According to the Wall Street Journal, 10 Senate Democrats have decided the fate for all of us as far as far as health care insurance goes. You will buy what you are told, because after all you live in a democracy (once a republic).

WASHINGTON — Senior Senate Democrats reached tentative agreement Tuesday night to abandon the government-run insurance plan in their health-overhaul bill and to expand Medicare coverage to some people ages 55 to 64, clearing the most significant hurdle so far in getting a bill that can pass Congress.

So Democrats dropped the government-run insurance plan, but expanding a government run insurance plan? Considering our aging population and people living longer (for now anyways), it’s not hard to see that a majority of our country eventually falling under a government plan. Do you think they aren’t going to try to expand this further?

The agreement capped several days of high-stakes negotiations by a group of 10 Democratic senators — five moderates and five liberals. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had advanced a bill that would have had the government directly operate a health-insurance plan, while giving states the right to opt out.

I love this. In our supposed Republic, we are forcing 1/6th of our economy under government control because of  5 liberals and 5 moderates. Who’s to say they are moderate? I guess they are moderate socialists. Wow, that makes me feel better. Moderate socialists are the ones protecting our liberty, so you can sleep well tonight.

In place of that, the senators embraced a more limited proposal that would empower the government’s Office of Personnel Management to put in place a new low-cost national health plan, congressional aides said. The office already administers plans offered to federal employees and members of Congress. The new national plan would be run by nonprofit entities set up by the private sector, and would be available to the public on the new insurance exchanges that would be created under the bill

If no private insurers sign up with the Office of Personnel Management to offer a national plan, the office would be authorized to implement a direct government-run plan, an unlikely prospect, aides said.

Didn’t they say they got rid of the government option? Instead they are going to have the government setup national plans and have them ran by non-profits? Sure sounds the same to me, except more corruption. Who’s going to pick the non-profits? Hey, isn’t ACORN a non-profit?

So here is where the government run plan comes in. If no private insurers sign up for the government designed national plan, then the government will create the plan itself. Despite what “aides” say, I would say it’s likely that no private insurers will sign up. Look at what working with the government has done with the banks. You sign up with them, you are going to do what you arer told, and what you are told changes at their discretion. How can a private insurance company plan for the future under conditiosn like that? Even if private insurers do sign up, it is no different than other quasi-government institutions like Fannie Mae, Amtrack or the Post Office. They will be ran into the ground, and we’ll be paying for them anyways. The politicians will setup the rules, so they will not be ran as a private institution.

The arrangement is attractive to Democratic centrists who worry about the government’s growing footprint in the private market.

Can this sentence be any more disengenous? So called centrist are worried about the growing government footprint in the private market? They sure have a funny way of showing it. Let’s see, TARP, Government Motors, bailouts, stimulus bills, newspaper bailouts, and oh this massive ass health care takeover.

In a nod to Democratic liberals still intent on expanding coverage, the group agreed to a proposal that would open Medicare, the health-insurance program for the elderly, to Americans ages 55 to 64. The proposal would benefit an estimated two million to three million Americans who have difficulty obtaining coverage elsewhere, including those who have lost their jobs. People in the 55-to-64 group who already get health insurance through their employers would continue to do so under the proposal.

Republicans criticized the Democratic negotiations. “What’s becoming abundantly clear is that the majority will make any deal, agree to any terms, sign any dotted line that brings them closer to final passage of this terrible bill,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).

Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) said expanding Medicare “is putting more people in a boat that’s already sinking.”

The American Medical Association said it opposes expanding Medicare because doctors face steep pay cuts under the program and many Medicare patients are struggling to find a doctor. Hospitals also said expanding Medicare and Medicaid is a bad idea.

“We want coverage — in the worst way — expanded, but both of these means are problematic for hospitals and physicians,” said Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, which lobbies on behalf of for-profit hospitals. “It’s going to make it difficult to make it work.”

Well, I guess the AMA can go screw themselves now. They had to back the Democrats health care bill before, and what do you know, it’s come back to bite them in the ass. Should have heeded my warning about making a deal with the devil.

The legislation is designed to extend insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans. It would create new tax subsidies to help low- and middle-income people comply with a mandate to purchase coverage.

