The Myth of the Two Party System

A certain Soviet leader once reportedly commented, "We have a hard time convincing people in the USSR that our elections aren't rigged because we have only one party on the ballot, you Americans have figured it out though... you have two parties on your ballots!"

We do.  We have two political parties on our ballots.  But are our elections still rigged?  What good does it do to have two political parties if the people chosen to run against each other are hand picked for us by big money?

What good does it do to have two political parties if there's not an ounce of difference between them?

Case in point: Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney. 

Both support the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which gives the US government the power to indefinitely detain US citizens on US soil without a trial (a clear violation of the fourth amendment.)

Both support the right of a US president to assassinate US citizens if they are deemed a "terrorist" or a "terrorist sympathiser" by top administration officials (remember that this administration was calling the Tea Party "terrorists" not too long ago!)

Both support bailouts of big financial institutions that have made incredibly bad business decisions (rather than letting the bad ones fail so the good ones can rise to the top.)

Both support Corporate Welfare - the idea that the government needs to intervene on behalf of the corporations it wants to succeed--with bailouts, and tax incentives--and against those it wishes to fail--with excessive regulations and environmental restrictions (refusing again, to let the free market sort out winners and losers on a level playing field.)

Both support the idea that the president can take us to war without a congressional declaration of war (in other words, without the approval of the people.)

Both support Keynesian economics - the idea that government spending will improve a bad economy (in spite of the fact that we are so deep in debt right now that there is not enough physical money in the world to pay what we owe!)

Both support the Federal Reserve system and the idea that financial crises are "eased" (and Wall Street is buoyed) by printing more money (despite the fact that every time money is printed - without being tied to anything with concrete physical value: ie gold or silver - it is worth less in real spending power.)

Both support an interventionist foreign policy and the idea that it is up to America to right the wrongs in the world (despite the fact that the blowback from all of our international interventions has been catastrophic in every region we're in and the fact that we're broke and can't afford to police the world any longer.)

Both support continued foreign aid (again, even though we're broke and even though most of our foreign aid actually goes to interests counter to our own.)

The list is even longer but those are the points I can think of just off the top of my head. 

This Republican primary season has been a real eye opener for me.  I watched in amazement as all the big money interests, and their propaganda machines, got behind Mitt Romney from the very beginning.  I watched them weed out his challengers one by one.  And I watched them completely ignore the one candidate who doesn't share the common views listed above.

So what now that big money has chosen its contenders?  Who do they want to win?  That's the genius of it - it doesn't matter!!!  Either way Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, and the corporations chosen by the government will win.  And everyone else loses.

It's time to wake up America.  It's time to stop letting the media--and the big money interests behind it--pick our candidates for us.  We need to take our country back!

The Media Blackout Continues...

OK now... Ron Paul is either winning, or has won, the most delegates in Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Louisiana, Alaska, Maine, Nevada and even Massachusetts (Mitt Romney's home state) yet there is not a peep of this on Drudge, Fox News, or any other "conservative" (re: neocon) media outlet.  The media, both mainstream and neocon---believing the AP's "delegate count" (a made up prediction based on straw polls)---has declared those races "over" and has already placed most of those delegates in the Romney column.

This is a disgrace!!

But while the media sleeps, the rest of the country is waking up to find that there IS an alternative to "Obamney" and it is Ron Paul.

While every mainstream or neocon media outlet speaks of Dr. Paul as "having no chance", his supporters are silently taking the country back - wresting it from the greedy, soiled hands of the corporate interests and power brokers who have been destroying it for profit for the last 50-100 years.

Dr. Paul's message of freedom, liberty, sound money, foreign restraint and constitutionaly limited government cuts across party lines and has become the new rallying cry of the youth in America.  This also goes under-reported.  Perhaps what the youth realize (and what some of us old-timers are slowly realizing) is that big government is not the answer.

