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Barack Obama Versus Barack Obama

In 2009, the so-called Individual Mandate was, according to Barack Obama (and I quote), “absolutely NOT a tax increase”.

Listen:



Magically, however, in 2012, two short days ago, in fact, that exact same Individual Mandate was, according that exact same Barack Obama, after all a tax:

Barack Obama: “By the way, if you’ve got health insurance, you’re not getting hit by a tax,” the president said during his Friday rally in Roanoke, his third Virginia campaign event of the day. “The only thing that’s happening to you is that you now have more security because insurance companies can’t drop you when you get sick.”


Give them enough rope, they hang themselves every time.



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What Is Independence?

Independence is autonomy. It’s the freedom to govern yourself and to rely upon your own independent judgment.

Independence is freedom.

But what, finally, is freedom?

In its fundamental form, freedom really has only one meaning: it’s the omission of force.

Freedom is the absence of compulsion.

It simply means that you are left alone.

The thing that distinguishes the free person from the unfree person is voluntary action versus action that is compelled.

Freedom is one of those things that virtually everyone believes in — that is, until everyone finds out what freedom actually means. And then almost no one believes in it.

The difficult thing for many people to accept about freedom is that it doesn’t actually guarantee you much of anything. It doesn’t guarantee success or happiness, or shelter, or a certain income, or food, or healthcare, or a level playing field, or a level training field, or anything else that must ultimately derive from the production or labor of others. Freedom simply means that you are free to pursue these things and that if you achieve them, they are yours unalienably — which means: they cannot be taken, transferred, revoked, or made alien.

As Thomas Jefferson put it: “The legitimate functions of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others” (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785). Here, he’s speaking of — and against — the initiation of force.

Right around the same time Thomas Jefferson was writing those words, another erudite fellow, a German named Wilhelm von Humboldt, independently came to much the same conclusion:

“Any state interference into private affairs, where there is no reference to violence done to individual rights, should be absolutely condemned” (The Limits of State Action, 1791).

That — the absence of violence, the omission of force — is finally what Independence Day is all about.


Ama-gi: Sumerian symbol which many believe to be the first written expression of liberty.




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Ray Bradbury, RIP



“It was a pleasure to burn,” wrote Ray Bradbury in the beginning of Fahrenheit 451, and continued:

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

Ray Bradbury, mi tocayo, who as you know died this past week at the age of 91, was, as you may not know, a committed anti-authoritarian, an enemy of the state, a man who loathed tyranny, taxation, tariffs, and all other forms of control, a man who didn’t believe any individual may legitimately be forced to live in any way for another human being and who for this reason antipathized all forms of governmental coercion, whether it was book-burning, book-banning, or bans on big beverages, who therefore devoted so much of his life to fighting that tyranny of the majority AND the minority, which, as he said, “both want to control you” (“Whether you’re a majority or minority, bug off! To hell with anybody who wants to tell me what to write. Their society breaks down into subsections of minorities who then, in effect, burn books by banning them”) also memorably wrote, again in Fahrenheit 451, a line of dialogue that compendiates, I think, in several ways, on several levels, his live-and-let-live ideology:

“Why is it,” he said, one time, at the subway entrance, “I feel I’ve known you so many years?”

“Because I like you,” she said, “and I don’t want anything from you.”


Ray Bradbury, RIP.





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New York Times Says: When It Comes To Limiting Sugar In Our Food, Coercive Action Is Okay

Sometimes you have to see it to believe it.

The following Op-Ed, which appeared in yesterday’s New York Times, was written by one Daniel E. Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard — a fact I mention only because you, like me, might be tempted to think that someone with those sort of Ivy League credentials wouldn’t be capable of something so misbegotten. But you and I would both be wrong.

It just goes to show: the human capacity for rationalization is limitless. In this case, what’s being rationalized is the leftist justification of government force.

Here’s an excerpt:

OF all the indignant responses to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to ban the sale of giant servings of soft drinks in New York City, libertarian objections seem the most worthy of serious attention. People have certain rights, this argument goes, including the right to drink lots of soda, to eat junk food, to gain weight and to avoid exercise. If Mr. Bloomberg can ban the sale of sugar-laden soda of more than 16 ounces, will he next ban triple scoops of ice cream and large portions of French fries and limit sales of Big Macs to one per order? Why not ban obesity itself?

The obesity epidemic has many dimensions, but at heart it’s a biological problem. An evolutionary perspective helps explain why two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese, and what to do about it. Lessons from evolutionary biology support the mayor’s plan: when it comes to limiting sugar in our food, some kinds of coercive action are not only necessary but also consistent with how we used to live.

Read the full article here.



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Obama Versus Obama: A Losing Battle

In his attempt to fully socialize American medicine, Barack Obama’s blatant and outright contradiction of himself — regarding, in particular, the Individual Mandate — damages him irreparably, in my opinion, and it’s long surprised me that this fact hasn’t been hammered home more completely.

