How we lose our right to self defense.

 The February 25th 2024 edition of the Detroit Free Press carried an article by staff writer Jeff Seidel reporting on the tragedy of an acquaintance who was shot in the face by her step father. Since Mr. Seidel knew the family of the young victim I can empathize with his concern over her fate even though she did survive.

But where I depart from Mr Seidel's concern is his use of the concept of "gun violence" as the act of the shooting. Why? You might ask? Because the concept gun violence is a package deal packaging together two different kinds of gun violence: the violence of gun assault and the violence of gun self defense. To me, this is sloppy thinking.

Guns are violent tools. They are supposed to be. But combining the gun violence of assault with the gun violence of defense is to package both forms of violence as equal evils. This has been the goal of most of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media to which Mr Seidel belongs, for decades now.

I would have no issue with his article if he had identified the kind of violence used on the young lady as gun assault. That is what it jolly well was.

Michigan's governor Gretchen Whitmer has been using the package deal of "gun violence" for quite awhile now. It is this kind of package dealing that is being used against the young and unsuspecting.

Logically, if all forms of gun violence are dangerous and thus to be avoided then gun confiscation would seem to be justified to the unthinking.. Actually the most unsafe people in the world were the peasants in communist Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba and other dictatorships of the last century.

It is hoped that future articles on gun violence by the Free Press staff will distinguish between the violence of assault vs the violence of defense. The right of self defense is in the Constitution for a reason. It is a requirement of the right to life. If you don't have a right to defend your life, you don't have a right to life.

Another corrupted package deal.

Today I received an email from my Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. She was promising stronger action to end gun violence that was manifest at the Michigan State campus a few days ago. Her concern is justified of course but her plan of action is misplaced.

You see the concept of "gun violence" is a cognitive package deal. As Ayn Rand Institute scholar Peter Schwartz pointed out in his excellent disc set "Clarity in conceptualization: the art of identifying "package deals," a package deal can be an honest concept or a dishonest one.

For example, you are looking to buy a house. You see one you like and inquire. The owner says the sale includes the vacant lot next door. It's a package deal. There is nothing wrong with that. 

But a dishonest or corrupted package deal combines two or more things that should not be combined. That is what the concept "gun violence" does. It combines the violence of assault which the Constitution forbids, with the violence of self defense which is protected by that Constitution, and condemns both as equally evil. And that is how citizens are fooled into giving up their rights. In this case, the right of self defense.

Michael Neibel

Is disagreement really a sign of weakness?

Kevin McCarthy has won the GOP House chair despite 20 Republicans refusing to endorse him without certain concessions from him. I couldn't help but notice how the collectivist mainstream media (MSM) treated the whole debate.

The January 8th Detroit Free Press carried an opinion piece by USA Today writer Connie Schultz calling the event a "circus" that "makes America look weak." On the TV media I heard others call it a fiasco, a joke and so on.

I just want to say that there was no "circus" in the German NAZI party, or in the Russian Soviet Communist Party. No disarray in Mao's Chinese Communist party nor in Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields.

It's eye opening to see what today's MSM considers strength: unquestioning obedience/loyalty to the party where dissent/disagreement are not allowed. The above dictatorships I mentioned certainly believed in party unity.

But a party in a semi free nation can be united on certain principles yet disagree on a particular implementation of those principles. I think that's where the GOP is today. The Democrats though are all in on a party platform that want's to provide everyone with their daily bread-by the force of a loving caring government, something that has never been or will be.

Just a thought on dictatorship.

     The bloody dictator of Soviet Russia Joseph Stalin had a right hand man named Lavrentiy Beria who was once quoted as saying "Show me the man and I'll show you his crime."

     Isn't that what we see looking at the Democrat Party leadership today ever since the 2016 election? Since then the M.O. of the entire Dem party leadership has been "Show me the Republican and I'll show you his crime."

     Yes, Soviet Communism or something close, is now the goal of the Democrats. They thought they were going to get their communist dictatorship with Hillary but Trump crashed that party. Now they are digging in for another shot and are pulling out all stops. 

     What the US needs is a long range plan to restore our Constitutional Republic where every individual policy must be clearly based on the principle of individual rights. More thoughts on that soon.

Michael Neibel

Strange Things Are Happening.

 "Strange things are happening" as comedian George Gobel  used to say. What I find strange is the recent announcement by Russian president Putin that he is putting the Russian ruble on the gold standard. This told me that at least in the field of economics, Mr Putin is more rational than anyone in our Federal Reserve system and our Treasury dept.

