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

The new world order is here.

 I'm sure all my readers can clearly see that the Democrat Party leadership has been taken over in its entirety by globalists seeking a one world dictatorship with them and international allies like the UN, the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization et al in charge.

They even have a motto they are openly pushing: "You will own nothing, and you will be happy." Please consider the real meaning of those words. They very accurately describe the attitude of a rancher toward his herd of cattle, or a shepherd toward his flock of sheep.

That is exactly how they see you and me. They are saying in essence "We (Globalists) will feed and look after you and tend to your physical needs." But the happiness they provide will not be your real happiness but rather their idea of what should be your happiness.

In fact, it won't even be happiness. It will be a forced contentment. Animals including pets can feel a perceptual joy at seeing their master or shepherd nearby, or at feeding time. But in my view, it is a perceptual joy, not the kind of conceptual happiness we humans experience when we accomplish the goals we want to achieve. There will be no achievement of your goals but rather theirs.

In short, you will be expected to give up your happiness for a forced contentment which you are expected to enjoy. Not only is this an assault on the concept of happiness but on life itself. Since to live your life you need to acquire those things that sustain your life and you need the right to possess those things. That is what the concept of property rights means. 

If you don't own the things that sustain your life then you must be renting them. From Whom? The real owners of everything, the globalist elite. That's their goal. 

The only antidote to this is the concept of individual rights and for us to start electing candidates who will promise to start tearing down the regulatory state by privatizing some and completely shutting down others. Government has gotten way too big. By refocusing our government on the protection of individual rights we can regain our right to our life, our liberty and our pursuit of our happiness.

Michael Neibel

I'm back blogging again.

  Sorry for not blogging recently. I've been busy with family and personal problems. The family problems seem to be subsiding for now as progress has been made in helping them out. On the personal side I've been somewhat in the dumps over the fact that so many people could still vote for democrats in federal and state elections. 

Are Americans really that stupid I wondered. But I know the mind numbing effect that Progressive Education has had on abut two generations of Americans in our colleges.

Prog Ed has refused to teach students to think in terms of principles which has had the effect of forcing them to rely on their feelings instead of their reasoning mind. But our feelings cannot tell us what is good for our survival and what threatens it. Only our reasoning mind can do that. No, I decided, today's citizens are not stupid but rather badly informed because of Progressive Education.

(Here I want to point out that this condemnation is largely confined to our college departments of the social sciences. They still teach some principles in the applied sciences.)

There is an excellent book still in print called "The Ominous Parallels" by Leonard Peikoff. It shows how the cultural ideas that were dominant in Germany in the 20 or so years before the rise of the NAZI party are ominously parallel to the ideas in today's Progressive America. It is truly scary. I highly recommend that book.

There will be more posts soon.

Mike Neibel

Our Birthday

Today we celebrate the 4th of July because it was then in 1776 we declared our independence from the British monarchy of King George. But it wasn't just the King that we were free from. It was freedom from tyranny, the rule by force of some men over the lives of others.

The founders had a new idea for creating a "more perfect union." It was to create a government that gets its just powers from the consent of the governed, an idea so radical it is still not understood as clearly as it should be today.

It was the concept of inalienable individual rights that made such a society possible. Even this concept of rights is also poorly understood today. Some people--and some politicians-- think a right is a right to things before before one earns them, like a right to a job or health care.

The right to life does not mean the government must provide us with the food, clothing and shelter we need. It means only that we are free to provide these things for ourselves with only one requirement: that we refrain from violating the same rights of everyone else.

In such a free market system the government does have a role. It is that of a protector of rights thus it must have a presence like that of a patrolman who is there to be summoned if a citizen's rights are violated.

It is a system where people are free to make a dollar servicing the wants and needs of other people. What a great win-win, life promoting, happiness creating system that is!

But this system is under attack because its principles are not being taught in our schools anymore. Our young people are finding it difficult to love and respect a nation they know nothing about and whose history has been reoriented to focus on most of her mistakes and not her accomplishments.

We have turned over to government our roads and bridges to maintain at their leisure, our children's education for it to decide what our kids will be taught and not taught. We let the government control our health care so the Gavin Newsomes, (California) Gretchen Whitmers (Michigan) and Andrew Cuomos (New York) et al, can decide what is good and bad for us and force it on us with the force of law.

Benjamin Franklin when asked what kind of society he and the founders were creating said: "A  Republic, if you can keep it."

Well we are in danger of losing it. Look how many so-called educated people today think we are supposed to be a democracy. So today let's thank the founders and resolve to take back our marketplace from the government and keep that freedom for future generations.

The Government Control Virus

In my last post I mentioned our government's reaction to the COVID-19 disease is a perversion of the natural roll of government which in normal times is to protect the individual rights of its citizens. But I also know that in times of emergencies government may be justified in using extreme measures to protect citizens from natural threats like telling people to evacuate homes during fires, floods etc and quarantining people during epidemics.

 I will say that during an epidemic government does not abandon it's rights protecting duty. In fact, every thing it does should should be done within the framework of how best do we exercise our rights while protecting the rights of everyone else. In this regard I highly recommend her essays "The Nature of Government" and "Man's rights" in Ayn Rand's book "Capitalism:the Unknown Ideal." In fact I recommend the entire book. 

In the former essay Rand writes: 

"A government is an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area." (italics hers pg378)

And:

 "If men are to live together in a peaceful, productive, rational society and deal with one another to mutual benefit, they must accept the basic social principle without which no moral of civilized society is possible: the principle of individual rights." (pg379)

She goes on to show the difference between initiatory force and retaliatory force and points out that government must never be allowed to use initiatory force by saying:

 "If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules.

This is the proper task of government--its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government. 

A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control--i.e., under objectively defined laws." (all italics hers.)

So, what happens when the government decides to adopt the initiatory use of force against citizens who have committed no crime, who have not started the use of force against anyone? Well, the answer is: a free market that is no longer free but is controlled by a gang of regulatory agencies.

Our founders envisioned a nation of rights protecting laws that protected citizens' rights with retaliatory force. But over time our government has persuaded us that it needs to protect us with government regulations over the entire marketplace.

Thus government has secured control over roads, bridges and all transportation, over education of our children's minds, over healthcare, over the economy over everything. Very few people have noticed that government has usurped to itself the initiatory use of force.

For now it exercises more control over some parts of the economy and less over others. But that will only get worse. When government takes control of anything it is almost impossible to get it back into the control of the marketplace.

