save –verb

1. the fallacious suggestion of decreased costs which excludes from consideration an inevitable trend towards DMV-quality service, severely muted market competition, an army of new bureaucratic goons, the introduction of inestimable stress to everyday life, an exodus of talented professionals, skyrocketing taxes and/or skyrocketing inflation, and an inevitable *increase* in all associated costs for all involved parties: The healthcare bill will save Americans money.

• Obama Cronies vs. American Citizens: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part I
  

  There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first 6 months of a new administration.
  The fact that they got away with it before, with the “stimulus” bill, may have led them to believe that they could get away with it again. But the first bill simply spent hundreds of billions of dollars.

  The current “health care” bill threatens to take life-and-death decisions out of the hands of individuals and their doctors, transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats.

  People are taking that personally– as they should. Your life and death, and that of your loved ones, is as personal as it gets.

• Obamacare’s Phony Arguments: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part II
  

  The logic of their collectivist thinking– and the actual practice in some other countries with government-controlled health care– is that you cannot even pay for some medical treatments with your own money, if the powers that be decide that “society” cannot let its resources be used that way, or that it would not be “social justice” for some people to have medical treatments that others cannot get, just because some people “happen to have money.”

• Obama’s “Bait and Switch”: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part III
  

  Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans do not have medical insurance, hardy souls who have actually read the mammoth medical care legislation being rushed through Congress have discovered all sorts of things there that have nothing whatever to do with insuring the uninsured– and everything to do with taking medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and their patients, and transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats.

Tack one more nail in the American coffin. The rights-trampling frenzy continues with restaurant and bar owners being the latest victim burnt on the collectivist mob-rule stake as The People’s Republic of North Carolina has finally passed their precious smoking ban.

A similar attempt failed a few years back, but the statist yearning to rule by force is insatiable. This debate emphasizes the typical degree of concrete-bound, irrational thinking that consumes most of our population. If we were to extract the essentials from the average opinion supporting this law, we’d discover a criteria template that could justify any law imaginable. However, when the facts are considered, the silly, evil, and obtuse nature of this law is abundantly clear.

Relevant Facts:

1. Freedom: In a rational, civilized society, individuals are free to choose which establishments they patronize. Virtually all supposed justifications for this pathetic abuse of power evade or ignore this fact completely.

2. Property Rights: In a rational, civilized society, property owners are free to determine their own smoking policies. This is the core issue at hand.

3. Role of Government: In a rational, civilized society, the proper role of Government is to protect individual rights from forceful encroachment. Instead, this law relies on initiation of force by Government.

4. Objective Law: In a rational, civilized society, laws and legal enforcement thereof should be based on rights. If an action doesn’t forcefully encroach on an individual’s right to life, liberty or property, or doesn’t objectively convey intent to do so, it shouldn’t be illegal. Whenever considering any law or regulation, justice demands we ask “whose right to what is being forcefully violated?”, and if there is no clear and objective answer, then justice is not the motive at hand. In this context, where smoking is permitted by the owner and other individuals are free to leave, no one’s rights are forcefully violated.

Irrelevant Misconceptions:

“The issue is smokers vs. non-smokers…”

This issue is about the rights of property owners. The owner of a restaurant or bar has the right to determine his own policies regarding smoking. This law imposes on the property owner, not the customers. See #2.

“When you serve the public you forfeit your property rights.”


Perhaps in a collectivized, mob-rule nation ignorant of the concept of rights, but not in a free country. Individuals conducting commerce are traders - not servants. They are offering a value in the form of a product or service that other traders can choose to consume or not, depending on whether they find the value offered as beneficial in proportion to the cost. These two individuals, the traders, are the only two who should rightly decide on the details pertaining to their barter. If a consumer is unhappy with the product or service offered they are free to seek consumption elsewhere, and the seller must adjust his offering to remain in business. The only proper function of Government in the barter is to enforce contractual obligations breached by force or fraud. Any other Government intervention in this voluntary transaction is illegitimate and a violation of one or both of the trader’s rights. Only the competition of a free-market can rightly and justly promote change in the seller’s offering. In a rational and just society, this rule applies to any and every aspect of the business and barter. The fact that we’ve set precedent for such encroachment with OSHA, FDA, zoning, wage and countless other regulations does not justify yet another blatant disregard for the sanctity of property rights. See #1-4.


