot, Russia under Stalin, Germany under Hitler, or Cuba under Castro and Guevara. It makes promises it can never keep and it’s promise is to overcome the human condition itself.  It makes people believe that human frailty can be corrected through the right government regulations.  It attempts to enforce an equality that nature has not intended.

Enforced by Coercion

It can only be implemented by using the coercive power of government to forcibly confiscate private property from individuals who have acquired it so it can be given to people who did not earn it according to a metric developed by government bureaucrats who are very well paid to openly carry out the theft.

Socialism is no economic theory.  It is only a story told; a fiction.

Again, socialism is a like a mirage: it promises something you desperately want; but as you move toward it, it disappears and turns into a withering desert.  It cannot be achieved.  Ask the Greeks, the Italians, the Portuguese, and the Irish.

It will never go away though because envy and greed are universal flaws of human nature.  Like other intrinsic sins, we must personally work to overcome them ; they will not be overcome by a moralistic government which chooses to use its power to attempt to recreate the human condition.

It will never go away because it is a way of sounding intellectually and morally superior.  It actually seems intuitive.

Socialism: Rhetoric not Economics

People who are motivated by envy will never respond to arguments about the economic superiority of capitalism because ‘socialism’ isn’t about economics – it’s about wanting more of somebody elses’ stuff.

In order to deal with the Party of Envy, we must quit rushing forward to bayonet the straw men they continually set up.  We must deal with the real enemies – envy and greed.

The arguments of the Party of Envy range from, “I think it’s a good idea to spread the wealth around, don’t you?” to “We stand in favor of economic justice don’t you?”

These questions are what lawyers call “leading questions” because the question contains the answer the questioner is looking for.  These kinds of questions cannot be asked in a court, and we should never respond to them the way they are asked.

The questions all contain planted axioms, viz., one person controls the wealth and therefore another person cannot accumulate it; the envious alone are capable of deciding who is wealthy and who isn’t; the Party of Envy alone is qualified to decide who gets what, define fairness,  and so on.

These questions and propositions frequently put forward by “journalists” in the attempt to cover the vulgarity of envy.

The Party of Envy redefines envy and greed as moral virtues depending on who is envious and greedy; so they are always presenting their case in moral terms rather than economic ones.

Arguing About Socialism

In order to refute these arguments and save our republic, we must respond to them on moral grounds not economic grounds.  Remember, the issues are envy and greed, not economics.

When it is suggested that it is more moral to spread the wealth around, we should ask, “Are you suggesting that the President thinks it’s a moral good thing for him to spread my wealth around?  That may sound good in the abstract, but exactly whose money are you proposing to take?  Who exactly are you proposing to give it to?  The President earns more than I do.  I think it’s a moral thing for me to spread his wealth around – wouldn’t you agree that that would be moral by your definition?  You have no idea how much of my money I already spread around.  So who are you to suggest I would be more moral if I acted according to the President’s definition than to my own?”

When asked if we believe in economic fairness, we should respond by saying, “Absolutely!  Now you tell me — who gets to determine what’s fair?  Seriously, tell me right now what you think is fair, and tell me why your idea of fairness is better than my idea of fairness.”  Question the questioner.

The Consequences of Socialism

Government employees giving your substance to a person you do not know and who may refuse to change their destructive behavior cannot possibly be defended in moral terms.

Thankfulness is Excluded

When the person receives your money as an entitlement to them, it means that they have no obligation to be thankful for the help: why should they be thankful — the government ways they deserve it!

Entitlements exclude thankfulness and encourage more greed and envy.  If there are thanks at all, they go to the politician who gave them your money – not you.  You remain nameless and faceless.

Resentment Increases

Worse, you are denounced by the Party of Envy as being wealthy, greedy, stingy, and evil; so the person who receives your wealth as an entitlement is taught to hate you for having earned it.

Charity is Excluded

Charity is excluded; thankfulness is excluded.  You are denounced.  Resentment increases.

But if I am permitted by the government to engage in the gift of true charity, I give because I desire to do so.  I give to a person known to me to be worthy of my sacrifice; a person who has shown responsibility in the past.

In this case both charity and true thanksgiving are accomplished.  Resentment is diminished.  In addition, both I and the recipient can mutually admire what my gift has accomplished in their life; everyone is rewarded.

The Party of Envy considers true charity to be immoral and unfair.  It’s their belief that only highly paid government bureaucrats are capable of giving my money away.

So, what’s the latest proposal from President Obama and the Party of Envy?  They propose to tax you for financially supporting charitable work — the government needs that money more than the poor and sick!  They are preparing to punish you for giving away your own money.  Entitlements rule.

Now I want to discuss the participants in the manipulation; the people who promote this scheme.

