Category Archives: Individualism Vs. Collectivism

Big Corp America Is No Country For Small Biz Or Individualism

Business, Conservatism, COVID-19, Critique, English, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, War

Face it, we live in a country in which, increasingly, big corporations with political clout prevail in the economy. In politics, it’s the factions with the biggest corporate donors and the slimiest lobbyists: their politics and policies rule the day.

What is particularly sick-making is not only that a (subsidized) sham like “Tesla is allowed to reopen in defiance of the shelter in place order,” applied diligently to small companies—but that Tesla doesn’t care to protect its employees.

Hardly a good corporate citizen.

Resentment Builds When COVID-19 Reopening Rules Apply To Some Businesses, But Not Others“:

“At the beginning we immediately closed our store, shut off our lights, put up messages to the community saying ‘we’re all in this together and we’ll be back,” said Marcy Simon, co-owner of Ashby Flowers.
But even now, the tiny shop is not allowed to bring flowers outside for curbside pickup by customers. It’s legal in the rest of Alameda County but Berkeley has its own health rules that say florists can only deliver. Meanwhile large Whole Foods Market right next to it–which also sells flowers—has a long line of people waiting to get inside.
Simon is like a lot of others who thought they were doing the right thing, but are now starting to get mad.
“I think that many people are now definitely looking for ways to get around the rules, there’s no question about it,” she said.
Clinical psychologist Judye Hess says that shouldn’t be a surprise. She says people naturally lose respect for laws when it feels like they’re being unfairly applied.

This mentality applies across the board. How many times, over 20 years, have I heard the shameless refrain from conservative outlets that, “We won’t syndicate a column that doesn’t come from the major syndicator”? To be syndicated by a major syndicator you have to parrot received opinion pretty much on everything. Neither can you be a stylistically risque, interesting writer. With few exceptions, monotony of style and mind are a must if you are to be syndicated.

Other than “too idiosyncratic,” there were the other refrains around the time my column was first syndicated unsuccessfully (2001 or 2002), chief among them were these: “You are neither Republican nor Democrat. And you don’t support Bush’s war.” (The Iraq onslaught was supported by most members of the duopoly.)

The idea that the gritty little gal or guy carries the day, or that individualism is cherished in the USA: These are fallacies in my experience.

*Image via Mises

UPDATED (7/22/019): NEW COLUMN: Do We Still Have A Country? Part I

English, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Law, Nationhood, Natural Law, Private Property, Racism

NEW COLUMN, on Townhall.com, is “Do We Still Have A Country? Part I.” It’s accompanied by an abridged YouTube clip.

An excerpt:

How do you know you don’t have a country?

Simply this:

Every single passive, non-aggressive act you take to repel people crossing your borders is considered de facto illegal, or inhumane, or in violation of international law, or in contraventions of some hidden clause in the U.S. Constitution.

So say the experts and their newly minted jurisprudence.

You may tell a toddler, “You can’t go there.” But you may not tell an illegal trespasser, “Hey, turn back. You can’t come into the U.S. at whim.”

Please understand that not giving someone something they demand or desire is a negative act. Or, more accurately, an inaction.

You are not actively doing anything to harm that person by denying them something.

Unless, of course, what you are denying them is their right to their life, their right to their liberty, their right to their property. Those are the only things you may not deny to innocent others. These interlopers do not have a right to, or a lien on, your liberty and property.

But if you cannot say to millions of people streaming across your border, into your turf, “Hey, you can’t go there.” Then it’s simple:

We don’t have a country.

Oh sure, we have a territory. America is a market place for goods and services. A mighty one at that. It’s a market place to which millions arrive each year to make a living and engage in acts of acquisitiveness. ….

… READ THE REST. “Do We Still Have A Country? Part I” is on Townhall.com.

UPDATE (7/22/019): pointing out that language and civics knowledge are not required to pass the US citizenship test: that amounts to bashing. Are you sure it’s not also racist?

Trump, on the other hand:

Tower Of Babel:

Once upon a time:

NEW COLUMN: Kamala’s Collectivist Values Village

Argument, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality, The State

NEW COLUMN is “Kamala’s Collectivist Values Village.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com.

An excerpt:

Sen. Kamala Harris talks a lot about “our American values.” Ditto the rest of the female candidates who’ve declared for president in the busy Democratic field. They all lecture us about “values.”

“Our American values are under attack,” Harris has tweeted. “Babies are being ripped from their parents at the border …”

As her own proud “know your values moment,” the Democrat from California pinpoints the U.S. Senate Supreme Court confirmation proceedings inflicted on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

To manipulate Americans, politicians have always used the values cudgel.

With respect to immigration, the idea is to impress upon gullible Americans that the world has a global Right of Return to the U.S. Fail to accept egalitarian immigration for all into America; and you are flouting the very essence of Americanism. (Or, to use liberal argumentation, you’re Hitler.)

