Social Security is a scam

 Ever heard of a Ponzi-scheme? Charles Ponzi was a man from New England who convinced thousands of locals to invest in a postage stamp pyramid scheme. He took investments and promised huge returns. He made a million dollars in a few hours from initial investors. The idea was that he could pay those returns by using the cash from future investors, whose returns could be paid by yet newer investors. You know..... the good old "rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul" stuff. Eventually, there are no new investors, and the people at the end of the investment chain get screwed. But who cares, since Ponzi had already made off with all that money. The SEC says it's quite illegal, nowadays. The Social Security system is a giant Pozi scheme. It takes from you now, promising you a big return later. In the meantime, it uses your investment to pay off old return promises that have come due. 

 Today, we can see the coming collapse of Social Security. We can predict the point where new investors will stop coming in, or at least the dues will be far higher than the collections. But who cares if you're FDR? You've already made off with your fame and supposed service to the needy retirees, and screw the people at the end of the chain.

 It's sad to me that people still insist today on pretending Social Security is something other than this. "Reform!! It just needs reform!!" What is needs is for it to be thrown back under the rock that it came from, and it's authors need to be called out for they really are. The same as Ponzi was. A cheat. As long as we pretend we can save the system from the fallout, we doom ourselves to invest in the same false trap of future pay-off. We're still buying stamps -- even though Ponzi has been exposed.

 Oh, and while we're on the topic.... how did the government get authority to do this whole thing again?? I didn't remember an amendment about this....

Free-Market means free individual

 I know a few people who are not "real big proponents" (to say the least) of the free market system. "Capitalism is just an unfair system where the rich exploit the poor" they say. As far as I'm concerned, this is about as true as saying "socialism is just an unfair system where the lazy exploit the hard-working." Both arguments are straw man arguments. Capitalism is not the exploitation of the poor, although that tragically has occurred before. The same is true for socialism. Lazy exploiting the hard-working is a loophole within the system, not the system itself.

 I am a clear proponent of the free-market system. I mean, CLEAR PROPONENT. Against minimum wage. Against anti-trust laws. Against unions. Against OSHA. Against permitting and liscence offices. Like I said, clear proponent.

 I understand the objection, however, that the rich seem to get richer and the poor seem to get poorer. This does seem, at times, to feel like it's the case. It's a myth, however, to say that the socialist system accomplishes national wealth. A look at history will demonstrate that that has never once occurred. Why people believe "the next time will be different" is lost on me, and I fear I will not come to understand it anytime soon. Even local and recent examples can show us this. Many of the poorest states in America are ardently modern liberal/democrat, and yet have remain every bit as poor as when they starting hoping liberalism could change things.

 I must admit that capitalists do not do a very good job at explaining how capitalism is the ladder out of poverty, instead of the pit that keeps them stuck. One of the great things about capitalism is that innovation is always available to you, and your hard work to accomplish it will be rewarded in the capitalist system. Hard work, sacrifice, and innovation pay off in a free market. Not so, in a social welfare system.

 But my commitment to free market is not essentially about reward for hard work. It's about personal liberty. The free market allows you to do things your way. You do not need the government to tell you how a business should be run, nor do you need the government to tell you which business you need to work in. In a free market, an individual has the right to self-govern his work, and he has the right to self-govern his purchases. This, I believe, is most in keeping with our constitution, and most in keeping with the beliefs of our founding fathers.

 And, by the way, when did the people surrender the right to regulate business to the government? I don't remember any amendments that granted those powers to the government..... perhaps they just took them from us without asking.

The Second Amendment

 All the time, you can say "Second Amendment" and get immediate response from people. Some proud and some angry, of course. But it really has become a major issue in today's voting booth. People protest for and against, people argue and make outrageous statements, and people despise their political opponents on few issues more than on this one.

 It's a big deal. Some people feel threatened by guns. Guns, for some, immediately bring to mind feelings of violence, fear, and danger. To them, guns are things that kill people. Nothing else. Others see guns like others see their old dog. It's been with them for years, right by their side during some of their finest memories. It makes them feel relaxed, safe, and comfortable. With perspectives this different, it's no large wonder that people don't all agree.

 The Second Amendment itself reads "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, may not be infringed." While we argue about whether this applies to the individual person having a right to keep and bear arms (the position of gun-rights advocates) or only to the State Militia aka The National Guard (the position of gun-control advocates), the Supreme Court has just issued a controversial ruling pointing towards the former. I think we should note that there is more here in this Amendment than this, and I think that some time spent remembering the context of this sentence can lend some understanding to us.