Think about this: there are currently 90,741 governments in this country, but one---the federal government---completely drowns out the other 90,470.  Is that really the answer?  The 90,470 state and local governments do a better job, and are more accountable to the people, than the monstrous federal behemoth does for 90% of what governments do (national defense, immigration and regulation of interstate commerce being the exceptions).  Why then all the hand-wringing about cutting the federal budget?

I think the country is starting to realize that.  Let's face it, there's a whole lot of government we could do without.  I also believe the country's starting to understand that there's only one candidate who would actually do something about that.

So keep an eye out because the fat lady hasn't even started warming up yet!!!

Ron Paul Or No One At All!!!

I've been a Republican for over 30 years.  I've never voted for a Democrat in my life.  But I've become so disillusioned with the Republican party lately---because of their hostility toward Ron Paul and his supporters (like myself)---that I've decided that I will not vote for anyone else.  I don't care who the nominee is, if it isn't Ron Paul, I'll write his name in (or I'll stay home).  I'm so sick of this "electability" crap!  Ron Paul is the only candidate who represents me, and, in a representative form of government, that's all that matters!

If that helps Obama get re-elected, so be it.  I honestly don't care anymore.  If the Republican party cared about that - they wouldn't treat their own members with such disdain!  Screw them.  4 more years of Obama is what they deserve!!

Chris Berman Foreign Policy

Ever notice how schizophrenic our US foreign policy is?  Like a bad politician, we were always "for that dictator before we were against him"!  It's not like our foreign policy is "evil" or the product of bad intent though - the United States has always been well-intentioned enough when it comes to our dealings with other nations.  It's just that we really don't know enough about what we're doing.  There always seem to be a slew of unintended consequences to our foreign entanglements (of course the same can be said for all manner of central planning!)

Take Iraq for instance...  We went there to eradicate Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" and to stop him from "handing them over to Al Qaeda".  Then, when it turned out that neither of those reasons were valid, we changed it to a Wilsonian "spreading of democracy".  All of those things are well intentioned and noble on their face, but unfortunately, like every big government intervention into volatile areas, reaped all manner of unplanned consequences (more oil contracts for China and more dead Iraqi Christians to name just two.)

And, have you ever noticed how every time we slap sanctions on a country, Russia and China step in and start trading with that country?  Is it because Russia and China are our sworn enemies?  Or is because they are smart enough to recognize large untapped markets when they see them?  I have to think it's the latter.  Of course this leaves all the "experts" scatching their heads and wondering "why do Russia and China always oppose us?"  Well DUH!! 

In truth, our foreign policy can only be described as---to paraphrase ESPN's Chris Berman---"bumblin', stumblin', foreign policy!"

Why Are Conservatives Such Pussies?

I was listening to Mark Levin on my way home from work and he made a statement to the effect that "when conservatives get into office they try to shrink government but when liberals get in they try to grow it".  All I could think was "why are conservatives such failures?"  Nobody's shrunk government in decades!  In fact, government grew exponentially with Republicans in charge of everything!!  It immediately hit me that the reason conservatives are such dismal failures is because they fail to embrace any sort of radicalism for their cause.

Take the debt ceiling debate last year: conservatives had the chance to make a radical change in the way government works... all they had to do was vote against raising the debt ceiling and immediately the federal government would have been forced to live within its means.  But did they do it?  Hell no!  That would be "too radical!"  And the debt spirals out of control.

Now look at the Republican presidential candidates: only one of them is proposing anything close to "radical" spending cuts and the entire Republican establishment can't do enough to distance themselves from him.  All I can say is WTF?  Ron Paul proposes a trillion dollars in real spending cuts and the "conservatives" run and hide!  "It's too radical!"  "We need someone electable!"  And the debt spirals out of control.

What are Romney's proposed spending cuts?  How about Gingrich's?  Santorum's?  Nobody knows because every conservative journalist, every conservative talk-show host, every conservative debate moderator will not ask the question!!  "We can't talk about spending cuts - that's too radical and it might scare people!"  And the debt spirals out of control.

Does God Have Any Potential?