When politicians pule about the importance of preserving “our values,” they mean their values: Barack Obama’s values, Hillary Clinton’s values, Angela Merkel’s values, Chucky Schumer’s values, Jeff Bezos’ values, the late John McMussolini’s values, Lindsey Graham’s values, and Jared and Ivanka’s values (but not Trump’s).

When a politician preaches about “the values that make our country great,” to quote Mrs. Clinton, chances are they mean multiculturalism, pluralism, wide-swung borders, Islam as peace, communities divided by diversity as a net positive, and the Constitution (it mandates all the above, just ask Ruth Bader Ginsburg) as a living, breathing, mutating philosophical malignancy.

For them, “protecting” the abstraction that is “our way of life” trumps the protection of real individual lives. “We must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are,” dissembled Obama in the waning weeks before he was gone. The empty phrase is meant to make the sovereign citizen—you—forget that government’s most important role, if not its only role, is to protect individual life.

In his last few addresses, Obama promised to speak up on “certain issues,” in times when he imagined “our core values may be at stake.” Likewise, in delivering her Control-Alt-Delete speech against the Deplorables, Clinton had asserted that “our country is great because we’re good. … Donald Trump disregards the values that make our country great.” The two’s groupthink, notwithstanding, only individuals can be virtuous, not collectives.

Self-government, and not imposed government, implies that society, and not The State, is to develop value systems. The State’s role is to protect citizens as they go about their business peacefully, living in accordance with their peaceful values. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Kamala’s Collectivist Values Village.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com.

NEW COLUMN: Dead By Illegal Alien? You’re Just An Anecdote

Crime, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Logic, Reason

NEW COLUMN IS “Dead By Illegal Alien? You’re Just An Anecdote.” It’s on WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com (only slightly abridged).

An excerpt:

THE topic: American lives snuffed out by illegal aliens.

The forum: The ubiquitous, Fox News, dual-perspective panel that never fails to dim debate.

Arguing in favor of letting potential killers come: Geraldo Rivera, a former daytime talk-show, bosom buddy of Sean Hannity, and a permanent fixture on Fox.

The Rivera “argument”: That some criminal aliens kill is incidental and immaterial to their status as uninvited, unvetted interlopers.  

Here are some of the stories Geraldo dismisses as anecdotes sensationalized:

The latest in a string of bereaved parents to appear on TV are the parents of young Pierce Corcoran, 22, killed by Franco Cambrany Francisco-Eduardo (44), recipient of the U.S. Professional Drunk-Driver Immigration Visa. And in 2012, a man named Ramon Hernandez took the tiniest of victims. Dimitri Smith, of blessed memory, was killed in-utero by this recipient of the same visa. The deceased preemie was shown on CNN, in 2012, being held for the last time by young mother Aileen Smith, before being laid to rest.

“In the last two years,” said a solemn President Trump, in his Jan. 8 address from the Oval Office, “ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 violent killings. Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now.”

It seems crystal clear that, were it not for Geraldo’s plucky, uninvited visitors—more American than a lot of Americans, sneered Comrade Ocasio-Cortez—there would likely be 100,000 fewer assaults in America, 30,000 fewer sex crimes in America, and 4,000 fewer murders in America.

It seems perfectly clear that young Pierce Corcoran would be alive, if not for a bad hombre who had no business being in the country.

Clear to you and me, but not to “brother” Rivera (Mr. Hannity’s appellation for this idiot).

With the same logical illiteracy that has been given sanctuary and sinecure on Fox News, Mr. Rivera proceeded to make his “case”:

“I would feel equally pained,” he roared, “were the killer Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican or Jewish, young or old.”

Could a killer illegal alien be “Irish, Italian, Puerto Ricans or Jewish, old or young”? Certainly. But these categories are irrelevant and superfluous to the central point. Rivera is mixing it up; mixing logical categories to the point of moral incoherence.

This studied stupidity led Rivera, in short succession, to his next point: American lives lost and recounted “sensationally” on television were “anecdotes.”

To be charitable, Geraldo here is following his own breaking-eggs-for-omelets argument—and it is that, since the murderers are statistical outliers, the murders they commit are the exception to the rule in what is an exceptional immigrant community.

The logic doesn’t add up, but the numbers of the dead do—each life lost is precious. Each loss comes with a world of hurt that never heals.

Death by illegal alien is not about group crime aggregates, as Geraldo contends. (In particular, his contention that illegal aliens commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans, therefore, let them come.)

Wrong. Death by illegal alien is about this life-cherishing, immutable logic:

If alien X HAD BEEN REMOVED from the U.S., as the law dictates, innocent American Y WOULD BE ALIVE TODAY. …

... READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN IS “Dead By Illegal Alien? You’re Just An Anecdote.” It’s on WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com (only slightly abridged).