Are eugenic sentiments on the rise again in America?

Compassion. Mercy. These are the rallying words of would be tyrants, not necessarily those with iron clad fists but those wearing velvet gloves, when they start going on about how all these undesirables and the unfit special needs children with certain disabilities is the moral or ethical thing to do.

It's because they know how powerful these words are as a motivator. Especially when you are grieving, because you're vulnerable. If they can actually convince you to kill your own child, they know they have you. If you can be killed from the inside,(willingly, you've willingly surrendered) you'll kill for them outside too, against any enemy foreign or domestic.

Children with special needs are (probably literally)angels, the lowest among us, the ones who need our protection more than any others. Completely and utterly defenseless.

Which is why seeing things like this which happen right there on national television is a truely scary prospect. The stand out moment is the show of hands. The crowd, how many Americans have allowed themselves to become dead inside when it comes to something like this puts an exclamation point on how dangerous of a position our country and society is in.

I'm not one who thinks it's all over, otherwise I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. But I do realize just how steep of a climb all of this will be, and I do think that history is one of the keys necessary to showing people that this is not a place they want to be. It's very hard to have a drawn out discussion about eugenics without heading off into nazi land, so I might as well just go there first and get it out of the way.

Compassion and mercy is exactly how it all first started in the Reich, it wasn't always about 'them jews'. If you want to see how dark your current path is, look at what others on virtually identical paths have ended up doing: Named: the baby boy who was Nazis' first euthanasia victim

German historians have identified the family whose request to Adolf Hitler that their disabled son be "put to sleep" was the catalyst for the Nazi euthanasia programme.

The five-month-old boy, who was given a lethal drug after Hitler sent his own doctor to examine him, has been named as Gerhard Kretschmar, the son of a farm hand.

The case was to provide the rationale for a secret Nazi decree that led to "mercy killings" of almost 300,000 mentally and physically handicapped people. The Kretschmars wanted their son dead but most of the other children were forcibly taken from their parents to be killed.

That's what I was getting at in the beginning. If the tyrants know they can convince you to believe that it's good to kill your own child,(and even moreso if you actually do it) they know they've got you. You'll do anything for them now. Anything. It only takes one to set a precedent. What happens after that is up to the intrigues of the dictator, depending on how ambitious their prospects are.

We were warned about all of this. An essay book titled An Argument Against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation - Thomas Mackay, A Plea for Liberty: An Argument against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation contains the following stark warning from Edward Stanley Robertson:

I have suggested that the scheme of Socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes a power of restraining the increase of population, which power is so unwelcome to Englishmen that the very mention of it seems to require an apology. I have showed that in France, where restraints on multiplication have been adopted into the popular code of morals, there is discontent on the one hand at the slow rate of increase, while on the other, there is still a ‘proletariat,’ and Socialism is still a power in politics.

History ultimately has played out a little bit differently. They don't just want the power over population increases, but life and death itself. That's what you're seeing in the Dr. Phil video, is the slow advance of statist propaganda as espoused in universities, the media, and elsewhere.

But some might say "In America, we don't have socialists". A rebuttal to this is unnecessary, as everybody knows America has progressives. What most Americans don't know is that progressivism is nearly just as bad. American progressives and British Fabian socialists long enjoyed a very friendly relationship, and here are the words of one such fabian. (caught on video, thankfully)

"I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board, just as they might come before the income tax commissioners, and say every 5 years or every 7 years, just put them there, and say, sir or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you're not producing as much you consume, or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the big organization of our society, for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can't be of any use to yourself

That's George Bernard Shaw. I would suggest that you don't spend too much time searching for progressives who will rip into Shaw, as that's a waste of time. Shaw is a hero amongst progressives. You can find equally disgusting comments right here in the states, from American presidents no less! America's 26th president wrote the following: (audio)

I agree with you if you mean, as I suppose you do, that society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind. It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding. Any group of farmers who permitted their best stock not to breed, and let all the increase come from the worst stock, would be treated as fit inmates for an asylum.

Yes, you read that right. An American president, Theodore Roosevelt, plainly wrote that humans should be bred like cattle to one of his eugenic friends.

Among paperwork for places with names like the "Human Betterment Foundation" you will find documentation containing things like this:

You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program.

The Human Betterment Foundation was headquartered in California. There was a whole lot of pro-eugenic sentiment right here in America long before it ever came to Germany.

This is not a road that Americans really want to go down again. Sadly, most of them don't know that's where they're headed. But I am convinced they'll listen, if they can just be reached. Modern discourse has forgotten just how evil the roots of progressivism are, which is why I do the things I do. I know my blog won't be read my many, but Youtube can't quite so easily be ignored.

Especially the youth of America. They must be reached with things like this in the long run, and Youtube is important in this process. If you truely want to reach a Youtube generation, then you need to put it on Youtube.

http://tinyurl.com/7na77fs

Did Franklin Delano Roosevelt read the book Philip Dru Administrator?

