Special Post: Our 29th Wedding Anniversary

I want to give full credit to my wife, for inspiring me to be a better man and I don't want to leave anything out. 

NOVEMBER 4th, 2018 WAS OUR 29th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY 

So, where do I begin?  

Let's start with "Yes, I still do!"  I still love her and would still choose to marry her.  

• I find her the sexiest woman I've met.  It's not overt, like a late teenager/early twenties woman, "shaking her ass in your face" to get you fired up.  "No," I'm not in it just for the sex (Let's face it:  If any relationship was based purely on sex and sexual performance, it would end when either party couldn't perform as they once could.).  She still arouses me.
• She is still as pretty as she was at age 19.  We dated for 5-1/2 years (to the day) before we got married, waited nearly 7 years until we had children, raised and homeschooled both of them and we still get along.  We've aged 34+ years since we first went out together.  She's had 2 children (and gained some weight which she never lost).  I've gained some weight too, gone mostly bald and my facial hair has changed from red to black to salt and pepper and is now mostly grey.  We've both faced some medical conditions that come with aging; High Blood Pressure, Speed Apnea Weight Gain and Knee Problems.
• She's my best friend.  I can discuss ANYTHING with her (though some subjects are more uncomfortable than others).  We are close and our two, disparate lives merged into a single life, with a single direction.  The two have become one.
• She still puts up with my "Stupid Shit," weird self-deprecating sense of humor, my 2nd guessing things that I've done in the past and annoying habits.  Before we had children, she'd get up with early on Saturday Mornings with me to watch Pinky and the Brain cartoons (and all of the vaudeville jokes and AYPWIP? Lines - now we have them on DVD and can watch them whenever we want).  We still laugh at the dumb Vaudeville jokes.  She still goes "train chasing" with me to photograph Steam Locomotives in action, pulling passenger trains (as I got to find out on Father's Day in 2013, as we chased Southern Railway Consolidation Type, # 630 from Historic Spencer Shops to Barber Junction (NC) on Norfolk Southern's "S-Line" toward Asheville) and later went to photograph her favorite steam locomotive, the Norfolk & Western class "J," streamliner, #611 in Thomasville, NC on its maiden trip after being restored a second time.
• I still try to tell her how beautiful she is (on a daily basis) and buy her flowers about once a week.
• I try to watch and follow the British Romance Novels of the 1600s-1800s that have been made into films with her (e.g. Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Jane Eyre, et al).
• Her smile still melts my heart, reminding me of just how beautiful she is and of my hopes and dreams to share my life with hers.

Is "Love" still the super hot sexual attraction that it once was?

• No, the excitement of purely erotic love (eros) can't be sustained, simply because we eventually become familiar with each other.  However, it is still VERY GOOD and I'm still very attracted to her.
• Love has turned into a very comfortable place, where we are naked and unashamed of who we are in front of each other (not just how we look, but our ideas, hopes, dreams and who we really are).
• We still occasionally go out (on a date) to eat, but it's different than what we'd do as young 20 year olds.

So what does our love for each other look like in our early to mid 50s?

• Well, the kids are grown and "going."  Our son has moved out and is living with friends.  Our daughter is going to college, studying Engineering Technology and (currently is) going to take additional courses and transfer to a 4 year Mechanical Engineering degree.  We're not quite "Empty Nesters," but we're headed that way in a hurry, as well as toward retirement.
• We have our own hobbies, just as we did before we married.  We enjoy walking together, when our knees aren't bothering us.
• There's very little that shocks me any more and it would take something catastrophically egregious to change the way that I feel about her.  We can and do joke about each others' "quirks."  I suspect (and hope) that she feels the same way.

Here are some of my general thought about the Marriage Relationship:

• Marriage is difficult and is nothing like the romantic stories found in books or the movies.  It takes hard work.  
• If you depend on your partner to make you happy, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
• We should marry to compliment each other, to help each other, to encourage each other.  
• Beauty is fleeting:  We soon got old, fat, bald and grey (me balding, with mostly grey facial hair, her greying, losing the flower of youth.
• Love is about commitment.  It's an irrational act of giving yourself away, that is not dependent on the return of the same level of commitment from the other party.
• You can't change another person (and a wise person would not even try).  
• You need to decide before you marry that you can live with their cute little quirks that you'll someday come to resent or hate and you would be far better to change yourself and choose not to be bothered by them.
• You need to ask yourself before you get married, can we be together when life is boring and there is nothing to do (or there is no time or money to do anything that is entertaining)?
• You marry, promising in front of GOD, family and close friends that you'll forsake other partners, and devote your love toward your chosen partner, despite times of plenty or need, times of health or infirmity, for better or worse, until death.  A preacher is there to represent GOD, as His witness and your family and friends are there as well to bear witness against you, should you decide to break that vow.  If they are good friends, they should be willing to "kick your ass" or "knock some sense back into you to persuade you to "get your mind right" and "your act together," so you'll decide to keep that vow.