So how does this relate to the COVID-19 pandemic and the failure of our caring, loving, concerned government to be prepared for this disaster? It relates in the sense that while there is plenty of blame to go around--China, Wuhan, CDC, FDA, Obama's not restocking our supply of PPEs which he used on the Swine flu, the Democrat Party's lust to impeach Trump while ignoring the virus, I'm afraid that much of it is on us, the American Citizen. More on that in my next post.

The virus is bugging Michigan.

Like the rest of the nation, my state of Michigan is under siege from the covid-19 virus and a loving, caring, but strict paternalistic government. Thankfully Governor Whitmer hasn't instituted martial law yet.

 I thank her for that. But she hasn't taken it off the table either. So she is practicing the standard authoritarian policy of  "Have gun, will nudge." As of midnight Monday all non essential stores are to be closed. All social gatherings forbidden etc. etc. I know she means well but here are some of my thoughts I wish the governor would consider

 #1. is the fact that this virus transmits itself though the air. Airborne viruses are almost impossible to contain. The earth is a windy place.  Even if small droplets can hover for about 6 feet,  a gentle breeze can move them farther. Air conditioning and furnaces can move air around in buildings.

#2. A proper response to an epidemic is to quarantine the sick, that is, those known to be infected or exposed to the virus. But the healthy should not be quarantined. That is counter productive. Their healthy immune systems need to be out there killing the virus or slowing its spread.

In this regard, South Korea is doing the right thing. It's not shutting down its economy, but rather is unleashing its private markets in medicine and diagnostics. These in turn are mass producing things like masks, ventilators, test kits and whatever is needed.

Here in the US there were testing labs and diagnostic centers asking the CDC for permission to develop them. The CDC response? No. In fact, some of these labs were told  to go get permission from the FDA first then come for permission from the CDC. Such permissions usually take 6 to 8 weeks. Meanwhile, people die. This is insane. Congress or the President needs to remove the permission granting powers from these two agencies. To his credit President Trump recently fast-tracked the permission granting powers of the CDC.

The American economy is the most productive economy in the world. It needs to be free to do what it does best; massively produce goods--like test kits and ventilators and other PPEs (personal protective equipment)--and services like delivery of these things. 

A network of private labs would be working to develop vaccines. Just think of how it would be if all these private labs were free to jump in back in January.

In my view, we citizens have for way too long been turning over to government all the things we value. My generation, my father's generation, his father's generation and who knows how far back, have over time given to government all the values we hold dear and which a free market would be providing such as:

Our roads and bridges over to government infrastructure, our children's minds to public education, our health care to public health care, our insurance to Romney Care or Obama Care or what ever is coming next. We have to stop it. 

Yes I'm afraid we have brought much of this on ourselves. We need to take back these things from the government and return them to the free market where it will provide for our needs and wants in abundance.

Dismantling the regulatory state, which happens to be the deep state, is in all of our interests. I think the Center for Disease Control should be completely privatized. It would make a fortune testing for private enterprise. The FDA should be completely shut down. It has been deemed the Federal Death administration. It's ridiculous waiting times for bringing new drugs to market has resulted in countless numbers of unnecessary deaths.

In the meantime I can only hope Governor Whitmer  sticks to her three week deadline and even rescinds it sooner. It just isn't needed.

The Demons in Guns.

The May 12 print edition of the Macomb Daily (a suburban county of Detroit) carried an oped attack on gun ownership by Miami Herald writer Leonard Pitts Jr. He starts out by reporting on an 18 year old student who died rushing a gunman in his school and goes on to list a few other heroes who met the same fate.

He then declares:

     ""Don't blame the guns."
     That's what gun-rights advocates always say in moments like this. And OK, fair enough. Lets not blame the gun"

From there he proceeds to blame the gun but not the gun itself just its existence in a free society. Like Ocasio-Cortez  claiming that billionaires are not immoral themselves, just their existence is.

     "But can we not blame this nation's insistence on easy and unfettered access to the gun? Might that not have the tiniest bit to do with the fact that gun violence is rampant here?
     Instead of dealing with that causality, gun people ask us to take gun violence as some immutable fact of life, some intrinsic component of freedom."

There are three  things wrong with those sentences. First, unfettered access to guns would mean me going to a gun shop, selecting a gun, paying for it and leaving. But that's not the reality we have. I had to apply for a permit, wait for a background check, take an 8 hour class in gun safety. Unfettered? Hardly.

( In a laissez faire economy it wouldn't be completely unfettered either. The above requirements would be demanded by insurance companies not the government. Any government involvement would be restricted to the framework of how best do we exercise our right to self defense while protecting the rights of others. For example, laws against brandishing in public, because such brandishing is an objective threat to the rights of others, would be a proper government concern.)

Second, "gun violence" is a cognitive package deal designed to deceive by packaging as a concept's defining characteristic two or more things that are not the same and thus don't belong together.

Gun violence can be used to assault and destroy life or it can be used to defend life. To package these two contexts--assault and defense--together in the concept of 'gun violence' and condemn both as equally evil is dishonest at worst or sloppy writing at best.

Third, someone needs to inform Mr Pitts that an individual's Constitutional right to life includes the right to defend that life and 'unalienable' means immutable and intrinsic. Notice too how he admits that he believes guns, inanimate matter, cause deaths when he uses the word 'causality.' But 'let's not blame the guns''?

Mr Pitts then tells us his view on why we citizens want to own guns in self defense:

     "People are dying for nothing. For some fantasy of rugged self-reliance.
For some shortcut to macho. For some terror of the Other standing at the bedroom window. For nothing."

So your right to defend yourself and family against attack is nothing more than an irrational fear of a boogey-man in the bedroom window? Or a shortcut to macho? This is nothing but a smear of American's right of self defense. What's wrong with self-reliance rugged or otherwise? To be against self-reliance is to be for dependence. That must be what he wants of citizens.

The image that Mr Pitts is projecting is an image of self-reliance, independence, individualism, and self-defense. This is to be denigrated as fantasy?

I would like to point out that if you don't have a right to defend your life, then in fact and in reality, you don't have a right to life. How can you have a right to something you are not allowed to defend and keep? You can't and you won't. And this is what the gun grabbers want, your right to life in their hands, not yours.

Our ancient primitive ancestors believed that spirits and demons inhabited everything, trees, rocks, air, water etc., that some had a magic power to bless us while others could destroy us. Mr Pitts, in believing guns have a power to urge their owners to run around killing fellow humans is trying to return us to the primitive. Let's not fall for that.

