What Do We Want? $15!

When do we want it? …….Now!

Photo via socialist alternative

Today listening to Dave Ramsey I made a note of a brilliant observation, which is, to paraphrase, that every person has an intrinsic, God given value as a human being. This should NOT be confused with their ECONOMIC value, which is the value of their work to an employer.

Over the past couple months our news here in the Seattle area has been replete with demonstrations, town halls, and picketing to have the minimum wage raised to $15 an hour in the City of Sea-Tac and the City of Seattle. The typical argument shows no concept of economics, and no concept of ‘starting wages’ for someone on their first job.

And now that the Seattle City Council has it’s first freely elected socialist council member they dialog has been elevated to an even higher level of B.S.

In Socialist Sawant’s words, It is “the nature of capitalism to crush small business . . . capitalism overwhelmingly sets up small business for failure,” (Seattle Times)

Neglecting of course that capitalism is what makes small business possible.

I am sickened to see the country’s shift. I don’t know if I am posting this message to whine, or vent, or just commiserate with others while we watch our freedom go down the tubes, but anyway, there it is.  I’m having one of those days where I feel pretty hopeless about our future. But let me add one thing.

Capitalism is a by-product of freedom. At it’s core it is human beings who have found a common value, in our case the dollar, with which to interact in trade with other human beings. The market gives consumers what they want and rewards producers who give consumers what they want. A business person cannot get rich without benefitting scores of people around him, from employees to car sales to gardeners and day care workers. That’s just how it is.

One more observation. My son-in-law was recently in an economics class at Washington State University. At the end of the semester the professor commented that the students this year were less prepared and had less of a grasp of economics that those of previous years.

My prediction is that he will see it get even worse. Socialist thinking is widespread, especially in Washington state, and has been conditioning youth to think counter to logic, and to believe rhetoric rather than take the time to observe what is real.

Meanwhile, the $15 per hour wage already approved in Sea-Tac might just be the tipping point for some businesses to either close, or rely more heavily on automation, but the chances are that the city of Seattle will rush into their own higher minimum wage before they can see the fruits of similar efforts in Sea-Tac.

You may be worth millions to dear old mom, but not to Ronald McDonald.

-Lynnae

Summer Travel, Conservative Reading

My husband was gone for another month recently for more army training. They spent some days in the field where he got to put his new uniforms to the test, not with life or death supplies like our soldiers overseas, but things important to him nonetheless. Because I have a public blog I don’t like to broadcast the fact that he’s gone, when he’s gone, but I sure am glad when he’s home again.

Things have been pretty busy around here preparing for my daughter’s wedding. One thing we did was go down to New Orleans to meet my future Son-in-law’s family. It went well. I got along great with his mom, it felt to me like we were old friends. And to my surprise and satisfaction, his dad is another one of us crazy conservative types like me. Our conversation went from the presidency to voting, to scripture to great books we’ve read. Once you’ve realized that you have many of the same favorite books, then you really know a lot about someone (i.e. they are as awesome as you are, haha). So that went well.

Speaking of favorite books, the long out of print “An Enemy Hath Done This” by Ezra Taft Benson is back in print by a company named Freedom-Books. As a former Secretary of Agriculture under Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ezra Taft Benson fought against farm subsidies from the government in order to preserve a free market farming system back in the 50’s. He later became the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Ezra Taft Benson warned against forces in society that were seeking to overthrow the freedom of this country. This book contains many speeches to the Boy Scouts Of America and other organizations, on constitutional topics and is very relevant today, though the facts and figures have changed dramatically over the years. (I think most of the speeches were given in the ‘60’s). I ordered a new copy recently because I had given mine away. I need a few more! So if you haven’t heard of it or read this book, check it out. It is one of my ‘MUST READ’s’.

-Lynnae

Historic Win for GOP

Yesterday was a historic win in the House of Representatives for Republicans and conservatives.