On Sunday, November 4th, Susan and I celebrated 29 years of marriage by taking a Sunday Drive in her Buick Century Custom through the Uwharries today.  The Uwharries are an old, worn down chain of mountains that might get to just above 1000 feet in altitude,  just past the end of the Sandhills and into the Piedmont of North Carolina.  It's very rural area with spotty cellular coverage.  Some places are beautiful and there are numerous places to hike, camp and go four-wheeling, off road.

We left and went up US 29  over to Concord, eating breakfast at a McDonalds (about our 4th choice, but other places we wanted to go were too crowded or had stopped selling breakfast by 11:00 AM).  Leaving Concord at about 11:30 AM, we drove east on NC 3 to NC 73, turning northeast and went to Mt. Pleasant.  The weather was perfect, clear and in the low to mid 60s.  Turning on NC 49 we rode northeast, crossing US 52 (with my alma matter, Pfeiffer University about 2 miles up US 52, towards Salisbury) and then the Yadkin River’s Tuckertown Reservoir,  continuing on until the NC 109 interchange.  We turned right (south) and drove into Troy, going to NC 24/27 via NC 109 Business and NC 134.  We took NC 24/27 southwest back through the Uwharries toward Albemarle (taking a minute to traverse both directions on the Bridge over the Yadkin River, down toward what I’d call "the narrows,” as the river valley is pretty steep in that area - and the water level today on Badin Lake was down between 6' - 10,' with the edge of the water way out past the ends of the docks in that area of the river).  By this time we were getting chilly, as it had become moderately overcast weather with slightly dark clouds and the temperature was falling, though it was about 2:00 PM.  Then we continued back into Cabarrus County at Midland and turned right on Sam Black Road, Right again on Flowes Store Road, left on Piney Church Road, Right on Lower Rocky River Road, Left on Rocky River Road, Right again on Stallings Road, Right on Harrisburg Veterans Parkway and a left on NC 49.  From there, we drove back home.  

The leaf colors were generally muted with dull reds, somber browns and dull Greens of deciduous hardwood trees getting ready to drop their leaves and go dormant, punctuated by Evergreens (pines, and cedars), the bright Red of Sumac and with some Oranges and Yellows.  It's only been relatively cold one day so far, slipping to near freezing at night about 2 weeks ago.  Most days are still in the 60-70 degree Fahrenheit range and night time temps are in the 50s.  It's still warm for this time of year and we've had a lot of rain with the left overs of Hurricanes Florence.

There was a lot of Mold in the air and especially on the backs of leaves that are turning (color and loose!).  It made the day uncomfortable in places where the local mold levels were especially high.  When my allergies were really bothering me, viscous phlegm drainage was causing me to hack like a 3-pack-a-day smoker. as I tried to speak.

Our Sunday drive was just about 125 miles and took us 4-1/2 hours including time for breakfast at McDonalds (Susan went Keto with a Triple Stack Breakfast Sandwich on an English Muffin, tossing the English Muffin and the American Cheese.  She got an extra egg slice on her sandwich.  I had the Same, made as a Combo (without the extra egg), eating the whole sandwich and the Potato Cake.  I had my customary Sweet Tea, while Susan had the Iced Coffee, Extra Cream and Sugar Free Vanilla).  Just guessing, but I’d bet her car got 20 - 25 MPG (her car seems to be better geared for the NC Hills than my Olds 98 Regency, which was originally ordered for Northeastern Ohio).  We didn't play the radio or mess with phones:  We just drove (as I enjoy driving and she just does it to get from point A to point B, I drove and she rode) and talked with each other on various topics.  She was still recovering from minor outpatient knee surgery on her left knee last Wednesday, so there was little getting out and walking except to stop at restrooms.

It was a good day and we really enjoyed each other's company.

  

Thoughts on #NeverTrump, the G.O.P. CountryClub/Establishment and "PureConservatives" unwillingness to Support Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election

I found this piece that I'd written before the Glorious Election Of Donald J. Trump as POTUS.
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Oh will the #NeverTrump, GOP (country club) Establishment and those Intellectually Pure Conservatives ever stop trying to replace Donald Trump as the Republican Nominee for President in 2016?

At first, it was the sheer incredulity that this unexperienced business man, reality TV star and real estate magnate, Donald Trump, is Running for the Republican Presidential nomination.  The sheer nerve of this outsider! However, Trump is a Marketing Genius and had covertly "tried the waters" with his support of the birthers, demanding Barack Obama's real birth certificate and offering a reward for it.  With an almost intuitive understanding of the man on the street, Trump started talking about issues that Blue Collar Workers and the Common People understood:

• Illegal Immigration is harmful to America, because of the added costs to the Social Welfare Net
• Uncontroled Borders Allow Not Only Illegal Immigration for Economic Reasons, but also allow Drug Trafficers and Terrorists to come into the country
• Illegal Immigration adds workers to a job pool where skill sets (although needed) do not supply high wages, driving down wages further
• Free Trade Deals ave been extended to a point where too many jobs building products have been "off shored" and manufacturing is dying in America.

