journal . Ben Sommer

But are they soft? Well, to the extent that they are motivated by feeling for their common man, I'd say that liberals are compassionate, empathetic, and well-intentioned. When they cross the line into outright effeminacy is when they lose their perspective - when is enough enough? Is it enough that Statist school segregation ended and freedom of association is now the standard, or do we need to force equality on schools? Is it enough that women and blacks and latinos can vote and face no Statist barriers to getting a good job or education, or do we need to 'Act in the Affirmative' to give them what they can't or won't earn on their own merits? Is it enough that we leave the rest of the world alone and not perpetrate aggression on other countries, or must we intervene with our military and state coffers to help the disadvantaged and oppressed third world? Indeed, is this a land of Entitlement or Opportunity. I admit it - I shout from the mountain top and tear my shirt over it - we WERE a land of missed opportunity and sham freedom for a very long time. But we eventually delivered on the promise of The Constitution. Is that enough, or must we perpetually make a show of remorse and regret and atonement?

In similar news, Bill Cosby has bravely stood up against the destructive mentality of victimhood in the black community. Predictably he is getting all sorts of flack for it.

Liberal vs. Conservative - Soft vs. Hard

I heard a talk radio show on the local NPR station this morning - with the predictably liberal talking-head guests discussing - or rather defending against - the conception people have that liberals are softies. In the course of the discussion this guy mentioned at least THREE TIMES that he was a graduate of both Harvard and Yale, as though to say that if one got a LOT of edumacation then it meant that one wasn't really soft for being liberal, but that one was just enlightened. Blow me.

Everyone now knows that I find The Establishment Left and The Establishment Right in this country both despicable, hypocritical, and demonstrably willing to urinate all over The Consitution and true American values at their leisure. But if I am forced to take sides I will for the forseeable future side against liberals. Though the Taliban - oh, I meant the Religious Right - would love to gut the First Amendment in the name of Allah - oh, I meant Jesus - I think enough of us plebes would revolt if they went too far restricting abortion rights, censoring media, etc. So that means that by far the most dangerous threat to America is the continued bloat of the Socialist Welfare State.

Liberals in government don't have a single idea that doesn't require more of YOUR tax money. Their first complaint when a government program - like Public Education - is not working is that it SURELY must not have ADEQUATE FUNDING. And so it goes. They play Robin Hood, confiscating YOUR money to redistribute to SLOBS (in the Teacher's Union, welfare supplicants, corn farmers) who won't work for themselves. And they accomplish all this in the name of 'fairness', 'equality', 'social justice' and other euphamistic and un-American values. Yes, this great nation of ours was not conceived as a land of forced equality, or unearned entitlements - but as a land of Opportunity. We should all sink or swim on our own merits. So until Liberals with their Marxist agenda are driven from places of power and influence - to quote the Arab proverb - the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Headline: Private Property Not Entitlement Empowers Poor

The Cato Insitute is my one stop shopping for information. I've got my own libertarian ideas, but they do the research to give them weight, which gives me ammunition to make compelling arguments on today's hot issues. I've begin spamming my extended family and friends every day with such missives, and though they are mostly liberal, they have surprised me with their receptivenes and eagerness to know more. Liberty is common-sensical. If only I could help spread this particular virus. I'm think of ways - starting with a streamlining of this BLOG, thanks to blogger.

Anyhow, Hernando De Soto - Peruvian advocate of capitalism - is today's essayist. What he says is so self-evident! Third-world countries suffer not from lack of foreign investment, or lack of natural resources, or (most surprising) disrespected soverignty (ala colonized Africans, or Palestinians), or 'unfair' trade with America - but from the Rule Of Law. It is the law that allows them to pursue creating their own wealth - through milking cows, carting tourists up the mountainside, leveraging the value of their sheep herds or taco stand to get a loan, etc - without fear of the local feudal lords or corrupt government deputies extracting their pound of flesh. What he says may even appeal to big-goverment Liberals - to set the conditions for proprerty rights and the rule of law, we need to engineer it. That means lots of interesting work (at least in the beginning of the enterprise) for third-world policy people, NGOs, and other bleedy-heart compassionists.

Notice:

This journal will hence forth be only about politics and news - I don't have time anymore to catalog how many and what color were my craps, and other domestic things.

Google is my backup

Indeed it is. Why bother with backups when you can scrape Google's database?

Those cowards at the Boston Metro didn't run my column on the Social In-Security meltdown, even though I got tons of fan mail from my piece on homo marriage - which starts in Massachusetts in 2 days. Here is a reprint. But wait it wasn't even printed yet:

The Social Security Scam - A Boston Original

Who would have guessed that a two-bit huckster from the North End of Boston could have inspired the greatest scam inflicted on us by the federal government? I did, that's who.

As an essentially self-reliant, hard-working, and ambitous young fellow, my attitude toward economics tends to fall on the conservative side. So you can imagine my horror at watching the bizarre spectacle of Republicans in Congress and the Whitehouse falling over themselves to lavish our tax dollars on massive programs from Homeland Security to Medicare to crackpot Defense R&D, not to mention the Iraq fiasco. The unfortunate irony is that President Bush's decidedly un-conservative moves on spending and the deficit crowd out his one truly visionary proposal: privatizing Social Security.

Its no secret that Social Security is in trouble. There have been many accusations hurled from left to right and back again about who is short-changing the trust fund, whether it should be tossed in a lock box, or whether benefits should be cut or taxes raised (gasp!) to meet the looming shortfall. While watching the slow meltdown of fiscal responsibility in Washington for the past three years the phrase Ponzi Scheme kept coming to mind, though no where is it more apt than when describing Social Security.

No, he's not that guy from Happy Days. Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who settled in Boston in 1917, was the first large-scale peddler of get rich quick schemes in America. His claim to double your money in 90 days! was supposedly based on his idea to exchange postal coupons from one currency to another at a ludicrous profit, though in reality he simply used cash from new investors in his scheme to pay off earlier investors, until the supply of investors ran out and it all came crashing down. All that's left is the mansion he built in Lexington, which you can drive by.

Some call this robbing Peter to pay Paul, some call it a pyramid scheme, and it has been illegal in most countries for centuries. Unfortunately this is exactly how Social Security works, with current workers paying for current retirees. Just like Ponzi's scheme, it works smashingly well as long as the ratio of tax-paying workers to tax-collecting retirees is high, as it was for the first few decades of the program. But by the time the Baby Boomers start retiring in five years, this ratio will sink to 2 to 1, where it was once 15 to 1 back in the golden 50s. What that means is that in a few short years half of working America will be sitting at home, retired, while the other half slaves away to pay their bills for them.

Privatizing Social Security is the only way out of this mess. Paying into private retirement accounts would us allow us all to accumulate a far bigger nest egg, making us less dependent on payments from the government, and it would help restore our Constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property. And unless you're rich already or plan to Get Rich Quick! like that goomba Ponzi, I bet you could use a little more property. To find out more about what needs to be done, visit www.socialsecurity.org.