Jim Crow Laws

This person rambles a bit, ok alot, but he eventually gets to some damn good points, at least from my perspective. :) Me saying someone rambles and is verbose is a bit like looking in the mirror!

Well, a cogent criticism I have read of libertarian leaning people is that they tend to emphasize the injustice when a government violates civil rights or liberties but have very little to say about private individuals violating others rights. This is most emphasized when discussing "Jim Crow Laws".

One must ask the question about Jim Crow Laws....at whom were these various local and state laws directed for the most part?? It is true they affected Black people in a severe and unjust manner.....however they were enforced against business owners in the South. They were written as codes regulating the conduct of business. They were laws that basically interfered with the fundamental right of a property owner to use his or her property as he or she wished, ie to serve whomever he or she wanted.

One must ask the question whether the libertarians adherence to the inviolability of property rights is not an ignorance of the history of slavery in America and that history must be "corrected."

But I come back to the "law" in segregation. Without the imposition of government, segregation in a broad sense would barely have been possible, and THAT we can argue on. Even on the question of slavery, if we OWN our own labor then what right, on a fundamental level did slavery violate?? The right to one's own labor, a property right. However, on a deeper level, the problem was that society did not acknowledge the slaves right to own ANY property, much less his or her labor. And so, when one is denied his or her property rights one is susceptible to becoming a piece of property themselves. This was the manifestation of the denial of the right of personhood to the slave; the denial of the right to ownership of property or of himself. This is why the right to ownership of property and person is such a fundamental human right. Not because "greed is good" or some narcissistic need to acquire, but because ultimately the right to own is the right not to own. If we have the fundamental right to our labor and our property then our ownership of those things can be a manifestation of our pursuit of happiness. We can choose what to labor at, what to buy, what to sell or not buy and not sell or give away or what, we are free to choose because we are a person born with rights.

Sometimes our views on various topics are shaped by the ways that we shape the questions we ask ourselves when trying to form opinions on them. It is self-questioning that is the essential primary element to rational thought. Before we ask a question to another we ask it of ourselves

we answer it or not and then wonder how another person, a person we respect, would answer and what questions they would ask that we have not thought of. This is how Human Knowledge is created. It is the interaction between the inner life of the mind of the individual and the social interaction that is so necessary to advance knowledge as a whole, the knowledge of the human race.

But it begins with the individual mind and self-questioning. Self-questioning takes imagination. The imagination to see multiple perspectives upon the same question. And now another tangent is gone off on!!! :) how bout some kick ass Tchaikovsky?? good night, more tomorrow....maybe....

The Reaction is Coming-The Revolution will be Smashed

The last century or so in the US, accelerating since 1898, has seen a revolution that has almost seamlessly welded the power of the Federal government, corporations and the military. This has not been some grand conspiracy. But once the logic of Empire, both at home and abroad, is accepted then a nation cannot back down from the pedestal of domestic control and foreign domination for the real fear and reality that its policies of force have created or will create enemies which are more powerful than it. But it has gained a momentum of its own as interests within each of these centers of power have become invulnerable fiefdoms each with interests and pull over policy that are often antithetical to law, the Constitution and always to Justice. Both political parties, over time, have become servants of these centers of power in various configurations.

But new alignments are now being formed around the world, but especially in the US, which over time will either dissolve or rapidly smash this Leviathan, this serpent that twists and turns around the trunk of the tree of Liberty. These new alignments confound both the Left and Right and especially mainline Republicans and Democrats who are blind to the pernicious and insidious undermining and destruction of the basic building blocks of American Liberty that the welding of government, corporate and military power has facilitated.

It should be remembered that Americans were originally extremely distrustful of standing armies and very anti-militaristic. Americans today are largely militaristic as long as they can watch the results of that militarism from the comfort of their living rooms. When we were pacific we won a revolution against the greatest power on earth. When we are militaristic our forces wallow in the sands for decades battling phantoms to a hopeless draw and squandering the wealth and credit of the nation.