This morning I hear the Democrats say “now is the time for us to work together and compromise”.

Firstly, why do the LOSERS get to define what we do now?

My second issue of the day is the constant whine I’ve heard from some sore loser Democrats, that goes something like this:

“All Republicans can do is complain about Obama’s Health Care and stimulus. They have presented no plan of their own. (Waaaah!) All they can do is tear down but where’s their plan to help the economy? Where’s their plan?”

I don’t know if said Democrats really are thinking this or is they are just trying to feed a talking point to young, whiny, first-vote-ever 18 year old girls who don’t know Boehner and Reid from Edward and Jacob.

But the best plan to put the economy back on track is for the government to GET OUT OF THE WAY!

The government is putting a stranglehold on the neck of productive workers and businesses. Adjusting the grip of the stranglehold slightly will not help. Let go! Let Americans do the work they want to do. Let businesses plan and risk and build with an assurance that the ground will have some stability, instead of the ever shifting quagmire of regulations, laws and taxes that Obama is threatening them with.

By what right does Obama say that $250,000.00 a year is a magic cutoff? By what right does he protect someone making $240,000.00 and PUNISH someone making $260,000.000?

And I know health care seems compassionate, but in the end we will all be worse off. Socialized medicine is an assault on democracy, and an assault on the freedom of the American people.

-Lynnae

Reagan vs. Khrushchev

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." ~ Ronald Reagan

Decades ago Nikita Khrushchev said:

“I can prophesy that your grandchildren will live under socialism. We will bury you.”

Was he right? How can we be so shortsighted as to sell our freedoms in the name of security and entitlement?

It’s a shame.

Lynnae

Vlademir Lenin and I

When a little girl plays house it’s all fun. You get to clink your tea set and lay your dolly in the cradle, yet you can drop it all and run out to play whenever you want.

You can do this because there is a mommy around to put the toys away and dredge up the gooey cracker crumbs from dolly’s mouth.  Someone makes it all possible and someone cleans up the mess.

This musing comes as a result of visiting a famous statue of Vlademir Lenin on a street corner in Freemont in Seattle, Washington.

The statue was originally erected in Czeckoslovakia, in collaboration with the Russians, but was quietly taken down after the revolution. An English teacher from Issaquah, Washington, found it is a refuse pile (dustheap of history???) and purchased it to bring to the states. More of the story can be read here.

Now the perpetual children in Freemont can hang out in groovy coffee shops paying extra for their organic brew, professing the sensitivity and good intentions of socialism, and even communism, and turn a blind eye to the atrocious results of those systems, because they were lucky enough to be born in a land of freedom and entrepreneurs, a justice structure and a Bill of Rights.

I have heard people spit out the word ‘Capitalism’ as if it were a slur, while they enjoy the rewards of it every day.

Capitalists don’t get rich on their own. Yes, they dream big and they take risks, but in order to expand their dreams and be productive they need people. They train workers, they purchase land, they build. They scoop up in their wake others who need a steady income, who try to be dependable though they might not have the genius, strength, or desire to start a company of their own.

Redistribution of wealth does not create wealth. It never has and never will.

Not that wealth is the most important thing. It is merely a side effect of FREEDOM.

It’s a Trap

 ‘drawing’ by Lynnae Pulsipher

It’s been a while since my last post. I’m sorry about that and I’ll try to be more consistent. The reason, pure and simple, is discouragement. How long must we continue to fight these people back as they try to destroy our country?

National Health Care.

I stood in Westlake Center in Seattle and ‘booed’ Hillary Clinton off the stage when my children were little ones. Now they are entering college and we are fighting the same thing, and the scary part is that the American people seem a lot more receptive to the idea this time. We may have to fight the socialists back every ten years, but, if every time, the voters are more indoctrinated and misinformed, then it’s a loosing battle.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve reconciled myself to fighting a losing battle many times, mainly because I know God is in charge and even a loss is a temporary loss. But sometimes I still get tired. So I sketched out the little picture above to sum up my feelings (and then added three paragraphs, so much for brevity).