Yesterday I made a posting with regard to FDR's dictators, with which I realized after the posting I may have been chasing a ghost, a mere media creation. I did some digging into several executive orders(dealing with the creation of said commissions), and neither Czar nor Dictator appears in any of them.(This will be a long entry, so I hope readers will stick with me and follow the bouncing ball.)

Thus, I realized that I may have went about this the wrong way around. What journalists say and do can reflect reality, but often times is spun in a way that brings the truth into irrelevancy. Realistally speaking, Czar and Dictator are practically the same word anyways, so splitting hairs about which one was the true title is a waste of time. But this is not where the story ends, because during the process of information searches all sorts of things come up.

Sadly, the book Philip Dru has been a hot topic amongst conspiracy websites for quite a long time, and I would use the term "hijacked" - Philip Dru has been hijacked by conspiracy websites. Given that Edward House was literally President Woodrow Wilson's alter ego, "Philip Dru: Administrator" goes a long way toward granting insight into the mindset of a statist progressive. Philip Dru is one of those such gems that deserves not only our consideration, but deserves to be reclaimed from the doldrums of the web of conspiracists.

Now, there are plenty of places out there which have a high degree of credibility. Like the Ludvig Von Mises Institute. Mises hosts many great pieces of literature, many of which are there free for the taking.(quite literally, Mises is against copyright AFAIK and many of these books are post-copyright)

So here we go. The Mises Institute has a book in it's Literature Library titled Fabian Freeway, written by Rose Martin. See pages 158/159:

Labor, said Dru, should "no longer be classed as an inert commodity to be bought and sold according to the law of supply and demand." The Government would give employment to all who needed it. Dru "prepared an old-age pension law and also a laborers' insurance law," and provided for certain reforms "in the study and practice of medicine." Finally, he "incorporated in the Franchise Law the right of labor to have one representative on the boards of corporations and to share a certain per cent of the earnings above wages, after a reasonable per cent upon the capital had been earned." In return, labor was to submit all grievances to compulsory arbitration.

When the newly installed Democratic Administration announced the legislative program it wished enacted, House's novel aroused even more pointed comments. Cabinet members remarked on the similarity between Dru's program and the legislation requested over the years by Woodrow Wilson. "All that book has said should be, comes about," wrote Franklin K. Lane, Wilson's Secretary of the Interior, in 1918 to a personal friend. "The President comes to Philip Dru in the end." (8)

Among the junior officials who read the novel and took it to heart was a handsome young Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his doting mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, was then and always a close friend of Colonel House. The Texas Colonel was the first important Democrat to support Roosevelt's nomination for the Presidency in 1932.(9) Whether House presented a copy of Philip Dru, Administrator to the dowager Mrs. Roosevelt or to her son, (10) its contents unquestionably played a part in the political education of still another American president. It even recommended "fireside chats."

Given the close relationship between American progressives and British Fabians a century ago it doesn't surprise me at all that this information is in Martin's book. Just sitting there, locked away behind a virtual firewall of copyright waiting to be excavated like a diamond or a long forgotten Pharoah's Tomb. Full of treasures to be examined and discussed. Footnote 10 is the fascinating object here, obviously. It's an op. cit. to a historian named Arthur Douglas Howden Smith, who wrote the 1940 biography Mr. House of Texas (content blocked by copyright), which is recommended by John Dos Passos(who lived through the Wilson and FDR eras) as a source for information on Edward House.(and along with Mises/Martin, is much more credible than other sites) So we know where to look, and to what page numbers(Fabian Freeway says pages 366-367 are what we need) to reference, and knowing enough about the content by what Fabian Freeway says, I can get at the information via Google. There's some behind-the-scenes political stuff here that isn't so interesting to me, but I'm sure that some of my readers may put a higher value on. Page 366:

So the depression, when it came, with its continuous and paralyzing blows at land values, its annihilation of mortgage-holders without the provision of a new market to assume the mortgages at equivalent values, wiped out equities he could never reestablish. He lost considerable money, too, in carrying men whose plight, he felt, was not their fault.

The only beneficent feature of the depression, he considered, was its ruthless success in arousing the country to the false standards of values which had destroyed the people's ethical code, as well as their sense of proportion. He had no doubt about its effect politically; but it would be erroneous to say that he anticipated such a mood of panic and despair as swept all countries. As has been shown, he had anticipated the disastrous consequences to American finances, if an effort were not made to cooperate with European debtors to enforce a sane method of collecting Reparations and balancing the international debt structure. This, however, did not reconcile him to wholesale repudiation of debts by countries with the reputations and resources of Great Britain and France. "italy and lesser countries he could understand, but he thought that it was as regrettable for the two great democracies to resort to such steps as later he held it to have been for the Roosevelt Administration to repudiate the gold value of the contracted obligations of the United States.