There is a reason that the Congress and the Presidency are basically mistrusted. They are mistrusted because they have been derelict in their DUTY to maintain those building blocks of Liberty through the use of their Constitutional authority and instead have yielded this authority to the interests that profess to be essential to the health of the nation but are unaccountable to the People in their political capacity and therefore unaccountable, ultimately to the law and the Constitution.

The American People, guided by a wise and moderate sense of the fallible but broad wisdom of their ancestors, will return the nation to a balance where the three legal branches of government: the Congress, the Presidency and the Courts again wield the authority they are obligated to wield. Law, tradition, and a balanced constitutional perspective will slowly but surely supplant the failing pillars of misplaced power.

If events do not occur in these relatively peaceful ways, the same outcome will occur but in a more violent way. The danger in that event will be the aftermath.

Von Mises' Crack Up Boom

here is an interesting articl.e

Bad Night for Paul

Tonight the biggest loser was Paul unfortunately. He needed to finish at least second. He finished about 3,000 votes behind Santorum and Mittens who basically finished tied. It was definitely a strong third but still a third. There is no doubt the idea that Paul is a "racist" and a "kook" took hold at least to some extent. Also the idea that he could not beat Obama took hold as well. Many consider his ideas on domestic policy and foreign policy quaint and unworkable and "oh so 19th century." They believe that his emphasis on monetary policy and the federal reserve is strange because it is not an important issue. The idea that the Federal Reserve is not important would be quite amusing to its board members and to bond holders who are losing their asses because of fed policies.

In his speech he says "we are all Austrians now" in a reference to Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek however to the more casual viewer wanting to "be Austrian" probably sounds like a reference to Hitler and Paul's supporters supposed "Nazi racism" or some rot. The exact opposite is true about the Austrian school of economics which is the antithesis of National Socialism but I doubt the "we are Austrian" battle cry will get him many votes in New Hampshire. And I am sure the silly, hyperbolic reference to Paul as "the new Thomas Jefferson" will be viewed as ironic by the chattering Left who view the author of the Declaration of Independence and the virtual inventor of religious Liberty as "a symbol of rape and racism." To really know the attitude in the Paul camp just view the expression on his son Rand's face for most of this speech. It tells all. He knows what needed to happen tonight and it didn't. That is the bottom line.

One other thing is that Paul needs to emphasize that he wants to keep from entering so many small wars so that the military can prepare and train for a larger one that may be thrust upon us in the coming years. It is only a matter of time before a larger enemy that is militarily capable throws a left hook to our blind side (and no, I do not mean Iran) Right now we are leading with our chin, so to speak, in our military policy. You won't hear this on the news but morale in the military is very low. The troops are committing suicide at record levels and they are coming home sickened from all the depleted uranium being used in the munitions. Nobody will speak for these guys. Nobody. Paul ought to start doing that. I think all of us ought to. Its the 1,000 pound story that no one seems to want to discuss.

But overall it was a bad night for Paul. If he can't win in an Iowa caucus it is hard to see where he can win. He will finish better than expected in some states but it is a long shot now that he will win any. In the end the reality is that Libertarian policies don't garner enough support to win elections. As the year goes on and the economy moves from the current phony "optimism" to the reality of an increasingly rapid decline the electorate will become more polarized but one of the poles will not be a return to a more gentle approach to government at home and abroad. It will be a choice between the phony "toughness" of the Republicans and the phony "Progressivism" of Obama.

My views on Taxation

I prattle away often about taxation so here is an attempt to codify my views on the topic using, as with so many of my views, historical references.

Parliament was often trying to assert its "right" to tax the Americans. But Parliament had not the right to tax the Americans. Legislatures only have the POWER to tax, not the RIGHT. These are separate concepts. The RIGHT to tax resides in the individual citizen because the money ultimately belongs to him or her.

The POWER of the legislature to tax depends exclusively on the RIGHT of the People who are to be taxed to be represented within it. In a real sense, when these conditions exist, the tax is voluntary. The People agree to pay the tax freely through their representatives. Taxation and legislation are fundamentally different; the one being a POWER vested in the legislature by the People, the other being a RIGHT and DUTY of the legislature if it is to call itself by that name. Our Founders understood this. We tend to confuse the two issues. However the residual of the ideas of our Founders is still manifested today in the fact that legislative bills and taxation bills must be passed separately in Congress. This was, on a philosophical level as stated above, to insure the difference between POWERS and RIGHTS and on a practical level to insure at least a semblance of adherence to fiscal discipline in that the amount of revenue available would be calculated and then laws within that amount would be passed. Obviously, it hasn't worked out that way.

