Conservative Monitor

I have been delving into the recent release, “How to Achieve Heaven on Earth“. No it is not a religious tome about the end days. It is rather, a series of essays about how to make the world a better place. Assuredly, of the 101 or so essays, some of them do have a religious slant, but for the most part they attempt to deal with the here-and-now, and not the here-after.

There are many thought provoking essays. Though the editor, John E. Wade, seems to attempt to pick a balanced crew of essayists, most of them lean to the left. This is not all bad as it gives me a chance to scribble in the margins and fulminate, and also decide what it is I really think about a particular subject.

For example, picking an essay at random out of the book, I struck on one by Peter J. Tanous. It is called, “What is the Money for?” It goes into detail about how most rich people ultimately want to help the underpriveleged and end up leaving legacies that do just that. The robber barrons of the late 1800s are a perfect example. Think of all of the buildings and endowments still around that bear the name Carnegie, or Mellon. Look at how Bill Gates is spending much of his fortune for Charity.

It all sounds very nice. It is great that people are high-minded, principled, and love their fellow men. The only problem is that this is not the solution to the world’s problems. People don’t seem to understand that in an economy, money is NOT wealth. Any economist who understands his subject can tell you that wealth is the sum total of goods and services created. If you have all the money on the planet and the only wealth out there is a pot to…well, cook in. Then all the money in the world is worth one pot.

This means that all this money for charity would be better invested in new industries that created jobs, goods, and services. Productivity is the solution to the worlds problems, not charity.

Now, all this does not mean that we should not have a safety net for people incapable of making a contribution to society. But it does mean that by being too nice to people we spoil them. We create an environment of inflated expectations. I would admire Bill Gates far more if he would have plowed his money into monetising the final frontier, or founding a shoe factory in Ghana.

Let’s get our heads screwed on strait, and not view what is good by the intention of the giver, but by the results accomplished by action!

Read my in-depth review of Heaven on Earth.

Leonard Semas has released his book, Reason Justice and Common Sense. It is a compilation of essays he produced over the last several years in his magazine, the Sierra Sage.

He takes a thoughtful look at many of the issues troubling America. Sierra Sage is a monthly magazine coming down from the mountain with insights and commentary. The great thing about this book is that it gives those who have not been subscribers for the last couple of years an opportunity to get a peek at what they have missed.

The stock market is in the doldrums, the price of oil is dropping and chaos reigns…in Venezuela. The fact is that life in capitalist countries may be tough, but in Venezuela things just keep getting worse and worse. So bad, in fact, that the whole country is on short rations when it comes to electricity. All the major newspapers and TV stations have been taken over by the government, and any hint of disagreement to Hugo Chavez is severely punished.

What has the socialist government of Presidente Chavez accomplished? Well, the redistribution of wealth is pulling the entire society down to the lowest common denominator. Chavez’s foreign adventurism fueled by oil sales has ruined not only his own country, but negatively impacted countries all about him. The standard of living of the people in the area is plunging.

The man promisses much to the poor, by taking away from the working class. But what little of his corrupt agenda he has succeeded in accomplishing has been due primarily to selling oil from the vast reserves in his country. What is ironic is that when oil is high, he has plenty of money to throw around. Oil goes up when the capitalist economies around the world are humming. Which means, the communist “Bolivarian” needs a successful world capitalist system in order to maintain its campaign against it.

But truly, this is no different than communism in general. Because it is so dismal at creating wealth, it must rely on raiding and destroying capitalist enterprises to sustain itself. When there is nothing more to pilfer, the result is devout poverty for all. How different from the capitalist system and Objectivism where everyones labor ends up contributing to not only their own advancement but the advancement of society.

A recent article in the National Review about how leftist policies are hardest on blacks reminded me of an argument I had years ago about minimum wage. In the National Review piece, we find that the minimum wage eliminates jobs that make a good starting point for minorities and youth to get the experience for a better job.

I had been talking with an engineer who lived well. He was a cosmopolitan gentleman with feelings for the lower classes. He thought that everyone should live as well as he did. For this reason he was adamant for the latest minimum wage bill hitting Congress. I told him that the bill would only eliminate jobs and drive up prices for the products most purchased by people on the lowest rung of the income ladder. He didn’t care that some businesses could not afford to pay minimum wage and that some jobs were not worth that amount. He asked me if I could live on minimum wage?

