Will You Bow or Will You Be Free?

From The Washington Post editorial page.

“That Apple and others behaved legally does not mean that they behaved beneficially, from society’s point of view. As subcommittee chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) pointed out, the net effect of Apple’s tax avoidance is to raise the tax burden on everyone else. Yes, Apple pays $6 billion per year in federal taxes, and that’s a lot of money — but not commensurate with its heft in the U.S. economy. The billions Apple and other firms hoard overseas are billions not working to create jobs here.”  (Full editorial here.)

Really?  Are we to conclude that, in the view of The Post, Apple is in business for the benefit of society?  And, Apple’s shareholders should pay more taxes to reduce the burden of other taxes on ‘everyone else”?  Mr. Donald Graham (chairman of The Washington Post Company) What is ‘commensurate with [Apple's] heft’ and may we see your tax return, sir?  If, in your view sir, Apple’s purpose in business is to ‘create jobs’ one could wonder: How many excess employees does The Post carry on its payroll for the sake of ‘job creation’ and how many are on payroll to perform some task that contributes to the company’s delivery its [shoddy] newspaper to its readers?

When The Post and the government have brought profitable corporations (excluding, of course, mass media corporations that do Senator Levin’s PR work for him) to their knees (metaphorically speaking) you can be assured that John Q Public is next - no metaphor, HIS KNEES ARE REAL, and the all-powerful state/media axis will expect him to bow down on command, even if he’s not a Tea Party supporter.

If they have no qualms about harassing a successful corporation – remember, corporations are owned by real humans (not big-wigs and robots, not fictional Thurston Howell IIIs) even working stiffs who invest their retirement plans in stock indexes and the like – why would they stop once they’ve gotten the corporations “in line”?

These people are ignorant and evil.  First they vilify money-making and the people who create wealth with innovation that results in products that millions of customers willingly purchase, products they willingly possess in exchange for $699.99.  Then, in the next breath, they insist that those evil, good-for-nothing, vilified corporate monsters ‘support society’ with some undisclosed, unknowable portion of the $699.99.  That’s an extreme version of “biting the hand that feeds you!”

At some point, the strike will happen, and the next Steve Jobs will be preemptively stomped upon and will crawl under the table and wait for the scraps the government lets fall off of the table.  The only limit these people know is ‘what can I get away with today?’  Are you going to stop them or will you bow down?  Are you going to crawl under the table, too?

NEWS FLASH: Statist Policies Produces Statism!

His antagonists should resist the temptation to merely “catch” Obama, to hope to find his finger prints on one or or more of these ‘scandals.’  Better to demonstrate that his ideology, his entire worldview, is based on the false premise that government knows best.  Better to highlight that the statists’ ideology is inherently scornful of liberty and the rights of the individual.  Better to re-teach Americans that such an ideology leads inevitably and invariably to the kind of behavior we witness throughout the behemoth government we are forcing our children to buy for us.  There is no smoking gun that would lead a detective to the Oval Office, as the ideologists throughout the bureaucracy know that state power has no bounds in this administration.  They aren’t following orders, they’re doing what comes naturally to all statists.

So what?  So we must throw the baby out with the bathwater, the ideology has to go out with its practitioners, and we can have peace for a generation or two.  Any thing less will be insufficient – Joe Biden atop the same governing apparatus will not result magically in less state intrusion in our lives.

Tellingly, the statists are angry that the consequences of their ideology have been revealed by recent events. They’re aghast that big government’s under-belly has been exposed.  They are despondent, dismayed that the discovery of rampant abuse of power will give their antagonists, those right-wing nuts and radio personalities, the chance to argue convincingly that big government can be intrusive, can actually threaten individual liberty, can be (egads!) tyrannical. They hate that bad things happening under big government can be construed as evidence that bad things can happen under big government.  They are undeterred.  They are not disappointed that their policies have produced an unaccountable, run-away bureaucracy that is predisposed to ignore constitutional limits on power. They’re mad they got busted.

What else do you need to know?

Benghazi, IRS, AP Phone Records . . . and Your Freedom

These are not scandals.  These are not a result of an administration’s 2nd term arrogance – I’m particularly tired of that chorus.  These are not stories with legs, not the controversy that will make Obama’s team reassess their approach to crisis management and press relations.  This is not Obama’s Watergate.

These episodes are symptomatic of a particular mindset.  They are to be expected from a power structure (ALL of DC, not just The White House) that thrives on the conceit that THEY know best how to run YOUR life.  They are not a government, they’ve become rulers.  They were elected to manage the affairs of the state with a very finite, limited mission (See US Constitution, enumerated powers clause – Article I, Section 8).  Instead, the political class has arrogated unto itself the power to affect every aspect of your life.

In the process, they claim to know how the entire medical and insurance industry should run, how much an aspirin or an open heart surgery MUST cost, how many OB/GYN doctors there should be in each town and whether granny should get a hip replacement or new crutches.  They know how much capital a multi-trillion dollar bank should have on its balance sheet, how many derivatives trades a hedge fund should have outstanding at one time, how much risk is too much risk, how much a collateral debt obligation is worth at any given moment, and how many futures contracts on soybeans should be written on a Wednesday in August during a leap year.

And, they also know these things about you and your life:

• how many ounces of Coca-Cola is too many ounces in one cup
• the right speed you should travel across the desert in Nevada
• what percentage of your income is the fair amount for you to retain
• the exact moment during a pregnancy at which a fetus becomes a child and shouldn’t have its spinal cord snipped with scissors
• the age at which your children should know what “homosexual” means (and it’s long before they can or should know about the emotional bond that should and often does accompany procreation, as contrasted with recreation that is)
• the kind of fuel you should burn in your furnace

They’re so damn smart, they even know the proper, sustainable average temperature of planet Earth at noon on May 14, 2099.

They know all these things and so many, many more.   And for your own good, for the good of the community, they’ll use the law to nudge you toward the behavior that doses the most good for everyone else.  In other words, since the community’s fate and well-being trumps that of any individual, you do not own your life, they do.  Or, as they like to say, the “community” does – and it owns your kids too, by the way.  These DC statists (Republican and Democrats alike) believe in a thing they call a ‘Social Contract” the premise of which is that you’ve forfeited sovereignty over your life to society.  It does not matter whether you knowingly entered that contract, once you crossed that line between fetal matter and child, you were bound by their contract, and that means you shall obey, FULL STOP.

That belief, the very foundation of their worldview and the role of government therein, is anathema to the concept of human liberty that is the basis of the Constitution of the United States.  So, why should any one be surprised that they use that document to line their bird cages?

The answer is not to search for a smoking gun or for Obama’s finger prints on a memo that says “Let Ambassador Stevens burn, I’ve got a trip to Vegas, ya know.”  The answer is to prove that their entire ideology is based upon a lie – the lie that denies this elemental fact of life: that to be free, to be a man, one must own his life – ALL of it.