Legislation and taxation are different because legislation is a manifestation of the People's will to protect their Rights and Liberty. All legitimate legislation is a protection of individual rights. Laws against unlawful killing, the murder laws, are a protection of the individual's right to life for instance. Acts to generate revenue, generally taxation of various kinds, are the necessary precursors to fund the enforcement of the law in general. They are not to be attached to specific acts of legislation as a part of them. This would lead to absurd situations where each dollar would have to be tracked to make sure it was funding the specific action of government stipulated at the risk of violating the law. Any semblance of government accounting would be impossible, even more so than the current disastrous situation in government accounting.

The power of a legislature to pass laws is inherent in the nature of law and a legislature. The power exists organically stemming from the existing rights of the People as individuals. The Right and DUTY of a legislature is to pass legitimate laws to the end of protecting individual rights. Legislatures do NOT have a duty or inherent right to tax. The POWER to tax onlt stems from the individual's right to voluntarily give his or her money to the government for the protection of his or her liberty.

The voluntary nature of taxation is expressed through the representative of the individual to be taxed. This does not mean that all taxes must be UPON individuals to be legal. The individual gives his consent to various types of taxation through his or her representative. As long as representation exists, taxation cannot be called a violation of Liberty. (however, it may be a violation of common sense, or economics or whatever but that is different) Legislation in the form of penal laws, for instance, violates the liberty of the lawbreaker but even here only as a consequence of protecting the individual liberty of the citizen.

A convicted murderer cannot withhold his consent to be punished and escape the law. The citizens, acting in their political capacity, can withhold their consent to be taxed precisely because the legislature has NO organic, inherent right or power to enforce taxation without consent.

We see then the difference between legislation and taxation. The power for the former exists organically in the form of the inherent rights and duties of a legislature. The power for the latter exists only THROUGH the inherent self-evident right of the individual to consent to the taxation of his or her money.

The Eulogy

This was the eulogy I delivered in my mother's memory on December 10, 2011. It is not verbatim as I had not written it out word for word at the time of delivery. It is written here from memory using the notes and prompts that helped me in the delivery. It is a close rendition of what I actually said. The eulogy seemed to me to have been received well as appropriate and fitting. In preparation to enter the mindset needed to deliver this eulogy and to help me think about it I read Plato's Last Days of Socrates which includes "The Apology", "Crito" "Euthypro" and "Phaedo".....then Seneca's essays and letters, then Plutarch's "In Consolation to his Wife:We Must Not Slump in Dejection or Shut Ourselves Away"....then Artur Schopenhauer's "Essays and Aphorisms" (interesting but I discovered what I already knew about him:a misogynistic, misanthropic bastard)

Well, my name is John O'Grady. I am Karen's youngest son. I asked mom one day when I was about eight, "mom how do you remember all the lines in plays and musicals that you perform in at the Hartnell theater?" She said, "John, when the time comes you remember." About a week before this my brother and I had been talking to my Dad while driving out to our little ranch to do some work. He told my brother and me in his irascible way "whatever brains you boys got, you got them from your mom, you didn't get them from my side of the family!" Remembering this when talking to Mom I asked her how does Dad remember all the lines and songs in the plays and musical he is in? since he told Mike and me that he's got no brains? Mom said, "well, you know John, your father has become a much better actor since he married me."

Well, when the time comes you remember, when the time comes you remember........

A poem I remember mom used to love read to me often is by William Blake, it is only four lines and here it is.......He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity's Sunrise

For my Mom her joy came from music. One of the first memories of I have of her is walking home from school and being still about halfway down the block from my house and hearing this powerful soprano voice rising up to the heavens from the back of the house. I would go in. I would walk to the back and peek through the curtains into a room we called the Music Room. It was a beautiful room with a high, open-beamed ceiling and two huge skylights at the top. There was a full Steinway piano in the middle of the room on an Indian rug and there would be Norma Wylie, mom's vocal coach, or Yvonne Crane, a friend who helped mom prepare for particular roles and musicals, sitting at the piano playing. Light from the skylights would be pouring into the room in visible streams like illuminated water. While singing, mom's face would just be full of elation, peace, joy. It was this....this music that allowed her to live in eternity's sunrise.