It would also bar insurers from engaging in a range of practices, such as denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and Senate Democrats were considering adding to those restrictions.

Under discussion among Senate Democrats was a proposal that would require insurance companies to spend no less than 90% of the insurance premiums they take in on health services, effectively limiting how much they can reap in profit. The health bill the House passed last month contains a similar provision, though it sets the minimum at 85%.

Aides cautioned that the accord reached Tuesday could be reopened if the CBO identifies major problems. Moreover, other issues, such as proposals to control the rapid growth of health costs, may still need to be negotiated over the next few days.

But if Mr. Reid has his way, he could begin the process of shutting off debate late this week. That would set the stage for another test on the Senate floor early next week that will demonstrate whether he has 60 votes for the bill. Final passage could come late next week.

via Senators Strike Health Deal – WSJ.com.

The government take over plan is so obvious. Expand, expand and expand the government programs in place. Then restrict, regulate and starve private insurance out of existence. The so called moderates like Joe Lieberman know better. They are just trying to save face when they hand over our liberty.

This bill is going to pass, so I hope we are all ready for it. We can only hold out hope now for public outrage next year to the extent that we elect enough new congress people that will then overturn all these government takeovers. They will need a veto proof majority, which is not going to be easy. Hopefully, insurance premiums adjust quickly and people feel it in their pocketbooks. If insurance premiums reflect the new costs imposed, people will notice it. They will be pissed off, and they will not have the government options until 2013. Hopefully, that will drive enough people to the polls to elect some real politicians who believe in freedom.

If you have not read my previous post, Thanksgiving, Statism and Life Outside the Matrix, you may want to do so first. This will be my first post where I will challenge the assumption of public education, which is what provides us our programming to live within the Matrix.

As I said in my previous post, both sides of the Matrix structure argue about how to best improve public education. One argues for more money. The other argues for more localized control. Neither side questions the existence of government controlled education, the results over the long term, or whether we’d be better off with no government education.

To start, why do statists claim we need a public school system? They claim that all children need an education, and only government can make sure all children regardless of race, class, and gender receive an education. That sounds reasonable, but are the children, especially the poor really getting educated? According to The Daily Beast, 7,200 students drop out every day. In some cities (usually ran by socialists), it’s even worse. In Detroit, only 25% of students graduate. According to CNN, the nationwide dropout rate is 16% or over 6 million students.

Every single school day, more than 7,200 kids, on average, drop out of high school—1.3 million each year. In many American cities, including Miami, Denver, Los Angeles, New York and Minneapolis, most public school students don’t graduate. In Detroit, the unhappy poster child for American industrial decline, a study from last year showed that a mere quarter of students earn high school diplomas.

via America’s Dropout Crisis – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.

Nearly 6.2 million students in the United States between the ages of 16 and 24 in 2007 dropped out of high school, fueling what a report released Tuesday called “a persistent high school dropout crisis.”

The total represents 16 percent of all people in the United States in that age range in 2007. Most of the dropouts were Latino or black, according to a report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, Illinois.

via ‘High school dropout crisis’ continues in U.S., study says – CNN.com.

As you can see, the groups most affected by the dropout rate are the groups that socialists claim to champion. Students are dropping out left and right, which does not provide them many options for the future. Then again, why worry? We have a “safety net”. You know if you don’t go to school, you can at least live off the government dole. On top of that, you can partake in criminal activity and receive tax free income. “Cash only please for all drug and stolen good purchases”.

“Yeah, OK Prof, but literacy was horrendous.” Well, let’s take a look at the “improving” literacy. As we all know, slaves were systematically prevented from learning to read and becoming educated, so we can’t really count their literacy under slavery. We can look at how quickly they became literate after slavery ended.

Although the black literacy rate soared from 20% in 1850 to nearly 80% in 1890, blacks were still having a difficult time finding work.

via ljonespage4content.

Wow, that’s damn impressive. Black literacy reached 80% in 1890. Well, what is it now? Hmmm, under our socialized, secular government ignorance programs, it stands at about 60%.

Six decades later, at the end of the twentieth century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can’t read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled.

via Intellectual Espionage – John Taylor Gatto.