As far as his rationality in other contexts goes, like politics, or ethics, etc. I have my doubts. But I will say he is doing what our government should have done years ago and desperately needs to do now.

The US dollar is a fiat currency which means it is worth what it is because our government says so. It's a policy of make believe or lets pretend. Or else!

When we Americans allow the government to give us a fiat currency it's only a matter of time before government gives us fiat freedom, (government can do anything through regulations but we can't do anything with out permission of those regulators) fiat wealth, (lots of paper dollars with no purchasing power) fiat safety, (with reduced police you will still be safe because they will be caring police) fiat happiness, like "You will own nothing and you will be happy." 

Happy? Really? According to what standard of happiness? I'd like to know. Whatever standard of happiness the new world order invents it will be them deciding its use not you and me.

The dollar needs to be put back on the gold and silver standard, ASAP.

Michael Neibel

A big SORRY to all for not posting in the last 8 months.

August of 2022 is almost over. Aside form the warm weather there were 2 happy events here in Michigan.

 First was the retiring of the jersey of Lou Whitaker, second baseman for the Detroit Tigers 1984 MLB champion team. He and Alan Trammel turned 751 double plays, most in history. This honor was way overdue. I reveled in watching all the fanfare.

Second was the happy (for me) ending of a political dynasty here in Michigan. For the better part of 50 years Sander Levin in the House and Carl Levin in the Senate dominated Michigan politics. Both are retired now (Carl has since passed) but Sander's son Andrew rose to take his dad's seat in the House.

In my view, both brothers were what Ayn Rand called in her essay* "The left, Old and New" members of the old left which she referred to as having some respect for individual rights and freedoms. But as the Democrat Party was eventually taken over by the new socialist left, the pair joined the movement. This I believe is what Andy Levin experienced in school.

Every time there was a shooting Andy Levin called for more restrictions on all gun owners who didn't do it. Instead of looking for a reason why some men choose to kill others (I suggest progressive education) he blamed the availability of guns and tried to place more restrictions on all gun owners.

He was advocating the illegal and immoral principle of preventive law. I'm not talking here about preventive crime where police are notified of a impending crime and move to prevent it, an idea which our Constitution supports. 

Preventive law is based on the principle of the presumption of guilt, the exact opposite of the Constitution's presumption of innocence principle. Preventive law says you are presumed to be guilty of a future crime and must prove your future innocence today by obeying a forced rule of behavior today. 

So, if you don't obey this rule of behavior your crime, instead of being a rights violation will be that of a rule breaker. That's how free nations devolve into dictatorships. The crime of rights violator is replaced by rule breaker. Once a society accepts this reversal, it is done for. That is why I'm glad Andy Levin lost in the primary. There's hope.

I have no idea whether his ouster,  Haley Stevens, will be any better but I'll see..

*The above essay can be found in Rand's book collection of essays titled "Return of the Primitive" which is still in print.

There's no doubt now. The government needs to be removed from the economy.

 Today every thing is regulated by government and everything is collapsing. Do you see a connection there? I sure do. Everything the government controls is a disaster. 

Look at the pandemic. It's not doctors, nurses or other medical scientists who are deciding how to heal us but governors, mayors and other politicians. Government controls health care. Why are we doing this?

 Look at transportation. Hundreds of cargo ships waiting offshore to get unloaded but can't because there are not enough workers to unload them or truckers to deliver them to our stores.. Government controls transportation of everything. Why are we allowing this?

 Look at education. Kids are being taught to hate this country and even their parents. They are taught America is evil incarnate and needs to be replaced with some form of collectivism-- communism, socialism, fascism or some combination of these. Why? As one historian--whose name escapes me now-- once pointed out that the goal of the collectivists has always been to create new generations of young adults who will not be eager to fight/die defending a nation they know nothing good about. Government controls education. Why do we tolerate this?

Look at the economy. Inflation is destroying the dollar's purchasing power. The dollar has lost most of its store of value since being divorced from gold and silver backing. This has resulted in the prices of everything rising faster than wages. Government controls the economy.

I could go on but we all need to realize that government's role should only be that of an observer in the market place, that is, to have a presence so it may be summoned should some citizen's rights be violated or threatened.

We now need to start looking for candidates who will vow to start dismantling the regulatory state and vote them into office. In my view the most urgent regulator to privatize is the Dept of Education.

We almost had such a society in our beginning years but for slavery and women's suffrage. Those mistakes have been corrected. It's now time to correct the enormous errors of the government regulated  economy. 