Interest in Trump picked up.  As Carly Fiorina made her way into the "top tier Republican Presidential Debate," with a stellar performance in the 2nd tier debate, Trump quickly stole her thunder and showed his side as a "no holds barred" street fighter, knocking her out with the "Look at that face!" comment.  While boorish, the play might as well have come off of his show, "The Apprentice."  He immediately "sucked all of the oxygen out of the room," killing Carly's campaign.  By the time of the South Carolina Primary Election, she was done.

Trump, having had "his" own TV reality show, clearly understood how to control the message.  When Jeb Bush went after him, Trump easily controlled the narrative, building on the dissatisfaction with the presidencies of his brother George W. Bush and his father George Herbert Walker Bush by saying that Jeb Bush  had/was "Low Energy."  Though outspending Trump in a fashion that was simply unbelievable, Jeb got no traction and was soon out of the race.  As other candidates (Huckabee, Perry et. al.) dropped out of the race because they could gain no traction, Marco Rubio challenged Trump on his own turf, taking his offense to Bronx style street insults.  Nobody, however, trumps Donald Trump on his own territory and Trump quickly dispatched Rubio in his home state of Florida.  Trump easily dispatched Ted Cruz, securing the nomination of the Republican Party for their Presidential Candidate in the 2016 election. 

Michael Graham is Associate Pastor of Orlando Grace Church and CFO of Allogy Interactive.  He recently wrote a piece that was published on The Federalist, on October 14th with the idea of forcing the Presidential Election into the House of Representatives.  The idea is for voters to vote for the 3rd party candidate in what he sees as "possibility states" of  Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Maine.  His idea is to take away enough of the Electoral College Votes as to deny any candidate a majority of these votes and the Presidency.  This throws the election into the House of Representatives for them to choose the victor.  There is historical precedent for this to happen:  This is how John Quincy Adams was elected president in 1824 despite not winning the majority vote or having the most Electoral College votes.

So because your candidate (or an ideal to your philosophy) isn't available, the rest of us should take a bow and let you generously choose for us?  Gee!  I thought that servants of Christ were supposed to think of others first and trust in the LORD for their provision.  Sorry Pastor, no sale.

Trump's rise came from Obama and his statement about the "bitter clingers," who don't the people who don't look like them and who've taken their jobs.  It came from former Speaker Boehner, who publicly excoriated voters for not getting inline and following his agenda (and that of Harry Reid, Obama and Nancy Pelosi).  It came from the GOP establishment/country club members like Mitch McConnell that intentionally tried to destroy the TEA Party.  It's why Eric Cantor was "primaried" by Professor Dave Brat.

http://regated.com/2016/10/hey-boomers-so-you-say-you-want-a-revolution/

I'm not sorry that you see this election as a dumpster fire:  Those of us Deplorables and Red Necks, have watched as Barack Obama, has turned our Christian culture into a working Dumpster Fire, to be replaced with his more important Muslim Culture.  No, the candidates aren't ideal and Mr. Trump is a boorish braggart who needs to re-learn his lessons of Decorum.  However, if you think that the American Citizenry are willing to let a congress, who was elected to stop and reverse Obama's agenda and instead went along in lock step with it, choose our next POTUS, then you are insane.

As Pat Caddell said a year ago (https://vimeo.com/145289992), this is Revolution.  

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/45384

But, this is a cultural revolution.  There is another side, not of their impending doom but of a coming boiler explosion, as the deplorables get pushed too far, one time to many.  Pat Caddell said it last year, that "this isn't a revolt but instead a revolution," that "Americans don't want (to fight) a culture war, but GOD help the one who starts it."


This election is a safety "pop-off" valve on a fully charged boiler, a peaceful release of anger against rulers that have lied to them, destroyed their culture and hurt them economically.  It would be better for the Republicans to let that happen, and get behind Trump, rather than let it become the election of 1860, when a new political party elected it's first President too late to keep the revolution from turning violent and into war..  If Trump wins, the pop-off lifts and something gets done about the issues that are causing those members of fly-over country to increase pressure.  If it doesn't pop-off and Lady MacBeth Incarnate wins election, only to force higher taxes, more regulations, steal civil rights and to prove that it is who you know that determines whether a law will be enforced against you, an explosion is coming.  And as with most explosions, the whole is blown to bits and the parts remain, with not much of a chance to be reassembled into the working piece of equipment that once provided power.

Recently, I said to my son:  "You can learn the lesson by observing what others have done and the consequences they earned for their foolishness, or you can earn those scars yourself.  Either way, the lesson is here and you will learn it."  Maybe a better way to describe what's coming is to say what a good friend's father once said, "I don't think that I'd try that again if I were you." 

