Wondering

I wonder if the general poster on internet political message boards represents the thinking of the general majority of the people politically associated with that poster.

I used to spend an inordinate amount of time on political message boards. These days, not so much.  Oh, I go look at them, as a guest, not logged in, but I watch the tunnel visioned mud-slinging without participating anymore.  Two good reasons for that, really.  One, it takes a lot less time out of an already busy day.  Two, I'm tired of wondering when some admin is going to make something up out of thin air, or going to grossly twist and misconstrue something I said, and play stupid "I have power over you nyah nyah nyah" games, like the turtle named admin did on one board a while back.

Still, I do wonder.  Do these who write on these message boards stand for hundreds, thousands, even millions, who share their thoughts?  I hope not.  I have seen some of the weakest reasoning (if it can be called reasoning at all) on these boards.  People who will use the flimsiest references, sites with no reputation, no established credibility outside one narrow socio-political spectrum, and then jump all over someone who doesn't act as though itellitmyway.com is equivalent to the Library of Congress.

One scout claims to be independent, but he rails against everything conservative, and if he doesn't like something from the Democrat side of the house, he condemns it by describing it as though it were on the conservative side of the house.  Independent?  Hardly.

Then there's the pilgrim that knows everything, and everything is that all that is conservative is bad, much that is Democrat is bad, corporations are bad, rich people are bad...  Remember the movies from the 60s where the "beatniks" were portrayed as idealistic kids rambling on and on about the evils of everything they could think of to ramble on about, but you kind of knew that once they entered the real world, they'd figure out reality?  Seems this fellow never left beatnikville.

It gets a little tiring, the gross double standard of "believe me because of my political persuasion" yet "no one should believe you because of your political persuasion."  Sounds kind of silly when it's reduced to it's basic fact, doesn't it, yet that is the root of all their silliness, in the end.

The whites in Mississippi in 1955 took that stand, "I'm right because I say so, and (wink, wink) you know I am, right?  Sure you do."  These self proclaimed saviours of the world would be livid if they realized that they are taking the exact same stand, simply on a different subject.

More later, perhaps.  I just thought I'd mention this junk, in the hope that posters on these politically agendized boards and blogs represent no one but a tiny splinter minority of America.  I sure hope so.  If not, we are in HUGE trouble; not from wrong political leadership, but from a population that cannot or will not recognize leadership.

I'm a little worried, to tell you the truth.

Well, we are closer...

Sorry, not in much of a good mood. I knew the health care bill was going to pass, and for the people who will get medical treatment that would not have had medical treatment if it hadn't passed, well, I'm glad for them because of that. I just wish there had been another way, other than establishing yet another way that the government will do for citizens what the citizens of a generation behind us routinely expected to do for themselves, because it was called "standing on your own two feet."


I know, of course, that there are some who cannot do that, for reasons outside their control, and I have no issue with them getting help. My issue is with the fact that being only 54, I can remember a time when a youngster grew up to leave home and make his/her own way in the world. Now, we are one significant step closer to the place where "growing up to leave home" means switching who takes care of you, from Daddy to Government.

We're not there yet, and opponents of my position will be quick to point out that the bill is now signed and the world didn't stop.

Noted.

No, the world didn't stop, but America got one step closer to laughing at the memory of individual liberty for two reasons: one, the fact that passage of this bill institutionalizes the concept that someone belongs between the citizen and the person providing health care to that citizen and two, the acceptance of the idea that it's a good thing for Government to replace Daddy.

Now, about all that's left is to chink at the armor of liberty long enough to make it ok to admit that in so many words.

If you leave a comment, don't go the "you don't want people to have health care" route.  It's an argument full of baloney.  If opposing this political effort absolutely equals not wanting people to have health care, then the only way it can be equal is if the government is the only place that health care can be provided.

It is not a good day. I look at my USN Chief Petty Officer uniform, hanging in my closet, and I've begun to wonder why I wasted my time.

Simple and True

Happened to hear this on TV yesterday, and modified it a bit to suit my sense of detail:

Politicians are like bananas.  While they are green, they're not much use.  Once they are not green anymore, they are yellow, hang in bunches, and they're all crooked, not a straight one among them.

Well said, whoever you were writing that email to the CNN show.

I believe...

My American Beliefs

I believe the Constitution says what it means and means what it says and it doesn’t take a genius or a law degree to read it and understand it.

I believe that the Constitution can only be properly understood in light of the people who wrote it, whether it is the main body or an amendment.

