"When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe." … Frederic Bastiat


Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state, and the sovereignty of God. – Archbishop Chaput

Trader Dan's Work is NOW AVAILABLE AT WWW.TRADERDAN.NET



Thursday, November 8, 2012

Highly Recommended Read

Hello to all the readers;

On the heels of my commentary on the state of the nation yesterday, I highly recommend the following article written by my erudite friend Nelson Hultberg. Nelson brings a rich historical background to his writings and as such, he provides a perspective that is often lacking in much of what we read today. Understanding the historical origins of political theory is a key ingredient in grasping the underlying aims of modern political movements.

Our nation is in serious danger of losing its fundamental moorings if it has not already done so. When you read Nelson's commentary, you will better understand the extent of this danger.

I am also hopeful that many of you will understand why I believe the ideological divide in our nation cannot be bridged. There was a motto of the Communists when asked about their strategy of advancing their poisonous ideology - "Three steps forward; two steps backward".

This is a simple but diabolically ingenius plan. It means that once an aim is achieved, the society may rebel against it and kick back throttling some of the gains  the communists have achieved but it will never be successful at completely rooting those gains out. Then the drive "forward" (the Obama campaign slogan) begins afresh with the starting point now being a bit further down the line towards their ultimate goal.

This is the strategy that the left employs in our nation.... push, push and push their big government agenda knowing full well that there will always be a push back or a counter attack against it. However, their accomplishments are never completely gotten rid of and thus the nation as a whole slides further and further and further to the left and further and further and further away from its system of Constitutionally limited government.

Case in point - does anyone believe that having now managed to get their beloved Obamacare passed through employing the most despicable, nefarious and contemptible means imaginable, the left is not rejoicing realizing full well that it will never be gotten completely rid of? Socialized medicine, with all its horrific impact, will now become hopelessly entangled in the warp and woof of our society. America had a chance to drive a stake through this vampire once and for all, but stupidly chose to return the very candidate to office who shoved it down their unwilling throats in the first place. I predict here and now that it will not be that much longer down the road when the left will begin making noises about how those who are in the business of treating the sick should not be making such "obscene profits" in so doing. Wait and see, it is coming as sure as the sun rises in the East.


Trader Dan

A New Kind of Freedom
Nelson Hultberg


Karl Marx was asked once how he could justify advocating a political system of slavery for the individual, which is what socialism is. He replied that, socialism is not slavery; it is a "new kind of freedom." As all perceptive students of history know, the intellectuals of Europe bought into such Alice in Wonderland sophistry and plunged into the twentieth century nightmare of collectivist tyranny. But unfortunately so did American intellectuals about 30 years later when the Progressives of Woodrow Wilson's era established the Creature from Jekyl Island to usher in centralized government banking and the progressive income tax to "spread the wealth around."

Socialism is not really so bad, reasoned the American intellectual community. If we think about it, it actually is a "new kind of freedom." We just have to do what the Red Queen and the Mad Hatter advocated. We have to change the meaning of the words that define the fundamental values of our lives. After all, there is no objective reality; words can mean whatever we want them to mean. All we have to do is teach Marx's new definition of freedom to the young at an early enough age, and when they grow into adulthood they will not think of a government-dominated society as slavery at all. It will be a "new kind of freedom" to them.

Americans never bought into Lenin's violent revolutionary socialism, but they did buy into the Fabians' democratic evolutionary socialism. Fabian ideas in Britain were readily picked up by the American progressives and liberals of the twentieth century. This redefinition of values has been consuming us now for 100 years ever since the Creature from Jekyl Island and the tax revenuers took over Washington. The progressives and liberals have even redefined their redefinitions. Fascism, being basically the same as socialism, is now acceptable in the mix.

What is horrifying is that Barack Obama's election victory is tied directly to this corruption of values. We have now elected, for a second time, a man who was raised by communists in Hawaii. Obama's mind was forged from the likes of Frank Marshall Davis, a powerful and radical communist apparatchick of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Davis was Obama's constant companion from the age of 9 to 18 before he went off to Occidental College in Los Angeles. His worldview is thus the Marxian sophistry that socialism is a "new kind of freedom." In the mind of Obama, individuals like Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart are not entrepreneurial benefactors to their fellow man; they are evil rich people who exploit their fellow man. These evil rich need to be leveled down. And the way to do it is insidiously, governmentally with ever-expanding redistribution of wealth programs and ever-expanding monetary inflation. 

One of Ayn Rand's powerful insights in Atlas Shrugged is that dictatorships take over because the people actually approve of them. She called it the "sanction of the victim." This attitude now permeates the American electorate. Nietzsche's "slave mentalities" dominate the throngs of voters that determine what our government is to do. The great majority of Americans are demonstrating that they actually want to be enslaved.

Rand also made the following observation: When asked once why she voted Republican if she thought both parties had sold out to collectivism, she replied that both parties are headed toward the abyss, but Democrats wish to charge toward it and Republicans wish to creep toward it. She, no doubt, felt that we have more time to educate the people as to what is happening with Republicans in power.

Well, America just ran out of time this past election night. A majority of American voters indicated that they believe government owes them a living along with health care, security, and self-esteem. They indicated that they are very comfortable with the Fabian march into socialist-fascism that has been taking place ever since the Creature was instituted in 1913. They indicated that they believe rich people don't earn their wealth; they steal it from the kindly masses by siphoning off the surplus productivity of their labor and reducing them to grinding poverty. (This is the fallacious "labor theory of value" that Marx perpetuated.)