-Lynnae

Eye on Massachusetts

Good Luck Scott Brown !!!

Conservatives everywhere will be watching the Massachusetts returns tomorrow.  I will be there too. It’s just as fun to watch the media response.

I don’t know what is going to happen but my spirits are lifted just by seeing a close fight here. Maybe this is our country’s first step in pushing back the tide of Socialism that some elected leaders are trying to slip past us.

-Lynnae

Central Planning

I continue to marvel over the naiveté of otherwise intelligent people when it comes to the reality of what a planned economy would bring. Are people gullible or merely grabbing for power?

I liked this excerpt from my reading today in F. A. Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom”. I share it with you because it really rings true.

“…We all think that our personal order of values is not merely personal but that in a free discussion among rational people we would convince the others that ours is the right one. The lover of the countryside who wants above all that it’s traditional appearance should be preserved and that the blots already made by industry on it’s fair face should be removed, no less than the health enthusiast who wants all the picturesque but insanitary old cottages cleared away, or the motorist who wishes the country cut up by big motor roads, the efficiency fanatic who desires the maximum of specialization and mechanization no less than the idealist who for the development of personality wants to preserve as many independent craftsman as possible all know that their aim can be achieved only by planning, and they all want planning for that reason. But, of course, the adoption of the social planning for which they clamor can only bring out the concealed conflict between their aims.”

Are people just so blinded by the hope of forcing others to adopt their values that they can’t see the inevitable conflict?

In the end, it will be the task of a centrally planned government to decide between opposing projects. Then it will quickly descend into a series of favors and a system of political pull being the main factor considered.

A Few More Thoughts on Health Care

But first..... If you think Ayn Rand was prophetic 50 years ago, try this quote from Isaiah...

Isaiah 3:5 And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor: The child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable. Verse 12: As for my people, children are their oppressors, an women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.

Now on to health care...
Here is one major change that would occur under single payer health care:

The role of a doctor is to save lives and improve the quality of life. When applied to the individual, that is pretty clear, and pretty close to what we have now. But even that 'mission statement' changes meaning when you are referring not to an individual, but to a whole society.

Saving lives changes from 'saving THIS life' to 'saving the most lives'. Improving the quality of life changes from helping one person to 'what will help the most people'. And then the health and treatment of some will always be sacrificed to help the whole of society. This is the path that leads to eugenics.

That might seem like a far cry from what Obama is proposing, but it's putting us on that path. Unfortunately even many republicans are content to go in this direction, just maybe not quite as much as the democrats. It's all very wrong. And though the money needed to fund health care is an important issue, because there will never be enough, it's not the main issue. The main issue is that we are selling our birthright of freedom for a little security that is not even theirs to give!

More Quotes On Socialism

“The effect of Socialist doctrine on Capitalist society is to produce a third thing different from either of its two begetters- to wit, the Servile State” -Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State1913: 3d ed., 1927

I wanted to discuss another little passage from Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom today.

“We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past. Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by De Tocqueville and Lord Acton that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism. And now that we have seen a new form of slavery arise before our eyes [referring to Nazi Germany], we have so completely forgotten the warning that it scarcely occurs to us that the two things may be connected.

“How sharp a break not only with the recent past but with the whole evolution of Western civilization the modern trend toward socialism means becomes clear if we consider it not merely against the background of the nineteenth century but in a longer historical perspective. We are rapidly abandoning not the views merely of Cobden and Bright, of Adam Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient characteristics of Western civilization as it has grown from the foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans. Not merely nineteenth and eighteenth century liberalism*, but the basic individualism inherited by us from Erasmus and Montaigne, from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and Thucydides, is progressively relinquished……

…….. During the whole of this modern period of European history the general direction of social development was one of freeing the individual from the ties which had bound him to the customary or prescribed ways in the pursuit of his ordinary activities. The conscious realization that the spontaneous and uncontrolled efforts of individuals were capable of producing a complex order of economic activities could come only after this development had made some progress. The subsequent elaboration of a consistent argument in favor of economic freedom was the outcome of a free growth of economic activity which had been the undesigned and unforeseen by-product of political freedom.” (Italics are mine.)

