Loyal To LibertyBeta

In yesterday's post I used the expression 'national corporate socialism' to describe the mentality that drives the coalition of leftist and corporate interests now working together to promote the government takeover of control and costs in the health sector of the U.S. economy. This expression naturally calls to mind and invites comparison with the 'national socialism' from which Adolf Hitler's Nazi party took its name. The major difference between the two lies in the fact that both the leftists of the Obama faction, and the big business interests working with them appear to believe that scientific materialism is an acceptable basis for dealing with human affairs. They accept approaches based on the premise that on the whole human beings are material objects, essentially no different than rocks, hammers or electrons.

Because the enormous evils the Nazis perpetrated so consistently involved dehumanizing the people they sought to exterminate, we tend to forget that the core of the Nazi ideology involved the concept of the 'volk', which derived its existential meaning from the occult and mystic qualities of the blood. According to the Nazis, the essential traits that distinguish one race from another reside in the blood, establishing the hierarchy of inferior and superior beings. According to the Nazis, it was from its blood that the Aryan nation derived its unique role in humanity's journey toward perfection. Unlike the scientific materialists, who ultimately rejected all vestiges of Immanuel Kant's effort to take account of the mysterious, non-material aspect of man's consciousness of being, Hitler embraced Schopenhauer's exaltation of the will as the locus and expression of that mystery. Essential to the will is the goal, which makes it possible for man to become what Nietzsche called an "arrow of longing", aimed toward a moment of perfection comprehensible in action, but inexpressible in purely material terms.

The possibility of total commitment that arises from this exaltation of the will sweeps aside the boundaries implied by objective reality, and with them the limits upon human will that arise in good conscience as we deal with individuals whose existence demands respect for those boundaries. The commitment to reach for unbounded perfection informed by merely human will plunged the German people into a vast sea of evil, stained red with the blood of the victim millions they sacrificed on the altar of self-worship. But despite their disregard for humanity in others, the Nazis acknowledged in themselves the truth of its subjective being, the indefinable something that elevates humanity above the flotsam and jetsam of the materialistic universe.

To do evil the Nazis dehumanized others, whom they then sacrificed for the possibility of self-willed human perfection they idolized in themselves. The scientific materialists who now seek to supplant constitutional self-government in the United States act on an understanding that denies the relevance of man's subjective perception of existence. They pretend that science has demystified existing things, among which they include human beings. Where the Nazis exalted human will, these national socialists exalt human knowledge in its scientific form. Where the Nazis denied the boundaries on human will implied by objective reality, the contemporary national socialists deny the boundaries on human action implied by the subjective perception of meaning we derive from our experience of willing. The result: the new national socialists exempt no one from the dehumanizing paradigm of scientific understanding. In principle, therefore, they dehumanize not this or that group of human beings, but the whole of humanity.

In some of my speeches over the years, I have made bold to predict that because we are discarding the moral principles that allow us to recognize and acknowledge the evil that we do, evils will be done in the twenty-first century that make the holocausts of the twentieth look like a dress rehearsal. As Americans consider the struggle now taking place, I hope a saving remnant will look beyond the details of the particular issues we debate, and reflect on the general import of the choices involved. For I believe that the American people could have a special role to play in the human journey. However, it is not a role determined by materialistic and impersonal accident, nor set up by the committed force of human will. The great principle of our beginning allots to us the task of acknowledging the true source and mainstay of both objective reality and the subjective meaning our will ascribes to it. That source is the being-in-itself whose goodwill determined and daily renews the possibility of both, the Creator God whose authority our Founders respected as the basis for human rights and justice. Their respect for God's will distinguishes them decisively from both the 'right wing' national socialists of old, and those of the left with whom we now contend. I believe it is imperative for true Americans to join together now to preserve the work that reflects their wisdom, uniting for God, for Liberty and the Constitution in order to preserve both conscience and humanity.

Those who are opposed to Obama's totalitarian government takeover of the health care system should be wary of thinking that the tussle over it is a struggle between leftists who favor socialism and pro-Big Business proponents of the private sector economy. They'll get a better idea of the truth from an CSMonitor.com article (Burdened by healthcare costs, US businesses seek a shift) that appeared back in February, 2007. This was well before Obama became the focus of America's collapse into socialism. The article focused on an event at which "Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott took the stage… alongside representatives of a major labor union to kick off a campaign called 'Better Health Care Together.' The aim of this unlikely partnership is to extend coverage to all Americans by 2012…" According to the article "Wal-Mart was joined by other major companies: Intel, AT&T and Kelly Services." Another online article, (Wal-Mart, SEIU Outline Themes to Meet Health Coverage Goal by 2012) makes clear that the union with which these corporate giants joined forces was the now infamous SEIU.