Unfortunately this fallacious reasoning is why so many Americans have become so slothful and are choosing to vote for a living rather than work for a living. It is the reason why so many productive men and women in America are poisoned with guilt and now tolerate the egregious, confiscatory taxes that are destroying the dynamism of our economy and the sanity of our lives. Justice and prosperity cannot be built by catering to slothful masses with theoretical fallacies.

The slothful masses now control America through an Orwellian czar in Washington whose mentor was a rabid communist apparatchik in the 1970s, and whose close advisors (Bill Ayres, Jeremiah Wright, Valerie Jarrett, etc.) have always been radical leftist haters of America. This Orwellian czar is now a lame duck President and doesn't have to run again. All that blocks him from ravaging our rights and freedoms is a supine Senate and a timid array of House Republicans. Will these political sycophants be able to stand up to him and the new hordes of entitlement seekers that bolster him with their eager votes? Not likely. Congress will, instead, begin to reach out to the new entitlement seekers along with the pressing hordes of illegals and their comrades waiting in the wings for entrance to America.

Jean Raspail's Camp of the Saints looms over the horizon. Congressional sycophants will begin to emulate Fox News analyst, Kirsten Powers, who gleefully reported on election night: "We are now a brown nation." They will begin to reevaluate their position on the illegals. They will reason that another 15 million illiterate anti-Americans amidst us is no problem. To paraphrase Nixon, "We're all Multiculturalists now."

Thus Obama will push full-blown for amnesty for the illegals and Marx's redefinition of slavery into a "new kind of freedom." We will charge toward the abyss at a speed never before employed. Obama and the Creature will gobble up the last of our freedoms. America will become a giant replica of Greece. 


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Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Director of Americans for a Free Republic (AFR.org). His articles have appeared in such publications as the Dallas Morning News, The American Conservative, Insight, The Freeman, and Liberty, as well as on numerous Internet sites such as The Daily Bell, Financial Sense, and Safe Haven. He is also the author of a soon to be released book on political philosophy, The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values. Email him at: nelshultberg@aol.com

7 comments:

  1. Dan,

    Your passion runs high the last two days. I have read you blog for over a year now and you had to vent with what you see coming towards us.

    You see a HUGE freight train and the USA is standing on the tracks, looking the other way listening to their iTunes with head phones on.

    You see this event happened to the daughter of a friend of mine. She was 17, going to be a senior in high school. Killed instantly.

    It is tragic what is coming, .... time will tell how bad it will be and if you end up like Greece, well, they just started their rioting, hold on to your hats and get low.

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  2. Dan,

    Thanks for the insightful political pieces in addition to your regular market commentary of the highest quality.

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  3. Dan, i second your emotions and i fully concur.
    However, i think this is one of those cases where given enough rope, a fool will unintentionally hang himself.
    As we start seeing large layoffs, rising taxes, rising interest rates, a falling stock market and other Carter era problems (not to mention crappy health care) those who voted for this will be the first to start whining. It just so happened this time that America was hoodwinked by the media and they just barely got in under the wire on that as the covered up dung pit of their work is starting to bubble over. I predict this time next year it will be fun to sit back and laugh at those who got what they asked for.... they will be the ones who are least prepared for every Friday evening watching the news to see camera crews in front of major employers who were laying off hundreds weekly. Do you remember tent cities here in Houston and families living under bridges? i do.
    Sadly, we have come to the point where a lesson can only be learned by pain.... sorta like the dog that chases cars until he gets a foot smashed - if he lives through it, he will take a pass on chasing any more cars.

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    1. Foam_RAnger - i sure to remember those images in Houston. Do you know the area on Highway 59 north headed towards Cleveland where the San Jacinto river crosses under that bridge on the highway? There was a tent city located right there at one time.

      Sadly, I do think you are right - until those ignorant enough to willingly impose this sort of system upon themselves actually realize the consequences of their own choice by experiencing the hardship that results, we are going to get more of the same.
      Wise men see the ruin of others based on the choices they make and learn from and thereby avoid falling into that calamity. The fool learns nothing because he observes nothing and plunges headlong into disaster as a result.

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    2. Ohh yeah, remember it well!

      http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1985_9583/after-massive-layoffs-the-hunger-came.html

      You are dead on the money about the wise and the fools.
      I've seen enough of the ugly stuff to be very appreciative of the good stuff... something tells me you have too.

      Many thanks for sharing the market wisdom you have picked up along the way!

      Keep up the good fight - it will pay off eventually.

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  4. I agree with most of Hultberg's article, but object to his characterization of illegal immigrants as "anti-American". Most illegal aliens are here for one reason: to work. In this regard, they are more American in spirit than our home-grown moochers looking for a handout who just re-elected Obama. Ayn Rand, herself an immigrant, favored a liberal immigration policy.

    If Republicans truly want to be the party of freedom, they should reject a nationalist, collectivist, protectionist anti-immigration policy in favor of an individualist, pro-capitalist policy that says, "If you want to come here and work, we welcome you. If you want to come here to mooch, stay away."

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  5. Thanks for the read. These collectivist bastards are a clever bunch, contemptible but clever.

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