The Articles of Faith of this neopagan religion are:

• The earth is warming
• Warming is bad
• People are causing the warming
• People must be stopped

The Overall Means of Manipulation

Throughout our history, the government has used crises to implement more governmental control.  Following the Civil War, the government passed and the people approved amendments to the Constitution.  Certainly the text of the Constitution had to be amended because those who previously had been excluded from participation in political life and the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution needed to be included.  The problem is that the amendments were written in such a way that the Supreme Court has interpreted them to mean the the federal government can do exactly the opposite of what the amendments say!  Discrimination is presumably forbidden by these amendments, but the government required discrimination in hiring for many years by the presumption that the racial makeup of a workplace was evidence of discrimination if it did not reflect the racial makeup of the area in which the business was located.  In addition, these amendments have been used to attempt to overturn the 9th and 10th amendments regarding powers that belong to states or to the people – not the federal government.

Think about the explosion of governmental controls that came into being and extended the Great Depression. Wage and price controls, control of many commodities leading to the confiscation and destruction of poultry because they were sold in the wrong city, guaranteed prices for various crops grown on farms, and endless other impositions of government intrusion for which they had no constitutional warrant.

In the years since, the government has guaranteed prices for many farming products, and sometimes destroys the food it paid for to keep prices high.  The products include milk, peanuts, grains, rice, tobacco, certain animal products like mohair wool subsidies and more.  In some cases the governmental control of what you can grow on your own property is so severe, they will actually pay farmers to leave their ground idle and not grow anything on it!

In the last 15 years we have seen two attempts to take over the medical and hospital community in the U.S.  First during the Clinton years, Mrs. Clinton (now Secretary of State) attempted to create a context in which the government would not only take over the entire medical community, but would specify how many doctors medical schools could produce, and which specialties doctors could enter.

Thankfully it didn’t pass, but now we have another attempt, and this one purports to solve the crisis of the cost of medical care.  We now know that the law would give an appointed panel of 15 members control over the cost of the program which would mean that if the costs get too high, they could outlaw certain prescriptions and procedures leading the deaths of those who have become too expensive to treat in the government’s view.  Where in the Constitution would we find any enumerated power giving the government the right to control what prescriptions you should have access to?

Another, and more pertinent control is what the government considers a “wetland.”  Governmental control now involves a low elevation that held water a century ago, but has not been wet in the past 100 years.  This comes through the Endangered Species Act, or Navigable Waterways legislation giving the government absolute control over what you are permitted to do on your own property.  Utopia indeed.

A Few Examples of the Practical Consequences of Environmental Tyranny

The prescription for preventing humans from murdering Mother Earth is to end all human activity that contributes to making earth warmer. This means a multitude of practical, everyday things that we are being forced into. For example:

Getting rid of stuff that destroys ozone meant you had to purchase a new GE refrigerator, and now, you need to get rid of that one and purchase yet another new GE refrigerator. Icebox anyone?

Stop using disposable diapers, clamshells at McDonalds, plastic cups that actually keep your coffee warm and don’t burn your fingers, and plastic grocery bags because they are making landfills overflow when newspapers (mostly leftist propaganda rags) are by far the largest component of landfills. They force us into using paper bags which require more pollution to create and are harder to dispose of than plastic bags. Idiots.

Add methyl tertiary-butyl ether, (MTBE) to our gasoline to clean up the air as a part of the government required Clean Air Act; oops, MTBE is a carcinogen and leeches into the ground water so the EPA required it to be removed from gasoline and we pay $billions to clean it up. Corporate farmers then sought approval for ethanol to be added in place of MTBE since ethanol is manufactured from corn, but ethanol increases pollution and decreases air quality; in addition, the cost of corn has increased from $2.00 a bushel in 2006 to $7.70 today. This drives up the cost of corn for food, sweeteners, pork, and beef; but it makes corporate farmers a lot of money – and costs us a lot of money.  What are they thinking?

It is illegal in many cities to cut down a tree you yourself planted on your own property – you must first apply for a permit; and violations can result in fines imposed by government.  You don’t own your own property; you don’t own your own trees even though you purchased them and planted them, prune them, water them, fertilize them, and care for them.  Other people may want to look at them, so you have to get their permission to cut them down.  See here, here, here, and here; and I could give hundreds more.

I could go on and on, but will spare you the agony.  The above examples show some of the environmental issues being used to force you into changing the way you live with no positive effect on the environment. Only God Himself knows what your world will be like it we permit them to win.

No doubt it’s a fool’s errand to try to understand what radical ideologues actually think; but whether their thinking is faulty, or they are lying to force us to live differently - we must in either case think clearly about the facts. So let’s look at the groups collaborating together to create this brave new world.

Participants in the Manipulation

No doubt we all think from time to time how much better the world would be if we could just run it.  Some thinkers have actually written books on the subject, and we can read what they considered. Among them, The Republic, by Plato; Politics, by Aristotle; City of God by Augustine; Utopia, by Thomas More; Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley; 1984, by George Orwell; and Ecotopia, by Earnest Callenbach. Even books like Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury; Anthem, by Ayn Rand; and Walden Two, by B. F. Skinner can be considered visions of the future.  Some of these are proposals for how the world should operate; others are visions of what is likely to happen in a man made Utopia.