 You must remember, first, that owning guns was an everyday reality for virtually everyone at the time the amendment was written. The idea that a hunting rifle could be banned would have been as outrageous as banning cars today. It was some people's means of food and money -- and I don't mean shootists, I mean hunting. In fact, the right of an individual to own a firearm existed before this amendment as part of British common law. The individual's right to keep and bear arms was essentially assumed here (and remember, the Constitution was intended to lay out the bounds of government rights, not the people's rights). 

 Second, you must remember that the idea of a standing federal army was not a reality at the time. Armies held during times of peace was actually one of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence. Standing armies were State militias comprised of state residents, not Federal armies. The Articles of Confederation (the documents that held the 13 original states together as a unit after the Declaration of Independence, but before the Constitution was signed into law) created the Continental Army in order to fight the British for freedom, but this viewed as temporary, and when the Second Amendment was written, whether to maintain this Federal army was the subject of hot debate. The Second Amendment was largely a concession or a compromise toward those who disapproved of a standing Federal army, as a way to guarantee that the Federal army could never take away a state's sovereignty. "The state always had the right to maintain its own standing militia in case it had to hold off the federal government" was the essential message.

 As Patrick Henry said, "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined...." This is the attitude of the Second Amendment. The People have the right to maintain the ability to keep the Federal government in check against tyranny. The right to own weapons privately is assumed in this, as is the right to self-defense (another item already a part of British common law before the Constitution was drafted). Early commentary on the amendment confirms this view. The Boston Journal of the Times printed in 1769, commenting on the British Bill of Rights and the King's attempt to disarm the colonists, that "It is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defence." The right to own a gun was viewed as a NATURAL RIGHT. One of the self-evident, unalienable rights that the people had, and commissioned government to protect. 

The Issue of Abortion (part II)

Like I said in my previous post, this issue needs two different conversations about two very different kinds of abortion. One about early abortions, where the baby is completely undeveloped, and another about later term abortions, past about 15 weeks, where the baby has developed into everything that humans are. Today, I will adress the second of these two issues.
Two things must be conceded at the very beginning of the conversation. One is that regulating the procedures and medical care on someone's body is, indeed, invasive. Imagine how rediculous the idea would be if a baby was not involved. Telling someone, for instance, they may or may not be allowed to have a tooth pulled, or have some particular surgury. We would all be agreeing that this was both an invasion of privacy and an overstepping of enumerated power (remember the limited gov't post). The second thing is that the "right to privacy," the 'implicit right' that Roe vs. Wade was based upon, is NOT a bogus idea. The Constitution doesn't even pretend to spell out our rights. It spells out the government's rights. If you regularly say "Hey, the Constitution doesn't even give a right to privacy in the first place!" then you need to go and read the 9th amendment.
The reason having a conversation about lawful invasion of privacy is appropriate is because other rights are involved here. A living human baby is also part of the abortion question and, because of this, other people's rights are also in question. I understand this is where most of seem to disagree. But go and take a look at an ultrasound of a 20 week baby. Ask an OB-GYN whether a 18 week baby is really a baby. I understand you can make an objection about religion, but this is really only true for a brief time in the first term. Beyond this point, as Roe vs. Wade implied in their decision to NOT mandate 2nd and 3rd term abortions, we have a completely different set of arguments and reasoning. Even the law can recognize this when people are charged with double-murder because they kill a pregnant woman.
Many of the objections about making abortions outright illegal are early-term objections also. "What if a woman gets raped and then gets pregnant?" or "What if a parent is the father?" of even "What if we can't take care of a baby?" All of these objections are first term issues. Not a single one of them has a good reason why a second or third term abortion would be necessary.
You see, even if people are completely deviod of any religious understanding of a soul and have a "reasonable cause" to consider an abortion, even then we can see that waiting until a baby has developed into, indistputably, a human baby is both unnecesarry and cruel. Why is it that those who support the idea of an abortion want an abortion anytime? Why not, abortions in the first, say, 10 weeks and then after that, let's have the mother abandon maternal rights, the state remove the baby as soon as the baby could live on its own, and allow a couple who has been working for years to get pregnant have a chance to adopt the baby while it is still an infant? Why would abortion rights advocates not want something like this?
The reason is because they don't want what's best for the baby, like they say. They want it dead. There is a big difference between saying "we want what's best for both the mother and the baby" and saying "we want to be able to kill the baby and pretend it never happened." This is what 2nd and 3rd term abortions are really about. People want to "not be a mother." But they already ARE mothers. People don't want a baby. But the HAVE a baby. They don't want to not have to take care of it - they want it dead.
This is why this conversation needs to be split up. You may be able to reasonably argue that you want what is best for a child who was raped three days ago when you give her a "morning-after" pill, but to say this about a 26-week mother? This is ridiculous. There no other reason for allowing a 2nd and 3rd term abortion than to prefer a dead baby to an adopted baby. While you may not want a human baby inside of you, at 19 weeks, it is an objective, scientific reality.
While we must mingle religion with law, difficult situations, and discernment in first term abortions, this is not true at all for later term abortions. At that point, it has clearly become human. And at that point, -- "created human" -- it has attained certain unalienable rights. Like the Right to Life. And the government, after all, exists to protect exactly these rights.