I believe the Constitution defines what government can do, and that government can’t do anything the Constitution does not give it permission to do.

I believe the Preamble to the Constitution is a description of what the rest of the Constitution puts into place, and cannot be correctly understood to be binding in and of itself.

I believe that changing the “understanding” of a standing portion of the Constitution is changing the Constitution itself, and is therefore anti-Constitutional. Only one method exists for the changing of the Constitution; that method is by amendment. Otherwise, any phrase in the Constitution means today and tomorrow what it meant yesterday and it has the same effect today and tomorrow as it had yesterday, unless it is modified by amendment. That is true for any set of three days since the signing of the Constitution into perpetuity. If a court determines something to be unconstitutional, it is only properly done if the action determined would always have been unconstitutional, as long as the phrase proposed to have been violated was in effect.

I believe that the next order of legislation that should taken up by both federal houses is the disallowance of specifications in legislation that are not materially connected to the stated title and purpose of the legislation. In this vein, all legislation must be required to have a stated title and purpose, and said title and purpose cannot be compound.

I believe that the body politic and the body social are not the same body, even though comprised of the same people. Political solutions do not solve social problems and social solutions do not solve political problems.

I believe that equality before the law can only possibly apply to opportunity. If failing to avail oneself of an opportunity occurs because of a personal decision (whether immediate or historic) or a personal capability (as opposed to a non-personal restriction), the law cannot address these in a free nation. Any attempt to make the law address either of these is attempting to apply a political solution to a social problem and is therefore doomed to failure.

I believe that convenience is no justification for legislation, under any circumstance.

I believe that in our present population, there are at least two generations of Americans who have been taught by precedent that convenience is sufficient to establish need, whether an objectively bona fide need exists or not.

I believe that the moment any elected official takes the oath of office, that their political affiliation should become moot, and I believe that their constituents should hold them accountable for this characteristic first and foremost.

I believe that all constituencies should have the ability of recall of any elected official at any time, when a simple majority of the constituency indicates so by personal signature, or by an equivalent accounting to the method of election when a simple majority is not the method of election to that billet. I believe that this should be the subject of the next amendment to the US Constitution, and to every state constitution, and that this must be undertaken before this nation can recover the concept of government of the people, by the people and for the people, which concept is now lost. In this application, recall should be a separate action from replacement.

I believe that because leadership can be sometimes stern and serious, that actual leadership was rejected in a previous generation in favor of convenience and the sanctioning of ease and irresponsibility; therefore leadership is now unrecognizable by the overwhelming majority of Americans.

That is what I believe.

Liberty for the Brave,

Al

Veterans/Armistice Day

This venerable poem about says it all.  Written at the edge of a battlefield by a Canadian Army doctor who had just buried his friend who was killed in action.  If the deep meaning of these verses escapes you, then thank those who did not let it escape, some of who came home whole, some who gave some, and some who gave all...

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

To those who served with honor, and who honor the nation founded by the US Constitution today, thank you with all my heart.

The United Sta... uh, U-nannied States of America

[a poster who calls himself rhinodriver gets the credit for the basic idea that resulted in this posting]

Saw this on a message board today, and it's not a bad way to put it.

No, I'm not saying the current efforts are a total sell-out to a total nanny state, but they are a move in that direction, from the political power center that least minds moving in that direction.

So, in what formerly was the United States of America, 50 sovereign states voluntarily giving up some of that sovereignty to the United States, comprised of individually sovereign individuals, who give up some of that sovereignty to the state (both federal and state "states"), we now change "United" to "Unannied" States, 50 far less sovereign states no longer attempting to preserve their sovereignty comprised of members of a collective who are unaware that their forebears had individual sovereignty and who have no desire for it today.  They only have a desire for the Nanny State (or should that be Sugar Daddy State?) to take care of them.

Liberty for the brave (and for those who remember living more like the founders intended)

Al

Healthcare and simple lessons

The discussion regarding health care proposals, and getting everybody in the US covered by some health insurance company, in the multiple threads and places it’s being thumped back and forth on the internet, has come to the place that I don’t think I see anybody actually addressing what the person they are arguing with is saying, nor is the person they are arguing with addressing what they are saying.

Ergo, I’m gonna lay this out as best I can, given the limitations of the written word. We’ll see if anyone can get onboard with this.