I told him, “No, I have to support a family of four, and a house. But I can tell you this, when I started out I made less than minimum wage. I lived at home and then pooled resources with a few others to get an apartment. I got experience, put myself through college, got a better job, then a better one, then a promotion and so on.”

The expansive, kind-hearted gentleman had no answer for this. When I tried to explain to him that his good intentions were causing more harm than good by denying people the opportunity of job experience, he merely blustered. He wanted so much to believe that he could benefit society by voting for minimum wage that he refused to acknowledge my point. Subsequently, the minimum wage passed and made life that much tougher for people on the bottom of the income scale.

This is the problem with liberal good intentions, they always lead to destructive policies all for the sake of the feelings of the liberal. Helping others is not as easy as voting for some bill! If you want to do good for someone, make a real sacrifice and DO IT YOURSELF!

Judo is a martial art where you use your opponent’s weight and strength against him. He charges you, you let him come ahead and just when he thinks he has you, you flip him over your shoulder. Now, I have never been much of a Judo kind of guy. I am more a fan of the Tae Kwon Do method of politics. Go right at the opponent and let him have seven times your body weight with every blow, and finish him with a side kick that generates enough power to simultaneously break through four boards.

What do the martial arts have to do with politics? Well, quite a bit actually. The Republicans just laid the Dems low in Massachussettes using Judo techniques. We let them run the state for 30 years, take over the federal house and senate, plus the presidency. The plan was to let them think they have it all, and let them get overconfident. That way they show everyone who they really are. And then flip, Ted Kennedy is out, and Scott Brown is in.

Well, it is nice that we got a victory. But we sure had to suffer to get it. All during the 2008 presidential campaign I heard conservatives saying, let Barack Obama be president! Let the Dems control everything. When they completely screw things up, then people will figure out that we were right and the Dems were wrong. I never agreed with this strategy, but I must admit that it worked in this case. Or has it worked?

We got one seat back in the Senate. We still only have 41 seats to their 59. we don’t have the house, and we don’t have the presidency. Yeah, if the 2010 elections were held today, we might be in the majority. But there is plenty of time for that to change between now and November. I’m not trying to be a pessimist. I am trying to say we can’t let up. The Judo Strategy is only going to work once. The Dems have finally figured out that they are vulnerable. Now we need to take up the Tae Kwon Do Strategy. Hit them with everything we have, which really means educating the public as to what works and what doesn’t. We have to get people to understand that the Republican platform means prosperity and the Dem platform servitude to the state. We have to select candidates who are conservative and will stick to their guns when they are elected. No more John McCains and Olympia Snowes.

Yes, the Judo throw worked once in the Bay State, but look what that strategy almost got us…and we aren’t clear of it yet!

Well, what do you know? We had a victory for Scott Brown yesterday in Massachussettes Senate race over Martha Coakley. No question that this is a victory for conservatives in particular and Americans in general. What is amazing to me is that some pundits are already wondering if Brown is going to run for President next time around (2012).

Perhaps, but I think it is jumping the gun just a bit. Why don’t we let the poor guy get used to being a senator first and see how he does at that. Besides, the Republicans don’t have enough seats to spare in the Senate to be giving up the Massachussettes seat already.

Senator Brown’s victory in Mass. has got me wondering how long this Republican tide will last. Truthfully, I think it depends largely on how the Republicans handle it. What caused the debacle of 2008 was the lack of conservatism in the Republican party, and even more, the seeming inability of conservatives to get their message out.

We have to view politics as a continual effort to educate the electorate, to get them to understand that liberalism generally does not work because when you try to control a very large system from a central point it becomes inneficient. That is what liberalism is all about, central control. Conservatism, in our country is about devolving that control to the lowest level possible and making decisions that are most effective there. This most often means on the individual level. That is why freedom benefits not only individuals, but society as well.

What I liked about Senator Brown’s campaign is that some of that message got out…and guess what…people liked it and voted for it.

Will conservatives see more victories in states like Massachussettes? If we keep telling it like it is.