It is amazing to consider the almost universal expectation that the future will be characterized by the aggregation of power away from the people to the state; by mechanization; by the loss of individuality; by increased control over every human action accompanied by the exercise of power by the state to force compliance with state-mandated actions.

In this section I will show that there is an alliance between environmentalists and communists/socialists to bring about Utopia. I do not suggest that even a sizeable percentage of environmentalists are also communists; in fact I believe them to be two almost discrete groups.  I do believe environmentalists are either overt socialists, or are comfortable with the imposition of socialism to achieve their Utopia. The point I want to make is that the Utopia each of these groups seek to impose may not be exactly the same, but they cooperate together on the means to achieve the goal they seek.

Consider the words of Vaclav Klaus – President of the Czech Republic – about the goals shared by communists and some environmentalists.

The name of the new danger will undoubtedly be different, but its substance will be very similar. There will be the same attractive, to a great extent pathetic and at first sight quisi-noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of something greater than the self, supplemented by enormous self-confidence on the side of those who stand behind it. Like their predecessors, they will be certain they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their ideas reality. In the past it was in the name of the masses (of of the proletariat), this time it is in the name of the planet. Yet, structurally, both are very similar. I see the current danger in environmentalism, and especially in its strongest version, climate alarmism.

(You can read a longer transcript of a speech by President Klaus here. By the way, www.wattsupwiththat.com is a great resource on climate science. Here is another.)

George Reisman, PhD; is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics and author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996). In this book dealing with economics and capitalism, Dr. Reisman has some things to say about those who want to end the capitalistic model of economics, and has this to say about the common goals of both socialists/communists and environmentalists:

The only difference I can see between the green movement of the environmentalists and the old red movement of the Communists and socialists is the superficial one of the specific reasons for which they want to violate individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Reds claimed that the individual could not be left free because the result would be such things as “exploitation,” “monopoly,” and depressions. The Greens claim that the individual cannot be left free because the result will be such things as destruction of the ozone layer, acid rain, and global warming. Both claim that centralized government control over economic activity is essential. The Reds wanted it for the alleged sake of achieving human prosperity. The Greens want it for the alleged sake of avoiding environmental damage . . [And in the end,] [b]oth the Reds and the Greens want someone to suffer and die; the one, the capitalists and the rich, for the alleged sake of the wage earners and the poor; the other, a major portion of all mankind, for the alleged sake of the lower animals and inanimate nature (p. 102).

Read “6 Lessons We Can Learn From Communism” on the www.treehugger.com website to see how environmentalists are learning from the communists.

Various socialists groups also work together with environmentalists to reach common goals; see here, and here.

My view is that both of these groups have a shared disposition to use the same means to manipulate the populace.  Keep in mind that manipulation is required, because when collectivists of either type tell the truth about their ultimate goals free people will not follow them.

The Shared Means of Manipulation to Achieve Utopia:

• The willingness to economically subjugate people to bring about a ‘greater good’
• The willingness to restrict human freedom to achieve utopia
• The willingness to confiscate private wealth to create an end the wealth creator opposes
• The willingness to use the coercive power of government to control human reproduction
• The view that private property does not exist
• The willingness to take the lives of  very large numbers of people in order to create their utopia
• The Willingness to use deception, manipulation, and lying as appropriate because the utopia they seek is a greater good and the end justifies any means to achieve it

I will leave it to the reader to consider examples of these shared goals by environmentalists, communists, and socialists. Again, I so not suggest that the ends sought be each of these groups are identical; I do suggest that they share many of the means by which they seek to achieve Utopia; and that a Utopia is possible, and would make the world a better place.

The only way to create the world in the image you desire is to deny individuals the freedoms they seek so you can create the environment the way you wish it to be.  Socialists support environmentalists, and vice versa. Communists are frequently represented at socialists gatherings and environmental events. Wealthy supporters of socialism, or environmentalism give money to their own charities which funnel the money through others that finally gets into the hands of environmental terrorists who blow up houses and auto dealerships. Internationalists work together with environmentalists through the United Nations because they both seek a Utopian world. The networks are thoroughly intertwined.

All of these various groups have spokespersons who have access to media through which they lie, misrepresent, and give credence to other liars and cheats. Many of these groups are supported with money you paid in taxes because our government gives the money to causes like Planned Parenthood, environmental groups, advocacy groups, legal groups who sue businesses trying to force them into compliance with the goals of the group. (You can read about how tax dollars are funneled through the Legal Services Corporation to fund all manner of radical political, criminal, and environmental activities.) Groups like Jesse Jackson’s PUSH, Al Sharpton’s National Action Network stage demonstrations in support of environmental causes and socialist causes; and socialists support them back. They also demonstrate at businesses attempting to force the business to hire certain people - of course they go away when the business agrees to do better and makes a large donation to the group.

A democratic republic cannot survive if the people who vote in its elections are ignorant.