American Crossroads, however, has just released a video that captures pretty well the essence of what I’m talking about:




As you know, oral argument for and against the Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate began today, and the stakes could not be higher.



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Obama On Solyndra: “Not Our Program Per Se”

Amazing what a difference a couple of years can make, isn’t it?

Here, for example, is Barack Obama now talking about Solyndra — the bankrupt solar-panel company that we the taxpayers funded to the tune of billions:

“Understand: [Solyndra] was not our program per se.”

I know what you’re thinking: who the hell uses per se?

But here’s the real point. Barack Obama addressing Solyndra in May of 2010:

So that’s why we’ve placed a big emphasis on clean energy. It’s the right thing to do for our environment, it’s the right thing to do for our national security, but it’s also the right thing to do for our economy.

And we can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra. Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot. But through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans.

The Recovery Act, in case you’ve forgotten, is the failed Stimuls Plan (so-called) that none other than Barack Obama jammed through before anyone knew what was in it.

Barack Obama’s attempt here to distance himself from Solyndra is what I call prevarication per se.




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Obama: Folks Faint All The Time At My Events

Everyone, including cult-leader Barack Obama, knows that frequent fainting are common when you’re a brainless follower.

Here’s what Barack said about it just today while speaking in North Carolina:

“Looks like somebody might’ve fainted up here, have we got . . . Somebody . . . EMS . . . Somebody . . Don’t worry about it: Folks do this all the time in my meetings,” Obama said. “You always got to eat before you stand for a long time–that’s a little tip. They’ll be OK, just make sure–give them a little room.




Uh-huh. It’s not always easy being cheesy, eh, Barack?

Hat tip Daniel Halper.

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The ObamaCare Provision That Compels You To Pay For My Contraception


The storm of controversy surrounding the provision in ObamaCare that will force America’s many Catholic institutions to fund, for example, sterilizations, contraceptives, and morning-after pills for their employees — “despite each of these being fully athwart fundamental Catholic doctrine on sexuality, abortion and life,” as Rex Murphy eloquently put it — has many people like me wondering the following:

Why suddenly the big furor now? I mean, this is socialism:

I don’t pay for my own medicine, because it’s not my responsibility: it’s yours.

This is exactly what you voted for when you voted for Barack Obama.

Please don’t insult us by being surprised now, after all the time we spent trying to tell you.

Governmental compulsion: it’s the American way.

“We’ve actually been operating in a way entirely consistent with free-market principles.” — Barack Obama, 2009



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More And More Unto The Perfect Day: A Good Review At Chanticleer



L Wilson Hunt, of Chanticleer Book Reviews, recently wrote a flattering and insightful piece on my novel More and More unto the Perfect Day.

That review reads, in part:

Bizarre things are beginning to happen to Joel Gasteneau. A strange illness has left him feeling weak and haunted by vivid dreams, and he feels that he is being followed. Exhausted and fearful, he decides to abandon his life as a pensive drifter and focus on a long-neglected project: To find a durable proof for the existence of God.

This pursuit will run Joel through a gauntlet of self-discovery, one that will challenge the very limits of his mental and physical endurance.

In a solid telling of a complex story of mystery and intrigue, author Ray Harvey assumes the role of master illusionist. Clues abound, but can Joel trust them? What is he really experiencing? Viral fever flashbacks? The eruption of long-buried memories? Reality? More questions than answers emerge as the reader is drawn into another world, where mysticism and philosophy tangle and clash across a stunningly-rendered, often other-worldly landscape.

The novel is stocked with well-developed, fascinating entities. Joel’s father, Neil, a brilliant and deeply ascetic man, has a weakness for violence and his own definition for the word “blood.” Has he killed in the past? And, if so, will he again, and soon? Another entity is a stranger that Joel encounters called Tom, a sort of human/alien hybrid, who seems to know too much about Joel’s past. Along with these characters are oddly-shaped, silver clouds that seem to be keeping a watchful eye on Joel’s whereabouts.


Click over and read the rest.



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The Origins of Christmas

Syncretism is a term that means the combining or reconciling of opposing practices and principles. It’s most commonly used in a religious or philosophical context, and as with Easter, Christmas too is syncretic in its origins: a pagan celebration whose provenance long predates Christ’s birth but which eventually made its way into the Christian mainstream.

As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until approximately 300 years after the death of Christ that the Roman church began observing Christmas, and it wasn’t until the 5th century AD that the church officially mandated that Christmas be observed by Christians throughout the world “as a festival honoring the birth of Jesus Christ” — though, let it be noted, Christ was not born in winter but most likely fall. (Not all Christians have agreed with this official Christmas mandate: in 1659, for instance, the Puritans of New England, about whom I’ve written before, banned Christmas by law throughout the Massachusetts Bay Colony, calling it “heathen, papist idolatry,” and even went so far as to deem its observance a crime punishable by imprisonment. It was until 1856 that in Boston people stopped working on Christmas.)