My Grandfather, mom's father, Howard Wilson was a very deep influence on mom. He was a Baptist Minister and died much too early....much too early at only 38 in an auto accident. Anyway, he used to give mom one simple admonition, he would say, "Karenina" (his nickname for her) "you will face many challenges in life, many...throughout life....but the key to overcoming this is perseverance.....perseverance." I can't tell you how much just this one simple admonition from her father helped mom not only to cope with Multiple Sclerosis as it progressed but also to fight it, she often told me this.

Well, unfortunately the disease did progress. And over the years we have so many people tell us that it is such a shame about Karen you know, oh such a shame that she just really has no quality of life. I understood what they were trying to say on one level. However, on another level I don't think that one can know a person's quality of life until one knows the qualities that one values.......let me tell you what my mom valued, it was not the physical......she valued strength of Soul and Character and the love of her family.

One incident that really brought all these values into perspective and focus occurred only about a year ago. My dad took a fall off his bed. It turned out to not be very serious but it seemed so at the time. My dad and I were talking and I was trying to figure out how I was going to get him off of the floor and back into a wheelchair and or bed. Dad was concerned mom was worried because she could not see what was happening on the floor from her bed. He assured her he was ok. Mom, at a time she had been scarcely able to move her head much less speak for about a week because her MS had flared up, somehow turned her head and in a clear and loud voice looked down at my Dad and said "Mike, you get up, I love you but you GET UP right now!!" Well, I was able to help get him up, with the help of the Urrutia family. In a few minutes Dad was in a wheelchair next to mom's bed telling her he was fine. She said to him, "see....I knew you could do it!"

After that incident Mom had some good days where she was able to express herself quite well. On days like that the main thing she always wanted to say was "thank you" to everyone who thinks about her and loves her and to tell everyone that she is fighting as long as she can. And to you Dad......she especially wanted to say "thank you." Thank you for all the love and devotion you gave to her throughout the decades....thank you....and God knows the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune did not exactly pass you by either. Mike loves you, we love you, I love you.....Mom loves you.....she loves you to this moment......to this moment.

(this part I had written out and have just found tucked away in the notes I used in the actual eulogy. I paused and then simply read the following two paragraphs before returning to the prompts and notes) For me, Mom showed the power of the human soul. Though broken physically, she opened her eyes that see inward and looked up. That was her path to joy and wisdom. Her life was bound only by the limits of her thoughts. Her thoughts were bound only by the limits of her expressiveness, and these were boundless.

Even when our bodies are bound by afflictions, death or disease our soul transcends all this by singing out in words illuminated by sunbeams brought forth with lightning.

And this, this (hold up mom's Bible) is a very special book for me, very special. This Bible was given to my mom on her 17th birthday by her Grandpa and Grandma Wilson (Howard's parents). And in the front piece my mom wrote out lines from a Psalm.....these words......

"My voice shalt thou hear in the morning O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up."

And I.....I......can only pray that when the time came to remember that these words were in her mind and her heart as she "slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

Hyperventilating on Phony Outrage

In the predictable back and forth of all American elections today that are completely driven by Party considerations it is now the turn of Ron Paul to be brought down a notch or two by political pundits of the Left and Right whose attacks, while justified to a limited extent, often do not become them and serve only to reveal a certain sycophancy either in the service of a failed president or a false and failed political Party.

The main thrust of the attacks of the Left has been the alleged "racism" of Paul for some highly charged racial language used in fundraising letters. Paul probably did not write these himself, although someone close to him probably did. If he wrote them he should say it and challenge anyone to claim they have never used a racial issue in a way that was divisive. If someone else wrote it he should ask them to admit it. Enough with this phony outrage regarding racial language in politics. It is a bitter and sad consequence of the racial games played by both parties. It is an open secret among political consultants that race still plays a huge part in American politics in BOTH parties. This is because race still brings out powerful emotions in many people and that is too often what gets people to vote. The Left Democrats ALSO use race and racial language in exactly this divisive way.