President Trump's first SOTU

I watched President Trump's SOTU Tuesday. Here are my initial impressions.

I thought Trump did a good job of appealing to his base and to most who voted for him in 2016.  There were lots of things to like. For example:

Cutting regulations on business.

Cutting taxes on everyone.

Restoring our military strength.

And I really liked his claim that weakness invites aggression. That is so true.

There were others but not to create a long list I'll defer for now.

I don't like his idea of tariffs as something good. They are not of course because they raise the price of goods to American consumers.

But Trump pretty much stayed loyal to his agenda of Making America Great Again (MAGA). He did make several invitations to the Democrats to join him in bipartisan efforts to MAGA but looking at the reaction of those Democrats to Trump's list of accomplishments it was obvious the Democrats wanted nothing to do with anything bipartisan.

The Dems sat through all of the ovations Trump received. One media pundit said the Dems all looked like their dog just died. Well it did die actually, on Nov 8th 2016 and they still haven't got over it.

But I'm becoming convinced that the Democrats have no intention of getting over it. They don't see anything to get over. They feel cheated and like little children who are frustrated that reality is not conforming to their world view, they want to pick up their ball and go home. No teamwork for them.

I also saw the Democrat response  by Joe Kennedy 111. I felt like I was watching an audition for a future presidential run. It was the standard Marxist talking points of class warfare, of victims and oppressors, of haves and have nots with Donald Trump as the symbol of the haves and oppressors.

But that's just it. Trump is just a symbol of their hatred, not the essence. That essence is the voters who voted for him. They are the real object of Democrat hatred.

I can't tell what the Dems will adopt as their strategy going forward. It looks right now like they will rely on the midterm elections and continue to try and get him out of office any way possible. They won't give up on their socialist utopia. More analyses to follow in next post.

There's injustice on both sides of NFL kneeling.

In my view Colin Kaepernick chose the wrong venue at which to display his political views. He was wrong to appropriate the property of the NFL owners' stadiums and the medias' cameras to display his protests. Mr Kaepernick is a famous football star. He would have been welcomed on an abundance of TV and radio talk shows and print media to express his views. No need to use the property of others without their consent.

On the other hand, some NFL owners went to local governments to get taxpayer money to help pay for their stadiums. This makes those stadiums a quasi or pseudo public entity at which, of course, free speech is protected. What's happening here is the NFL owners who use tax dollars are trying to have their private property cake and eat it too. Irrational.

But this kind of mess, where each side has a seemingly legitimate complaint, will always happen when government is allowed to meddle in the marketplace for some alleged public good. There is no way to justly adjudicate an unjust system. If however, a team's stadium is completely privately owned, the owners would have the right to terminate a player for breach of contract. But such clear thinking is not the case today. That's why all government subsidies to private entities should stop.

As to whether Kaepernick's main problem with police racism is real or imagined ( I think it is some of each), that will have to wait for another post.

I will say this though, he took it upon himself to kneel in front of an entire nation to make his views known and to do it alone. I have to give him credit for courage.

More racist Trump bashing.

Tuesday's 10/24 Macomb Daily carries an oped by Leonard Pitts, a writer for the Miami Herald. (Click on 'opinion'). It's an anti-Trump screed titled "Donald Trump, poster boy for white privilege." Here we go with the white privilege meme so popular in progressive circles today.

First Mr Pitts sets up the target he wants to attack, the lack or patriotism allleged of former president Barack Obama.

"It was that some people said he didn't have any. The claim was based on the flimsiest of evidence: his failure to wear an American flag pin on his lapel and a picture, widely circulated online, that purported to show him with hands clasped instead of over his heart, refusing to cite the Pledge of Allegiance."

Then here comes the excuse making:

"Of course, most men don't wear flag pins. And the picture was taken during the singing of the national anthem, not the Pledge of Allegiance."

Well, let me say that most men are not president of the USA and sworn to uphold it's Constitution. The leader of any nation is always supposed to advance some positive aspects of the nation he represents. A pin or badge or banner or garment or salute or some such is usually in order. Evidently, not for Obama. As for the picture? Come on! So Obama's target of disrespect was the Anthem and not the Pledge? Talk about flimsy!

Pitts then quotes several prominent people who questioned Obama's patriotism and then followed it up with:

"Donald Trump has faced no sustained questions about his patriotism, though the evidence of his lack thereof is far more substantial than an empty lapel and a photograph. Indeed, in just the last few days, we've learned that he failed for almost two weeks to contact the families of four America soldiers killed in Niger. He did, however, manage to squeeze in multiple Twitter feuds and lots of golf in that time."

The reason Trump 'faced no sustained questions about his patriotism' is because the evidence for that patriotism is overwhelming. As for not calling the families for almost two weeks, I can't see how that has anything to do with lack of patriotism. Waiting a short while for the families to do initial grieving seems very respectful and, I must add, presidential of Mr Trump.

But most disappointing for me is Mr Pitts willingness to play the race card for the political purpose of bashing Trump by claiming 'double standards imposed by race':

"The black guy fails to wear a lapel pin and endures months of questions about whether he belongs. The white guy canoodles with Russia, insults the intelligence community, undermines the judiciary and makes a Gold Star widow cry, dismissing her husband's sacrifice as, apparently, just one of those things."

That, my readers, is a completely racist paragraph. President Obama did not refuse to wear a lapel pin or endure months of questions about his patriotism because he was black. He did it because of his ideas, his obvious contempt for America and its founding principles, his stated desire to 'fundamentally transform the United States of America" and prancing around the world apologizing to tyrants, dictators and assorted butchers of human life for America's existence.

I don't have to defend Trump here but I will say some in the intelligence community needed insulting for doing nothing about Hillary's 'canoodling' with the Russians and our uranium supply. Whatever Trump did he didn't do it because he was white. He did it because of his ideas, his stated desire to make America great again.

Mr Pitts is not alone. Because they have not defined precisely what racism is and are thus unable to mount an attack on it, lots of black and white intellectuals are left to fight white racism against blacks with black racism against whites, an exercise in futility.

In closing I will say that the only way to defeat racism is to stop focusing on all our differences like skin color and nationalities through policies like multiculturalism, egalitarianism, diversity etc. and start focusing on the things we do have in common like equal individual rights, and how to adjudicate them.

Is the media unfit to be objective and fair?

The Sunday 8/27/17 Detroit Free Press oped page carried a rant by former Free Press editor Paul Anger who asked "Can we all agree now that Trump is unfit to lead?"