Guest Post => American Thinker => Chet Richards => Suicidal Empires

This Column in the 6 September, 2018 American Thinker deserves a place in my Blog, because it dovetails in with the other blogs that I've written or posted about the coming 2nd Civil War in the United States.  If we understand the dangers, we may yet avoid the carnage, however I believe that we are past ANY HOPE of stopping it.  Comic Strip artist and author of Dilbert, Scott Adams has been saying that we've been suffering cognitive dissonance since the Presidential Election of 2016. He simplifies this by saying that there are two movies playing at once and the audience of citizens of the US will not even acknowledge that there is a movie that they aren't watching.  Actually, by saying this, he's making it clear that there are two views about the "consequences of the last Presidential Election" and he's telling us that the group that lost the election refuses to acknowledge.  And As the "losing side" decries the "winning side" as Barbarians, the winning side is likely to act like Political Barbarians, consigning the losers into the dust bin of History.

September 6, 2018

Suicidal Empires

By Chet Richards

In the year 410, Alaric and his Goths sacked Rome.  For 800 years, Rome had not suffered siege and sack.  Within 30 years, the Western Roman Empire effectively vanished, becoming a bundle of new Germanic kingdoms.  The change plunged the West into a darkened age.  But it also reinvigorated Europe to have a brilliant future.

What is happening in our world echoes those distant events. 

Historian Michael Kulikowski offers a new take on the Western Empire's fall.  He proposes that the Western Roman Empire accidently committed suicide.

Like the Eastern Roman Empire, the Western Empire was basically stable and should have lasted.  But it didn't.  The pettiness and vitriol of powerful fools destroyed a great empire from the inside.  We face that same risk. 

The Roman Empire always had a fundamental problem: succession.  How does the empire peacefully transfer power from one competent emperor to the next?  The Romans never solved this problem.  Some emperors reigned for decades, others for weeks.  Some emperors died in bed, but most were murdered.

The Empire was too massively coherent for any given emperor to do much damage.  However, in the time of Alaric, supreme idiocy triggered the West's downfall.

Our founding fathers found a clever solution to the Romans' problem of succession.  This was our Electoral College.  When it failed, in 1860, disputed succession gave us secession and the Civil War.  The Romans were all too familiar with civil war.

In 212, the Roman Empire fundamentally changed: Emperor Caracalla proclaimed that all free people in the empire were now Roman citizens.  Unfortunately, universal citizenship had its downside. 

Until Caracalla, Rome was a loose association of different peoples in different places with different cultures and different laws.  In effect, the Empire was a kind of armed trade association.  The early United States was similar until the Civil War, and the later 17th Amendment, imposed constricting centralized authority on America.

During the early Empire, members of the Roman Senate oversaw a light sprinkling of Roman rules in each of the provinces.  Local laws and institutions remained intact.  Under this system, most people had friendly relations with other members of the empire regardless of their various cultures.  

With Caracalla's edict, this fundamentally changed.  Now there was to be comprehensive uniformity of law – Roman Law – everywhere, and at all levels.  Enforcing this led to a vast expansion of the governing bureaucracy, culminating in Diocletian's administrative system.  The Roman Deep State had arrived.  Now a vast influx of ambitious men joined the ruling class, all greedy for power. 

Religious and political factions developed, each of which attempted to impose a different doctrine.  Friendships evaporated.  And everyone despised "barbarians." 

But the "barbarians" weren't always barbarian.  Indeed, most of the Goths were Christian.  Over centuries of contacts with the empire, the Goths had become Romanized.

Then the climate changed.  There began a centuries-long Little Ice Age.  The newly winter-frozen Rhine and Danube were no longer barriers.  Worse, drought drove the fearsome Huns west.  Fleeing before them were the Goths seeking refuge inside the Roman Empire. 

Rome had been swallowing foreigners for centuries – melting them into the Empire, much like the American melting pot.  The emperor admitted the Goths and promised to provision them until they could be properly settled and begin farming.

Rome then initiated its suicide: the arrogant and greedy Deep State appallingly treated the Goth refugees.  The Goths rebelled and annihilated the Roman Army at Adrianople.  Emperor Valens vanished. 

Theodosius the Great restabilized the empire.  Near death, Theodosius installed his son-in-law, the half-Vandal general Stilicho, as regent of the West and protector of his underage son, Augustus Honorius. 

We first see Alaric in command of many federated Goths under Stilicho.  At the civil war battle of the River Frigidus, Alaric's troops were up front, resulting in their great losses.  Resentful at this placement, Alaric rebelled against Stilicho, and the Goths joined him. 

For several years, Alaric maneuvered his army around the Balkans and northern Italy, all the while skirmishing and negotiating with Stilicho.  But negotiating with the feckless Roman Deep State was hopeless.  Since the establishment treated him like a barbarian, Alaric would be a barbarian!  And Rome was sacked. 

The Western Empire had committed suicide.  Without effective defenses, the empire now succumbed to multiple invasions and faded away.