“Smokers don’t have the right to smoke anywhere they choose.”

This is correct, but the decision to allow or prohibit smoking is up to the property owner and no one else. See #2.

“Do you smokers have the RIGHT to harm other people just because you think it’s ok to smoke around them?”

Of course not, there is no such thing as a right to harm others, but this question evades the fact that the “victim” is free to leave an environment where conditions (including second-hand smoke, noise, temperature, food quality etc.) aren’t suitable. See #1.

“This ban is guarding the public safety.”

See #1 and #4.

“It’s a darn shame that a law had to be passed to prevent the inconsiderate nicotine addicts from spreading their disease and stench while ruining ones meal.”

If their lack of consideration offends you, you’re free to leave. See #1 and #4.




“Studies show that {insert any fact supporting the negative impacts of second-hand smoke} is harmful.”


See #1.

“An owner that accepts non-smokers does not reserve the right or choice to put the life of the non-smokers family in danger of death due to lung cancer to satisfy the addiction of a smoker.”

Their lives are only in danger if they choose to be present in such conditions. See #1.

These are only a handful of the common justifications used by advocates. As I hear new ones I’ll add them to the list along with a proper debunking.

Conclusions:

There is no just basis to support a smoking ban on private property - only emotion-driven rationalizations that undermine the rule of law, and scoff at the American essence. Objective law requires for an individual’s rights to be forcefully violated. So long as one’s presence in such establishment is voluntary, force is absent, and any legal intervention represents an injustice.

If all private restaurants and bars closed their doors (the appropriate response to this and any other meddling in business), how many days before this fascist tripe would be repealed? The first day they’d call their bluff. The second day they’d call an emergency session with expedited Governor sign-off so all the statist thugs in Raleigh would have a place to grab lunch, and this wretched idea would never be brought up again.

Do I look forward to the first Sunday morning I enjoy a completely smoke-free breakfast at Cracker Barrel? You bet I do. But, for that reality to come into fruition through an anti-American, rights-stomping, emotion-driven law is hideous. I’d rather endure smoky meals for the rest of my life to hang on to the smell of freedom than condone such a contemptible mob-rule measure. Precisely because this is happening in America, the first nation founded on justice and freedom, we truly are in the golden age of injustice.

Government that is…

Congress is working really hard to take government meddling in the economy to the next level.

The bill, which passed on a 247-171 vote, would give the U.S. Treasury broad powers to prohibit “unreasonable and excessive” compensation and bonuses that are not based on performance standards.

The “Pay for Performance Act of 2009″ is among a number of efforts by Congress to claw back bonuses and curb pay in the wake of public anger over recent executive bonuses at insurer American International Group, which has received a bailout worth up to $180 billion.

“The Pay for Performance Act is based on two simple concepts. One, no one has the right to get rich off taxpayer money, and two, no one should get rich off abject failure,” said one of the bill’s authors, Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat who co-authored the measure. “We should not pay an arsonist to put out his own fire, and we should not be paying an executive to ruin his own bank.”

Congress represents the pure embodiment of that which of both stipulations aim to curb! Why should politicians be exempt from these standards? Don’t worry though, the free-market republicans will stop this madness right?

“There’s no question we need more performance-based pay decisions, but the government deciding and judging the performance of employees in private companies, the secretary of the Treasury deciding whether an employee is performing? I think not,” said Representative Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican. “The answer is not a dramatic expansion of government control.“

In other words, “we need more government controls, but only so many new government controls.”