Well, no, I don't agree.

There are a number of things Mr Anger said with which I disagree--like his notion that Trump is un-American. Though I reject that viewpoint, I will support his right to have it and express it publicly.

I want to focus on a more serious injustice, his claim that Trump legitimized the Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va. I want Mr Anger to understand that the Nazi rally was legitimized by our Constitution which guarantees everyone the right of free speech regardless of how obnoxious or even evil their ideas may be like those of the Nazis.

This a good test of one's loyalty to a principle like that of free speech. Most people don't have a problem agreeing with each other. It's when we disagree that problems arise. But even if someone's ideas are wholly evil, a loyalty to free speech requires we defend their right to voice them. Defending someone's right to speak evil ideas is not the same as defending those ideas.

Mr Anger properly gives a list of the evils of slavery and Jim Crow laws for which the KKK and neo Nazis were demonstrating. His complaints about Trump are that he spoke "...so erratically about what happened in Virginia" and that Trump's response was 'belated and tepid' and "There were "many sides" to blame?" and there were "fine people" on both sides. This last was indeed wrong. There were no fine people on either side as far as I could see. He deserves criticism for it. But 'belated' and 'tepid' and 'erratic'? We should execute him immediately?

But Trump's claim that there were "many sides" to blame for the violence is spot on. You could see that on the media's videos where Antifa (anti fascist fascists) were wearing helmets and body armor vests. One does not wear these these things if one intends a peaceful protest. No, they intended to be violent.

Mr. Anger states: "And as someone who spent almost five decades in journalism, I am beyond fed up with Trump's attempts to demonize the media. Members of the media are not perfect. We're human. We're your neighbors, friends, family member. But the media's first responsibility is to be objective yet relentless in reporting and fair yet fearless in commentary."

Objective? Fair? Let's take a closer look at this.

 There was a rally designed by neo Nazis and some KKK members to protest the taking down of a statue of Robert E Lee, a civil war general for the Confederacy which wanted to keep slavery and Jim Crow. The Nazis applied for a permit to peacefully protest. I say peacefully because when you sign such a permit you agree to the terms and conditions therein one of which is always that your rally remain peaceful. Did Mr Anger mention that? Nope.

Nor did he mention that the so-called counter protesters consisting of Antifa and Black Lives Matter did not get a permit. Obviously neither group planned on being peaceful especially since one group wore body armor. Clearly both groups think they are above the law. Did Mr Anger mention that? No.

Most of the time when there are protests and counter protests the local police keep both sides separate precisely to avoid violence. That did not happen in Charlottesville. Why not? There was a police presence yet they did nothing to maintain the peace. Did Mr Anger report this? No again.

 It certainly looked like the powers that be-the mayor and/or governor-wanted the violence to happen. Why that? I say in order to tie it to the Trump administration. Of course this is speculation but not without some warrant.

For example, the neoNazis hold a rally every year and the only media coverage they get if any, is local. The national media routinely ignores them and properly so. Routinely ignores that is , until Trump was elected. I fully expect more media to look the other way as BLM and Antifa hold more violent rallies somewhere and to search the land for more evil and try to tie it to Trump.

Can the media actually be 'objective' and 'fair'? Sure, when it comes to things like "local PTA holds bake sale" or "Dog bites man." But when it comes to politics? Forget it. A nonobjective and unfair media has been around for a long time. Back in 1971 Edith Efron published her book "The News Twisters" on the 1968 election between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. One of the things she shows is how the 3 major networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) gave much more air time to Humphrey than Nixon.

Here is a quote from page 50 on the media's general opinion.

"The opinion-selectivity of all three networks resulted in:

   !)A portrayal of Mr Humphrey as a quasi-saint.

   2) A portrayal of Mr Nixon as corruption incarnate"

As for Trump being un-American, well I find it a stretch to believe a man who was awarded the Ellis Island Award by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations for immigration and ethnic philanthropy, with co-Award winners Mohammed Ali and Rosa Parks, could somehow support Nazis and KKK types. I don't buy it.

 I've always believed that one should look at the essence of opposing sides. To me the Democrat Party has been for a totally controlled society since FDR at least. Trump in his bumbling, stumbling way claims to be for America and more economic freedom. I'll take the latter any day.

Mr Anger says he's always been an independent voter until two years ago when he decided to become a Democrat. For a man who says he condemns the KKK, slavery and Jim Crow, it's sad to see him join the party that promoted all three.

4th Circuit Court deals blow to individual rights

     The Friday 5/26 Detroit News print edition ( I could not find a link in the online edition) carried a front page news item "Court deals new blow to travel ban" by David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau. Evidently, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 10 to 3 that "...it appears to discriminate based on religion and that the administration's argument that the order was needed to protect national security was a "pretext" offered in "bad faith."

     Please understand what this means: we should never have bombed Japan in WW2 because doing so was discriminating against their religion, Shinto. Their religion treated the emperor as a god or godlike. His every command was to be accepted on blind faith and obeyed. America's self defense then was just a "pretext" determined by our own "bad faith." Evidently, that 'bad faith' caused Pearl Harbor. Thankfully, none of these justices were around in WW2.

     This is what happens when justices drop context when considering legal decisions. They dropped several contexts big time in this one.

     First, is the question, what is the purpose of our laws? Generally speaking, their purpose is to provide justice. But that leads to the next question: according to what standard?  That standard is provided in our Declaration of Independence. It is man's unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed to all men equally. This should be the standard by which all laws are to be written.

     It's a simple formula actually: If an activity violates or threatens to violate a citizen's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Congress shall address it. If an activity does not violate or threaten to violate a citizen's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Congress shall make no law. This in turn means the Constitution and all its amendments must be held to this standard.

      So when the founders wrote the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,...." The context here has to mean that any religion that requires its followers to violate the rights of other humans cannot receive judicial sanction as a rights compatible religion and must be exempted from the first amendment. The reason is plain: a rights protecting society and a rights violating religion are incompatible.

     To hold that a rights violating religion should have the same legal status as rights compatible religions is to ignore the purpose of law: to protect individual human life in a social context. It is astonishing that these 4th Circuit Justices cannot see this. (The truth is that they are blinded by their previous acceptance of an out of context notion of the concept 'discrimination', a topic for another day)

     I understand that not all Muslims seek to kill infidels. But the fact remains that all the major religions have repudiated their more violent and brutal pasts, except one, Islam. Plus, their bible, the Koran, orders them to lie to all infidels to gain their confidence then kill them. So how can we infidels trust them? By what standard? For those Muslims already here however, it has to be the principle of assuming innocence until proven guilty.

