Category Archives: Individualism Vs. Collectivism

‘You Didn’t Build That’: Obama’s Political Epitaph

Barack Obama, Government, History, Human Accomplishment, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Republicans, Socialism

“‘You Didn’t Build That’: Obama’s Political Epitaph” is the current column, now on RT. Here is an excerpt:

“… Not once but four times did Obama repeat the gist of his clinching line, ‘You didn’t build that.’ With each iteration, his voice dripped contempt for individual achievement.

‘…you didn’t get there on your own.
You didn’t get there on your own.
If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.
Somebody else made that happen.’

‘You didn’t build That’ will be Barack Obama’s political epitaph.

Obama’s collectivism, and vertiginous ignorance, called for a one-two punch. A knockout. Patrick J. Buchanan was the only rightist—I hesitate to libel Mr. Buchanan as a Republican—who delivered the blow.

‘Barack Obama, with due respect, does not understand America — at least that part of America that produces and creates,’ roared Buchanan on Fox News. ‘Obama spent his whole life in tax-exempt, tax-subsidized and tax-supported institutions. Does he not understand what creates the wealth in America?’

‘For the first 175 years of our existence as a people, there was no federal government. Who does he think created that country of 3 million who defeated the greatest empire in the world, other than the individuals who built the farms and little factories; who clothed and fed and housed themselves and created one of the greatest societies on earth, again, before the federal government was created?’

Indeed, America is the culmination of the individual principle of voluntary cooperation…

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

With these remarks, Obama has come out of the closet as a most odious collectivist, who believes religiously that government predation is a condition for production. Or, put simply, that the parasite created the host.

With his near-religious repetition of the ‘you didn’t build that’ phrase, the president of the United States demonstrated his faith in the statist principle of compulsory cooperation. …”

The complete column, “‘You Didn’t Build That’: Obama’s Political Epitaph,” can be read on RT.

Also available from WND is my book, “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.” The paperback edition features bonus material, including an Afterword by Burkean philosopher Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. Order it from WND.

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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.

Collective Punishment?

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Justice, Media, Morality, Pop-Culture, Sport

When the events surrounding pederast Jerry Sandusky surfaced, I ventured that, to an outsider, the American football scene was obscene—starting with its incestuous fraternities, the rock-star status surrounding handlers and players, their pompom-waving, knickers-baring groupies, and the tantrum-prone fans who experience bare-fanged fury when their heroes let them down. The problem with this freak show is that the participants are pathologically invested in it.

Besides, how did the words “coach” and “legendary” ever come to be paired? Ridiculous.

Now comes the news that the NCAA, whatever that stands for— reporters no longer follow the convention of first writing out acronyms in full—has leveled a punishment on Penn State that will likely affect every student at the university.

Collective punishment for transgressions (crimes included) committed by certain individuals (who are no longer at the helm)!

The football program will also be excluded from playing in bowl games and post-season games for four years, as well as having its football scholarships reduced from 25 to 15, and having to pay a $60 million fine, the equivalent of one year’s revenues from the football program.

Thirteen team victories have been voided. So many kids must have worked hard and played their hearts out. Why are they are being penalized?

Career and camera-conscious individuals will do anything to look as if they are busy doing something. This is all Brownian Motion, and terribly unfair.

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.