- F.A. Hayek, The road to Serfdom, pg.16-19

* Remember at this time the word liberal referred to those in favor of a free market individualism.

Are we ready to give up such a heritage? Are we ready to trust the political impulses of Barack Obama and his cronies over the great thinkers of the ages and the benefits of the free market that we can see with our own eyes? Are we ready to give up the freedom we have for a system that has FAILED every time it has been tried?

I would also like to call attention to the last sentence that I italicized. It is easy for our opponents to claim that our capitalist tendencies come from greed and nothing more. I do find it frustrating that our way of living has become called capitalism, when that is merely an outgrowth, and a way of describing the system of market a free society is able to produce under a laissez faire government. But the free society is the point, and offers many opportunities for pursuing life, liberty, and happiness beyond just the pursuit of capital.

-Lynnae

Planned Economy or Planned Destruction

I Saw this on Cato@Liberty and had to pass it along. It fits with our recent conversations. It is from the 1938 Chicago Tribune. If it is too small to read please follow this link. It's well worth it!

The Road to Serfdom

I have a borrowed copy of the 50th Anniversary Edition of "The Road to Serfdom" with an introduction by Milton Friedman. My husband was about to return this copy by the time I saw it floating around here so he may have to wait till I finish, I say may because I already plan to go out and get my own copy. I'll write a 'book report' when I'm done, but along the way I'm finding little gems I'd like to share.

The theme is Hayek's warning that going down the path of Socialism leaves a country susceptible to totalitarianism, dictatorships, fascism, etc. Published in 1944, with the rise of Nazi Germany as a backdrop, Hayek sets forth to explain how many of the socialist ideals the British and Americans are accepting could lead us down the same path.

Here is an interesting and timely quote from the 1956 preface:

" It is for this reason that I rather hope that the time may now be more favorable in America for a serious consideration of the true argument of the book than it was when it first appeared. I believe that what is important in it still has to render it's service, although I recognize that the hot socialism against which it was mainly directed-that organized movement toward a deliberate organization of economic life by the state as the chief owner of the means of production- is nearly dead in the Western world. The century of socialism in this sense probably came to an end around 1948. Many of it's illusions have been discarded by it's leaders, and elsewhere as well as in the United States, the very name has lost much of it's attraction.

[Oh how I wish that were true!-L.P.]

........If few people in the western world now want to remake society from the bottom according to some ideal bluepoint, a great many still believe in measures which, though not designed completely to remodel the economy, in their aggregate effect may well unintentionally produce this result. And, even more than at the time that I wrote this book, the advocacy of policies which in the long run cannot be reconciled with the preservation of a free society is no longer a party matter. The hodge podge of ill-assembled and often inconsistent ideals which under the name of Welfare State has largely replaces socialism as the goal of the reformers needs very careful sorting out if its results are not to be very similar to those of full fledged socialism. This is not to say that some of it's aims are not both practicable and laudable. But there are many ways in which we can work toward the same goal, and in the present state of opinion there is some danger that our impatience for quick results may lead us to choose instruments which, though perhaps more efficient for achieving the particular ends, are not compatible with the preservation of a free society. The increasing tendency to rely on administrative coercion and discrimination where a modification of the general rules of law might, perhaps more slowly, achieve the same object, and to resort to direct state controls or to the creation of monopolistic institutions where judicious use of financial inducements might evoke spontaneous efforts is still a powerful legacy of the socialist period which is likely to influence policy for a long time to come."

I will bring you more great quotes and information as I go through the book.