Category Archives: Founding Fathers

Field Of Hypocrites

BAB's A List, Education, Founding Fathers, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Regulation, Sport, The Zeitgeist

Field of Hypocrites
By Myron Pauli

There exists throughout America a species of busybody who decides morality and behavior for the rest of us. Sometimes it is just silly things like a yellow ribbon to “support the troops” (does that protect against IED’s?), or a pink ribbon for breast cancer (as if I need to be reminded of breast cancer). I guess if shoving your head in a toilet bowl makes you feel better about the Holocaust, go to it!

Of course, the current rage is to “pile on” the notorious Jerry Sandusky child abuse case, where we need to “make a statement” via some collective punishment. Maybe we can drop a nuke on Sandusky? Or change the ice cream brand to “Ben and Hortense’s”? Or rename “Pennsylvania” as “Lesotho”? Into this collective mentality steps this cartel of hypocrisy known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

Now, you might take a step back and ask why state governments need to run colleges when private universities do fairly well. Thomas Jefferson thought that some public education would make us enlightened and freer, not knowing that most universities would be run by neo-Marxist academicians. While some colleges stick to learning (such as Caltech, which lost 300 basketball games in a row), others run semi-professional football and basketball teams. I guess colleges could also operate breweries, pencil factories, and whorehouses – the latter of which is, arguably, in line with the rest of what goes on there!

Hence the neo-Marxists wind-up sending hulking semi-literate Neanderthals to bash each other with weekly concussions for subsistence “scholarship” under the pretense that they are “students.” Should one of these exploited gladiators hock a T-shirt for $50, they get pounced upon for violating the “rules” that they have no say in! This, we are told, maintains the “integrity” of the process.

But even on non-athletes, the Universities are hardly better. With severe shortage of scientists in the labor force, they could hire paid “staff” to do the grunt work of searching for the Higgs Boson – but instead, they train “graduate students” for subsistence to work 100 hour weeks soldering connections to scintillation counters, for the same reason that Simon Legree employed slaves on the plantation – cheap labor. [IM: Myron, slavery, which was economically inefficient, was purported to be “free” labor.] The fact that there are going to be ZERO jobs in experimental particle physics in 2030 is of no concern to the professors.

Back to the NCAA. They have decided to follow the dictum of Orwell: “Those who control the past control the future,” by ex post facto declaring victories of Penn State to now be losses – which, undoubtedly, will also erase child abuse!

Why not award the ersatz victories to Caltech?! This has to rank with the claim that the late Kim Jong Il of South Korea golfed a 34 in 18 holes including 11 holes-in-one. Undoubtedly this constitutes another victory for both morality and academic integrity.

They also decided to limit the amount of “scholarships” that the taxpayers of Lesotho (formerly known as Pennsylvania) can give to muscle-laden ghetto kids to bash their brains in.

However, in fairness, the NCAA is allowing the “scholars” to transfer to other Bowl-bound semi-professional franchises (sometimes called “Universities”). Hallelujah, justice is served! Ten years from now, most of those former “scholars” will be serving fries with that “justice” on torn cartilages, suffering migraine headaches.

Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism.

UPDATED: What Would John Randolph Of Roanoke Have Said?

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, States' Rights, The State

Obama’s remarks at Roanoke, Virginia, July 13, 2012, were more than a faux pas.

With these remarks, Obama has outed himself as a most odious collectivist, who believes that government predation is a condition for production:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

That snot Obama uttered these words in a place carrying the name Roanoke. I’m probably in a minority, but the place name makes me think of John Randolph of Roanoke, the great Southern agrarian, radical proponent of the states’ rights doctrine. John Randolph would have driven the parasite Obama off the commonwealth with force, if need be:

“Randolph was especially critical of the commerce clause and the general welfare clause of the Constitution. He predicted that the great extension of the power of centralized government would someday occur through these legal avenues. Time has proven him correct.” John Randolph of Roanoke [was] an eccentric genius, unwilling to admit the slightest compromise with the new order. Randolph feared the results of excessive centralization and the impersonality of a government too far removed from the varieties of local experience. Discussing the House of Representatives, he asked: ‘But, Sir, how shall a man from Mackinaw or the Yellow Stone River respond to the sentiments of the people who live in New Hampshire? It is as great a mockery — a greater mockery, than it was to talk to those colonies about their virtual representation in the British parliament. I have no hesitation in saying that the liberties of the colonies were safer in the custody of the British parliament than they will be in any portion of this country, if all the powers of the states as well as those of the general government are devolved upon this House.'”
“Russell Kirk makes Randolph’s attitude completely clear when he writes, ‘For Randolph, the real people of a country were its substantial citizenry, its men of some property, its farmers and merchants and men of skill and learning; upon their shoulders rested a country’s duties, and in their hands should repose its government.’ It is John Randolph who developed much of the political framework later brought to fruition by John Calhoun. The primary emphasis in that framework as it developed rested upon the doctrine of states’ rights, a position not without validity. Indeed, an earlier biographer of John Randolph, the almost equally eccentric and irascible Henry Adams, has suggested that the doctrine of states’ rights was in itself a sound and true doctrine: ‘As a starting point of American history and constitutional law, there is no other which will bear a moment’s examination.’
Randolph was especially critical of the commerce clause and the general welfare clause of the Constitution. He predicted that the great extension of the power of centralized government would someday occur through these legal avenues. Time has proven him correct.” (“American Federalism: History,” by George Charles Roche III)

UPDATE (July 18): The Law by Frédéric Bastiat:

When successful, we would not have to thank the state for our success. And, conversely, when unsuccessful, we would no more think of blaming the state for our misfortune than would the farmers blame the state because of hail or frost. The state would be felt only by the invaluable blessings of safety provided by this concept of government.