White literacy was near 100% at the beginning of the 20th century, and as you can see, it is now at about where the formers slaves were in 1890. According to John Quincy Adams, only 4/10ths of 1 percent of New Englanders were illiterate. Also, I think everyone would agree the books that were read back then were much more challenging.  Isn’t progress wonderful?

How about math and science scores? Well, according to international testing, American children are not what they used to be. The bad news is the longer they are in school, the worse they get.

At science and math, American students trail those in other advanced democracies. The longer students are in school, the worse things get. Among fourth graders, U.S. students rank high on the International Test of Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Despite this head start, by eighth grade, American adolescents have slipped to the midpoint on the TIMSS; by age 17, their scores trail all but those in a few developing countries

via Hoover Institution – Hoover Digest – The Decline and Fall of American Education.

So as you can see, the public schools in our country have failed as all government planned goods and services do. The debate then goes straight to “how do we make them better?” This is the debate that rages inside the statist Matrix. Both sides argue back and forth about how to improve it. The cheerleaders hooray their side and boo the other side, and it’s completely incomprehensible to them that maybe the government should not be forcing people into government schools. All coercive monopolies are bad, and government is a coercive monopoly. If you do not believe so, try to “choose” to keep your children out of government approved schooling. See how long before you go to jail.

What is the solution? Well, let’s start off by agreeing that we should not stick a gun to people’s heads and tell them they are either going to send their children to government schools, or else they will go to jail. Can we agree that is the moral thing to do? I’m sure some will argue that some parents just are too stupid to make sure their kids get educated, so government must stick a gun to your head. The argument goes that because a small group isn’t responsible with their children, the government should stick a gun to everyone’s head and force their kids into public schools. Pro-government school people argue it’s child abuse to not let your child get an education, but then have no problem with the abuse government schools are inflicting on our children at increasing rates as the statistics above show. Let’s not even get into the lunch programs they inflict on children.

Next, let’s let people choose how they want their kids to be educated. If you do not want to send your child to a government school, there is no reason you should have to pay for government schools plus a private school. Do you think this has something to do with why poorer students are worse off? Their parents cannot afford to pay for public and private schools, so they suck it up and send them off the the ignorance factories. You should be able to keep your money. At the very least, you should be able to take your tax dollars to the school of your choice.

Then the government should allow the free market to deliver education options. They should not set standards, because their standards are pretty much useless. They deliver horrible results. Private schools will have to deliver to the parent’s liking, or they will automatically be punished with lost tuition. Government, on the other hand, has no accountability. If you don’t like the results, you still pay for it. If you try not to pay for it, well you know what happens.

Why is it so hard to imagine a world without public schools? It’s hard to imagine because it’s part of your programming. You were brought up in public schooling and taught that you must have public schools. It’s like most of society in the early 1800s, who couldn’t comprehend how former slaves and former slave masters could live in the same society if slavery was abolished.  Instead of admitting it was immoral, abolishing the institution, and letting free men figure their own way out of it, the government legalized slavery every step of the way. They couldn’t see outside the Matrix in which they were living. If the government had not enforced slavery through fugitive slave laws, it’s hard to believe slavery would have lasted long at all. It would have cost plantation owners too much money to chase slaves down when they escaped. They were only able to do so, because government (really the tax payer) ate the cost of chasing them down and returning them. It would have actually been cheaper for plantation owners to hire the slaves or any other workers had they not forced the cost of fugitive slave laws on the society as a whole. What I am saying here is just because you can’t imagine something other than government schools, because you have been programmed to only see it that way, doesn’t mean it’s not possible and better.  When men are free to make choices in their best interest, society progresses more quickly. It is not happenstance that the least regulated areas in our life are all the fast growing and evolving areas, and there is no reason education cannot be the same.

It’s very easy to see how education if unleashed from government shackles could quickly skyrocket in the success it delivers. It’s not hard to envision bountiful options to meet the needs of all children. Does your child excel in math? How about a school that focuses on math, engineering, and computers? Has your child always loved being the center or attention? How about a school that focuses on the arts? Does your child love to fix things and find out how they work? How about a tech school? Do you want your child to focus on reading, writing, and math? How about an elementary school that focuses exclusively on fundamentals? Does your child have special needs? How about a school that specializes in teaching kids with the same needs as your child? Does your child have many interests? How about a school that brings in great teachers from around the country via video conferencing? Better yet, if your child goes to any of the other schools mentioned, how about those schools bringing in the best teachers in their focused area via video? How about sending your child to a school whose competitive advantage is small class sizes? How about a retired NASA scientist being able to teach students without a teaching degree? How about parents, who know their kids best, deciding what school is best for their child. It is not hard to imagine options and schools opening all over the place.

