COMMENCEMENT 2014

 

Many people ask me " Why are you so angry?"   I usually reply "Why aren't you?"  For starters I am not built to surrender.  I take my rights and responsibilities seriously.  I take my obligation seriously to try and leave my country and the world better than they were when I found it.   I cannot roll over and become a slave to those who once they have stripped me of my rights would then attempt to eradicate my humanity.  So I'm angry!

The country is in the throes of an American version of the cultural revolution.  Too many of our allegedly educated youth are all too ready, willing and eager to silence anyone who disagrees with them on whatever issue du jour  they have taken a pious and ignorant stand.

We were warned  that this day would come when the missionaries of Marx took over Academia and systematically proceeded to turn our children into witless disciples of numerous phony Messiahs.

Intolerance in the university is now the norm as witnessed by the procession of graduation speakers who have become objectionable for moronic reasons held by brainwashed bigots with caps and gowns.

If I were to be a commencement speaker (which is about as likely as playing shortstop for the Yankees after Jeter retires), I would say this to the graduates of 2014:

" The world is in terrible shape.  The country is virtually in free fall because the rule of law has been abandoned.  The Constitution ...the greatest secular document of freedom ever written is in tatters...and many of you, but not all of you are oblivious to all of the above because your education has not included an accurate history of this country, warts and all.  Instead if you got anything it was The History of the United States...warts...that's all.    

Nor were you instructed in how this country is supposed to work  so you could be the watchmen in the night when the nation veers off course.  Had you been so instructed, most of you would be on the barricades today.   

You also do not understand that you live in an "exceptional" nation unlike any other in the history of the world.  Whether it remains that way will now be up to you.  Whether it remains that way means  you will have abandoned an innocence that no longer justifies your arrogant, self righteous pathology of never offending anyone in order to justify in turn your knee jerk reflex to censor anyone who disagrees with you.

Your obsession with grievance based conformity of word and deed must be put away with your toys.  Your thirst for punishing your mythical enemies while aligning yourself with some of the most vile political movements in history has become in the minds of many the  signature achievement of your academic careers...unless of course you count the appalling fact that far too many of you know more about Ben Affleck than you do about Benghazi.

You might be surprised that many in the real world see you first and foremost as Fascists.   If you  don't know what that means than Google it.  They wonder how Liberal Arts became so illiberal.

You worship "diversity" but were not educated in an environment that practiced it and most of you said and did nothing about it and now the bill  for that avoidance will be coming due.

You will now be entering a world more dangerous and complex than any before it.  It is also a world which is more competitive on a global scale than ever before.  Those who know how to seek and acquire knowledge and truth will survive, thrive and prosper and the rest will not.  Those who have wallowed in the popular culture while ignoring the humanities, science and western civilization, now must radically change their ways or be relegated to a life of diminishing returns.

Mine is a call not just to your hearts and minds but to your souls as well.  The wisdom of the past is the only road map to the future. But it will only be as good a road map as you make it... as you chart your course in an unsettled world.

My plea to you is simple.  Do not wake up 10...20...30 years from now as a cog in a machine made by politicians selling you what passes as political manure.  Do not wake up as subjects of the state and not the ultimate rulers of that state. Do not wake up as serfs to a progressive elite.

I close with the following thoughts;

Shun the cult of celebrity and the curse of political correctness...both will devour  you...

Embrace the classics and the lessons of history...they can save you

Embrace the sermon on the mount...it can save your soul

Be faithful to the vision of the founders or risk losing your freedoms forever...

Keep learning until you die...

Learn a trade to get you through the lean times...

Practice courage,bravery and honesty...they are virtues that define you in good times and bad...

Do not let the nation, your nation, wither on the vine until it becomes a cruel parody of the last days of the Holy Roman Empire...

And if you don't know what The Holy Roman Empire was ...don't Google it...instead pick up a  book and learn!"

ERLANDSSON

INCOME INEQUALITY

Nobody capable of useful work need today lack food and shelter in the advanced countries, and for those incapable of themselves earning enough these necessities are generally provided outside the market. Poverty in the relative sense must of course continue to exist outside of any completely egalitarian society: so long as there exists inequality, somebody must be at the bottom of the scale. But the abolition of absolute poverty is not helped by the endeavor to achieve 'social justice'; in fact, in many of the countries in which absolute poverty is still an acute problem, the concern for 'social justice' has become one of the greatest obstacles in the elimination of poverty. In the West the rise of the great masses to tolerable comfort has been the effect of the general growth of wealth and has been merely slowed down by measures interfering with the market mechanism. It has been this market mechanism which has created the increase of aggregate income, which also has made it possible to provide outside the market for the support of those unable to earn enough. But the attempts to 'correct' the results of the market in the direction of 'social justice' have probably produced more injustice in the form of new privileges, obstacles to mobility and frustration of efforts than they have contributed to the alleviation of the lot of the poor.