We are all ignorant of many things: the mathematics PhD has to hire a mechanic to fix his car; the surgeon hires someone to paint his house. But we cannot afford to be ignorant of the large issues challenging human freedom right now. We cannot be ignorant of the stand of various individuals who ask for our vote. We cannot rely on only one news outlet with a prior political disposition. We cannot refuse to consider the consequences of long-term decisions about short-term problems. We cannot save our country if we heed those who cry “Wolf!” in their attempt to coerce us into bad actions because we are afraid. We cannot spend all our time being entertained while the country is being dismantled. We cannot focus only on personal consequences regarding elections, legislation, or legal decisions; we have to consider that perhaps it’s best if we personally suffer in order to preserve our freedoms purchased at such great price.

If the environmentalists win, worship of the earth becomes the national religion.  Earth First! is not just a radical, anti-human group – it is a commitment on the part of well-funded radicals whose central aim is to deny you the freedoms you hold under the U.S. Constitution. It means you come second.

Some see humans as parasites that are a constant irritant to the Host, who have lately proliferated sufficiently that we make the Host very sick and in danger of dying. The pagans feel they must do something about it.

Just two years ago, the UN designated April 22nd as “International Mother Earth Day” with a unanimous 192 nations voting “aye.”

On April 20th of this year, a group of socialist countries forced a debate at the United Nations which is seriously considering granting ‘human rights’ to the earth itself. This is beyond anthropomorphising; it is sacralizing.

Bolivia is the lead nation, and they are promoting the universal adoption of official Bolivian law, The Law of Mother Earth. The proposed UN resolution would establish at least 11 ‘rights’ for Mother Earth including: the right to life and to exist; (a better deal than most of the UN nations offer their own citizens) the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Former Obama Advisor Van Jones is also promoting rights for Mother Earth as well. He is a Board Member of an organization called “Pachamama” – apparently a goddess revered by some South American natives.

She is celebrated by annual offerings of “food, beverages, coca leaves and cigars.”  This is sure to catch on around the world. At least the coca leaves – cigars might not work.

Neopagans:

• Do not believe in human stewardship of the earth
• Reject that we are created by God in his image and likeness; and as such are both His representation, and His representativeson earth
• See humanity as species of parasite infecting the Host, Mother Earth
• See humanity as one specie among millions on earth worthy of no more dignity than any other specie
• Seek to end capitalism
• Seek to end the tools of modernity
• Seek socialistic world governance in order to coercively mandate all manner of human activities

If you Have a god (or goddess) you Must Have the Following:

Environmentalism is now a religion, and if you have a religion, you have to create a hierarchy, and a form of worship. This has all been created in the environmental movement – there are now:

• Sacred scriptures
• Mystical religious language
• Anointed priests who are to pronounce blessings and imprecations; evangelize and teach the heathen, and guard the orthodoxy against heresies
• Worship and celebration services

Sacred Scriptures:

“Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson published in 1962 which has resulted in the deaths of 47,000,000 people by malaria

“The Population Explosion”by Stanford Universit professor Paul Erlich published in 1968. In the book Erlichpredicted England would have ceased to exist (currently celebrating another Royal marriage), India would have collapsed from famine, mass starvation would engulf the globe, andhe concluded by saying, “it is too late to take action to save many of those people.”

Mr. Erlich continues to be celebrated as a priest of this new religion. Apparently pagans don’t stone false prophets.

“Ecoscience, Population, Resources, Environment”a college textbook by John Holdren and Paul Erlich published in 1977. In the book Holdrenproposes that human population is so dangerous that we must find a way to put “sterilants into the drinking water” in order to prevent pregnancies. Babies born to teen moms should have them taken away by law andgiven to childless couples; those who “contribute to social deterioration can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility.” Mr. Holdrenbelieves in state regulated euthanasia in apparent agreement with Margret Sanger that we must not permit human weeds to reproduce.

Finally, he suggests, “a planetary regime” would be instituted where world government uses “police powers” to control the minute details of each person’s life in order to preserve Mother Earth.

“Earth in the Balance” by Al Gore published in 1992. In this ridiculous screed Mr. Gore outlines his strategic goals:

First, we must stabilize the earth’s population – which, of course, means government control of the real objective of sex

Second, the rapid creation and development of environmentally appropriate technologies. This means huge governmental subsidies of ineffective technologies that nobody wants or is willing to pay for. We of course would have our wealth extracted through taxation so the government can engage in crony capitalism with huge corporations. (Think General Electric earning $14 billion last year, and not paying a cent in taxes.)

Third, a “comprehensive and ubiquitous change in the economic rules of the road in which we must measure the impact of economic decisions on the environment.” I will interpret: we abandon capitalism and institute socialism and use the economy to carry out the desire of our pagan rulers.

Fourth, these new economic and industrial and financial institutions must be international treaties leaving no escape from the onerous regulations

Fifth, a globally required re-education program forcing the population to adopt these new principles

Sixth, socialistic governments must be established throughout the world in order to create

These are some of the sacred texts of the new Utopian pagans.