Why would so many schools open? Because there are greedy profiteers out there, and guess what. They have to deliver a quality service in the private sector. According to the 2007 census, the average cost per student in public schools was $9,000. Do you think for one second there wouldn’t be businesses competing for that $9,000 per pupil and driving the cost down? It happens in every other sector of our economy. Well, it does until the government gets jealous and decides to jump into the game.

While I’m sure the diehard statists can never imagine education without Uncle Sam forcing us into a one size fits none system, I hope some of you question your assumptions about our supposed need for public schools. Hopefully, when you hear politicians debating more funding for education, higher national standards, or any other top down school program, you will question it more deeply. You will ask why they would do that in the first place. How does that open up choices? Does not having choices provide better results? Who benefits from this?

Take the Red pill, and ask yourself, “If I could disregard all laws related to education, what would I choose for my child or for myself when I was a child? Would I send them to government schools, or would I send them to schools who must prove themselves in order to get my money?”

PS. Please ignore all spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. I learned those in public school.

An article in the Wall Street Journal discussing jail time if you don’t buy health insurance.

The notion of imprisonment has its origins in the bill’s requirement that most Americans must get health insurance, with the help of government subsidies if necessary, or pay a special income tax of up to 2.5%. If someone refuses to get insurance and refuses to pay the tax, that person would be guilty of tax evasion. Criminal penalties for willful tax evasion, which are pursued in rare cases, include a fine of as much as $250,000 and up to five years in prison for the most egregious cases, Republicans point out.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.) said on the House floor that this means the health overhaul comes with handcuffs. “Now, I am not talking about figurative handcuffs,” he added. “If you don’t comply with the individual mandate, what happens to you? You can be subject to five years in prison and you can be subject to a quarter of a million dollars in fines.”

Supporters of the health overhaul say this is a distortion and prosecutors don’t pursue criminal penalties for tax evasion except in drastic cases. “It’s like saying you could be jailed for jaywalking,” said Rep. Robert Andrews (D., N.J.).

via Coverage Mandate Under Fire – WSJ.com.

So there you have it. Don’t worry about jail time. You can rely on the Government to only use it in “drastic cases”. Who decides what’s drastic? Also, just because you don’t get sent to jail doesn’t mean you are free? The IRS would inflict high penalties on you, and ultimately could confiscate your property and your bank account. Oh but don’t worry. You still live in a “free” country.

Bob Murphy had a great post on his blog, FreeAdvice, about how the Right-Wingers (I’ve always considered myself a right-winger) are always blasting the government for it inefficient and disasterous social programs, but yet we act like things are different when it comes to the military, war, and safety. Here’s a snippet of his post.

Army Wasn’t Told of Hasan’s Emails

A person familiar with the matter said a Pentagon worker on a terrorism task force overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation was told about the intercepted emails several months ago. But members of terror task forces aren’t allowed to share such information with their agencies, unless they get permission from the FBI, which leads the task forces.

In this case, the Pentagon worker, an employee from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, helped make the assessment that Maj. Hasan wasn’t a threat, and the FBI’s “procedures for sharing the information were never used,” said the person familiar with the matter.

So the above suggests to me that even if we gave up enough civil liberties to transform the entire country into one big military barracks, we still couldn’t trust the government to protect us from obvious terrorist threats.

Since that’s the case, I vote that we don’t give up our civil liberties and test the theory.

Of course, what will happen is that they will “streamline agency cooperation” and implement other reforms, so that the above doesn’t happen again. Just like Fannie and Freddie and General Motors will keep revising their procedures every time they lose another few billion dollars.

“Just give us some more money and liberty, we’ll get it right eventually. We’re from the government and we’re here to help.”

via Free Advice: Right-Wingers: “Gov’t Can’t Run the DMV or Health Care, But It Will Keep Us Safe From Terrorists”.