From economist Friedrich Hayek's "Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice" (1976):

 

  

It seems as if everyone today is  talking about income inequality.  Obama is using it as a bogus political crusade to divert our attention from Benghazi, the IRS and ObamaCare; Pope Francis is denouncing it as an ethical and moral challenge.  Bill DeBlasio ran with it as his signature issue to become Mayor of NYC. 

 

Thomas Piketty,a neo-Marxist French political scientist believes that income inequality is cause by capitalism.  He has written a book called  "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" which the left is having schoolgirl swoons over.  In it Piketty, says only taxation can correct this problem, so he  advocates a world wide tax of 80% for anyone making over $500,000 a year.  For those making less, levies of 40% and 60% are proposed.  This is all social justice masquerading as a path to income equality which history has shown will not work when the market mechanisms of capitalism have been thwarted by ideology.

 

 

Yet no one can really dispute that the gap between the "uber" rich and some of the rest of us is growing.  The real question is why?

Since 2008 the economy has been stagnant.  In the first quarter of 2014 it  grew by a measly .1%.  This was blamed on the severe winter which in turn was blamed on "climate change" thereby turning an economic and political disaster into a cause for further manipulation of the economy, one more time. 

This administration, in point of fact has addressed all things economic, via a comprehensive "progressive" ideology that defies both common sense and the modern marketplace.  In doing this it has conducted a not so secret and not so subtle war on capitalism itself and thereby created income inequality. 

The true cure for income inequality is economic growth coupled with prudent and common sense policies and  regulations which prevent or curtail among other things ..."crony capitalism"...excessive regulation ( 4000 new regulation a year on top of the 200,000 "regs" that exist already)...massive Federal debt and deficits...government growth which causes the private sector to remain in stasis or contract...excessive taxation...waste and corruption in government spending...an educational system that rewards you for showing up in K through 12 and then brainwashes you in the university...and failure to end programs that don't work or need re-imagining in order to work in the 21st century.

The "Fed" has kept the lid on interest rates by "Quantitative Easing" but in so doing has forced those with capital to invest until very recently in the market which is still the only game in town if you want to make a buck.  These investments create wealth but do not create jobs.  The Fed has also increased anxiety about the inevitability of the inflation they seek to forestall.  This in turn adds to the overarching uncertainty which hovers over the economy  like a dark cloud.

The President doubles down on this uncertainty with a war on fossil fuels that raise energy prices for the average person to record levels, stifles job creation  and reduces the wealth of the middle class. This is done in a nation which has longer term sources of energy than any other nation on earth. 

 

EPA regulations in the name of climate change in particular, regularly kill jobs  and shrink the GDP.   But the ideologues who  practice a form of "Green terrorism", don't care if people end  out of work and dependent on government instead of being independent, employed and contributing to a vibrant economy.  Today the levels of unemployment, under employment and people leaving the workforce have reached "great depression" levels with certain demographics within the population.  

ObamaCare also kills growth by driving the cost of health care through the roof while delivering substandard care in a system designed by bureaucrats and not Physicians.  Job growth is thwarted  by artificial requirements placed on the size of private  businesses disguised as reasonable regulatory limitations linked to healthcare  without ever once recognizing that from town to town...state to state...and region to region there is no such thing as one size fits all.

Globalism has moved manufacturing off shore and turned us into a service economy with a technical IT elite who increasingly make what they do and how they do it, unintelligible to the average person.  As it turns out it also makes us dependent on a omnipresent, omnivorous technology which has taken over our lives  to the point of also making us strategically vulnerable from a national security standpoint.

Our politics seem about where they were before the Civil War.  Harry Reid has turned the Senate into a joke where solutions die in childbirth.  It has rocked the Republic to the core and begs the question of can a Republic work without democracy.  Nothing can grow in such a climate.

All of the above and more, create "manmade" income inequality.  All of the above involve deliberate policy decisions that this administration has made which fly in the face of common sense and the lessons of history.

Capitalism today is sick, but not for the reasons the left would have us believe.  Capitalism is sick because of ideologues who say it is  and have proceeded to wreck it in order to prove their point.  Capitalism is sick because this President has infected it with socialism.  The end result is the creation of a society where being reduced to poverty,  joblessness and loss of both economic and political freedom and opportunity  has perversely created a brave new world of income equality where poverty will make us all equal.

ERLANDSSON

THE SMOKING GUNS

 

Benghazi has been and continues to be a scandal trifecta. 

 

There is the scandal of why the Consulate in Benghazi was not reinforced with adequate security despite a rapidly deteriorating security situation and despite repeated requests from military, diplomatic and security officials inside and outside the State Department.  Those questions have been largely answered due to the callous indifference and incompetence of the State Department and Hillary Clinton. 

 

 

The second scandal is why there was no attempt to come to the aid of both diplomatic and CIA personnel once the attack began.

 

 

The third scandal is what various elements of the US government did and said, subsequent to the attack, to explain to the American people what happened, why it happened and who was responsible.

 

 

On April 30, the release to Judicial Watch, via a FOIA related Federal law suit,  of  e-mails from Ben Rhodes, White House Deputy National Security Adviser for Communications, provides proof that the story of a YouTube video as the cause of the Benghazi attack was bogus and was an attempt to give cover to the President seven weeks before the November 2012 election.