I’m 54. I remember a time when NOBODY stayed away from the doctor if they had something home remedies (aspirin, orange juice, rest, etc) couldn’t fix. NOBODY did. Doctors worked it out, patients worked it out, they came together and made it happen, because the doctor was committed to healing people and the patient was committed to paying his own way as much as possible. It’s how normal people used to think.

By the way, that situation is properly called “universal health care.” Nobody went without what was needed. If nobody goes without, that’s universal (as regards the US, which is what this discussion is about).

Not that way now. Why?

The 122 people dying per day on average is probably a decent enough estimation to work with. It ought to make every American sick. Personally, I think it does, whatever side of the aisle they are on. It surely says to anyone “It’s not the way it was, today.” Again, why?

For one thing, health care is not a calling anymore, it’s a business. It transmogrified from decent human beings helping human beings (and having to deal with a business side of getting that done) to the crap we have today, where a decent doctor that puts patient above bottom line shines like a searchlight in a cave. I know. I’m trying to change general practitioners because I just moved. I have 3 people in the family who practice health care, and ALL their suggestions for good Docs are met with “full up and am unable to take new patients, just have no room, very sorry” or some version of it.

The second factor is insurance companies. No, not the way they are run, that’s transitive, short termed, can chance with the winds of fortune. The factor here is the fundamental idea that it’s a good thing for somebody else to pay my way. As soon as insurance companies became the person who paid the doctor, instead of the patient, insurance companies got the power to say what they would and would not pay for.

So now, instead of two players in the game, the patient and the doc, there are three: the patient, the doc, and the payer. The trouble is, the payer is not there for humanitarian reasons, the payer is there for business reasons. If he gets enough money from premiums, he’s betting he can invest that money and make more than he has to pay back out. Nothing wrong with a business, but if anyone forgets that player #3 in the game is not there to make the patient well, but is there to make money, then that could be a fatal mistake, literally.

So, here we are. The mistake that has been made is inserting something not medical (business) into medicine, and the outcome is absence of treatment for people who need it (as well as some other bad stuff that should be the substance of another discussion, not this one).

If I flip a switch, and everything goes bad, I flip the switch back. If I open a valve and things go bad, I shut the valve back. If you do something, and it goes bad, the very best first response is to go back to where things were stable, and THEN figure out IF something else needs to be done.

However, that’s not what’s being proposed. We let medicine stop being medicine and let it become a business, and now, the proposal is to make medicine government. So, I’m supposed to believe that government is a better third player in the game than insurance is? Why? Some proposals leave insurance in the game and insert government, too. To me, that’s even worse. Instead of going back to when it worked, now that it’s been complicated so that it doesn’t work, our “leaders” are trying to go to something else even more complicated. Now, we have to hope that the govvie cares for us just as much as the doc does. We did that before. We said before “no, they wouldn’t make soley business decisions, nobody could be that cold” of the insurance companies. We were wrong.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There is one and ONLY one solution to people not being able to go to a doctor, and that is going back to the ONLY way we’ve ever seen it work. NOBODY is trying to do that. One group wants to keep their insurance buddies happy, one wants to make political hay while the sun shines, and others want to bridge the two at one place or another. It is stupidity following stupidity. We did this right, once, but we can’t go do it like that again, God forbid. NO, the govvie forbid, because enabling this will simply make the govvie be one step closer to being the god for more Americans yet.

Liberty for the brave, with sadness,

Al

Individualism is bad.... REALLY???

Sometimes, I just get knocked for a loop. Maybe I’m just gullible, but is it really just me and a half dozen hillbillies that think the best and most honorable way to go through life is to do all you are able to do for yourself and your family before you ask for help from someone else? Be responsible for yourself. Seems to me to be a fundamental part of what I was taught by family, school, church, and friends for the last 54 years.

Make that 53 years and 11 months.

No, make it less than that. This is not the first time this has come up in message board conversations with folks who identify themselves as liberals.

The last time, I attributed it to the fact that the person who argued so starkly that there was no such thing as individualism was a strong union supporter. The fundamental basis of union existence is that no one person can change anything, but a large group can. Ergo, the individual loses significance and importance, and only the union has importance. Soon, it gets to the place that the person who decides to represent himself, rather than trade company control of his work for union control of his work, is seen as the bad guy, the wrong guy, the guy not to be trusted. Solely because he wanted to stand on his own two feet, not have the union prop him up.