Today, our current political environment resembles the situation in the time of Alaric.

Consider succession.  The attacks on President Trump are the most dangerous assault against our founders' solution to the problem of succession.  Our Deep State refuses to recognize that Donald Trump really is the president.  It is doing everything in its power to eject him from office or cripple him. 

Without orderly succession, our republic will disintegrate as it almost did in the Civil War.

Today we have the parasitic swamp.  The Deep State part of the swamp is the government bureaucratic system and the regulatory agencies.  These institutions have become corrupt ruling kingdoms unto themselves.  They are no longer governed by we the people. 

Federated in the swamp are its elitist forces: the academy, many judges, most of the media, web giants, and so on.  These federates propagate the Swamp's progressive ideology – Orwellian ideas that subvert the very essence of our Constitution. 

With the recent ascendency of progressives, most Americans are now treated as un-American – in many cases with expressions of real hatred and scorn.  Conservatives are now "deplorables," "barbarians," "morons."  Even a recent progressive president called the traditionalist majority "the enemy."  In effect, an alien ideology has conquered most of America's institutions.  Most Americans are now strangers in their own land. 

Very well: If lovers of liberty are to be called "barbarians," they will be "barbarians" – political barbarians.  They will fight those who oppress them.  Sweeping aside conventional politicians, conservatives found a fearless, dynamic leader – an outsider, like themselves.  They now have their own Alaric – Alaric inside the political gates.  They have President Donald J. Trump.

Guest Post=> Sultan Knish Blog=> The Left Is All The Rage

Daniel Greenfield wrote this Blog post on his Sultan Knish blog:

Thursday, October 11, 2018

“Use the rage,” former Attorney General Eric Holder scream-tweeted. “Get people out to vote and be rid of these people.”

Had President Trump urged his supporters to channel their rage into politics, the quote would have been good for a week of sanctimonious media lectures about his destruction of democratic norms. Not to mention his dangerous divisiveness, the risk of violence and the high price of tea in Outer Mongolia. 

But the media has neither the interest nor the inclination to even note Holder’s ‘rage’ tweet. It’s too busy preaching anger, fury and hatred to the same shrieking choir of maddened lefties screaming at the sky, having meltdowns on social media and clawing madly at the doors of the Supreme Court. 

"We need to stay angry about Kavanaugh," E.J. Dionne Jr. fulminates in the Washington Post. But that’s nothing compared to the New York Times where the old gray lady is frenziedly distempered all the time. 

"Get Angry, and Get Involved," an op-ed screeches. "Tears, Fury or Action: How Do You Express Anger?", an op-ed from a few days before shrills. “Fury Is a Political Weapon And Women Need to Wield It,” a third howls. That’s a lot of anger from the megaphone of the privileged wealthy northeastern left. 

There hasn’t been this much peevishness on Martha’s Vineyard since they raised the yacht docking fees. 

The New York Times and the Washington Post are echoing Holder’s call for political anger. Rage will solve all of America’s problems. If the Democrats stay angry, they’ll take over the government and be truly ready to unleash their rage on “these people”. Otherwise known as the rest of the country. 

Even as the media preaches the virtues of leftist rage, it warns about the threat of Republican anger. 

"Brett Kavanaugh's Anger May be Backfiring," the Washington Post had hopefully speculated earlier. "Judge Kavanaugh is One Angry Man," the New York Times spat. "Kavanaugh Borrows From Trump's Playbook on White Male Anger," it threw in. 

But there’s a fundamental difference between Kavanaugh’s anger and that of the media left. 

Brett Kavanaugh was angry because he had been falsely accused of rape by the media, with no actual evidence. His life was torn apart. His family, as he testified, had been “destroyed”. Democrats demanded that a 53-year-old man account for every detail of his high school and college years. 

His accuser was held to zero standards while he was told to disprove an accusation lacking basic essentials like a specific time, place and witnesses. Had a black teen in the ghetto been hit with equally flimsy charges, the left would have gone into a rage tantrum in support of the accused rapist. 

But, unlike Brett, the left wasn’t angry because it had been personally abused. Despite the efforts to pass off paid leftist activists as “sexual assault survivors”, the progressive bilious bile was purely political. 

Kavanaugh was angry because his life had been destroyed. The left is angry because it wants power. 

Leftist political anger inflicted sadistic torments on Brett Kavanaugh for political reasons. And the media pretends that this political anger is somehow more worthy than that the outrage of its victim. 

Obama activists, Senate Dems, Soros social justice flunkies, sleazy lawyers and fake news reporters put a decent man through hell so that they could, as Holder tweeted, “use the rage” in the midterm elections. 

The media left demanded to know what right Brett Kavanaugh had to be angry. They mocked his pain, ridiculed his suffering with the venal contempt and snarky hatred that now passes for leftist comedy. 

But a better question would be what right does the left have to its endless anger? 