Michael Neibel

New post on capitalism

 Here is a link to a good post on the importance of reversing our current slide to tyranny. This is from the website of Capitalism Magazine.com, a website I highly recommend. 

The ultimate goal of course is to bring about Laissez-faire capitalism i.e. a society not regulated by government but rather by the marketplace in which millions of individual choices determine almost everything economic. 

The government's only role is to protect individual rights by having a presence so it may be summoned if someone's rights are being violated.

Michael Neibel

Critical Race Theory

 On the site of National Review today (6/13) I read a pretty good article by Michael Farris on the utter disaster of Critical Race theory. In it Mr Farris correctly points out:

"Parents have simply had enough of the politicization of their local schools and the attempts to turn their children into young but full-throated activists for the progressive movement."

I want to add that it was not only today's parents but all our parents and grand parents who lived here before us who are and were responsible for the politicization of our school system. We followed in their missteps by by insisting that government "do something" to fix all of our non-political problems such as transportation, health care, education, insurance, in all sciences and anything in the economy.  We did not realize we were inviting/demanding the government to politicize everything i.e. we asked for it.

So how do we correct this problem of ours? We have to realize the insanity of turning our problems over to an institution that has a monopoly on the legal use of  physical force. We correct this by looking for and supporting candidates who promise--and have plans--to start tearing down the regulatory state and replacing it with rights protecting laws.

Unfortunately, way too many people today cannot tell the difference between rights protecting laws and laws that violate rights. For that I highly recommend Ayn Rand's essay "Man's Rights" and an accompanying essay "The Nature of Government" in her book "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal" still in print.

Critical Race Theory is nothing more than an attempt to teach students to tie a person's social, political and moral values to his skin color or nationality which is exactly what racism does. It's using racism to defeat racism, a logical contradiction and cannot work. The most critical regulatory agency to dissolve is the Dept of Education. We need to start now.

Michael Neibel

To teach or indoctrinate, that is today's crisis.

 The Saturday May 29th edition of my local paper the Macomb Daily contributing editorial writer Cal Thomas wrote:

"Truth has become subjective and relative in modern times and is now personal. You have your “truth” and I have my “truth.” Even when they contradict each other, it doesn’t matter as long as we both feel good about it.

This flawed notion has contributed to our cultural decline.

Try this experiment if you want to see how far we have moved from objective truth. Go to any popular definition website and type in “truth.” They assume truth exists and can be discovered.

The truth is supposed to set us free, but if we can’t recognize or define it, we will be in bondage. Secretary Mayorkas should reread Orwell’s novel and then abandon any plans to indoctrinate schoolchildren."

I agree that truth exists and can be discovered. But what is being taught in our public schools today is subjectivism as Mr Thomas points out. This in turn leads to political and social relativism. For example: "Rioting should be legal for me when I'm frustrated but not for you." Which is what many Democrat governors and mayors have been allowing.

It was Ayn Rand who pointed out that truth is that which corresponds to reality. It's called the "Correspondence Theory of Truth" which she wrote about in her essays on epistemology and which I highly recommend. References below.

The only way to correct education and return it to a focus on objective reality is to begin  the process of getting the government out of education. As she also once pointed out "Mind and force are opposites." To mix the two as in public (government run) schools will lead to mind (learning) being forced out and replaced with indoctrination. 

Why must this be do? because when we turn our children's minds over to an institution with a monopoly on the legal use of force it's only a matter of time before government indoctrinates all its students with the value of government: how government control and government money will be the solution of all their future problems.

 Unfortunately, one or more generations of Americans have been thusly indoctrinated so that now whenever there is a problem say in transportation (infrastructure), in education, in health care, in any and all sciences, we reflexively turn to government and shout "Do something!"

When we do that we are saying in essence  'Go ahead government and use your monopoly on legal force and fix this particular problem.' This is insane.

Now is the time to look for political candidates who will promise to start privatizing education. It can be to non profit or for profit entities. The parts of the National Labor Relations Act that give unions the right to force teachers into union must be repealed. Teachers need to have professional organizations to represent them to the public. Not unions.

I highly recommend Rand's essay "The Comprachicos" in her book "Capitalism:the Unknown Ideal" and "Teaching Johnny to Think" by Leonard Peikoff. Plus "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" All should be available at the Ayn Rand Institute or Amazon. But we need to start now.

Mr Thomas has identified the problem, Ayn Rand identified the answer.

Michael Neibel