     But in my view, those seeking to come here anew to establish Sharia law must be turned away. It is an admission of wanting to overthrow the government. The attempt to establish Sharia Law here in the US should be grounds for deportation or imprisonment for the same reason as an attempt to overthrow the government.

      The second major context dropping is accepting a principle, moral or political, out of the context of rights protection. For example, if you accept the principle 'honesty is the best policy' without ever putting it in context, it can hurt you. A thug breaks into your house and demands your wallet. Then asks 'do you have any more'? You say 'yes, $300 in the second dresser drawer under the socks.' He takes it and leaves. Your honesty just cost you an extra $300. Loyalty to the virtue of honesty here leads to the destruction of life values, not their survival.  In this context honesty was the worst policy.

     And so it is with immigration. Allowing massive amounts of unvetted, uncontrolled immigration the pretext that immigration is always a moral virtue regardless of any hostile intentions by those immigrants is risking suicide. I contend there are contexts in which immigration needs to be supervised or controlled like in war or at least vetted for diseases if coming from a stricken nation.

     This leads to the third evasion of context: treating immigration as though it were exclusively a domestic policy issue. It is also a foreign policy issue which I wrote about here.

     In that essay I imagined what I had hoped then President Obama would have said in his speech on immigration but didn't. One paragraph:

"We need to find out why our neighbors to the south are not creating the conditions in their nations that exist here in the US so their citizens don't have to come here to be free and prosperous. Again, this is something that needs to be discussed not only by our congressional houses but by the State Department as well. Foreign Policy is this Department's domain. It needs to be developing policies with perhaps incentives or even disincentives to be applied to and/or negotiated with our southern neighbors. This isn't happening right now. It will going forward."

Although that paragraph was about immigration from our southern neighbors it applies to all immigrants. Yes immigrants have a right to their pursuit of happiness which includes the right to try and come here. Yes we are a nation of immigrants and need to stay that way. I'm all in favor of open borders but not from nations that have sworn "Death to America." Even though we did not declare war on them, the Muslims in Iran declared war on the U.S. long ago.

It was President Obama who first identified the 7 nations as terrorist hot spots that Trump wants vetted. But do you think if Obama had followed up with a ban from those nations the Democrat Party and news media would have gone hysterical like they are now? There would be not only silence but eager approval.

These 10 justices are engaging in blatant obstructionism and should be rebuked by the Supreme court. From the New's article:

"All 10 judges in the majority were Democratic appointees. The three Republican appointees dissented."

That's all the evidence we need to know that these justices (and the Democrat Party and the news media) have no interest in law, justice or individual rights.

Double Standards for me but not thee

It could be a candidate for the eighth wonder of the world. I'm referring to the bulldogged resistance of the Democratic Party and its acolytes in the media. After losing the white house to Republicans, they have a born again concern for things like the Constitution, principles, rule of law and separation of powers among others. Although Democrats paid lip service to these values when in power, they were largely ignored by the party leaders and their media champions.

Case in point: the Sunday 5/14 Detroit Free Press' Brian Dickerson posted an oped on how Trump's judicial appointees could protect us from an imperious president if we examine them closely. The need to examine them critically is true enough. But his first paragraph says:

"The men who wrote the U.S. Constitution never met Donald Trump. But he was precisely the sort of president they had in mind when they invested the other two branches of government with the authority to corral a commander-in-chief with pretensions of autocratic power."

One has to ask where was Mr Dickerson's concern for the separation of powers while Obama routinely sidestepped congress to get what he wanted? For example, when the president signs into law legislation passed by congress, only congress can alter it. But Obama altered or postponed several parts of the ACA until after the then next election. That is supposed to be unconstitutional. Evidently loyalty to the separation of powers is only expected of Republicans not Democrats. He continues:

"The good news for champions of a robust judiciary is that Trump is not terribly interested in the judicial process, and that he has largely delegated the business of identifying and vetting candidates for judicial office to people who are."

I agree. That is exactly what Trump with no judicial experience, should do, rely on those who do have such experience. Dickerson then adds:

"The bad news is that some of those people are less interested in promoting the rule of law than with greasing the judicial skids for the same special interests that already wield outsize influence in the other two branches of government."

Who are 'those people'? Who are the special interests that wield 'outsize influence'? No answer. They are simply evil bad guys lurking about, which we are to take on faith.

 But 'greasing the judicial skids' has been on the Democratic Party's dream list going all the way back to FDR and his attempts to pack the SCOTUS with progressives. Evidently, greasing the skids is OK for Democrats but not Republicans. Later Mr Dickerson claims:

"Trump took office with the opportunity to fill an unusually large number of seats on the federal bench. Now, after hustling to fill the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia's death (and prolonged by the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's unprincipled refusal to schedule confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama's nominee to replace Scalia) the White House is turning its attention to 129 lower court openings."

I think those 129 seats are what the Democrats and media really fear. But why was Senate Leader Mitch McConnell's refusal to schedule a  hearing on Obama's nominee 'unprincipled'? From the NYTimes:

"WASHINGTON — As a senator more than two decades ago, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. argued that President George Bush should delay filling a Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise, until the presidential election was over, and that it was “essential” that the Senate refuse to confirm a nominee to the court until then."

The above statement is in the form of a principle. Just not one Mr Dickerson or the MSM feels loyalty to this year. Perhaps loyalty to that principle will be born again in the next Democrat administration. Mr Dickerson concludes with:

"Last week's transparent attempt to take the wind out of the FBI's investigation into the administration's ties to Russia is only the latest signal that Trump's grandiose conception of presidential prerogative is on a collision course with the constitutional reality."

No it isn't. It's on a collision course with the wishes, whims and feelings of the Democrat Party and their baggage handlers in the media. Nor is any wind taken out of the Russia investigations. Mr Comey did very little if any investigating himself. He had a vast number of investigators working on many cases. His job is that of an administrator coordinating teams and helping where needed and turning over results to the Attorney General.

I wonder where the concern about presidential prerogative was when Bill Clinton, under investigation by the FBI for the Whitewater scandal, decided to fire the FBI director? Was that director getting close to discovering something pernicious? Obviously, firing FBI directors is only permissible when Democrats do it but a no-no when Republicans do so.

