Category Archives: Political Philosophy

Trash Trash ‘Joe the Plumber’

Elections 2008, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Philosophy, Taxation

The trashing of “Joe the Plumber” by the Left is uncanny. The defense Republicans offer of Joe is hopeless (like the defense offered up by the woman with the worst voice on TV and radio: Laura Ingraham.) When you have no first principles you are powerless to coherently defend a man’s right to his property.

Of course, proponents of natural rights suffer no such debilities.

Smear #1: “He’s not licensed”

State licensing is a guild system deployed to restrict entry into a trade, so as to keep the wages of a protected group artificially high. Licensing is ludicrous, especially in the case of trades.

Joe, who represents everything that’s good about America, says he doesn’t need a license to make a living. Unlike the ponces in politics, he is not forcing anyone to employ him. That’s the spirit. Don’t you hate those fat cats who want to control Joe’s destiny with meaningless stamps of officialdom?

Obama says no plumber earns so much as to worry about his tax plan. Hogwash. A plumber can look forward to earning a lot of money; they are never outsourced and are always in demand.

Smear #2: “His name isn’t even Joe!”

His name is Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher. I believe that in some parts of the US, people go by their middle names. Even if he were not “Joe,” why would that make him the object of derision and smears from parasites—politicians who’ve never done an honest day of work in their lives, and who live off others?

Smear #3: “He owes taxes”

The IRS is the criminal entity in the business of taking what is not theirs to take. In the process of preying on Americans, it has destroyed many lives. The 16th Amendment ought to be repealed. If generic Joe has taken on the IRS, he’s a hero. If he has held on to what is his for a little longer, well, then, he will soon be forced to hand it over.

The idea that a politician would make fun of his employer—Joe Citizen—is repulsive. Pitchforks anyone?

One more thing: The Republicans are grandstanding about Obama’s tax plans amounting to socialism. For the edification of GOP grandstanders, progressive taxation is socialism. In case Republicans don’t know it, we have a steep taxation system that distributes income. (Russia, I believe, has a flat tax.)

Although they could have lessened the socialism, they have not–life under the Republicans has seen a “slouching toward socialism,” perhaps not in direct taxation, but in borrowing and money printing. That’s how Republicans have funded their orgiastic spending. These stealth-like means are no different to taxation. One might argue that they are more destructive because more clandestine, allowing a greater increase in the national debt and deficit spending. The proof is in the Republicans’ record spending.

‘The Obamanation of Desolation’

Affirmative Action, America, Barack Obama, Christianity, Political Philosophy, Racism, The West, The Zeitgeist

A magnificent, crisply argued piece by the peerless Thomas Fleming, who happens to be a nimble stylist as well. Here are some highlights:

“The appearance of John McCain and Barack Obama at Saddleback, California’s ‘purpose-driven’ church marks the ultimate ascent of Rick Warren to the Gantry-in-Chief of the P.T. Barnum Church of America.”
“A liberal, as I never tire of quoting (from Robert Frost), is someone who would not take his own side in an argument. Rich liberals naturally support high taxes and extravagant government expenditures on the poor, preferably the undeserving poor. A male liberal—we can hardly call such creatures men—favors women’s rights; heterosexual liberals favor “Gay” “marriage,” and European-American liberals prefer all cultures to that of Europe. And, if these idiots condescend to note their skin color, they hate it or at least they think they do.”
“The DNC and the media can tell any lies they like, but they cannot change the fact that the Democratic presidential candidate hates Whites, including the members of his mother’s family who showed him every kindness. Compared with the average self-proclaimed white bigot who says he loves his ancestors, Obama is one sick and sorry excuse for a human being.”
“[Obama’s] claim to be a Christian is his best evidence that he was never a Muslim.”
[S]etting aside race-loyalty, greed, and the libido dominandi, how could anyone else hold his nose long enough to vote for anyone who talks in that smarmy adenoidal voice? When Obama gets on his pulpit, it sounds almost like he is swallowing his words in a sea of phlegm. He does not so much speak as (to quote what Alexander Wolcott once said of a theater audience) strum his catarrh. His self-righteous public persona should grate on the sensibilities of normal people–like nails on a chalkboard or the voice of Mariah Carey. And yet, some otherwise normal people voted for him in the primaries and will vote for him again in the general election. Why or rather how?”
[A]nyone will be better than Bush–is not an easy argument to refute—except in the case of Obama and McCain.
“However you describe Affirmative Action and minority set-asides, they represent a deliberate and systematic policy of discrimination against people like me in favor of people not like me simply because they are not like me. Such disgusting and immoral policies are worse than any form of racism I have encountered because they teach us to hate precisely those whom we are most supposed to love.”
“Bigotry these days has nothing to do with the way you treat people or even with what you actually say. Bigotry is what they say you are thinking when they play your speech backward at half speed.”
“[W]e should not make the mistake of blaming black people for the suicide we continue to inflict on ourselves. We white males are the problem, not blacks, women, homosexuals, or Mexicans. We–at least the liberal part of “we”– turned away from our religion and our civilization; we made war on property and marriage; we rejected Haydn and Sophocles in favor of John Cage and Kate Chopin. We have emasculated ourselves, pithed our brains, destroyed our vision and hearing, and now, all that is left, is to vote for a candidate whose rhetoric at least is telling us to fling our worthless carcasses off the cliff. I blush even to hint at this but John McCain is now the only alternative to suicide.”

Updated: Hand-Out Hussein

Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Political Philosophy, Taxation

Obama is right; the Bush administration has been one of the most fiscally reckless administrations in American history. Obama pointed today, in particular, to the never-ending spending on the occupation of Iraq.

What is Obama’s antidote to these wrack and ruin policies that have given us deficits and an upward of $9 trillion in national debt, causing prices of all commodities, gas included, to soar?

Hussein’s solution is not to stop spending, but to spend that money AT HOME. What money? Didn’t you just say, Sir, that there is no money to spend?

Of course, “A debased dollar, price inflation, dwindling availability of seed capital, malinvestment and speculation (bubbles)—these are some of the consequences of the government’s promiscuous spending and inflationary practices.”

“The first stage on the road to recovery is to pinpoint the problem and take responsibility for it. You’ve spent more than you’ve produced and have switched to living on credit. Having exhausted your creditor’s good will, but not your insatiable appetites, you turn to counterfeiting cash in the basement—that’s where the U.S. finds itself today.”

“The second stage in getting solvent is to quit spending and borrowing, live within your means, and start paying down what you owe.”

Yet deficit spending is the centerpiece of Obama’s domestic policies.

And the band of fools plays on…

Update (June 11): On who ought to have the vote:

“A sizeable majority of the people ‘receives in disbursements more than it pays in taxes.’ The minority funding the orgy ‘pays in taxes more than it receives back in disbursements.’ The latter, not the former, should have the vote.”—ILANA (April 24, 2007)

&

“Taxpayers ought to have the vote, not so tax consumers. And that goes for politicians, who pay taxes out of what they loot from the taxpayer.”—ILANA (April 24, 2007)

Lexicon Of Lies

Elections 2008, Political Philosophy, Politics, Propaganda, The State

“The prolix presidential candidates and their aids and enablers have a supply of misleading phrases. These verbal obesities are meant to throw the American voter off-scent.”

In my new WND column, “Lexicon Of Lies,” I offer a run-down of some of those “pitch-perfect platitudes.“ Examples are “comprehensive immigration reform,” and “reaching across the aisle to get things done.” You get the unlovely picture.