The Welfare State We'll Be in Soon - A Cautionary Tale

The English author, James Bartholomew, in his book The Welfare State We're In, discusses the serious societal changes of attitude and character that have "gone badly" in England, since the 1950's.

To illustrate this change gone badly, Bartholomew relates that before creating their welfare state of free education, free housing, pension and free medicine you could go to a soccer game and watch very orderly rows of fans applauding their team.

Today with a massive change in gang violence, of English fans out of control, architects have had to design stadiums to keep fans separate because now they are expected to fight each other after a game.

In 1950 only 3.4% of the population were on public assistance. Since then, England has experienced a 134% increase of wealth.

With such an increase, the 1950's government might have expected only 1% would be on welfare. Not true! Today 29% are getting pulic assistance. One third of the population!

Watch the panel discussion on his book at: (Advance the tape to start at 5:00 minutes)

http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=6105

Judge Sotomayor Blurs Separation of Powers

The Founders of the Constitution separated powers into three branches to prevent the power hungry from getting too much power.

Judges who follow the European judicial model believe that power best resides in enlightened individuals.

That was the foundation of the French Revolution.

The American Founders did not believe individuals were the best repository of power. They thought institutions were better able to guard against evil justices who grab for power.

When Baarak Obama says he wants a special person with empathy, he really wants a usurping justice to safeguard the rights of the poor; he really means he wants an activist judge who believes she is an anointed vessel of judicial light and compassion that is otherwise unavailable.

Such judges are dangerous to a free people, for these jurists will elevate special classes of people to special protection status, thus unequally applying the law.

Such judges, who seek special justice for special classes of people, will apply the law in specially skewed ways; they will do all in their power to subjugate people whom they think are threats to the social order the judges are trying to protect and promote.

They will create a new special class of people they believe have for too long been mistreated and deprived.

Hate Crimes Law is Really Thought Control Law

A scholar at the Cato Institute warns of the danger of hate crimes as thought crimes. These laws violate the First Amendment.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF2bBsKCBhA&feature=sdig&et=1242038806.65

Health Care Officials Will Decide Who Gets "Free" Health Care

Mark Steyn wrote, April 2009, in Imprimis:

Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place.

That's the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets, or the creepy teams of government nutritionists going door to door in Britain and conducting a "health audit" of the contents of your refrigerator...all this for the "free" health care - and in the end you may not get the "free" health care anyway.

Under Britain's National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements.

Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says it's appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of "lifestyle choices."

-Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale college. Read the entire article at:
http://www.hillsdale.edu/images/userImages/mvanderwei/Page_4221/ImprimisApril09.pdf

Al Gore Parodied with the 1984 Apple Computer Spot

See this video:



http://www.cei.org/1984

Star Trek vs. Star Wars - Federalism vs. Anti-Federalism

In Star Trek, the federal government is a force for good; in Star Wars, it is an evil leviathan.

The Trek experience is based on the assumption that humans will go beyond the apocalyptic impulse and emerge in future millennia as a federal force for good. As the recent Newsweek article put it: a Peace Corps on interstellar missions of goodwill.

In Star Wars the federal centralized government is seized by power hungry individuals who see themselves as the annointed to bring order to the universe.

Remember, Darth Vader's hand reaching out to Luke Skywalker, revealing that he's not just his father, but that by joining him they can create a Utopian society?

Stars Wars is the Star Trek Federation run amok - emerging as an evil empire, made more sinister and prolonged because of "a perverted science," as Churchill put it as he opened Britain's resistance to Hitler's regime.

That we believe Star Trek is "the vision of the annointed" - to borrow a phrase from Stanford scholar, Thomas Sowell - and not the dangerous Star Wars Empire, shows how naieve the 60's Generation actually is.

Star Wars is the Anti-Federalist impulse that gave us the Bill of Rights. It is that distrust of all federalist, central committee drives to consolidate power.

Distrust anyone dripping in Federation vision, and live quietly on Alderon with your families, because soon a federation will come and make everyone drink the wine of its fornication.

Then, the Death Star they build will be more powerful than the simple, mindless collective of the Borg.

With $10 Million, The Leonardo Center Should Be Inclusive of All Utahns

The Leonardo Center in Salt Lake should not receive $10 million until they demonstrate that the science and documentary arts they spread will be inclusive of all peoples in the Salt Lake area.

For example, the trajectory of the Center's oral history section disparages the Mormon Church with pejorative stories that deprecate Mormons, and create a stereotypical monolithic story line that seeks to reveal institutional racism.

And yet, the varied nuance of human history is nowhere found in the gathered stories.

And these stories are to provide the text for all sorts of mockumentaries and docudramas
about Mormons and the Mormon Church!

Missing from Les Kelen's Missing Stories are stories of Utes, African-Americans, Jews, Chinese, Italians, Japanese, Greeks and Chicano-Hispanics who have benefitted from their association with Mormons. But according to Kelen, you would have to talk to people who have converted to Mormonism to find such stories.

And whose kind of science is to be advanced at the Leonardo?

Taxpayers recently spent some $70 million on one of the finest public libraries in the nation. Why did we need a science center, unless it was to push a certain kind of science?

The use of Gunter Hagen's plastinated real human bodies on public display illustrates the kind of science that the Leonardo says we are "hungry for" here in the backwoods of illiterate Utah!

Look for, at the Leonardo, a Logical Positivism that enshrines science as an immutable, infallible guide to human progress, while leaving issues of the human heart on the dissection table. Tellingly, it wasn't until people in the United States squawked loudly about the display of executed Chinese political prisoners did Hagen finally incinerate their bodies.

In addition, the countries which gave a warm welcome to the public display of cadavers in BodyWorld - Germany, Russia and China - are the same countries with a record of mass murders in the millions by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. That Hagen so casually displayed such bodies back East does tell something in the end.

The Leonardo Center is left-of-center in its political persuasion. It is not inclusive but highly divisive.

A staff member said: One day, we expect that visits to our center will exceed that of Temple Square. So then, it's not about science; it's about another screw-you to the Mormon Church.

You'd think that with $10 million we could purchase some common ground somewhere!

Now where have I heard that before?