Of course, the SEIU is presently making internet waves on account of its bully-boy tactics against people who question or reject Obama's takeover scheme. What are we to make of this alliance between Obama's henchmen and such large corporate interests?

The answer is simple: both favor an eventual government takeover of health care costs. This is hardly surprising from a leftist union. A little sense of history makes it less surprising from the corporate side than might otherwise be the case.

In late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century America, many Americans earned their living in company towns. The company was their landlord. It owned the store where they bought their food and other merchandise. It probably had the lion's share of interest in the local bank from which they obtained mortgages and other loans. The managerial class it represented also controlled (through charitable and philanthropic institutions) the institutions that addressed social welfare problems (soup kitchens, orphanages, care for the disabled, and the like.) Given the company's clout, local government officials, including local law enforcement officers, tread carefully around its interests and the representatives of its power. In effect, such towns represented a local form of dictatorial socialism, with the corporate elite as the 'party bosses' dictating the content and enforcement of policy. Let's call this kind of governance local "corporate socialism."

At first, modern unions came into being to challenge corporate socialism. As their membership and solidarity grew, the American political system eventually allowed unions to translate their organization and numbers into political clout. Thanks to this clout, government, particularly at the state level, could no longer be counted on to respect the wishes of the 'corporate party.' Unions pushed successfully for higher wages, and other benefits that cut into corporate profits. They influenced the legislative power of government to impose regulations intended to improve safety and other working conditions.

In response to the rising influence of the unions in the government sector the 'corporate party' devised a long term approach intended to shift the effective burden for satisfying these demands to the government, so that eventually their cost would be shifted back to the wage-earners. Under the plausible guise of 'progressive' reform the 'corporate party' took overall control of America's national income through the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank system, and the implementation of the Federal income tax. The hardships of the Great Depression then provided the context for the first steps in shifting "social welfare" responsibilities to the government.

The Federal income tax was implemented on the false assumption that only a small percentage of income earners would ever be subject to the tax. But the New Deal's social insurance legislation (we now call it social security), provided good cover for implementing general payroll tax withholding, which had met with considerable resistance when the income tax was first imposed. When the withholding scheme expanded during WWII, all income earners were subjected to its terms.

Under local corporate socialism in the old company towns, companies often cut amounts for housing, utilities and payments due at the company store, leaving wage earners to live on the residue. In our times, as the national government moves to consolidate control over the banking system, access to health care and control of corporate management, American earners find themselves once again living in a "company town", but this time on a national scale. Under national corporate socialism, however, the government acts as the collector of dues. The advantage of this arrangement is the perception that the government's actions reflect the will of the people, who must blame themselves (not business profiteers) for the burdensome costs and regulations imposed on them.

It's becoming increasingly clear, however, that earners (now taxpayers) under national corporate socialism will have no more say over the policies and choices they must live with than their predecessors, who lived under the local corporate socialist regime. What we have is the re-institution of the age old system of elite (oligarchic) rule that characterized human societies throughout most of history. The national corporate socialist coalition, by hijacking and devaluing the structures of representative government, deprives the people at large of any political avenues through which to challenge their elite masters. We appreciate the full extent of this deprivation only when we accept the fact that under the present so-called two party system, both parties now represent and implement the basic premises of national corporate socialist control.

Is this why Congressmen and Senators now take offense at the questions of their constituents, scolding them in tones reminiscent of haughty aristocrats? Does it explain why Obama presumes to silence all opposition, as though he should reign unquestioned, like some absolute monarch? Does it explain the Republican Party's surrender to socialism at the critical turning point of the so-called bank rescue last fall? Does it explain the complicity of the corporate financed media, including supposedly conservative personalities, in preventing scrutiny of the questionable evidence that supports Obama's claim to the Presidency?

It's important to note that in the expression 'national corporate socialism' the term "national" is used in a strictly geographic sense. The ideological leftists and the corporate entities that have joined forces in the national corporate socialist coalition, long ago abandoned all allegiance to the concept of the "nation" as a focus of moral or political allegiance. No gods command their loyalty but Power and Profit and they respect no boundaries in their ambitious pursuit of both. This distinguishes the new national corporate socialism from the national socialism that gave Adolf Hitler's Nazi party its name. (This also distinction has a moral dimension that I will discuss in my next post.)