Eight years of running the country didn’t leave it any more generous toward its opponents, any less hungry for power, or any less tribal, partisan and furious than it had been in 2007. The left isn’t angry because it cares about rape victims. Not when it’s lining up to buy tickets to Bill and Hillary’s latest tour. 

It’s angry because, as Holder tweeted, it wants power. 

And it’s willing to destroy every political, civic, cultural, social and moral norm to get it. The left doesn’t believe in norms because it doesn’t believe in any compromise or standard. All it has is its will to power. 

Some people have the right to win elections (Hillary Clinton) and others (Donald Trump) don’t. Some justices have the right to be confirmed without campaigns of personal destruction (Democrat nominees like Kagan and Sotomayor) and others (Republican nominees like Bork, Thomas and Kavanaugh) don’t. 

And some people have the right to be angry (New York Times and Washington Post readers) and others (Trump supporters and Front Page Magazine readers) don’t. The entitlement of double standards is essential to the leftist quest for power which is about manufacturing perceived inequality in order to administrate mandates of total inequality. Disparate impact justifies affirmative action. If black workers or students underperform, then poor white workers and students must go to the back of the line. 

But if replacing the norms of political discourse with livid tantrums is bad, then it’s bad for everyone. 

There’s no way to mandate anger as affirmative action. If you insult, deprive and oppress people, they will become angry. And the only thing you can do is get angry right back or outlaw their anger. 

The choleric left is working on the latter. But in its conniption fits, it’s settling for the former. 

It deprives people of their rights and it responds to their anger with more anger. In its rage, it wipes out every political and social norm it can manage until its opponents are being hounded out of restaurants, fired from their jobs, assaulted on the street, shot at charity baseball games, smeared as rapists, doxed by reporters and staffers, censored on the internet and eavesdropped on by corrupt federal agencies. 

There isn’t a legal or political norm that Obama didn’t violate during his time in office. Reporters were spied on. So were Republicans. The IRS and the FBI were used to target political opponents. A man was sent to jail for making a YouTube video. The DOJ was used to go after folks who mocked Obama. 

After eight years of political terror, the Democrats have settled into accusing their political opponents of treason and demanding their imprisonment, everything from intimidation to death threats to attempted murder, and trying to destroy a Supreme Court nominee based on the most baseless allegations. 

This is what leftists have done to our political norms. And what enrages them about Kavanaugh is not any feigned concern for our political norms, but that our norms survived their tantrums and dirty tricks. 

The media claimed that Brett Kavanaugh should not sit on the Supreme Court by reason of his temperament. That’s rich coming from a deranged political movement getting high on its own fury. 

"If you're not angry yet, you should be," a riled New York Times editorial yelps. A forum for readers discusses their struggles “expressing rage” and urges them to turn “anger into action”. 

The media used to believe that basing national politics around anger was destructively bad. Now it’s been radicalized enough that it celebrates hate, rancor and rage. As long as it’s leftist rage. 

Love can be one-sided. But anger rarely is. 

When the media riles up leftist fury, it’s also rousing Republican anger. The Kavanaugh hearings are a clear example of how rage-driven abuses by the left lead to a wrathful reaction on the right. 

The Democrats and their media allies furiously preach anger, and their rage is tearing apart America.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

Guest Post: Bart Remes=> The Foundation for Economic Education => The False Promise that Debt Doesn't Matter, Because We Owe It To Ourselves

REALLY?  Gee, How Much Did You Spend To Get That Education?

Tuesday, June 05, 2018

Economics Debt National Debt Taxation Capital Government Spending Paul Krugman

Debt Doesn't Matter, Because "We Owe It to Ourselves"? Why Krugman and Keynes Are Wrong about This

It is an undeniable fact that debt, whether private or public, must, eventually, be repaid.

by Bart Remes

Creditors have better memories than debtors. This elegant line was coined by Benjamin Franklin—political philosopher, prolific writer, humorist and American ambassador to France. Mr. Franklin also was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A true polymath and a man of great common sense.

An entrepreneur assumes he is entitled to an inexhaustible supply of credit and nonchalantly racks up debt. Soon, he will discover that creditors have better memories than debtors. Credit will dry up. Workers will stop working. Suppliers will stop supplying. Debt, after all, needs to be paid back. Credit and debt are two sides of the same coin.

They will insist there is something subtle about debt we don’t understand.

“The creditor is always a virtual partner of the debtor. He has linked his fate with that of the debtor. Every grant of credit is a speculative entrepreneurial venture, the success or failure of which is uncertain.” – Ludwig von Mises in Human Action (Chapter 20 – p539)

Mainstream economists will not deny this. After all, how could they? Yet, they will say we got it wrong. They will argue we don’t get the full picture. They will insist there is something subtle about debt we don’t understand.

We Owe it to Ourselves

The subtlety we fail to see—according to the mainstream—is that public debt and private debt are two different animals. When government owes money to other organizations or individuals, a different rule applies than when a private person or a private enterprise owes money. That rule is: we owe it to ourselves.