Bob is completely right. Right-wingers (me) have a contradiction in their ideas of government. We know the government is horrible at basically everything it does, and the free market is much better at handling the allocation of resources and meeting needs, but we still think it is better equiped to protect us and to wage war. Why would that be? Protection and war are basically just services. Think about it on a local level. Police don’t actually protect you. At best, the thought of police deter some from committing crimes against you, but for those who disregard the threat of police force, you are unprotected. Police can only come after the crime has been committed.

In this case, the military couldn’t even protect it’s soldiers against an obvious threat. So, how did the government actually function in it’s role as protector? It had the exact opposite effect, as government always does. Instead, it disarmed soldiers with idiotic gun control, so that the soldiers had no defense against this mad man. This is the same thing you have in most shootings. The government forces citizens to disarm, and the citizen is left unprotected against those who would do them harm.

The only way to prevent episodes like this or to at least minimize their damage is to rid ourselves of these ridiculous gun laws. “Whoa, whoa, whoa there militia boy. You can’t just have people running around with guns everywhere. It’s too dangerous.” Why is it too dangerous? Study after study have shown that crime is lowered as gun rights are increased and vice versa. If everyone carried guns or at least everyone could be packing, do you think it would not make those who want to do harm hesitate before they do it? Are we to believe that Hasan would have had the stupidity to start his rampage if he knew the other soldiers were armed? Are we to believe that he was not emboldened by the knowledge that the soldiers were unarmed?

Let’s walk through a small scenario. Say there is a guy who wants to kill another guy. He isn’t suicidal, and he doesn’t want to die. He knows where the guy is. Now, let’s say the victim carries a gun. Do you think the killer is going to plan his attack based on where the victim goes? Let’s say the victim works at a school, about the most unprotected place on the planet. Where do you think the killer is going to attack? He’s going to attack the guy when he’s working, because the guy remains unprotected, and no one around the guy will be able to help him either. Everyone is unprotected. Now, if you have unregulated gun ownership as the constitution allows, the killer doesn’t know who has a gun. The killer, not wanting to die himself, will hesitate because the victim could have a gun as well, or anyone around him could have a gun. The more people in society that have guns the more of a deterance to those like our killer here.

“Well, yeah, but what if he doesn’t care if he dies like this Hasan?” Well, if that’s the case, you will not prevent the attack no matter what, but you will end the attack quickly with less lives lost. In the case of Ft. Hood, if the soldiers were allowed to carry, someone would have taken Hasan out after his first kill. It’s horrible to have even one death, but it’s much better than a massacre.

To take it to the next step, would we even have had Hasan if we didn’t have 9/11. Without 9/11, we wouldn’t be fighting two wars against muslims. Because the government prevents anyone from carrying arms onto a plane, you had unprotected passangers unable to do anything to prevent the terrorist attacks. Do you think the terrorists would have hijacked the planes if they knew there were people on the plane with guns and they didn’t know who was armed? So in order to prevent hijackings by armed criminals, we get the exact opposite result of what we wanted.

This is a tough subject, but one that must be thought through rationally. We can’t just wish the world to be the way we want it to be, and then try to regulate it to conform to our ideals. As I’ve said, you end up with the exact opposite of what you wanted. Below is a video from Freedomain Radio. It’s a bit long, but he has a great way of explaining how going against our intution is a much better solution. He even takes it as far as leading to world peace. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but he makes a great case.

Government’s role in society is to create criminals out of ordinary people.

Shout out to Hotair for the video

Bob Murphy had a great post,  Free Advice: “The Money That Is Sold Abroad Is You!”, that reiterates my post on selling our kids into slavery. This video is a lot more dramatic though. I’m jealous.

Here’s is a great post about the moronic regulations that move through government, and how they user our lack of trust in others to take away freedoms.

We all want freedom for ourselves, but many people have doubts about the way others might use their own freedom. Under these conditions, the state is there to help. Get enough people to favor enough restriction, and the state is good to go, administering every aspect of life.

Every day presents more cases, but the most recent case is stunning. It turns out that 97% of people polled support a universal ban on texting while driving. Half of those surveyed say that the penalty should be as severe as that for drunk driving. Among these, how many do you suppose do text and drive but don’t want to admit it to a pollster? Probably plenty. And yet I couldn’t find a single online defense of the practice anywhere on the web.