The leftist elements of the national corporate socialist coalition pretend to be interested in egalitarian access to goods and services. The corporate elements cast themselves as problem solvers. In fact both are interested mainly in consolidating control of power and resources so as to eliminate the decisive role of the people at large. The governing 'ism' ultimately turns out to be 'elitism'. The ultimate goal- overthrow of government of, by and for the people. That's why the reassertion of liberty, and a common will to defeat every element of the corporate socialist strategy for its destruction, need to be the rallying points for all Americans who wish to remain a free people. It's also why such people should trust no leaders, parties or media they do not fashion for themselves.

In the speeches I have given over the years supporting the pro-life cause, I have often pointed out that the calculated disregard for innocent life first aimed at babes in the womb would eventually claim the lives of the elderly, the infirm and anyone else judged to represent what the Nazis called "life unworthy of life." Once "quality of life" replaces the God ordained right to life as the criterion that assures the safety of the innocent, no one can live free of fear except those who are certain the shifting winds of popular esteem will never shift against them.

A new report from WND's Whistleblower magazine makes clear the likelihood that the Obama faction's proposed government takeover of the health care system will subject the American people to the terrifying consequence that I (and other pro-life advocates) have predicted. It will erect a totalitarian bureaucracy empowered to exile the elderly (and eventually others whose lives are judged to cost more than they are worth) to a hellish medical gulag, bereft of the choices that today allow many to determine for themselves the moment at which they surrender with dignity to the inevitable prospect of their mortality. "If this dire end-of life scenario sounds too awful to be possible, that is only because the reality of Obamacare has not been sufficiently reported. For this is not a fantasy - it is what is already occurring in other 'civilized' nations, including Canada and Britain, that have adopted the same government-run system."

Of course, it doesn't require much thought to realize that the sentence to death without dignity won't fall equally upon everyone. People who are part of the power structure of the dominant political faction will live in a different reality, like that which the politicians even now are setting apart for themselves and the people they love or favor. As gatekeepers who control access to this realm of privilege, they will have the opportunity to build and secure the political power base from which to manipulate the hopes and fears of those they wish to win over or intimidate.

Though today the dividing line between care and neglect seems to be defined by age and infirmity, once the system of political and bureaucratic control is firmly ensconced, it will be defined by factional favoritism. Those in good standing with the factional bosses will be treated one way. Those unwilling to tow their line will live in one administrative gulag or another.

Christ said "the poor, we will always have with us." Human societies have ever seen divisions between those who have less and those who have more. Contrary to the lying rhetoric used to promote the 'universal health care' shibboleth, the Obama faction's proposed totalitarian takeover of the health system won't eliminate such division. Instead America will move from a world in which less and more reflect relative economic status, to a world in which the ambition and greed of powerful factional elites will be the determining factor. A competition for the favor and patronage of powerful individuals will replace the competition for dollars.

In light of this fact, Americans need to ask themselves which they would rather be: people who work for a company that cleans people's houses, whose status in life in many respects depends on the company's ability to please its clientele; or people forced to be the personal house servants of arrogant, self-serving elites whose status in life depends on the interests, passions and whims of those elites. It's one thing to watch Oprah Winfrey on TV. It's another to be part of the entourage whose fate depends on the calculations and moods of the one who controls participation in her world of special privileges.

From being a society where status relates to economic success, we will become a society where status derives from personal dependency. We will exchange the insecurities and risks involved in the one for the certain servility and slavish fear of giving offense characteristic of the other. (I realize that when working for others we always have to manage our relations with our boss or supervisor. But when people live under a totalitarian regime there are no avenues of dignified retreat from that servility. The political and bureaucratic masters determine whether you can work, start a business, buy a house, or access a doctor or a hospital. Offend them, and you have no recourse but to languish in the gulags they will have created to punish their enemies and cow everyone else.)