 

 

 In an email he sent to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice the evening before her five Sunday news show appearances,  Rhodes states the "goal" of the cover story is "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."  Additionally Rhodes wrote that the video narrative was intended "to reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges."

 

 

These e-mails implicate both the President, his immediate staff and Hillary Clinton who in the aftermath of the attack was persistent in reiterating that the US had no part in  the production of this video and went so far to promise the father of one of the victims, that the US would punish those responsible for the video.  Shortly after, when violence in the Middle East was raging,Obama and Clinton spent $70,000 in taxpayer money on a commercial that aired on Pakistani television apologizing for the "video".

 

 

On May 1,  Retired Brig. Gen. Robert Lovell, who at the time of the attacks was the intelligence director at AFRICOM, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that "The point is we should have tried," to aid those under attack in Benghazi and,  "As another saying goes -- always move to the sound of the guns." 


He later testified that the military "could have made a response of some sort." and made clear repeatedly that the military was waiting for clearance to intervene, which never came, from the State Department and Hillary Clinton .  He also declared that at 3:15 AM on September 12, 2012,  AFRICOM knew it was an attack and not a demonstration and that the video had nothing to do with it.  Despite this Obama, Clinton, Rice, Carney and others maintained this fiction publicly, for another two weeks.


The e-mails now show the duplicity and possible criminal actions of both  the Obama White House and Hillary Clinton.  It is also inconceivable that the President himself did not know or even approve this cover up, coming so close to Election day.  Moreover where was he while the attack was going on?

 

The Obama 2012 campaign was built on a foundation of lies, first about ObamaCare and now about Benghazi.  Why should the American public give this disingenuous President the benefit of the doubt on the IRS scandal, Fast and Furious, the AP/James Rosen scandal, the economy and the NSA.  The only question left to answer is the motives of this President who persistently hurts and lies to the nation.

 

Hillary Clinton is simply, once and for all, unfit to be elected to any office... much less the Presidency.

 

ERLANDSSON

RACE, RAGE AND JUSTICE 

 

"Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centred falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated."
-Alveda King, civil rights activist 

   

Donald Sterling has been a racist for a very long time.  His public comments were always there for us to see if we really wanted to look.  So why is it now that almost unanimous scorn is heaped upon him as if a great and terrible secret had been uncovered.  Despite his odious views he got awards and now forgiveness (that he has not asked for) from the LA branch of the NAACP.   What is that all about?  This man seems unrepentant, locked as he is in a legal battle with the latest young woman he cavorted with while still married to his wife of 50 years who is  the co-owner of the Clippers. 
 

Racism is the great American sickness.  Clearly it exists all over the world, but in America it takes on insidious dimensions that threaten the soul of the nation.  It is has always has been an existential danger to who we profess to be and what we profess to stand for.  People who see the world and their fellow men through a racial prism are quite simply, mentally and spiritually ill.


The question before us however in the Donald Sterling affair is not how to demonstrate our collective outrage about his not so secret racist views...that question has been settled.  Instead the question before us now is what is  appropriate, moral and legal with regard to his punishment.  The NBA may well say he has brought shame and dishonor upon the sport and the league, and they would be right.  They may further say that 80% of the players are young black men and it would be intolerable to make them play while this man still owns a valuable franchise.  They would be right about this also.  They may conclude that because of the above, that which Sterling owns must be ripped asunder from him because it is the righteous thing to do.  The problem is... is it the legal thing to do?


Punishing someone solely for his odious views or thoughts is  neither right or legal.  If society attempts to make it so... then what thoughts or views  down the road will become markers for criminal punishment or worse? 


Recently we have witnessed a spate of incidences involving so called speech and/or thought crimes which have ended with people losing their jobs, careers or being threatened  with such a loss.  Brendan Eich at Mozilla is one such case.  Paula Deen and Phil Robertson are others. 


In the majority of incidences that become big news, conservatives or those believed to be conservatives, are the bigots.  Ironically Sterling seems to be an exception to this since he has reportedly been a heavy contributor to the Democratic Party.  The point is that far more often, disgusting speech from the left is ignored or excused while that from the right is never forgotten and never forgiven. 


This ideological selectivity is part of the totalitarian impulse which permeates progressivism and the PC culture it has nourished.  Attempting to bypass the law because the case at hand is so vile has become  a leitmotif for the left.


Nevertheless if there is to be further punishment for Sterling than let it be decided in a court of law with his due process rights protected and let the court of public opinion be restrained to robust  market and social protest that denounces and reacts to his views with vigor but within a legal framework. 

We  should all remember that the Nazis were allowed to march in Skokie and as good people turned their backs on them, they ended up  in the dustbin of history.  Donald Sterling is a nasty, sick man and not worth the loss of one American right under the law but he has given us an occasion to come together in shared protest as decent people, united and not divided.  
 
ERLANDSSON