Mystical Language:

You will find the mystical language in all of these writings andmore. It consists of a new vocabulary with the use of words like “sustainability,” “earthfriendly,” “renewable,” “biodiversity,” (kindof like multiculturalism) “endangered species,” “climate change,” “habitat,” “green,” “anthropocentric global warming,” “wetland,” “clean water,” carbon footprint,” “greenhouse effect,” “ecosystem,” “ecoscience,” “deep ecology,” “environmental justice,” and more. Hijack the language, and you hijack the capacity to think clearly.

The Priests of the New Paganism:

We have mentioned some of them above, and there are more. But I want to focus on how they bless, curse, and re-educate the population to bring salvation to Mother Earth.  Lots of sin to expiate.

We hear of those who produce jobs being referred to as “rapists of the land,” “developers,” “evil capitalists,” “fat cats,” “deniers,” and more. These curses have negative economic effects on the companies and workers employed by them.

We see neopaganism being required education in all levels of public education. Al Gore’s book has been used in thousands of public school classrooms. (See the tens of millions of web hits for “environmental curricula for children.”)

The federal government uses its judicial power to punish industries engaged in ‘heretical’ operations; and its tax authority to reward failing business who are promoting the pagan orthodoxy. There is no investigation of provable lies told by those receiving government grants to support pagan orthodoxy regarding the climate. (See here, and here.)

How Has All This Happened?

We have long since been in the age of empiricism andrationalism, so why should we be faced with an elitist attempt to promote what amounts to worship of the earth?

Simply it is the desire of the few to impose their vision of what the world should be like on the many.

The view of these pagans is that they should have the freedom to tax you, punish you, censor books and publications and speech, control the opinions you are permitted to hold; and confiscate your money and use it against you to accomplish all this. They believe they should be free to do this because they are who they are. In the Messianic words of Barack Obama, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for!” These people truly believe they have a manifest destiny to exercise their freedom, and limit yours.

Their vision has no room for you to exercise the same freedom as they grant to themselves. They don’t want you to exercise your freedom of choice because it conflicts with their vision of what the world should be like. It is, in the words of Thomas Sowell, “The Vision of the Anointed.”

These Elmer Gantry’s of paganism do not want you to fight them or oppose them – that’s too costly for them. Then how will they convince you to go along with their Utopian vision? They will lie to you in order to get you to act in a way that is antithetical to your interests and synonymous with their interests. Like gathering wild horses on the American prairie, they herd you into a smaller and smaller enclosures by creating fear that if you go another direction calamity will happen. Before you understand what was happening, you are in the corral they have created for you, and escape is impossible.

These people are coercive Utopians because this is the only way they can impose their vision.  They cannot persuade you by telling scientific or economic truth, so you must be coerced. Coercion requires manipulation. The tools of manipulation are different from the reasons for it.

The current tools of manipulation have to do with scaring you about the impact of humans on the earth.  They seek to intimidate you into believing we must be stopped. Remember, this is only a tool. The goal is to limit your freedoms and force your activity into specific directions that help reinforce the vision of the pagan elite. It’s a kind of environmental “scared straight.”

• In 1968, it was Paul Erlich in “The Population Bomb,” who wrote, “The Battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.”
• In 1969, he wrote, “I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
• In 1970 on Earth Day Erlich said, “In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.”
• In 1970, Kenneth E.F. Watt on Earth Day talking about air pollution, “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000…This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.”
• In 1971, it was Reid Bryson in “Global Ecology: Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man,” who wrote, “The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.” (Emphasis mine)
• In June 24, 1974 it was Time magazine announcing, “The earth’s current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries — the U.S., Canada and Australia — global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: ‘I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.’”
• In 1975 it was Newsweek magazine that said, “There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon…The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hare-pressed to keep up with it.” Newsweek, April 28, 1975
• In 1976, it was Lowell Ponte who wrote in, “The Cooling,” “This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.”
• On March 26, 2006 Time magazine now opines on global warming, “As fast as global warming is transforming the oceans and the ice caps, it’s having an even more immediate effect on land. People, animals and plants living in dry, mountainous regions like the western U.S. make it through summer thanks to snowpack that collects on peaks all winter and slowly melts off in warm months. Lately the early arrival of spring and the unusually blistering summers have caused the snowpack to melt too early, so that by the time it’s needed, it’s largely gone. Climatologist Philip Mote of the University of Washington has compared decades of snowpack levels in Washington, Oregon and California and found that they are a fraction of what they were in the 1940s, and some snowpacks have vanished entirely.” Pick and Roll.

These are the tools of manipulation.

In the next post I will deal with the reason for this manipulation, and show who is involved in it; and what they hope to achieve.

The reason for my new-found fear is that it just dawned on me that for the past several years I have been earning more money than Chrysler Corporation; even more than General Motors.  In fact, I’ve been earning more than Chrysler and General Motors combined, for crying out loud!