The Issue of Abortion (part I)

This is a tough issue to talk about. The truth is, very few people actually talk about it. Most people get angry and yell. Understandably, both sides of the abortion issue feel very strongly about their position and have a hard time even considering the arguments of the other side. As a friend of mine said recently, "It has been the most divisive issue since the Civil rights movement." In many ways, he's right.

The problem with this is that people argue at the expense of talking. Very few issues of disagreement get worked out by angry yelling, and we've been yelling for a long time now. It doesn't really seem like we're about to stop, either, regardless of any changes in the law. We are in desperate need of level-headed, honest, humble communication. The laws may change back and forth, but the practical values of America will not become agreed without it.

Now, I am a libertarian and I realize that the official Libertarian Party's position on this issue is pro-choice - but I am not. Frankly, this is not because I feel my religion trumps my political policy. I have addressed this issue in another post, and as difficult as it is to say sometimes, I do not feel any differently on this topic. Legislating religion is dangerous, even if it happens to be my own. People have the right to be free thinkers, and exercise their religion (or lack thereof) as freely as I do. 

The role of government is not to regulate "approved thought" or even behaviour, but to protect and secure the rights of the people. This is just as true when the consequences are devastatingly heart-breaking as it is when they are overwhelmingly joyful. But the issue of aborting children and women's right to private control over her own body, I think, needs to be addressed in two separate conversations. Today, I will address neither directly, but the issue as a whole.

Actually, the ruling of Roe vs. Wade implies that there are 2 different conversations to be had about abortion. Roe vs. Wade did not legalize abortion. I think we should remember this. Abortion was legal before Roe vs. Wade, and if Roe vs. Wade was overturned tomorrow, it would still be legal. Roe vs. Wade mandated that a state may not prevent the option of a first term abortion, which is much different. It was intended to be a compromise between people who felt abortion should be legal right up until birth, and people who felt abortion abortion should be regulated from the moment of conception. The decision was that during the first term, the only argument that a fetus had human rights because it was a human was religious, and therefore, not lawful to regulate. It implied that there was potentially an argument to be made for post-first term babies. An implication largely ignored today, despite science reinforcing this implication. Talking about whether a 3-day concieved baby is a human is a quite different conversation than a 3-month conceived baby. A 20-week baby has, not only arms and legs, but eyelashes, fingernails, and gets hic-ups. Apart from a religious understanding of a soul (and I understand that for a religious person like myself, this is very hard if not impossible to ignore), a 3-day conceived baby is much different. While I am hardly comfortable at admitting this, it is true, I think, that these two situations need to be talked about separately. One involves figuring how to blend religion and law, which is a tricky business. The other involves simple common sense and some honesty.

Really, the issue is not Roe vs. Wade, but abortion itself. And on the topic of abortion, why am I, a libertarian, pro-life and not pro-choice? If I believe that the government exists to protect the rights of the people and not to regulate their behaviour, and religion provides no exception, how can I remain pro-life? Well, the answer is simple. Remember the Declaration of Independence? It laid out that there are self-evident rights that the government is instituted to protect. It gave three examples, which it clarified to not be comprehensive, and they are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Stepping in and protecting the right to life IS EXACTLY the role of government. One individuals rights can never trump another's. How can we say that one individual's implied right to privacy overrules another's explicit right to life? I cannot! That is why I am pro-life, and not pro-choice. Remember that the Declaration of Independence grants that all men are created (not "all men live" or even "all men are born") equal. The instant of individual rights does not begin with born, but with man. Being a human. And, like I said before, when exactly this happens is best addressed in two conversations, both of which I will have later.