A new book that has come to my attention in the last couple of days is  Opus Americana. It is a great keepsake to remind us all of the glory of the founding of the Republic. It is studed with momentos of the events, people, documents, and places that have made America the shining city on a hill! This item makes a great gift, nice for perusing. It is America’s scrapbook.

We sometimes forget what a great country we live in. With all the stuff going on in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake, I find new reasons to be thankful that I am here and not searching for my next meal in Port-au-Prince, not to mention digging out from beneath a pile of rubble. But what is so terrible about Haiti is not merely the disaster of the earthquake, but the on-going disaster they call a country. Poor government and a generally misdirected culture are just two of the problems.

I have often noted that countries that were colonized by the French in modern times tend to be in the worst shape. Countries settled by the Spanish are fairly decent, and those settled by the English come out on top of the heap. There is a good reason for this. It has to do with English concepts of self-government, self-reliance, and high standards of behavior (generally).

This is not to say that we should not do everything that we can to help the Haitians now.

We should, however, take care. The French and that Bolivarian blowhard, Hugo Chavez, are accusing us of taking advantage of the earthquake to invade Haiti. Which I find laughable. I am quite certain - if there is one bipartisan issue in this country it is our determination to help the people of Haiti and at the same time not to become enmeshed in the political mess. Obama would be more of a fool than I already believe him to be to become involved militarily in subjugating a country that is not only corrupt and undisciplined, but absolutely ungovernable.

I would encourage you to take whatever opportunity you can to help out those in Haiti. I know of at least one worthy organization, Faith-in-Action International. They are the kind of mission that helps others help themselves. Be generous. Show the world that we are willing yet again to lend a helping hand to our neighbors.

Who Turned Out the Lights, a new book by Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson about the energy crisis, got me thinking about some solutions for our current energy dilemma. Of course, the problem itself first needs to be defined. It is not that we are running out of energy. Far from it. The sun blasts the planet every day with far more energy than we know what to do with.

The problem is getting hold of that energy and putting it to use. Although Bittle and Johnson did not give me the answer in their book, they certainly pointed the way. It was a comment they made about carbon dioxide:  basically, when we use fuels made with grain crops, we do not increase the amount of carbon dioxide, we are only doing what nature itself would do on its own.

This struck me as a revelation. I had never thought of that fact. There really is only so much carbon and what state it happens to be in is immaterial, considering its relative constitution in the atmosphere. What this means is that we can think of carbon not as a global warming agent, but rather as an energy storage device.

As plants go through photosynthesis while sitting in the sun they are making glucose which, as any high school biology student knows, is basically stored energy from the sun. When we eat the food our bodies, through the ATP-ADP cycle, burn up the energy. When we make fuels from cellulose, sugar cane or whatever, we are simply converting the potential energy into a form that can be used by an internal combustion engine. When the fuel is burned, it becomes carbon dioxide, which is necessary for plants to again go through photosynthesis. And so the cycle begins again.

Doesn’t this seem to point up the answer to our energy problems. Even if you are one of those fanatics who are afraid fossil fuels will put too much carbon in the atmosphere. Why not just RECYCLE the carbon we already do have!

The other night I sat down and watched “Ghostbusters”, the movie, with my nine year old son. I only felt compelled to fast-forward once or twice to protect his innocence.

I really enjoyed seeing the movie again. I have always been a fan of Sigourney Weaver, and Bill Murray’s deadpan humor, though sometimes crass, is usually right on the mark.

Yet what I really found interesting was the take on government. The villains in this story are not the ghosts, or the evil Zuul, but it is the EPA. A snarling bureaucrat from the Environmental Protection Agency is the character who sets loose all the ghosts the heros have collected. Which results in a cataclysm that only the ghostbusters can deal with.

The story is a perfect illustration, albeit fictional, of how governmental interference can really screw things up because of over-regulation, dogmatic knee-jerk reactions, and lack of specific local knowledge.

Now, I am not one who believes we should be able to dump toxic waste in our back yard, or start our own trash dump in the garage. Practical limits have to be set. But there is little question that the government has carried regulation too far. It was nice to see a movie where the ideas behind the plot actually reflect reality, even if it is a silly story about ghosts meeting technology.