Well, it could be different this year what with the government taking some of my money and spreading it around to GM.  Hey, if you don’t count their $billions in debt, or their (almost) unlimited stash of taxpayer money they can tap whenever they want, they are looking almost profitable!  Now if they could just sell some cars.

I was hesitant at first to make this post public for fear of Mr. Obama finding out just how much I really make compared to GM, but he’s busy right now licking his wounds from the trouncing he got by that Iranian guy Mahmūd Ahmadinezhād over nuclear weapons.  Besides, Mr Obama will attand a lecture tomorrow by Mexican President Calderone about what a horrible place America is for Mexicans to visit and collect welfare, and that if we don’t stop treating Mexican citizens like this, he might call us names and discourage them from coming!  I know that will keep the president’s attention off me because he will be apologizing to illegal Mexicans for several days.  Besides, everyone who works for GM has been making more than GM too; if I’m in trouble, so are they!  Except I don’t belong to the UAW.  Isn’t socialism great?

First, GM got $52 billion from the U.S. government and $9.5 Billion from the Canadian government and Ontario for a total of $61.5 billion.  Of this, this, the U.S. government considered $6.7 billion a loan, and $1.4 billion of Canada’s involvement they consider to be a loan. 

So here’s the deal, GM runs itself into the ground, builds crappy cars, ignores the impact of imported cars beginning in the late 1960’s, betrays its customers (think gas engines converted to diesel in the 1980’s) gives away the store to the United Autoworkers Union, promises healthcare for life, ad infinitum; then when everything crumbles down around them, they cry like a baby to “borrow” your money so they can rebuild. 

George Bush and Barack Obama both foolishly – and unconstitutionally – gave GM money that could only go to financial institutions according to the underlying legislation.  The U.S. Constitution forbids any money from the Treasury to be spend for any purpose other than what the underlying legislation prescribes.   (Section 9, paragraph 7, “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”  Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama misappropriated federal money when they gave money to GM.)  So now, the U.S. government owns 61% of General Motors, and Canada 12%.  Barack Obama is the largest shareholder in the company – he bought the stock with your money.  He handpicked the new GM President, and now while the company still owes $53.4 billion to the U.S. and Canadian governments they have the hair to claim GM has paid the ‘loan’ back 5 years early.  The stock transfer was a loan also, because the socialist Democrat Party government we have is not selling the stock and putting the money back into the Treasury.  If GM is so great, people would be standing in line to purchase that stock.  Right?

The secured bondholders of GM bonds got 33% of the value of their bonds; the UAW which had unsecuredbonds got 100% of the value of their bonds.  Any normal bankruptcy would pay 100% of the secured bonds before unsecured bondholders got a dime – which is why Obama didn’t permit this thing to go to bankruptcy court: he wanted to steal the secured bondholder’s money so he could give it to the UAW.  In addition, he wanted to steal $45.3 billion of your money so he could exchange it for GM stock.  That way the federal government becomes the top dog at GM.  At the risk of being hailed into federal court for defamation, or being publicly denounced by Bill Clinton I would call this a gangster government.  What other term applies?

Buy a GM car?  Not a chance – I’ll keep my Ford.

They have only acted in the public interest, don’t you know.  They have only been trying to clean up George Bush’s failures, his mess; and they have no interest in listening to people who made the mess, Mr. Obama says. In fact Bush’s mess is so big it explains every failure of all future Democrat presidents! They are only interested in lowering the debt, they announce; just trying to save small businesses, working people, the republic; and it’s all for the children.  If people only understood, they wouldn’t complain – they would thank me. Poor unwashed throng – they are just incapable of understanding my depth of thinking.  Heh.

What do these compassionate overseers get for their compassionate, all-knowing, noble and sacrificial efforts?  People are actually yelling at them!  They get called names, like “liberal,” or “progressive,” or even worse, “socialist!”  Oh, the humanity!  That they have been calling working, taxpaying, churchgoing, law-abiding citizens “rioters, Nazis, spoiled children, un-American, angry mobsters, fascists;” and in the words of the famous wordsmith Harry Reid, “evil-mongers,” isn’t an insult because it is so painfully true! ” They are bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” says Barack the Compassionate.  If they only knew how much he has given, how much he has sacrificed in order to look after for them.  He suffers in silence at the ignorance of these bitter clingers.  Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Now, Democrats are attempting to suggest that the exercise of free speech by saying that you do not want, and will not stand for the Democrat Party takeover of industry, healthcare, and banking; and forcing you to purchase a product you don’t want means that you are probably working in the dark of night making a fertilizer bombs in your garage intending to blow up a federal building. 

As I recall, it was Bill Clinton who launched the attack against the Branch Davidians killing 74 including 20 children; and it was Bill Clinton who pardoned the FALN terrorists.  These 16 members of a Puerto Rican terror group exploded 120 bombs in the United States, mostly in New York City and Chicago.  Their intention was to actually overthrow “Yanki capitalist monopoly.”  There were convictions for conspiracy to commit robbery, bomb-making, and sedition, as well as firearms and explosives violations. They were convicted of conspiracy and sedition and sentenced with terms ranging from 35 to 105 years in prison. Mr. Clinton pardoned them after they had served only 19 years in prison.  This group had killed 6 people, permanently maimed many others including police officers.  The decision was so bad that Hillary Clinton who was running for the Senate denounced her husband’s actions.  The U.S. Congress  passed a resolution denouncing it 95-2 in the Senate and 311-41 in the House.  Clinton claimed ‘executive privilege’, and refused to permit the FBI to testify.  He apparently had something to hide.  Perhaps his actions encouraged terrorism because the perps saw the U.S. wasn’t serious about punishing them.  Just sayin’.

Remember: it was Barack Obama who friended Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground.  This group publicly sought to overthrow the government of the United States by violence and to install a “dictatorship of the proletariat.”  A position paper they issued in 1969 stated the goal was, “the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classless world: world communism.”  Barack Obama’s friend Bill Ayers was there for all of it; he was a signatory of the position paper.  He has refused to say he was sorry; except to say he is sorry he didn’t do more.  He and his wife Bernadine Dohrn were present at all the planning meetings they called “wargasms.”  This, then, is Obama’s friend; but Mr. Obama thinks middle aged, employed, peaceful, taxpaying Americans who are exercising liberties granted by God, and secured by the Constitution are terrorists.  I guess when you are as far out as this bunch is, normal people look like revolutionaries.  When you’re upside down, everything you see looks like it’s upside down.

Remind me again; who are the victims here?  Who are the revolutionaries?

During his speech at the event, Mr. Obama said, “By cutting out the middle man, [banks formerly making these loans] we’ll save American taxpayers $68 billion in the coming years…real savings that we’ll reinvest to help improve the quality of higher education and make it more affordable.” (emphasis mine)  Before I get into the real agenda, I point out that its a good thing that our President has never run a company even the size of a lemonade stand.  Anyone who would state that they are saving the cost of higher education $68 billion dollars and then says he will spend those same $68 billion dollars on higher education would have to declare bankruptcy on his lemonade stand.  (“I’m going to save the people who purchase my lemonade $68 billion by using water from the hose instead of bottled water.  Then I am going to reinvest that $68 billion in my lemonade business by improving the quality of my lemonade business.”)  Must have gone to Harvard.

And so we know the takeover is only the start of the transformation.  Here, I give my list of things that the Obama administration plans on doing with higher education since they now control the future of  most everyone who will attend college in the future.  Here is the official White House transcript.

Give more money to community colleges

“First, we will reinvest a portion of those savings to upgrade our community colleges.”

These are the places where, among other things, taxpayers pay for overpaid educators to teach English to illegal aliens and public high school graduates.

Give more money away to students

“We’ll also help open the doors of higher education to more students, we’ll also reinvest part of that $68 billion in savings in Pell Grants…we are going to offer over 800,000 additional Pell awards over the next 10 years…raise the amount they’re worth to almost $6,000.”

This will help even more unqualified people gain entrance to college and university (after they have learned how to add and spell at Community College).  It will also have the added side benefit of keeping college tuitions high, and help them continue to increase the cost more than any other sector – except for drug companies – of our society.

Forgive loans for certain kinds of students

“Today, we’re making it easier for responsible students to pay off their loans..starting in 2014, you won’t have to pay more than 10% of your income in repaying your student loans…if you pay your loans on time, you’ll only have to pay them off [what?] for 20 years…and you’ll only have to pay them off [sic.] for 10 years if you repay them with service to your community, and to our country, as a teacher or a nurse of a member of our Armed Forces.”  (Does this mean that if I have a 3 year auto loan and only pay off two years of it we can consider it paid off?)

So let me understand. The federal government will make loans that require you to pay no more than a stated percentage of your income – no income, no payment.  (And if you stay at home, Dad can pay your health insurance!)  In addition, regardless of whether or not you have paid it off, you can stop paying in 20 years.  Unless you decide to go into a career path favored by Mr. Obama, in which case you only need to pay 10 years regardless of how much more you owe.  Thus the ‘loan’ becomes a gift.

Give handouts for specific racial groups

“Finally, we’ll reinvest some of the $68 billion in savings to strengthen our historically black colleges and universities and minority serving institutions.”  You can find a list of the various categories of ‘minority serving institutions’ and which institutions are listed here.   

So.  Now that the government controls who can afford to go to college, the possibilities of this “reinvestment” are endless. 

1.  Since about 50% of all college students receive some form of government assistance to pay for their education, the government will now be able to control who can afford to go to college. 

2. We know that Mr. Obama wants to spend $billions on so-called ‘historically black colleges’ and ‘minority serving institutions.’  His disposition is to increase the number of minorities who go to college whether they deserve it or not.  Think of it as “economic affirmative action.”  So his plan is  to discriminate who gets into college, and which colleges receive government money on the basis of race.  Think “reparations.”