Just another nail in America’s coffin…

Leftists are in denial. Sundry media chumps, politicians, even center-left leaning friends and acquaintances are adamantly opposed to tossing out the labels Fascism or Socialism. The thought of explicitly naming the deadly fact that they so earnestly long for is very unpopular and met with passionate challenges to justify such declarations.

Have we really become what they dream of, yet dread to name? I think this question by Myrhaf explicitly drives home the point:

If the state is firing CEO’s and telling businesses how much in bonuses they can get, how is this not fascism? At what point does a mixed economy that is heading toward fascism actually cross the line to fascism?

Driven by the primacy of consciousness, where reality is only a arbitrary product subject to their mental discretion, so long as they don’t call a spade a spade it can remain any object of their choosing. Such evasion enables them to still consider the irrational altruist-collectivist-keynesian nightmare that America has devolved into as a progressive society of hope, so long as they don’t label it with any unbecoming title. Conforming to their moral code, altruism, collectivists seek all the essential aspects of Socialism, but implicit, lingering filaments of reason and rationality demand that they stop short of its full embodiment. They realize that the whole charade rests on the fuel of individual freedom. They want the benefits of freedom but also to wrangle it with statist power, to enjoy the prosperity of Capitalism but under the control of tyranny, to have their cake and eat it too.

Historical fact places them within a precarious quagmire - fact vs. wish. The brutal and undeniable record of statism has ingrained negative connotations in the minds of most luke-warm leftists such that explicitly applying Fascist, Socialist and Communist labels to America would present very uncomfortable contradictions - ones that would be impossible to evade.

As a result, they must try to find a way to camouflage the attack, both to the victims and themselves. One tactic is to think up a lofty title wreaking of sincere benevolence - Universal Health Care, Smart Start, Paycheck Fairness etc. - the other is to debate inessential technicalities in order to persuade that our version of collectivism isn’t pure, or represents a unique approach to establishing stagnant misery.

Societies are in constant movement either towards or away from freedom - in almost all cases away. If we’re not moving towards freedom and the individual, i.e. prosperity, we’re heading towards statism and the collective, i.e. misery. Since this country has long abandoned the former, only the latter remains as our final destination.

Does America more closely resemble laissez faire Capitalism or Fascism? I think without any question the latter.

This read is astonishing.

This raises a truly alarming question: can capitalism and democracy survive side by side?
[edited for relevant concision]

His conclusive question is valid, but not for the misguided notions he presents.

The answer is clearly no, Democracy and Capitalism are not compatible.

Capitalism is a system based on individual rights where Government acts to protect such rights as the sole agent of retaliatory force.

Democracy is mob-rule. Whether the gangs involved are political parties, lobby groups or grassroots organizations - they are all competing to condone and prescribe illegitimate government force to achieve their ends. Such goals can only be achieved by encroaching on other individuals right to life, liberty or property and cannot be accomplished under a system where said rights are sovereign.

The author seems to resort to the tired old false dichotomy of Keynesian meddling vs. full Statism, i.e., Socialism/Fascism vs. Communism - neither is the path to Capitalism and the prosperity that results.

America is not and was not constructed as a Democracy but rather a Constitutional Republic. To borrow Ayn Rand’s words -

The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protection of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.

Also, contrary to his apparent penchant for central planning, Keynesian madness is precisely the tactic (facilitated by a phony currency) responsible for all previous, current and our impending economic turmoil because it involves wholesale trumping of individual values, choices and accountability and the attempt to evade reality in a economic context.

I’ll end with the thoughts of Myrhaf:

The only solution to the entire crisis is the one thing our statist politicians cannot tolerate: individual rights. Get the state out of the economy and let free individuals dispose of their property according to their best judgment. No, Obama and his buddies want no talk of individual rights; they want the people to think of themselves as part of a collective controlled by the state.

Mob violence is a perfect manifestation of Obama’s collectivist vision of man’s nature. His altruist-collectivist-statist premises have no room for free, rational individuals trading peacefully with one another without interference from their masters in Washington, D.C.

Courtesy of Titanic Deck Chairs: