Category Archives: Liberty

Update II: The French Revolution Revived

Conservatism, Debt, Economy, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Founding Fathers, Inflation, Liberty, Political Philosophy

“Everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit,” is how the Brilliant Edmund Burke, supporter of the American colonists, described the illiberal, irreligious, intolerant French Revolution. In return, the punk Thomas Paine spat worthless venom at Burke for his devastating critique of that blood-drenched Revolution. Like contemporary Americans, Paine’s fealty was to the Jacobins, who, for his troubles, almost had him guillotined. The Rights of Man, in particular, is intended as a refutation of Edmund Burke’s critique. Naturally, it does nothing of the sort.

There is no affinity between the French and American founding ideas. And Paine’s proto-socialism—he advocated welfare financed by taxes—is quintessentially unAmerican. Yet Paine is beloved of Americans; of Burke I seldom hear. I intend to change that here on BAB.

Let me begin with an excerpt from Reflections on the Revolution in France, where Burke speaks about the proliferation of fiat money (“fictitious representation”). He does so a great deal in this magnificent tract. Burke hammering on about “current circulating credit,” “defiance of economical principles,” and “bankruptcy” could not be more germane in fin de siècle America:

“At present the state of their treasury sinks every day more and more in cash, and swells more and more in fictitious representation. When so little within or without is now found but paper, the representative not of opulence but of want, the creature not of credit but of power, they imagine that our flourishing state in England is owing to that bank-paper, and not the bank-paper to the flourishing condition of our commerce, to the solidity of our credit, and to the total exclusion of all idea of power from any part of the transaction. They forget that, in England, not one shilling of paper money of any description is received but of choice; that the whole has had its origin in cash actually deposited; and that it is convertible at pleasure, in an instant and without the smallest loss, into cash again. Our paper is of value in commerce, because in law it is of none. It is powerful on ‘Change, because in Westminster Hall it is impotent. In payment of a debt of twenty shillings, a creditor may refuse all the paper of the Bank of England. Nor is there amongst us a single public security, of any quality or nature whatsoever, that is enforced by authority. In fact, it might be easily shown that our paper wealth, instead of lessening the real coin, has a tendency to increase it; instead of being a substitute for money, it only facilitates its entry, its exit, and its circulation; that it is the symbol of prosperity, and not the badge of distress. Never was a scarcity of cash and an exuberance of paper a subject of complaint in this nation.”

[SNIP]

Readers: search the online volume, posted on Bartleby.com, and post comments excerpting your favorite tracts.

Update I (August 26): Prof. Dennis O’keeffe is the author of Burke, due out in October of this year.

Update II: Russell Kirk on Burke:

“Written at white heat, the “Reflections” burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes. Yet his words are suffused with a keenness of observation, the mark of a practical statesman. This book is polemic at its most magnificent, and one of the most influential political treatises in the history of the world.” (The Essential Russel Kirk, 2007, p. 144)

Life On The ‘Swedish American Health-Plantation’

Healthcare, Liberty, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, Regulation, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Socialism, The Zeitgeist

Thomas Fleming administers a dose of reality about our “Swedish American health-plantation,” the lying conservatives and their standard-bearers, Palin and Gingrich, an infantile and retarded under-class that makes for a sizable clamoring class, and most enjoyable: the good doctor cocks a snook at a servile, stupid, unfree people afraid to live or die:

“I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry,

And if whiskey don’t kill me, I‘ll live till I die.”

Spoken like a free man.

Read “Just Say No — To Healthcare”:

“The American medical system, however, teaches us to live each day in bondage to death. Not dying—as opposed to living well–is the big objective, followed only by being healthy. This is exactly like our educational system that is not at all concerned with training minds to be intelligent and creative but is only interested in propaganda, basic literacy and job skills. Since they cannot really improve the performance of the stupid, they create equality by stultifying the intelligent. The result of the American Health Education and Welfare State is three generations of Americans who are stupid, timid, and servile, incapable of appreciating anything better than Michael Jackson and Desperate Housewives. They cannot even roll their own cigarettes; indeed, they don’t smoke, not because it is a stupid vice but because it will cut short their entirely pointless lives. There is truth in what we used to say in the good old days, ‘Anyone can quit smoking, but it takes a man to face cancer.'” …

Read the complete post.

Life On The 'Swedish American Health-Plantation'

Healthcare, Liberty, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, Regulation, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Socialism, The Zeitgeist

Thomas Fleming administers a dose of reality about our “Swedish American health-plantation,” the lying conservatives and their standard-bearers, Palin and Gingrich, an infantile and retarded under-class that makes for a sizable clamoring class, and most enjoyable: the good doctor cocks a snook at a servile, stupid, unfree people afraid to live or die:

“I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry,

And if whiskey don’t kill me, I‘ll live till I die.”

Spoken like a free man.

Read “Just Say No — To Healthcare”:

“The American medical system, however, teaches us to live each day in bondage to death. Not dying—as opposed to living well–is the big objective, followed only by being healthy. This is exactly like our educational system that is not at all concerned with training minds to be intelligent and creative but is only interested in propaganda, basic literacy and job skills. Since they cannot really improve the performance of the stupid, they create equality by stultifying the intelligent. The result of the American Health Education and Welfare State is three generations of Americans who are stupid, timid, and servile, incapable of appreciating anything better than Michael Jackson and Desperate Housewives. They cannot even roll their own cigarettes; indeed, they don’t smoke, not because it is a stupid vice but because it will cut short their entirely pointless lives. There is truth in what we used to say in the good old days, ‘Anyone can quit smoking, but it takes a man to face cancer.'” …

Read the complete post.

Update III: Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid

Healthcare, Human Accomplishment, Liberty, Natural Law, Regulation, Socialism, The State

The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid,” now on Taki’s Magazine:

“Code Blue Intensive Care Unit,” “Code Blue Intensive Care Unit”:

When the Code-Blue alarm sounded over the hospital’s loudspeaker system, my husband and I knew it sounded for our daughter. It was 11:00 at night. The hallways of the British Columbia hospital were dark. Only one emergency operating theater was in use. She was in it. The skeletal staff came running. Resuscitation carts were rushed toward the theater.

My own heart nearly stopped, because she is my heart.

To follow Dr. David Gratzer’s plainspoken definition (the good doctor is a Canada-care whistle blower), Code Blue is “the term used when a patient’s heart stops and hospital staff must leap into action to save him.” My then 12-year-old had stopped breathing on the operating table and was being revived. …

A cursory investigation into why [my daughter] coded that night was conducted. The findings were, conveniently, inconclusive. …

If you want to understand why the “subpar care Nicky had received” was just “a day in the life of a patient interned in a state-run health care system,” read the complete column, “Code Blue,” now on Taki’s Magazine. That’s where you can catch the weekly fare every Saturday.

Update I (July 31): The child can take pain. As a child, she suffered from severe asthma, which runs in the family (a great uncle died during an attack). My child’s heroic stoic composure during some of the procedures she endured in the course of this deadly disease—I cannot praise enough.

Update II: Readers: please make a habit of posting your comments to the blog, rather than sending them to me. I cannot answer all letters (although I try). Besides which other BAB posters here will often respond eloquently to your questions about liberty.

Rebutting those who say that my experience is typical of private establishments as well lies in advancing rights-based and utilitarian/economic arguments—you must address natural rights, and the structure of incentives in socialized systems. I speak to those issue in my work, regularly; have for years. But I also explain in the current column why this episode is certainly par for the course in the sphere of the “public option.”

Please check out the Articles Archive under socialized medicine and natural rights. The Barely A Blog archive (search “Socialism,” “Regulations,” and “Health & Fitness”) is a good source too, as we’ve conducted extensive debates on this lively forum.

I’m afraid that defending liberty demands the STUDY of—and familiarity with—principles. In other words, some work, a mental effort. Quick answers won’t replace the work liberty’s defenders must do. All too often readers demand quickies. Intellectual sloth extends to not even searching my accessible web and blog databases.

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