I think what we are seeing today is a clash between a false reality adopted by an intellectual class of concrete bound mentalities no longer able or willing to think in terms of principles, and a public that can still do so but lacks the integration needed to form a coherent philosophy which is needed for a consistent movement. So a frustrated public is striking back at the establishments the only way it can, by supporting an administration that wants to punch the establishment in the nose.

This can be futile because the intellectuals are well organized and united by their common anti-conceptual method of thinking. Novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand pointed this out nicely:

"This kind of psycho-epistemology works so long as no part of it is challenged. But all hell breaks loose when it is--because what is threatened then is not a particular idea, but that mind's whole structure. The hell ranges from fear to resentment to stubborn evasion to hostility to panic to malice to hatred." (from the essay "The Missing Link" in her book "Philosophy: who needs it"pg40          

This hatred is what we are seeing today. While Mr Dickerson's oped is one of the more milder ones, it is representative of how media pundits often employ a double standard against Trump as opposed to any Democrat.

 If America can get principled intellectual leadership, principled political leaders will follow. But it can't be done backwards, by focusing on politics first. Perhaps Trump can buy enough time for such a principled leader to emerge. Hopefully.

They only care about maintaining control

      The tooth and nail tenacity with which the Democrat, Republican and media establishments are resisting President Donald Trump's attempts to drain these swamps reminds me of a commercial I saw a few years ago on local TV. It showed an elderly gentleman standing in an auto repair shop in front of a larger man in mechanic's coveralls. The elderly man looks at the camera and proudly announces: "I always take my car to Joe's. He's fixed my transmission 26 times."

     I think we can all agree that TV commercials are prone to wild exaggerations and this is certainly one of the wilder ones.

     I now ask you to imagine with me that this commercial was not an exaggeration after all, but rather true: this gentleman-we'll call him Phil-actually did take his car to Joe's to have his transmission fixed 26 times. Fact.

     Now, given this fact, would you say that Phil's highest goal was to get his car fixed right? Or that his highest goal was to keep Joe in charge of fixing his car? It's rather obvious that after 26 times, Phil's main goal is to keep Joe in charge of fixing his car, and that the goal of getting it fixed right is further down on his priority list, and probably not even on it. I'm sure we can all be telling ourselves yes, that makes sense but I for one would never be guilty of that. Right?

     Well, I'm here to say wrong. We are guilty of it. All of us.

     First, year after year we see our roads and bridges crumbling. Pot holes that require more money to patch this year than two years ago. Endless lines of orange barrels turning our roads into obstacle courses. Yet our political and intellectual leaders in academia and the media keep advising us of the practicality of  putting our transportation needs in the hands of Joe's public transportation.

     Second, not year after year but decade after decade we see our kids coming out of school, especially in the inner cities, unable to read, can't write coherently about what they read, can't give change for a dollar without a calculator and can't get into college without taking two, three or more remedial classes.

     Even outside of the big cities, many graduates cannot think in principles. They can't identify the premise on which a particular idea is based. Our primary and secondary schools are failures. Yet our professional leaders insist it is practical and moral to continue placing our children's minds under the auspices of Joe's public education.

     Third, now we are told that it is practical and moral to put our lives and that of our loved ones under the control of Joe's public health care. In fact we are constantly told to let the government provide almost everything our lives require. So the question is, why are we allowing ourselves to be put into these boxes? Why can't we start thinking outside the box of Joe's government control?

     This is my main point. It is we who have to teach ourselves how to think outside the box of Joe's government control. It is you and I that have to research things like private roads in America, toll roads in America and how else can they be funded. We must look at private for profit and non-profit educational systems, private health care and so on. How can we identify a candidate's ability to think outside the box if we don't know what that looks like ourselves? Happily, some of this research has already been done.

     For example:

     There are lots of private roads in America and they are maintained nicely. We need to study these and call for the government to begin a process of auctioning off some of its roads.*

     The same with education. The public school problems have been around for a long time. A March 25 2002 Detroit News article headline reads "Voters to politicians: improve the schools"

Another Detroit News article on Dec 11th 2003 headline "District parents: Dump new math"

A Detroit Free Press article of Oct 16th 2004 says "Detroit students fall farther behind state." Those articles are 13 to 15 yrs old. So what have the media been saying recently?

     A Mar 17 2016 Detroit News article by Ingrid Jacques headlined "Mich. residents believe public schools failing." She cites a poll showing "...less than 30% of residents believe Michigan's school-age children get or have access to, the best education possible."**

     Another editorial this time in the Detroit Free Press by staff writer Nancy Kaffer is titled "To fix Michigan schools, we must fund them."***  It's an endless plea for more money which has never helped in the past. So we see nothing has changed in at least 15 years.

     The same with health care. First Lady Hillary Clinton tried to get Hillary Care passed during President  Bill's first term. It didn't fly then but with constant pressure from academia and the media to put our health in the hands of Joe's government, they tried again with President Obama and succeeded, for now anyway.

     So it is up to us to make it happen, to educate ourselves and seek out candidates of like mind. The politicians aren't going to do it themselves. They are the Joes who are determined to stay in power and maintain control over us. Do you really think our present Senators and Congressmen are going to start thinking outside the box of government control anytime soon? They have spent their entire careers creating these boxes and nudging us into them. It's time we climbed out.

     I would like at this point, to indicate what I think are two first steps to climbing out of these boxes: shutting down Joe's federal Dept of Education and electing freedom candidates to local school boards.

     The Dept of  Education doesn't teach a single thing to a single student. Instead it controls the purse strings of indoctrination. It actually threatens our kids by declaring for example that the states had better teach subject X or it will have to withhold federal dollars. It is child abuse.

     By turning education over to the states it will begin the process of decentralization which should continue within the states down to the local level where it belongs. The states will do things differently from each other. Best practices will tend have best results and those results will be out there for all to see, debate and copy.

     In closing I want to emphasize this point: when Joe controls education he will be sure to teach all his students the value of....Joe, that Joe cares about them and that Joe's control--and Joe's money--will be the solution to all of their future problems. Sadly, there have been several generations of American adults who have gone through Progressive Education and have been thusly indoctrinated. That's why it's absolutely critical that if we want to get education fixed right, we must first break the stranglehold that Joe has on the minds of our young, and do it soon. We need to stop being Phils and make sure our kids don't become new Phils.




   *http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimpowell/2012/07/29/no-president-obama-it-was-private-business-that-made-our-

**http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/ingrid-jacques/2016/03/16/michigan-public-schools-fail/

***http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2016/12/29/school-reform-michigan-funding/9570479

Here comes the moral agonizing over Trump's budget cuts.

