Paul Nathan - With Freedom and Justice For All

With the apparent next Republican candidate being Mitt Romney, many are saying that he is the ideal candidate for democrats to successfully attack and defeat. They'll dub him a vulture capitalist and put capitalism on trial as a ruthless system that panders to the 1% at the expense of the rest. Capitalism, with Romney as its poster boy, will be portrayed as a system that has failed.

This election will be more about capitalism than about any one candidate. And perhaps that is just as it should be. For if we cannot defend capitalism now, we will surely lose it. Capitalism is the natural result of freedom. It sanctions and defends self-interest. It allows individuals to be as kind or as ruthless as they chose so long as they don't use force, fraud, or coercion to accomplish their goals. Free people can be rational or be jerks. They can be kind or they can be cruel. They can be generous or stingy. They can do anything they want as long as they do it peacefully. And if they can't--handcuffs await them.

This nation was established as a Constitutional Republic. As such it provided unlimited freedom to individuals and limited power to government. It established laws against force and the derivatives of force--fraud, coercion, and blackmail. Those laws have been with us since America was formed and although they're not always enforced, they are there as part of our judicial system to protect individuals from harm.

At its very core, this election is about whether individuals need to be taken care of by government, or whether they should take care of themselves. Our founding fathers insisted the latter was the better form of government. No one is questioning whether there should be safety nets or not; the question is whether the safety nets be public or private.

For ages emperors and kings decided for individuals what was good for them, what was "right" and "wrong," and who should share in the wealth. In modern times there have been experiments with communism, socialism and fascism. Dictators ruled people's lives. Capitalism has been the one exception. Only capitalism put the individual in charge of his own destiny.

Today capitalism is on trial. In this election we will not be voting for a President as much as a system of government. The choices offered are clear: move toward more government rule and decision making power, or toward more individual freedom and responsibility. Much has been made of the 1% who, rich beyond belief, should be "asked" (forced) to pay more taxes to provide for those with less. But it isn't about one percent--it's about one individual. Either we have a free country where there is freedom and justice for all or we don't. If the government has the right to confiscate the wealth of one, they have the "right" to confiscate the wealth of all.

Does 99% of the country have the right to enslave 1% of it? We fought a war as a nation over such a question and answered, "No!" We abolished slavery as inconsistent with the principles of a free society. The notion that we take from others when we think they have more money than they should is a throwback to the thinking of kings and dictators who took from others as they pleased.

We need to move to a smaller, less intrusive government, that protects the individual. Not one that attacks him. In every aspect of the economy we find the strong hand of government and we need to say, "No more!" If we can't draw the line here and now it will likely never be drawn.

Now is the time to put up or shut up.

Paul Nathan

July 4, 2012

From Russia With Love

The authenticity of this piece was verified by Snopes (link provided at the end of article). The following is an article that appeared in the national Russian newpaper Pravda recently.       Date: Saturday, March 20, 2010, 2:43 PM  From Pravda a Russian Newspaper   The irony of this article appearing in the English edition of Pravda (Russian on-line newspaper) defies description.  Why can a Russian newspaper print the following yet the American media can't/won't see it? Check Snopes link below.    American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper        It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.     True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.     Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.     First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a Burger King burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy".  Pride blind the foolish.     Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more than Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more than happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power.  Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America .     The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama.  His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive.  His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America ' s short history but in the world.  If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst  Zimbabwe .     These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all.  First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, losses, and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars.  These make our Russian oligarchs look little more than ordinary street thugs, in comparison.  Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes.  Should we congratulate them?     These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another.  They are also usurping the rights, duties, and powers of the American congress (parliament).  Again, congress has put up little more than a whimper to their masters.     Then came Barack Obama ' s command that GM ' s (General Motors) president step down from leadership of his company.  That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self-given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will.  Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.     So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies..  I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less than two months ago, warned Obama and UK ' s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster.  Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.     Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "free man" whimper.     So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance, and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses?  SenatorBarney Frank, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort.  He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.     The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.  The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest, and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is.  The world will only snicker.  Snopes link -    http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/pravda.asp