The power hungry elite shilling for the transformation to totalitarianism in health care and other sectors of American life shrewdly emphasize and exaggerate the shortcomings of the way of life that respects individual rights and private enterprise. They promise a world without shortcomings, without deprivation, where everyone will have equal access to all the goods, all the hopes, all the sought for validations of worth and identity. But human contrivance will never produce such a world. We will always have to risk. Some will always have more, some less. The only realistic promise one human being can make to another is a society in which avenues consistent with moral dignity always remain open to character, discipline, talent and ability- so that no one willing to strive will be forced to live without hope of a better life. The promises of wily demagogues like Obama may seem for a moment more substantial than this- until we realize that in their world the fulfillment of every promise depends on the favored elites who control the reins of power. On the other hand, the fulfillment of freedom's promise depends on each and every one of us. As long as we refuse to give up on ourselves, we can hold on to the hope even the dimmest flame of life still represents. For like the still, small voice of conscience, that dim flame of life signifies the will and presence of the greatest power there is- the One who set the stars in motion and raised the mountains high, and who seconds the motion of our existence as long as we draw breath, and even, at long last, when it returns to Him forever.

I just read a succinctly brilliant piece by Tom Sowell on the insidious delusion involved in the false promise of "universal health care." As he so often does, he captures the essential heart of the matter in a few pithy observations.

"If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away, while we are mindlessly repeating the catchwords of the hour…"

"Ultimately, our choice is to give up Utopian quests or give up our freedom….If you think government should "do something" about anything that ticks you off, or anything you want and don't have, then you have made your choice between Utopia and freedom."

Sowell rightly agrees with the citation he makes from Edmund Burke: "It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know much of an evil ought to be tolerated…I must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes." He concludes with a similar citation from Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago; "If you cannot tolerate imperfection, be prepared to kiss you freedom goodbye."

I am sure that many conservatives applaud Sowell's reiteration of this wisdom, and agree that he has said something of great practical relevance to the ongoing discussion of health care. I am also sure that too many among them have joined in smug dismissal of people like me, who for many years have stressed the desperate need for America to address our moral crisis of character as the indispensable prerequisite for dealing with any of the supposedly practical issues we face. Tragically for all of us, this obtuse rejection of what I call the moral priority belies their superficial agreement with Sowell and the wisdom he reasserts.

Apparently, they fail to recognize that what Sowell is talking about-i.e., the ability to accept the reality of human imperfection, and to live with its unavoidable consequences-, is a moral virtue. In Christian parlance it is called patience or longsuffering. It is en essential characteristic of a free people. America's Founders took note of it as they articulated the moral basis for the American Revolution. In the Declaration of Independence they said that "Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable,..."

Sowell's argument boils down to this: the preservation of freedom requires moral virtue. What too many so-called conservatives refuse to see is that moral virtue doesn't just happen. It requires effort. From the viewpoint of the society as a whole, that effort takes the form of moral education. Since moral character is not just a matter of good precepts, but of good habits, such education must include constant exercise in putting good precepts into practice. In that respect moral education is like teaching someone to play a musical instrument.

We live in an era that boasts great sophistication when it comes to physical science and technology. To our sorrow this has come along with, and encouraged, profound stupidity when it comes to moral things. We must call it stupidity because it involves rejecting, willfully and with casual animosity, (or as some might put it today "with attitude") what we know to be the moral prerequisites of goods we profess to value highly, like "liberty and justice for all." Ignorance can be remedied, but only after such stupidity is overcome. Like drowning people going down for the last time, those prey to such stupidity struggle fiercely against the efforts of their would-be rescuers. They flail about so as to do them real, sometimes even deadly, injury.

For some years now I have felt this damaging hostility from elements within the conservative movement who vaunt their supposedly superior practical and pragmatic approach. They quietly do everything in their power to make sure that those who sincerely promote the moral priority are not even allowed to be heard. They pretend to appreciate wisdom like that which Tom Sowell reasserts in his article. But they scoff at, reject and seek to repress the common sense insistence that we must reverse the policies that disintegrate the moral understanding and virtue of our people.

"You can have it all." This is the lying slogan that encourages the surrender of moral discipline in every walk of life. It fuels arrogant sexual licentiousness. It prods the boundless ambition for money and power. It corrupts true spiritual hunger into a self-centered quest to invent and manipulate a God or gods who will be the pliable instruments of our fanciful "needs" and passions. Individuals who brook no interference with their endless quest for selfish satisfaction eventually become a people who brook no limit or constraint upon their common will. We know that this is happening to the American people when their leaders seriously assert that the majority's electoral or legislative choices don't have to respect the limits and constraints imposed by Constitutional provisions.