     Well it didn't take long for the leftist media to roll out its predictable orgy of bleeding heart anguish over President Trump's recent budget cut proposals. Sunday's Mar 26th leftist Detroit Free Press carried three opeds decrying those cuts.

     They appear to be written by staff writer Nancy Kaffer which the paper titled "Promises to Keep" regarding said budget cuts.

     First, it shows a picture of a young lady whose life was saved by a doctor when she was an infant. The doctor invented an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine which saved her life. He was able to create the machine because of a grant from the National Institute of Health, the very program president Trump's budget seeks to cut.

     Second, is one subtitled 'feeding the hungry' which shows food being loaded into cars to be delivered to needy elderly as part of the Meals on Wheels program which is now jeopardized by Trump's cuts.

     The third, subtitled 'staying warm' is about a lady whose electricity was shut off and had to rely on The Heat and Warmth Fund (THAW) for help with heat. It's another federally and state funded program which Trump's budget would 'wipe out' according to the article.

     The theme is quite obvious: government spending is doing lots of good for a small price so Trump's budget cuts should be rejected and the taxes on the people to pay for them should be continued. There are several unAmerican premises underlying this theme.

     First is the notion that it's moral to forcibly take money via taxation from people who earned it and could then use it to donate to charities of their choice, and give it to government so that it can decide which charity will get the money. This in turn is usurping the morality of kindness from the people and embedding it firmly in the government. Such charity taxing would be fine if taxation were voluntary but it isn't. This federal program of robbing Peter to give to Paul is designed to destroy in the minds of the public the fact that the moral is the chosen, not the forced.

     A second premise is that the needs of some people are a claim to the money of others. Again, no it isn't. The worship of need is replacing respect for and protection of, rights. Those who aren't in need are targeted to have their money taken to benefit those who do need. Sadly, it can be said that many of the needy are needy precisely because in their productive years their money was taken to benefit the poor of the time thus depriving them of the ability to save for a more secure future for themselves.

     A third premise is the idea that if government didn't provide grants for science, feed elderly, and provide heat, people would be dying for lack of medical technology,  starving in the streets, and freezing in their homes. This of course is utter nonsense.

     Perhaps that particular lady's life would not have been saved by that particular machine at that time in a free market. But in all probability it would have been invented sooner. More millions of people allowed to keep their tax dollars would mean many more people deciding which charity to help would have increased the odds of its creation.

     As for Meals on Wheels, it is mostly privately funded. About $3 million federal dollars are given to Meals on Wheels America which is an advocacy group that does not feed a single person. That is what Trump wants to cut. There is no reason MOWA can't do its own fundraising.

     As for the lady with no heat, there are private charities that will help with that. The American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and United Way just to name a few off the top of my head, provide help with paying heating bills. Besides, THAW is partly funded by state money which is not affected by federal cuts so it isn't all going to be 'wiped out.' And if the state money is tied to the federal money a simple bill to untie it would be easy.

     There is the further implication that past private charity was woefully lacking so government had to step in with its forced charity. From his excellent book "Rooseveltcare: how social security is sabotaging the land of self reliance" author Don Watkins writes"

"In 1910, in New York Sate, for instance, 151 private benevolent groups provided care for children, and 216 provided care for adults and children. If you were homeless in Chicago in 1933, you could have found shelter at one of the city's 614 YMCAs, or one of 89 Salvation Army barracks, or one of the seventy-five Goodwill Industries dormitories, among others."

     No there was no shortage of private benevolence before government decided to usurp it on a large scale.

     But President Trump is not going to return government charity to the private sector. He just wants to drain the corruption in it. He isn't going to make an unjust system just. But he can lay the ground work for a successor to the finish the job if he stays the course now.

     The media and the Democrats will fight tooth and nail and won't let up until he gives in. So, we can expect to see a lot more of this emotional agony as the media will try to blame every social, political and economic ill on Trump's budget cuts. President Trump and his various spokespersons need to arm themselves with the moral and practical arguments against these and other government enforced sacrifices.

The same ole New Year on the Left

It's New Years day and the leftist Detroit Free Press is at it again. The Freep's chief political cartoonist Mike Thompson presents his Auld Lang Syne year in review with a collection of past cartoons. One of them shows a family of four in a sedan with dad driving, mom next to him and what seems to be a daughter and son in the back seat and a small dog sticking his head out the window all of whom are smiling except the dog. This I presume is supposed to represent the traditional American family.

But in front of that car we see eight adults and two children standing in line just below a sign saying "Flint Bottled Water Distribution" with an arrow pointing the way. None of these people are smiling. In the upper right hand corner are the words written in cursive: "There's no way like the American way."

These two images together are conveying the notion that the American way is to go from having Happiness-the smiling faces, and having independence-driving the family car, to unhappiness-no smiling faces-and dependence, standing in line for emergency charity. So the American way is to go from happiness to unhappiness.

There is a lot of truth to this cartoon though I don't think its the truth Mr Thompson wants his readers to glean. The truth is that the traditional American family existed in an era of more political freedom, that is to say less government control and more self reliance.

But since the sixties that 'American way' has been reversed. Today we are constantly advised by the chattering class that it is wise, nay even morally ideal, to place all our economic needs--not just political ones--in the hands of government controllers. And I say it is the government control of the water supply that is responsible for the disaster in Flint.

On that note I just want to point to all that clean water being trucked into Flint. Why is it clean? Because it is produced by big, huge, giant corporations in business to make profits. They have the economies of scale that allow them to bring massive amounts of water, that small mom and pop businesses could not match, to those who need it.  They can't afford to poison their customers even accidentally. They would lose too much money. Government doesn't face that prospect.

So, the lesson to be drawn from Mr Thompson's cartoon is that the modern American way of trusting government to provide for our economic needs is unwise, nay even morally wrong. Thus the resolution we should all make for 2017 is to work hard to remove government from our economic needs and urge Mike Thompson and the Detroit Free Press to join us in that endeavor.

Can good intentions lead to places other than hell?

I posted this over at the New Clarion earlier this year. It was about the claim that Trump should be president because he means well.

"Then an image popped into my mind: Inspector Clouseau.

"Yes, the fictional character inspector Jacques Clouseau, the French police detective from the Pink Panther movies. The inspector was portrayed as very loyal to France, meant no harm to others, fully devoted to nabbing bad guys, but very inept and clumsy in doing so. Through a series of comedic missteps, some of which were slapstick like tripping over something and falling down, he would nevertheless, accidently, bumblingly, stumble upon the identity of the correct villain. What a guy!

Then I shuddered. Is the United States about to be led by a modern day Clouseau, someone who means well but has no clear clue (pun intended) on how to do it? Will we survive his stumbles and missteps?

You know, I really need to take a break from politics. Strange things are happening to my mind.

(PS, I think Peter Sellers excelled in that role.)"

After rereading the above, another thought occurred to me. What if inspector Clouseau decided to run for president of France? What would his inept, bumbling nature make his campaign speeches sound like? I decided--Donald Trump.

Sigh. Although lighthearted, this is not a joyous picture I paint. I find myself longing for some comforting signs, signs other than just 'he means well.' There's about 98 days to the election so I'll just keep on looking for those signs. Again, sigh.

Gun control is about destroying the right to life.

The Friday 06/24/16 Detroit News carried an oped by economist Thomas Sowell titled "The gun control farce" in which he cites evidence that gun restrictions cause more crime not less. Here is one example:

"Conversely, in the United States the number of handguns in American homes more than doubled between 1973 and 1992, while the murder rate went down."

 He rightly points out the gun controllers routinely ignore this and other contrary evidence.

 In a short letter to the editor I pointed out that though Mr Sowell was correct, he did not go far enough. He should have challenged their alleged motives because to ignore evidence on such a massive scale gives the lie to their claim to be for public safety.

The real issue in most of these gun control debates is not the number of murders. The issue is do you have a right to life or not? It stands to reason if you don't have a right to defend your life you don't have a right to life. How can you have a right to something if you don't have the right to keep and defend it? You can't and won't. And that is the goal to be achieved, your right to life in their (government's) hands, not yours. It is the dream and goal of every bloody dictatorship that ever was.

So the point I want to make is not just that the left is ignoring the evidence but that they are ignoring the evidence because reducing murders is not their goal. It's just an excuse. Disarming Americans is the goal. The left doesn't care about how many people die by guns or any other means. They are using the technique of  NAZI propagandist Joseph Goebbels who said:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." (From the thinkexist web page)

That is why the truth of the evidence Mr Sowell, presents must be ignored, evaded and just plain blanked out. Now, it may be hard for some citizens to attach such sinister motives to the gun controllers based just on this oped. But Sowell provides some supporting evidence for this anti self defense mind set of the left.

   "In both England and the United States, those people most zealous for tighter gun control laws tend also to be most lenient toward criminals and most restrictive on police. The net result is that law-abiding citizens become more vulnerable when they are disarmed and criminals disobey gun control laws, as they disobey other laws."

This is true. We have seen this leniency towards criminals and bias against police for a long while now. But why? What motivates people to evade real facts on a large scale, to be against law enforcement of individual rights and favor criminals who violate them? Could it be that law enforcement's job of protecting peoples'  rights is based on the right to life?

Well, if you believe man does not or should not have an inalienable right to life, that his nature is malleable and he can be forcibly molded into any desired moral shape by the force of a benevolent, caring government, you will be motivated to adopt the above mentioned anti rights mind set.

It really doesn't matter the cause of their evasions, their goal is the destruction of the right to life. The desire for the destruction of the political right to life is the desire to destroy the moral right to life which can have no other result than the destruction of life itself.

Government control, the uber value, Pt 4

In most of human history man has been ruled by kings, emperors and assorted thugs and rulers. Most of these had witch doctors at their side. The task of the witch doctors was to justify the antics of the ruler to the masses. Basically, the witch doctors' main role was to champion the ruler's rule as being in the serfs' interest. Nothing has changed in many millenia.

 The 6/12/16 Detroit Free Press's witch doctors (editorial page) are still trying to convince the emperors in charge (government) to annex (loot) the suburbs in order to make Detroit prosperous again. This time it is staff writer John Gallagher's editorial "Detroit is smaller than El Paso. Wait, What?"

Mr Gallagher correctly points out that metropolitan Detroit's population in 1950 stood at 3 million while today it is at just over 4 million. "All of that growth occurred in the suburbs, while Detroit bled itself to feed the sprawl" he said.

Now what does he mean by 'bled itself'? Did Detroit build the suburban roads, bridges, hospitals, schools? No it didn't. So he must mean that Detroit bled itself of people. But how did that happen? Aside from the 1967 riots, the urban renewal fiasco (dubbed urban removal), the insane war on drugs, a hostile attitude towards business as such, several decades of neglect by police and fire caused by corrupt city governments, it's really not surprising growth preferred the suburbs. In a rights respecting nation though, people are free to move into or out of cities. So how did western cities not bleed themselves of people?

"Using annexation, Sun Belt cities captured most of their post-war growth. Cities like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and yes El Paso, gobbled up their expanding suburban regions and made them part of their city proper, capturing the growing population and tax base."

It may be true that western cities were able to annex suburban land and Detroit could not. But in my view, so what? If a city can no longer afford to provide services whether directly or by annexation, then the morally proper thing to do is to stop offering them. Why force the population to put up with substandard services? When a school loses enough students it is closed down. When a business no longer has a product or service the public wants, it goes out of business.

You can't force nonexistent students into schools. A business cannot force customers into its doors. Only government with its legal monopoly on force can foist a failing infrastructure on citizens and force those citizens to pay for it. And only such a government can legally limit competition.

There is no reason cities like Detroit can't do what families and corporations do when facts call for it, downsize. Detroit should actually get smaller. Sell off outer parts of the City to surrounding suburbs. Sell or auction off city services to private or nonprofit entities.

But nowhere in Mr Gallagher's oped is there a call for privatizing or downsizing of any kind. This tooth and nail resistance to taking the responsibility for providing so-called infrastructure is proof again that providing infrastructure is not the goal, government control of it, is.

But let's look at other places that put quality services ahead of government control. Sandy Springs, Georgia is a city next to Atlanta that was facing  bankruptcy a few years ago. It privatized all services except police, fire and some public schools. According to this Huffington Post article and 8 min video they have no long term debt. Since then 5 other nearby cities have adopted the Sandy Springs model. (I strongly urge Detroit and Flint city leaders to read this article and watch the video.)

In the summer of 2007 City Journal had a good article on "The New Privatization" about how more and more cities are making big bucks privatizing services.

I know Detroit and Flint are strong union cities and unions want nothing to do with any privatization. That will have to change eventually.

What has to be challenged today is the religious like devotion to the idea that government must be the one to provide infrastructure services instead of the market.