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Milton J. Madison - An American Refugee Now Living in China, Where Liberty is Ascending

Federalism, Free Markets and the Liberty To Let One's Mind Wander. I Am Very Worried About the Fate of Liberty in the USA, Where Government is Taking people's Lives ____________________________________________________________________________________________ "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue." -Barry Goldwater-

Monday, February 28, 2011

Pajamas Media » A First-Hand Report from a ‘Jasmine Rally’ in Shanghai

Very interesting perspective on liberty issues in China. With the recent collapse of dictatorial regimes in North Africa and the Middle East, some in China are pushing for greater freedom and accountability by government. A good read.

Pajamas Media » A First-Hand Report from a ‘Jasmine Rally’ in Shanghai

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Quote of the day......

Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.

-Dietrich Bonhoffer, theologian and writer, studied in Berlin and at Union Theological Seminary in New York, played a central role in resisting Nazis during WWII, he has posthumously become one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Was executed by the Nazis just before the end of the war on April 9, 1945-


Dietrich Bonhoffer considered what it means to follow Christ in a modern world that was under siege by a dangerous and criminal government, in his case the Nazis. His philosophy addresses the life of discipleship and the path to follow in all ages of the post-resurrection church. He even has said, somewhat scandalously, in my opinion, that "Every call of Jesus is a call to death." One must think of this as the total submission to Christ, the death of the old self, and not the literal necessity of immediate death as martyr.

Even though his strong convictions took a path that caused his martyrdom, I think that his references to death are not a call to violence or the violence of intentional martyrdom as Muslim fanatics consider, and not the risk of retaliatory death that this may entail but the risk of death by not being a doormat to evil. His convictions to stand up to those and governments, in this case the leviathan government of the Nazis, that go against Christ, natural law and rights, is one that does not allow a Christian to stand idly by since by standing idly by one is tacitly participating in the crime.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Lloyd M. Krieger: ObamaCare Is Already Damaging Health Care - WSJ.com

Government meddling in healthcare through recent legislation is having a profound impact on the delivery of services. Perverting incentives through government mandate will always causue rational people to act in their own interest given the new environment. Unfortunately, it is difficult to predict how people will behave before whimsical government meddling and these changes sometimes have adverse consequences.

Lloyd M. Krieger: ObamaCare Is Already Damaging Health Care - WSJ.com

Monday, February 21, 2011

Consiver these thoughts from Madison on State vs. Federal power....

Madison wrote in Federalist 45....
Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
When Madison wrote this and Americans were forming their government of limited powers, the framers considered a substantive important role for the Federal government and this was to deal with principally these things; National defense, national diplomacy, system of national law and ensuring that the States do not restrict commerce between states. The balance of powers are in the portfolio of States rights and responsibilities including the 'improvement and prosperity' and this allows for states to theorectically provide such benfits if they choose to do so as healthcare, pensions and the like. The benefit of this model is that the nation will have a broad range of taxes and benefits, some of which will be a sucess and some of which will be complete failures. It will create a market if ideas and people will have the ability to leave a State that does not perform well.

I have subsequently added a system of money to these 4 powers since the ability to transact using a common currency is one that is fundamentally economically efficient and enables free interstate commerce.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Public extravengence will bury any nation, according to Thomas Jefferson....

"To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.

If we run into such debts as that, we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are.

Our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.

Our land-holders, too, like theirs, retaining, indeed, the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation.

This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public, as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments.

A departure from principle in one instance, becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.

Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers, observing to be so general in the world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man.

And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."

–Thomas Jefferson-
From Daily Pundit.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The Hong Kong Observatory on the cold weather here....

The coldest January in over 30 years and some of the lowest temperatures experienced in a century....
Due to the frequent replenishments of the winter monsoon, the monthly mean temperature of 13.7 degrees for the first month of 2011 was 2.4 degrees below normal, making it the coldest January since 1977. There were 14 cold days (daily minimum temperature at 12 degrees or below) in the month, doubling the normal figure of 7 days. The temperature did not rise to 20 degrees or above for the month which only occurred once in 1918 for January on record. The month was also drier than usual with only 5.4 millimetres of rainfall, about 22 percent of the normal figure.
From here. Of course, all of the global warming enthusiasts now call it climate change. Some how all of these greenhouse gases are causing the cold weather and I have been told to not get confused between climate and weather.

Of course, my kids are having this global warming nonsense drilled into their heads and with the false debate followup where students have to please their teachers with their acquiesce to this psuedo-religion. The secular Liberal philosophy where humanity is bad and evil and that government is the savior as a replacement for God is recipe for the coarsening of humanity since governments WILL be complete and total failures at both economic intervention and the replacement of God and family in life.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Limits on Federal Power?

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

James Madison, The Federalist No. 51
I do not think that the modern interpretation of Federal powers includes the concept of limits or an obligation to control the reach of the central leviathan.

Furthermore, the Commerce Clause, 16 words where most of the modern Federal intervention authority is resting upon, is probably not understood in the context of what was intended by the framers. Who in their right mind would ever think that the intent of the Commerce Clause was to provide unlimited Federal powers to essentially intervene in any private transaction for a broadly defined general welfare purpose of the citizens? The Constitution and Bill of Rights was designed to protect citizens from Federal intervention not to be the security for meddling. And this is what it has become, a document that every leftist uses to justify many too many actions.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Potential solution for the Social Security catastophe on the horizon.....

My mother has always said that we will somehow find a way to solve the massive shortfalls in Social Security that promise to bankrupt the nation.....
Known as "99942 Apophis," the 900-foot-long asteroid has had the attention of scientists for some time. According to an article from SPACE.com, back in 2004, NASA scientists announced that Apophis could hit the planet in 2029. But, after further number crunching, that prediction was later retracted.

The asteroid hurtled back into the news when Russia recently predicted 99942 Apophis may hit Earth on April 13, 2036.
Actually this is a final solution. So, no need to worry about shortfalls since the earth and almost all of human life will be destroyed in this catastrophe.

Since we have recently heard that....
The Congressional Budget Office had some bleak news about the Social Security Trust fund. Social Security, which started paying out more money than it took in last year, will be out of money by 2037.
Absolutely perfect timing. The earth is destroyed just before the money runs out. Whew, I was getting worried about what we were going to do.

Story here and here.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

Lawyer to Wall Street Says Don't Blame Pay - WSJ.com

"It was understandable why there was anger," says Mr. Eckhaus, but "the crisis was not caused by Wall Street fat cats. It was caused by a confluence of economic, political and historical factors."
I do not think that history had anything to do with the problem. I think it was purely the fault of bad public policy that created an environment that misallocated resources and allowed and incentivized this to happen for decades.

Lawyer to Wall Street Says Don't Blame Pay - WSJ.com