Tragically, once the people fall prey to the temptation to assert unbridled power, their foolish example legitimizes the old nostrum that might makes right; that power alone justifies every whim, every arbitrary disposition. How soon will they be reminded that their power of election has no basis apart from the Constitutional provisions they have discarded and destroyed. Against the power of arms, technology, and money, wielded by those of superior discipline and intelligence, the people's power of election vanishes like smoke. When the smoke clears, government of by and for the people will be gone. The arrogant few will everywhere govern unopposed, as they did for so long before the trial of liberty that is the real American dream.

There is yet a little time in which we may rekindle the moral heart that is the hope of freedom. But only if we make that task our first and clear priority. Will we heed the voices of them "that cry in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert the highway of our God", or will we let freedom perish?

Now that a document has surfaced that appears to be an officially certified Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Obama, what excuse will prevent responsible officials from properly investigating and adjudging his compliance with the Constitution's eligibility requirements? The manipulative media and others who dismiss the demand for an investigation have relied for evidence on a facsimile of a State of Hawaii Certification of Live Birth published on the internet. The document contained no facts that indicate the place of birth; similar Hawaiian COLBs are known to have been issued for births taking place outside the United States; and except he was born on US soil, Obama had no claim to US citizenship at birth because his mother, married to a foreign national, was not of age under the law to transmit citizenship by blood.

Neither I nor anyone else can claim that we are sure that a similar facsimile of a purported Kenyan birth certificate is authentic. However, it specifies the hospital in Kenya where he was born; the date on the apparent certified copy appears to coincide with the time during which it might plausibly have been requested as part of Anne Obama's divorce proceeding against Barack Obama, Sr.(an observation further developed here;) and, as noted in WND's report on the subject it appears identical to other birth documents issued in Kenya at the time. Just as people like me demanded, and continue to demand, that the birth document on file with the State government of Hawaii be opened to scrutiny, so it is essential to seek conclusive verification of the existence (or non-existence) of the original of the purported Kenyan birth document.

Despite a tidal wave of ridicule, mockery, threats and media repression many grassroots Americans have persisted in the common sense demand for an authoritative investigation and decision. Tragically for our country, officials sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution have done nothing to fulfill their oath. Perhaps blind partisanship and the arrogance of power explain the failure to act of Democrats and others who openly or secretly identify with the Obama faction (among the Judiciary for example). But how are we to explain the silence or open complicity of the Republicans in that failure?

The Republican party purports to be the loyal opposition. Presumably, the loyalty in question is to the Constitution, not to any individual, office or Party established or operating under the Constitution. Yet some Republicans in Congress have responded to inquiries from constituents concerned about this issue with language implying that Constitutional requirements may be ignored if that is the will of the majority in any given election. Others, through indolence, ignorance or cowardice, have simply accepted the inadequate evidence and arrogant dismissals of those who speak for or represent the Obama faction.

Does the Republican party actually subscribe to the view that Constitutional provisions can be amended or overturned by simple majority vote in an ordinary election? But the Constitution represents the agreed upon and established rules that confer legitimacy on such elections. If and when an electoral majority simply disregards those requirements, the election has no legitimacy. Such de facto alteration of the Constitution, in disregard of the orderly and rigorous amending process it ordains, represents a breach of the social contract the Constitution articulates- a breach that portends the dissolution of civil society and politics, with all the serious dangers that implies.

To preserve the nation from those dangers, clearly visible and transparent steps must be taken to reassure people that the authority of the U.S. Constitution remains intact as the basis for the government of the United States. If the Republicans continue to remain silent; if they continue to submit to the intimidation of the Obama faction's manipulated media claque; if they continue to allow the perception that the Constitution may be formally and openly disregarded without scrutiny or consequence; they will make clear that they have abandoned both their loyalty to the Constitution and their sworn duty to oppose the forces, foreign or domestic, that seek to overthrow it.

As one body, the Republican representatives in both the House and the Senate must rise to demand that the facts with regard to Obama's Constitutional eligibility for office be investigated, that the resulting evidence be carefully weighed, and that, by a process open to public scrutiny, a fair decision be rendered. I believe that, for the sake of the Constitution which secures the peace and unity of the nation, Americans will accept and abide by the result of such a process. However, without it, no other decisions or actions taken by the U.S. government in these increasingly momentous times will be free of the taint of illegitimacy and coercion.

For the survival of the constitutional Republic, the Republicans should have the courage to live up to their name. If they do not, those who still forlornly cling to the delusion that their Party offers hope to liberty may yet be forced to follow the example of people like me, who now seek to build a truer political vehicle for freedom's hope under the banner of America's Independence.