However, perhaps it’s not that isolated. I’ve just been in a conversation on a message board with a fairly intelligent person, in all other respects. This person (I flipped a coin, I’ll designate as “she” but don’t take it for anything but a flipped coin), is a medical professional, so I’m on fair ground, I think, to estimate that she is intelligent. Throughout this whole conversation, it’s been mostly about how useless and insignificant the individual is and how important and supreme the collective is.

I’ve tried telling her that “individualism” as used by normal everyday people on the street means “I’ll do all I can within my power to provide for me and mine, before I ask for help, and I’ll take responsibility for myself and my family.” At one point, she said she would do the same. At another point, she ridiculed the idea.

Anyway, while thinking about this, wondering what would cause an otherwise intelligent person to oppose the idea of personal responsibility and taking care of oneself as much as possible, it occurred to me that this argument is not really about individuals vs groups.

It’s about absolute right and wrong vs relative right and wrong.

You see, if an individual’s action can be of any value, if it can have any impact, that individual had to have made that decision on his/her own, individually. If it is a good impact, then that individual, by definition, is able to determine right from wrong without the input of the rest of society. There must be, therefore, an objective right and wrong, because the individual determined right without any input from any other human. Perhaps there was input in the past, but that establishes understandings upon which our person of the day makes that decision. If that individual is allowed to be recognized as right, apart from society confirming his/her “rightness” then there must be an absolute right and wrong.

On the other hand, if only groups can have impact or do good things, then only groups can be right, and it becomes much easier to set aside the concept of objective right and wrong in favor of the majority opinion of the group. Ergo, the idea that the collective is always and forever better than an individual is actually a retreat from the concept of objective right and wrong. It is believing that no individual person can determine right, but that a group of individuals can. How on earth can 10 people do what one person cannot do, when the question is a mental one, determining right from wrong? It has to become a physical act to make that come to pass, and that physical act is indicating a preference, and if more than half of the group indicates the same preference, then that preference becomes “right.”

Think about that. Right and wrong. Cardinal concepts upon which all of civilization rises and falls, now determined (supposedly) by a vote of a group. “Wait, wait,” you say, “that is the basis of American voting. We vote and that decides it.” Really? Do we vote on what is right and what is wrong, or do we vote on who we want to go to that office and (hopefully) do right and avoid wrong? This idea that the moral compass can be voted on by a group and the outcome of that vote has more significance than an individual’s conscience is the silliness that replaces what generations have known. Mankind has a conscience, but only on an individual level. When that conscience speaks, wise humans listen, and carnal humans rebel. That is where that argument comes from, I firmly believe. It is the exact same argument as the child that comes to his/her parents and says “but all my friends get to go to this movie” and the child expects that group “power” to have some effect rather than the objective truth of whether or not Mom and Dad consider the movie appropriate for that child.   Now, as you read this, those kids are the adults who make this argument that numbers make right, and they still expect it to have some effect when time-tested, conscience-driven right and wrong is the parent.

Sadly, I think the kids are winning.



Liberty for the Brave.

Al

Why "the view from the street?"

Perhaps I’d better explain something.

I am not a member of academia. I have only a high school education, followed by a significant portion of highly focused Navy training. I do not care if Dr. Whatshisname has written three doctoral thesis and published six books on this subject or that. I think for myself. If my conclusions agree with the Dr, all well and good. If my conclusions do not agree with the Dr, all well and good.

I am not here to discuss what some “expert” said that we are all supposed to think.  I hate that concept; I find nearly NO experts in the world.  I merely believe we are all supposed to THINK.  I think for myself; I expect others to.  If commenters come here with “but Blindangle said…” or “That’s not what a conservative is, Gonfoogle said in 1973 that…” and think that will win the day here, they are wrong.  Go away. Don’t waste your time. Blindangle and Gonfoogle (or whatever their real names might be) are not smarter than you and I. They only have a larger stage than we do. Noted.

So, this is the view from the street, pretty much literally. It’s what common people think, not what academia says we have to think. It’s what average Joes and Jills have on their mind, and how we see it from the perspective of someone who is not one of the uppercrust elite.

Hence, The View From The Street, and if I can ever figure out how to get the title properly capitalized, I will.

(edit:  It seems I have found how to capitalize the title, or at least found a work around for it.)

Liberty for the Brave,

Al

A quick thought from the street 2234, 23 Oct 09

The right road can change. What was smooth can become rocky; or what was rocky, smooth. The straight road can lead to curves, or the curves to a straight road. What CANNOT change is that if it was the right road when you stepped onto it, it is still the right road, all the way to the end.