He Contorts, Tom Woods Decides

Conservatism, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Media, Republicans

If Bill O’Reilly proves anything (over and over again) it is that Gresham’s Law (generalized beyond economics) reigns supreme: Specious reasoning will always drive out careful thinking.

Against these odds, Tom Woods tackles O’Reilly’s reliably wonky “constitutional scholarship,” in a masterful YouTube clip, below:

From The O’Reilly Factor, email segment for July 5:

“Bill, you keep asking what the Republicans have to replace Obamacare. Under the Constitution, there is no role for the Federal government in healthcare.”
–Felicia

O’Reilly:
“That’s not true, Felicia. The opening paragraph of the Constitution says the welfare of the people must be promoted. A just healthcare system comes under that banner.”

[Tom Woods] couldn’t resist answering this [for which we should all be grateful].

UPDATE II: A Romp Down Memory Lane With Justice Roberts

Bush, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Healthcare, Justice, Law, The Courts

HERE are excerpts from “A Romp Down Memory Lane With Justice Roberts,” now on RT.

Is John G. Roberts Jr. no more than a smooth operator, I wondered on September 15 2005.

I began tracking the now infamous Justice Roberts a month earlier, around the time he was exciting admiration from gay-rights activists for winning “Romer vs. Evans” for them. The Los Angeles Times, at the time, noted that “Romer vs. Evans” had “struck down a voter-approved 1992 Colorado initiative that would have allowed employers and landlords to exclude gays from jobs and housing.”

Gay activists still consider the decision Roberts won for them the “single most important positive ruling in the history of the gay rights movement.” Special pleading not being this column’s “thing,” arguments from and against so-called gay rights did not sway me much.

Rather, I urged readers to pay attention to Roberts’ efforts against the private property and freedom of association of Coloradans. “When property is rendered insecure,” said Edmund Burke, “so is liberty.”

Alas, Roberts’ (pro bono) work comported with 14th-Amendment jurisprudence, aspects of which violate private property rights and freedom of association. Simply put, to the extent that the Constitution coincides with the natural law, it is good. More often than not, it has buried natural justice under the rubble of legislation and statute.

My choice for the Supreme Court of the United States, back when President Bush was pushing the goofy Harriet Myers, was Justice Janice Rogers Brown. An originalist, Justice Brown is also black. Pigment, however, only works in favor of candidates of the Left.

“Today’s senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much ‘free stuff’ as the political system will permit them to extract.” This was just one of Justice Brown’s many admirable utterances. (Today’s brazen cannibals would object to Brown’s maligning as vociferously as the obese derided this writer for telling the truth about their fat and flaccid icon, Citizen Karen Klein.) …

… But, here’s the thing that unsettled so about Roberts’ performance during confirmation proceedings. Or so I wrote on September 15, 2005:

“He seems to be all about the moves” …

READ the complete column. “A Romp Down Memory Lane With Justice Roberts” is now on RT.

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UPDATE I: “A vast new federal power to ‘tax'” has been birthed by the philosophical successor to chief justice of the United States, John Marshall, the “intellectual progenitor of federal power”:

No one can know the true motivations for the idiosyncratic rationale in the health-care decision written by Marshall’s current successor, John Roberts. … Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts really means what he wrote – that congressional power to tax is without constitutional limit – and his opinion is a faithful reflection of that view, without a political or legal or intra-court agenda. But that view finds no support in the Constitution or our history. It even contradicts the most famous of Marshall’s big government aphorisms: The power to tax is the power to destroy.
The reasoning underlying the 5-to-4 majority opinion is the court’s unprecedented pronouncement that Congress’ power to tax is unlimited. The majority held that the extraction of thousands of dollars per year by the IRS from individuals who do not have health insurance is not a fine, not a punishment, not a payment for government-provided health insurance, not a shared responsibility – all of which the statute says it is – but rather is an inducement in the form of a tax.

“The logic in the majority opinion is the jurisprudential equivalent of passing a camel through the eye of a needle. The logic is so tortured, unexpected and unprecedented that even the law’s most fervent supporters did not make or anticipate the court’s argument in its support. …”

UPDATE II (July 6):

From: J
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2012 11:49 AM
To: Ilana Mercer
Subject: Recent article

Your article today was excellent.

Most notably the part about how Roberts answered the question posed by the Senator about the administrative state….. so true. That’s our biggest problem in this country because half of all “conservatives” are for it. Very strange how he steered around the question.

J.