What follows are some fascinating facts about the long and little-known history of Christmas. From The Encyclopedia Americana:

Christmas was not observed in the first centuries of the Christian church, since the Christian usage in general was to celebrate the death of remarkable persons rather than their birth…a feast was established in memory of this event [Christ’s birth] in the 4th century. In the 5th century the Western church ordered the feast to be celebrated on the day of the Mithraic rites of the birth of the sun and at the close of the Saturnalia, as no certain knowledge of the day of Christ’s birth existed.

And from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia:

Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. The first evidence of the feast is from Egypt.

From The Buffalo News, November 22, 1984:

The earliest reference to Christmas being marked on Dec. 25 comes from the second century after Jesus’ birth. It is considered likely the first Christmas celebrations were in reaction to the Roman Saturnalia, a harvest festival that marked the winter solstice–the return of the sun–and honored Saturn, the god of sowing. Saturnalia was a rowdy time, much opposed by the more austere leaders among the still-minority Christian sect. Christmas developed, one scholar says, as a means of replacing worship of the sun with worship of the Son. By 529 A.D., after Christianity had become the official state religion of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian made Christmas a civic holiday. The celebration of Christmas reached its peak–some would say its worst moments–in the medieval period when it became a time for conspicuous consumption and unequaled revelry.

And here’s a passage from the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge:

How much the date of the festival depended upon the pagan Brumalia (December 25) following the Saturnalia (Dec. 17-24), and celebrating the shortest day of the year and the ‘new sun’…cannot be accurately determined. The pagan Saturnalia and Brumalia were too deeply entrenched in popular custom to be set aside by Christian influence…The pagan festival with its riot and merry-making was so popular that Christians were glad of an excuse to continue its celebration with little change in spirit and in manner. Christian preachers of the West and the Near East protested against the unseemly frivolity with which Christ’s birthday was celebrated, while Christians of Mesopotamia accused their Western brethren of idolatry and sun worship for adopting as Christian this pagan festival.

Finally, from the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the church…. Certain Latins, as early as 354, may have transferred the birthday from January 6th to December 25, which was then a Mithraic feast…or birthday of the unconquered SUN…The Syrians and Armenians, who clung to January 6th, accused the Romans of sun worship and idolatry, contending…that the feast of December 25th, had been invented by disciples of Cerinthus.

The Democrat and Chronicle, of Rochester, New York, in December 1984 wrote:

The Roman festival of Saturnalia, Dec. 17-24, moved citizens to decorate their homes with greens and lights and give gifts to children and the poor. The Dec. 25 festival of natalis solis invicti, the birth of the unconquered sun, was decreed by the emperor Aurelian in A.D. 274 as a Winter Solstice celebration, and sometime (later)…was Christianized as a date to celebrate the birth of the Son of Light.

And in December of 1989, Dr. William Gutsch, chairman of the American Museum of Natural History, said, in the Westchester, New York, newspaper:

The early Romans were not celebrating Christmas but rather a pagan feast called the Saturnalia. It occurred each year around the beginning of winter, or the winter solstice. This was the time when the sun had taken its lowest path across the sky and the days were beginning to lengthen, thus assuring another season of growth.

If many of the trappings of the Saturnalia, however, seem to parallel what so many of us do today, we can see where we borrowed…our holiday traditions. And indeed, it has been suggested that while Christ was most likely not born in late December, the early Christians — then still an outlawed sect–moved Christmas to the time of the Saturnalia to draw as little attention as possible to themselves while they celebrated their own holiday.

Lastly, from a Christian who does not like Christmas, and from whom many of these quotes have been culled:

The Saturnalia, of course, celebrated Saturn–the fire god. Saturn was the god of sowing (planting) because heat from the sun was required to allow for planting and growth of crops. He was also worshipped [sic] in this dead-of-winter festival so that he would come back (he was the “sun”) and warm the earth again so that spring planting could occur.

In an Easter post I once wrote, I quoted the genius priest-poet Gerard Hopkins, in a poem he wrote about spring. And in response to the passage just cited above, it seems relevant to recall those same words that Hopkins’s wrote:

What is spring?
Growth in everything.


Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested

Cluster of bugle-blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod and sheath or shell.

All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathizing
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.

(Gerard Manly Hopkins, “May Magnificat”)

Winter. Death. Rebirth. The lengthening days. Life.

That, in part, is what Christmas represents.

But it also represents something more, something equally beautiful, and something much wider than the laws laid down by any one particular custom or creed: it represents peace on earth and good will towards women and men.