Krugman claims government can continue to pile up debt without ever worrying to pay it off because we owe it to ourselves.

Here is an example. When Japanese business leaders questioned their government’s policy of reckless racking up of debt, Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman immediately rose to the occasion. He wrote an article in the New York Times humbly titled “The economic wisdom—or lack thereof—of business leaders”. It is a shocking read.

Mr. Krugman essentially argues that government can spend and spend and spend. It can continue to pile up debt without ever worrying to pay it off because we owe it to ourselves. He even surreptitiously hints that anyone who fails to understand this simple notion surely is not of his intellectual level.

Murray N. Rothbard, not a Nobel Prize laureate, but in my view a far better economist and a much more humble man, pointedly observed that “we” and “ourselves” are not necessarily the same.

Animal Farm

Perhaps what Paul Krugman and other mainstream economists are alluding to is that the pigs in Animal Farm are right after all. "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." Transcribed to mainstream economist language, this reads as all debt is equal, but government debt is more equal than others. If you think this sounds a bit strange, it does. 

Every dollar a government spends has to be paid. That is the sheer reality. Have you ever wondered where government gets its money from? The answer is simple. There are three sources it can choose from. These are taxes, borrowing, and inflating the money supply. Unlike taxes or inflating, the money collected through borrowing needs to be paid back in future, eventually.

Time Machine

In our world, there are no time machines. This may seem obvious. But it has important implications! No time machines mean that all goods are produced out of present resources. When government or the private sector spends money, present resources are used. It is not possible to go to the year 2100, take robots, airplanes, pizzas, oil, or whatever there is to take and flash them over to use in our present time.

Government pays for all this now, irrespective of whether the money is sourced from taxes or borrowing.

All bridges, airports, tanks (and pizzas) that government orders are made using present resources that are provided by the present generation. Government pays for all this now, irrespective of whether the money is sourced from taxes or borrowing. Naturally, in practice, there is a difference in how the burden of this spending is shared among the present generation.

Nobody likes to pay taxes (with the exception of Warren Buffet). Taxes are never popular. Neither is inflation. When government pays for the stuff it spends on, with borrowed money at least, that doesn’t feel as bad. Taxes are paid for by everyone. Borrowing comes from a small group of lenders. People might feel a bit worried about the principle of it, but they don’t feel the pain of it the way they don’t want to pay taxes and dislike inflation.

Just Moving Around

We owe it to ourselves is based on the idea that the small group who lends money receives government bonds in return, which are financial assets. These lenders are entitled to a stream of interest payments and eventually will receive the principal back. They even can hand down the financial assets to their children and grandchildren.

According to mainstream economists, it means that down the road, borrowing by government is nothing more than moving money around internally. It is "transfer payments." Just like that. Taxpayers reimburse their own people, albeit from a big group of taxpayers to a small group of lenders. Let Murray N. Rothbard have his fun and say “we” and “ourselves” are not necessarily the same. Who cares? It is all the same. It is not making a country richer or poorer.

We are back to the original analysis and we owe it to ourselvesremains not a problem.

Obviously, if the lenders are foreigners, it could be that we owe it to foreigners, and we are living beyond our means. But if we extrapolate the present generationto mean all humans, and future generations to mean all future humans, then we are back to the original analysis and we owe it to ourselves remains not a problem.

Geen Gezeik, Iedereen Rijk

So then, why not abolish all taxes and source all government revenue through borrowing? Government debt doesn’t matter after all. We owe it to ourselves. It is nothing more than a mere act of bookkeeping and accountancy. Zero taxes surely will make everybody happy. It even could be a catchy election slogan: Geen Gezeik, Iedereen Rijk.(*)

The truth is that government debt matters. Government debt negatively impacts an economy, deeply. We owe it to ourselves is a fallacy! There are many reasons why this is. Here are some of them: crowding out, misallocation, and capital.

Crowding Out

Here is what that means. All government spending drains scarce funds and scarce resources away from entrepreneurs and channels them into projects selected by government officials.

Entrepreneurs will have to pay higher interest rates and higher input prices to fend off competition from government.

Remember, all goods are produced out of present resources. When government borrows to finance its spending, it competes with other borrowers for scarce funds and scarce resources that are nowavailable in an economy. Other borrowers end up with less.

As a result of crowding out, entrepreneurs will have to pay higher interest rates and higher input prices to fend off competition from government. There will be less incentive for them to invest in the fewer available funds and resources to make innovative new products, buy more equipment, hire more people, build new factories, create new companies, and so forth.

Some may argue that government will use the borrowed money to pay suppliers. So, after all, the money goes back in the economy. But this argument doesn’t hold. This brings us to another reason why government debt undermines an economy.

Misallocation

Government is accountable to spend money within its budget. It is not accountable to profit and loss and, therefore, does not know how to use the borrowed funds and resources as productively as entrepreneurs.

“In public administration, there is no connection between revenue and expenditure.” – Ludwig von Mises in Bureaucracy (Chapter 2 – p47)

For entrepreneurs, success is measured by the size of profits. If there is no profit in making something, it is a signal that capital and labor directed to producing whatever this something may be is misdirected. It signals that capital and labor are not used in an effective way.

In public administration, success is measured by the size of the budget.

Yes Minister is a British political satire that ran on TV in the 1980s. One of the protagonists—a fictitious top civil servant named Sir Humphrey—explains in a most un-cynical manner the difference between the workings of public administration and the private sector.

In Sir Humphrey’s words, in public administration, success is measured by the size of the budget. The more money that is available to be spent, the more success public administration can claim. A big department is more successful than a small one.

Sadly, the possibility of borrowing and issuing bonds leads to more and more government spending. And a higher probability of resource misallocation than compared to a pure market outcome.

Capital

We owe it to ourselves completely fails to understand capital. It completely ignores what takes place across time. It is the pinnacle of the short-term principle.

There is no such thing as an abundant or a presently inexhaustible supply of capital.

When government squanders money today on unproductive projects and misallocates scarce resources, this seriously impacts the process of capital accumulation and capital maintenance down the road. As a result, there will not be an increase in productivity in future.

Capital is not a direct gift from nature. It does not reproduce itself automatically. It is not a homogeneous thing. It has different uses. There is no such thing as an abundant or a presently inexhaustible supply of capital.

Capital accumulation is a process of trial, error, and entrepreneurial discovery, which takes time. Capital goes through a series of stages of production, from unfinished and unusable, to finished and usable, to usable capital, and eventually usable consumer goods.

When this process is tampered with, future generations will inherit fewer innovative products, less equipment and fewer machines, fewer well-trained people, fewer factories, and so forth. This is a major factor in explaining why government deficits translate into a poorer future.

All Government Debt Leads to Taxes

In the end, government can raise only so much through borrowing.

As debt grows, interest payments to service that debt typically grows as well. Nobody believes that government can drag eternally the burden of these interest rates. Increasingly larger parts of tax revenue must go to paying interest on the debt.

Eventually, the only source of revenue that will remain open is taxes.

It is obvious that sooner or later lenders will become nervous at the size of the debt and demand much higher interest rates. If government still wants to spend more, it then will activate the printing press (AKA inflating the money supply).

When this happens, lenders will react and insist on even higher interest rates, knowing that the purchasing power of the dollar will fall over time.

Credit will dry up. Government will learn the lesson. “The creditor is always a virtual partner of the debtor.” Eventually, the only source of revenue that will remain open is taxes.

When the friendly civil servant from the tax department knocks at your door and demands your money to pay for the government debt, you might just as well tell him taxes are unimportant for the same reason as government debt is unimportant. And that is: we owe it to ourselves.

(*)Geen Gezeik, Iedereen Rijk is Dutch and translates as No Hitch, Everybody Rich. This catchy a slogan was created many years ago in The Netherlands by comedians Kees van Kooten and Wim de Bie. The duo founded a fictional political party De Tegenpartij (The Antiparty) and used humor and parody to fight the populist tendencies of other political parties. Things turned out a bit differently. De Tegenpartij became so popular that it actually might have won several seats in parliament had they participated in elections.

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Every time I hear someone say something like this, I cringe, recalling the words of a late Manager, who said "you can't borrow yourself into prosperity."  Borrowing money is a transaction that generally requires repayment with interest.  Merriam Webster defines Borrow as 

• to take and use (something that belongs to someone else) for a period of time before returning it.
• to take and use up (something) with the promise to give back something of equal value.

As someone who has been in debt and received wise counsel in how to make a budget and eventually (over a LONG PERIOD OF TIME) has become debt free, I warn young people NOT to go into debt.  Debt is borrowing against the future.  And we don't know what the future holds.  

There are some items that we must surely purchase on time, as the cost is too great for 99% of people to be able to pay for those items in total, upfront.  Housing and Transportation come to mind.  

Way back when, in Biblical Times, men pledged themselves as Surety on a Loan,  When they could not pay they became Indentured Servants, working their debt to another person as service.  Then later, people who could not pay their debts went to Debtors Prison.  The state of Georgia was originally founded as an English Debtors Colony, where those in Debtors Prison would have to go to that colony and work off their debt.  this was less than 300 years ago.

When I worked at my first "career" in the Supply Chain of my previous employer, we had a series of jokes that were passed around.  The punch Line was:  Life is hard.  It's harder if you're stupid.

 Often times, we make decisions that at the time look wise, only to find our selves in "a pinch."  Then we have to dig ourselves out of the hole in which we have mistakenly put ourselves.  Those of us who are wise may have "learned about the perils of debt by others' mistakes" or "earned the scars of the perils of debt."  It is hard to watch others learn this lesson, but it's harder for you to live it yourself.