(Disclaimer: These are the ramblings of an amateur philosopher and thus these thoughts -- while new and exciting to me -- have probably been answered thousands of times already by real philosophers throughout the ages.  That said, I’m just going to say them anyway!  So here goes…)

Question:  Would something that is pure actuality necessarily have all active potentiality?

Aristotle defined two types of potencies: active and passive.  Active potency is that which is intrinsic to the thing because of its nature – it requires no external source of activation (an acorn has the active potential to be a full grown tree.)  Passive potency requires an external source of activation in that it is not in the nature of the thing to actualize (a tree has the passive potential to be a chair.)

My thoughts on that are these:  When an acorn becomes a tree -- although it exhibits many physical changes -- its nature does not change.  Thus active potency entails no change of nature.  In fact active potency is derived entirely from the nature.  The two are inseparable.  A thing’s nature entails all that it is and all that is in its nature to do or be.  In fact, it can be argued that the nature is the 'being' and the changes are not 'new beings' or 'changes of being' but rather actions stemming from the 'actual being'.  Thus, when an acorn ‘changes’ into a tree, it is not a change of being at all but rather the acorn acting according to the active potency of its nature.  The development into a tree is the nature of the acorn in action.

Now God is shown, through the five ways, to be a necessary, purely actual being whose essence just is to exist.  God is said to have no potential – active or passive.  This doesn’t make sense to me.  While it is certainly true that God can have no passive potential, I think the case can be made that -- because of his purely actual nature -- God necessarily has all active potential.  If active potency encompasses all that a being can do, then God -- who can do anything that is possible -- has the active potency to do all things.  In other words God has pure active potency.  The acorn can only do the things necessary to grow into a tree, it cannot do things to cause itself to play golf, nor can it read a book.  God, on the other hand could conceivably do all these things.  What’s more, if God has no active potency, then his ability to do anything is incoherent unless he is actually doing all possible things at all possible times – which is itself incoherent.  If God is not actually doing all possible things, all the time, his ability to do so when he chooses must be described as “pure unlimited active potential”. 

Thus, I’d argue, the nature of God -- which is purely actual -- necessarily possesses all active potential. 

[Postscript:  I brought this up in a post over at Edward Feser's blog and he confirmed that, not only has this issue been hashed out a long time ago, but none other than Thomas Aquinas himself said the same thing I'm saying!!!  (See Summa Theologiae I.25.1:)  Thank you Dr. Feser!]

US Foreign Policy: More Big Government

Why is the US taxpayer paying for the "defense" of Germany, Japan, and South Korea?  Aren't these all prosperous countries capable of paying for their own militaries?  Why then is the US taxpayer saddled with the bill? 

Well, it turns out the answer is pretty simple: Like every other government program, our military bases overseas (there are around 900 of them!) are just a symptom of a bloated federal government's constant overreach.  Installing military bases all over the globe is nothing more than big government trying to solve the world's problems.  That's right, not content with solving all domestic problems, our wonderful government has decided that it, (and only it), can solve all of the world's problems as well!  If you're for small government, you should be against the ever expanding role of the federal government - including its expansion into the affairs of sovereign nations around the world that are, truth be told, none of its business!  (Just like most of the domestic problems it is "solving".)

Here's the truth about our military bases overseas: The countries who want us there, don't need us there - they can afford to pay for their own defense; and the countries who don't want us are not worth defending anyway!  In fact there's ample evidence that a lot of our terrorism problems around the globe are generated from blowback due to our heavy handed interventionism.  We would actually be safer if we closed all our foreign bases.  If you doubt this, think of Canada: They are not being attacked by terrorist organizations like we are.  And why is this?  They have the same freedoms and lifestyle the world supposedly hates us for - so it can't be that.  The difference is that they have no foreign bases (that I know of anyway) and a non-interventionist foreign policy so they are not constantly inserting themselves into other nation's affairs.  (Even Canadian big government does not stretch to foreign lands!)

If any of the candidates for President are serious about ending BIG government (and only one of them is), they will pull the theiving hand of government out of our pockets, stop the spread of government into foreign lands, and keep OUR money here at home!