3. The government plans to lose $billions on these student “loans.”  Is it really a loan if you don’t have to pay it back? 

4. Mr. Obama has no plans whatsoever to lower the cost of college education, he only plans on subsidizing the increasing cost so even more students need government assistance to attend.

5. Mr. Obama plans to transform America by herding college students into certain careers.  He will do this by determining that students who choose specific majors will not have to repay much their loan.  In this way, he can provide the family care physicians he wants; he can produce new government bureaucrats by supporting careers in public service-  qua ‘community organizers;’ or expand or contract the supply of any specialty he wants.

6. The takeover of student loans means that just one of the companies previous engaged in these loans – Sallie Mae – will cut 2,500 jobs.  So now we can look forward to tens of thousands of new government workers who can’t be fired, earn almost twice as much as the private workers, and who will earn even more of our substance as we pay them throughout their long retirements.

Controlling American industry, controlling our banks, controlling what medical services anyone can receive, and controlling who gets into college based on race, ethnic background or whatever test he wants to apply; what careers they choose, and whether or not they have to pay back their government loan – I’d call that “transformation.”  Get homeschooled, study the classics, learn to think critically, go to Hillsdale College in Michigan; have a nice future. 

Hmmmmm.  Never is the question asked about which parts people support, because I don’t think people want a half $trillion taken out of Medicare’ I don’t think people want 139 new boards, commissions, and projects; I don’t think people want their health insurance costs to go up by 13%; I don’t think people want rationing of healthcare by bureaucrats who will decide which medical treatments “work” meaning that they will be deciding that certain procedures don’t work for people over a certain age – which in a rational world would be called “rationing of medical care,” and so on.

I think people do want real competition in health insurance by being able to purchase a policy from any company regardless of the state they are in, they do want tort reform, they do want to reverse pre-existing conditions limitations (although this will require coverage of the 600 pound lady in New Jersey who is going for half a ton, and Obama’s increased risk of lung cancer, sex change surgeries, ugliness, hairloss, cavities and all manner of other” pre-existing conditions” raising healthcare premiums by huge percentages).

When “The One” promised to fundamentally change America he meant what he said.  It’s up to us to stop him from doing it.

We show up at rallies only to be called an unwashed mob, Nazis, obstructionists; we show up at town hall meetings with our elected representatives and are pushed out of the meeting by union thugs, delayed until the room is filled with supporters only, ignored, denounced, degraded, treated like junk.  We are considered evil by the mainstream media outlets even as they are going broke for loss of audience share.  Without doubt we terrify the assorted communists, fascists, socialists, pinkos, bureaucratic totalitarians, and new age relativists in power now; we would ruin their (almost completed) takeover of American cultural, economic, political, and religious life.  We point our that their vaunted new clothes are only imaginary, and their naked hatred of the human condition is unsightly.

We are aghast at why they insist on instituting programs that stifle the human spirit; why they think the imposition of their utopian ideas is a better approach than the principle of liberty.  We are baffled by their naïve, child-like approach to evil wherever it exists in the republic itself or the world at large. 

For 23 years I did talk radio in Portland, Oregon, and one of my most memorable interviews was with British philosopher Dr. Roger Scruton regarding his book The West and the Rest, ISI Books 2001.  Recently Dr. Scruton wrote a brief essay titled “Totalitarian Sentimentality” you can (and should) read the essay here.   Purchase the book at a discount here.

“Conservatives recognize that social order is hard to achieve and easy to destroy, that it is held in place by discipline and sacrifice, and that the indulgence of criminality and vice is not an act of kindness but an injustice for which all of us will pay.  Conservatives therefore maintain severe and – to many people – unattractive attitudes.  They favor retributive punishment in the criminal law; they uphold traditional marriage and the sacrifices that it requires; they believe in discipline in schools and the value of hard work and military service.  They see welfare provisions as necessary, but also as a potential threat to genuine charity, and a way both of rewarding antisocial conduct and creating a culture of dependency.” 

“Liberals are of course very different.  They see criminals as victims of social hierarchy and unequal power, people who should be cured by kindness and not threatened with punishment.  They wish all privileges to be shared by everyone, the privileges of marriage included.  And if marriage can be reformed so as to remove the cost of it, so much the better.  Welfare provisions are not rewards to those who receive them, but costs to those who give – something that we owe to those less fortunate than ourselves.”

For liberals, “Far preferable to the hard life in which disciplined teaching, costly charity, and responsible attachment are the ruling principles is the life of sentimental display, in which others are encouraged to admire you for virtues you do not possess.  This life of phony compassion is a life of transferred costs.  Liberals who wax lyrical on the sufferings of the poor do not, on the whole, give their time and money to helping those less fortunate than themselves.  On the contrary, they campaign for the state to assume the burden.  The inevitable result of their sentimental approach to suffering is the expansion of the state and the increase of its power both to tax us and to control our lives.”

 Read this essay; read the book – you’ll love them both.