The truth is that it is not necessarily unsafe to text behind the wheel. It all depends on the situation. If you are in a traffic jam, and are late to an appointment, the ability to text can be a lifesaver. Or if there are no cars around, you can do it. On the other hand, it would probably be a mistake to attempt it while doing 80mph around slower traffic.

How can we know the difference between when it is safe and when it is not? The principle applied on American roads is that the driver himself makes that decision. If this principle didn’t make sense, there would be no way that the roads themselves could work.

Think of this the next time you are in a big city, zooming around curves and between lanes along with thousands of others, doing top speeds. Here we have 4000-pound hunks of steel barreling down the road without aids other than a dotted yellow line. These are real-life death machines in which one wrong move could cause a 100-car pileup and mass carnage. We do it anyway.

What’s remarkable is not that there are so many wrecks. The miracle is that it works at all and that, for the most part, people can get to where they want to go. And consider too the demographic behind the car: old, young, abled, disabled, experienced, inexperienced. Some people have a facility for driving and others do not. Some people have spatial agility and others do not.

How does it all work? Don’t tell me that it is due to central planning and the police. The police aren’t driving every car and controlling every wheel (much as they might like to). Our human volition on the road, and the decisions we make that affect other drivers, are nearly 100% our own.

And yet it works, and why? The reason is that it is not in anyone’s interest to get in a crash. It is in everyone’s interest to get to where you are going in one piece, and to do it efficiently. Roll together tens of thousands of people with the same broad goal, and you get spontaneous cooperation. Something that people normally think could not work does in fact work. Looked at from that angle, the orderliness we see on the roads is a general expression of the capacity for human society to work in the context of self-interested individualism.

via The Freedom To Text by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr..

In the Federalist Paper No. 12, Hamilton is arguing for the Constitution and the Union by discussing the benefits of the Union to raising revenue for the government. Quickly, Hamilton highlights something modern day socialists somehow forget, that through self interest, what they call greed, all members of society benefit.

Hamilton writes, “The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen,” except for modern day socialists, “to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.” What Hamilton is saying is all enlightened (educated) men of this time period recognize that commerce (free trade) is the best way to build national wealth. Because this is known to be true, enabling free trade has become the object of their policy.

He continues, “By multiplying the means of gratification, by promoting the introduction and circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice and enterprise, it serves to vivify and invigorate all channels of industry and to make them flow with greater activity and copiousness.” Here Hamilton is stating the government should encourage trade by “multiplying the means of gratification”. He talks about precious metals as “those darlings objects of human avarice and enterprise”. Basically, he is saying money and the want of more money (avarice or as socialist like to say, greed) drives people to work more and to produce more for society (enterprise).

“The assiduous merchant, the laborious husbandman, the active mechanic, and the industrious manufacturer – all orders of men look forward with eager expectation and growing alacrity to this pleasing reward of their toils.” What? You mean all these men look forward to earning profits? Those bastards! Hamilton recognizes that it is the reward of profits that causes the merchant, the farmer (husbandman), the mechanic, and the manufacturer to be productive, and the more reward the more productive they will be. He uses words such as assiduous (unrelenting) merchant, laborious (extreme effort) husbandman, active (involving physical effort)  mechanic, and industrious (working energetically) manufacturer.  He uses these words to emphasize it’s the profit motive that creates these behaviors. With no profit motive, you do not have the productiveness of these men.

Next Hamilton discusses how everyone benefits from the free market, even those who think they don’t. “The often-agitated question between agriculture and commerce (basically labor and businessmen) has from indubitable experience received a decision which has silenced the rivalship that once subsisted between them, and has proved, to the entire satisfaction of their friends, that their interests are intimately blended and interwoven.” Notice that Hamilton basically says that the interest of both labor and businessmen are interwoven. Government cannot benefit the laborers by punishing the businessman. In doing so, he also punishes labor.  He continues, “It has been found in various countries that in proportion as commerce has flourished land has risen in value. And how could it have happened otherwise? Could that which procures a freer vent of products of the earth, which furnishes new incitements to the cultivators of land, which is most powerful instruments in increasing the quantity of money in a state – could that, in fine, which is faithful handmaid of labor and industry in every shape fail to augment the value of that article, which is the prolific parent of far the greatest part of the objects upon which they are exerted? It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary;” Apparently, it still has it’s adversary in modern day politicians, socialists, and labor unions, who believe that free markets don’t help everyone. But Hamilton explains, how could you increase the value of one without increasing the value of the other? You can’t increase the value of what labor produces without increasing the value of labor. Both parties benefit.