The Left has systematically attempted to claim that virtually any attempt to place any limits on Federal spending to slow a catastrophic expansion of debt is "racist" in its philosophical underpinnings because "cuts would disproportionately fall on the poor and many poor are blacks ergo any reduction in federal spending is racist." This is simply an attempt by the Left to increase voter turnout among racial groups they think are "their people". If this is not using race and some might say racism to divide the population, raise money, and win elections that is at least as egregious as something written in a Paul newsletter in 1995 then apparently every issue of Federal taxing or spending is racist?? Paul wants to cut off bailouts for a gaggle of white, rich, Federally enabled bankers. Is this racism against Whites because 99.9999% of crooked federally bailed out bankers are white bastards?? I have always said that if the government would simply spend money helping TRULY poor people of all races, and not the middle or upper classes there would be no debt at all.

As an aside one of the most frankly ridiculous arguments I recently read attacking Paul from the Left was in regard to his non-interventionist foreign policy. The writer said that although she was anti-war like Paul, she did not agree with Paul because his views were based on an "isolationist hatred of the world" and not on "love for the world." (Oh God, where do I begin with this idiocy.) Um oh, sorry, to be polite, where do I begin. First of all, Paul has never expressed any "hatred for the world" unless being pro-free trade with all nations is "hating the world." The only evidence the writer gave for Paul's supposed hatred of the world is that he opposes foreign aid. Paul opposes foreign aid not because he "hates the world" but because he has read and respects the constitution. What he hates are the criminal regimes that foreign aid props up like the current Military regime in Egypt placed there by the "Arab Spring."

Frankly, the writer's argument about "hating" or "loving" the world is an intellectually lazy argument and belongs more in a tweet of 40 characters than a serious article. I assume she prefers Presidents Bushobama who, while professing to be "defending the world" behind smirks and toothy grins, set out to intervene in virtually every country in the mideast while destroying the fiscal and moral credit of the United States.

Well, as disingenuous as the attacks on Paul from the Left are, the one's from the Right or the "right" are even more so. There are many, including jumping on the Left's back and crying phony crocodile tears about racism. However, the main thrust is that Paul is "a nut" because he wants to "legalize heroin" and he "wants Iran to have a nuclear bomb." This was encapsulated recently on Faux News by the slimy chameleon DICK Morris.

First, Paul is exactly right on the decriminalization of drugs. This would rapidly and systematically destroy the major dealers of all types of drugs both nationally and internationally because the US is the biggest buyer. (talk about loving the World!! :) As far as heroin goes legalization might hurt the profits that the US government is making off guarding the poppies in Afghanistan and then flying them out to all corners of the earth but (oh gosh) that is only a conspiracy theory. (A conspiracy theory is any piece of news harmful to the US government that goes unreported in the US but is an open secret in the rest of the world.)

Second, Paul has never said that he "wants Iran to have a nuclear bomb." He has said that he understands the strategic reasons they might want one and that starting a war in the mideast again to root out the Iranian bomb is a catastophic strategic error for the United States. This might be wrong in terms of its reasoning (although I think not) but it is certainly not "crazy". It is exactly the way an American President should be thinking in a strategic way about foreign policy. "Crazy" policies are those of the other Republicans and of Bushobama who turn the issue into an emotional stand-off that closes off most opportunities to solve the problem short of entering the darkroom of war.

So, while I certainly don't endorse everything that was ever written in some Paul newsletters, I think his candidacy in 2012 has been a refreshing change from the elementary, hidebound, party oriented campaigns we have seen so much of in the last few decades. IT HAS STIRRED THINGS UP BABY!!! It has been a remarkably well-run and disciplined campaign whose themes of non-intervention abroad and constitutional individualism at home are the exact opposite of the racism and insanity that he is accused of.

And actions speak louder than words

And songs combine the two (this song is fornicating brilliant/smash the Left Right paradigm)