Lastly, “and it is one among a multitude of proofs how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstractions and refinement, is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.” Wow, Hamilton points out that jealousy leads men astray from reason and conviction. How true is this in modern society? While everyone truly knows that government produces nothing, many today still want the government to intervene in the free market because of jealousy. They are jealous of the rich. Because of their jealousy, they are blinded to reason which would highlight the errors of their ways. Does this remind you of the tax the rich argument? They need to pay their fair share! Who cares if they have benefited society more by creating jobs, services, products, etc. They don’t deserve that much more than the poor. Low and behold though, when government takes more of their money, they don’t create as many jobs, services, products, etc, and we are all worse off because of it. These are simple truths, but jealousy, as Hamilton points out, leads us astray from reason.

While chatting on twitter, one of my tweeps posted this blog. Because his name has Federalist in it, @Federalist84, I decided I should check it out. To my surprise, the blog is from @SoccerSeal, a 17yr old girl, and she has one of the most straight forward criticisms of President Obama that I’ve heard. Here’s the argument.

The role of a President is not to “Transform” the nation. The role of the president is clearly stated in the Presidential Oath, “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. So help me God.” Nowhere in that oath do I see change or transform. Your job is to protect, preserve and defend. Not change, dismantle, and control. And right now I get the feeling that you are doing the latter.

via Red, White & Conservative.

The Constitution was setup for a reason. It was setup to ensure human freedom. It was not setup for continual transformation. Nowhere does it say the government should give you any rewards. It is only there to protect your earned rewards and your liberties from force. Until we all realize what this 17yr old has already realized, we will continue our steady decline, and we will always have the least of us governing.

During this health care debate, I’ve argued many times that any government program comes at the price of your freedom. While the government supposedly can’t take away your rights as they are re-established in our Constitution, they can suppress those rights through coercing you to voluntarily give them up. They already do this with large portions of the population that rely on the government dole for their daily sustenance. How do you get the rest of society? Slowly you work toward one large government program that can be used as a carrot against the citizenry. What is that carrot? It would obviously be health care, the one program that can decide life and death matters.

“So what are you getting at here Mr. Profiteer?” By holding the carrot, the government can make you voluntarily give up your rights. If you tried saying that taking away your freedom of speech or your right to bare arms is unconstitutional, the government’s retort would be that it’s optional. You do not have to take government health care. You can forgo it. How do you forgo it when the private insurance has been decimated by trying to compete with the government’s ability to print its own money? On top of that, how do you pay for your own health care out of pocket when eventually physicians will be highly regulated and costs will be driven up so dramatically because of regulation and rationing?

Think this is a crazy scenario? How about you Mr. Frank with The Wall Street Journal? One simply need to read about what the CDC is looking into to see how quickly we may be chasing after carrots.

Take the Obama administration’s justification for its new gun research. “Gun-related violence is a public health problem – it diverts considerable health care resources away from other problems and, therefore, is of interest to NIH,” wrote the agency spokesman in an e-mail responding to questions from Republican members of Congress about new grants the CDC is giving out. The statement assumes the conclusion of the research before the first study is done.

The research on right-to-carry laws illustrates the problem with the CDC. Dozens of refereed academic studies by economists and criminologists using national data have been published in journals. While the vast majority of those studies find that right-to-carry laws save lives and reduce harm to victims, some studies claim that the laws have no statistically significant effect. But most tellingly, there is not a single published refereed academic study by a criminologist or economist showing a bad effect from these laws.

via EDITORIAL: The feds take a shot at guns – Washington Times.

Scary stuff? Public health can be played against any issue. Your speech could be a public health problem if the government claimed you were inciting violence. Hmm, how would they do that?

Mr. Frank can call me paranoid all he wants. Paranoia has kept us free for as long as we have been.