This statement brings forward the story of Mr. House's connection with the sustained campaign which focused national attention upon Roosevelt and procured his nomination at Chicago — a nomination adroitly and painstakingly planned, but achieved by a series of classical political trades, betrayals and plain flukes - and his impressive election, by virtue of his own personality and the country's decision to fasten upon the unfortunate Hoover complete responsibility for the economic sins of Republican predecessors.

Page 367:

To promote the young New Yorker's real emergence upon the national stage as running mate with Cox, of Ohio, in 1920. After Roosevelt's illness and recovery from infantile paralysis, Mr. House again had advised him in his essay in New York State politics, which - with the additional sponsorship of Al Smith - helped to carry him to the Governorship. Mr. House's interest throughout this phase of Roosevelt's career was to make him a national figure, with the White House as the prize ahead; and in this Mr. House's aid was perhaps as important as the faithful work of Roosevelt's household political adviser, Howe. Mr. House had the wisdom and experience of years, and the prestige and national connections.

After Roosevelt was nominated, with fairly certain chances of election — to which Hoover had contributed by his ill-judged, but correct, statement of the preceding summer on the danger of going off the gold standard - Mr. House assumed that he was to be the new President's closest responsible adviser. He had no desire to replace Howe or to usurp the powers or authority of James A. Farley, the National Chairman. He wanted nothing to do with patronage, of course. But he did think, and say, that he expected to be consulted upon all questions of major policy, national and international. He perceived the country's plight, and the urgent need of corrective measures. His Philip Dru schedule for revision of the social and economic forces had not been carried to completion in 1913-21. He had not considered the time ripe for many of "Dru's" measures, and as the years had passed and he had ripened in experience, his doubts of the wisdom of many of them had been strengthened. But he had variations or substitutions which he considered adaptable to the United States of 1932, and he took for granted Roosevelt's willingness to agree substantially with his ideas. There were reasons to believe, after the Roosevelt triumph, that Mr. House was over-optimistic in his assumptions. It was political gossip that neither Howe nor Farley was partial to sharing influence with Mr. House. They considered that the place for an Elder Statesman was in dignified remoteness from the scene of strife - as per Prince Saionji. He should await a summons from the Palace before volunteering his advice, and not give it too often, then. The ardent young men of the Brain Trust, apostles of the New Deal, were still more firm in this conviction.

It was the ancient story of Age and Youth, and a Chief Executive who

Page 368:

was amused by it all, and determined to carry on his office in his own way, as the New Dealers ultimately came to realize. Roosevelt had no inclination to split his triumphs with Mr. House, after Woodrow Wilson's regretted example.

Not long after the election, I had an opportunity to discover the exact sentiments of Howe and Farley, exact sentiments in the sense that they expressed their minds so to newspapermen who had their confidence. What Farley said was: "Colonel House? Oh, no, we're not worried about him. A very nice old gentleman. We'll take care of him, but I don't think we'll need him." I thought this was authentic enough to convey to Mr. House. He was firmly skeptical. "I daresay certain people don't want the President to listen to me," he said. "But I'm sure I can influence him. He trusts me, and so does his mother. I've known him ever since he was a mere boy."

The next, and conclusive, indication of Mr. House's misplaced confidence occurred in connection with the pre-inauguration conference between President Hoover and the President-elect, which resulted in Roosevelt's refusal to cooperate with President Hoover to check the ominous run on the banks, the colossal losses of business and the impending "bank holiday." Mr. House was strongly in favor of such cooperation. He thought it was no time for one political party to exploit the mistakes of another. He had always believed, it will be remembered, that the outgoing party should cooperate in a time of crisis with the incoming party, and that a willingness to do so by the vanquished should be accepted by the victors.

I had an article in Scribner's Magazine of January, 1933, in which I said that the future policy of the Roosevelt Administration would be guided by the new President's disposition to take the advice of Mr. House or of Howe and Howe's associates. If Mr. House was heeded, the new Administration could be expected to be progressively liberal and intelligently constructive. There would be no forced radical departures from past policies. There would be an attempt to work with business so long as business was cooperative. There would be a broadening of foreign policy, and an emphasis upon naval building within treaty limits. As against this, if the advice of Howe and his friends was paramount, the country might look for a parochial attitude by the Administration, with an effort to develop every selfish political advantage.

This story was in circulation just before Christmas. President Hoover promptly telephoned Mr. House in New York, and asked him to advise Roosevelt that the President would like to meet with him in Washington as soon as possible to explore ways to work in common to avert a finan-

Page 369:

cial disaster. What happened is a matter of history. Who was right and who was wrong, of the conferees, is a subject of legitimate controversy. Mr. House accepted the rebuff to himself with his usual philosophy. He had tried, and failed. But he had no illusions left as to the closeness of his connection with the new President. He remained friendly, but, I believe, never gave advice unless it was sought, and then with detachment. He found himself increasingly out of sympathy with the ballyhoo and hustle policies of the New Deal. Much of what the Administration was trying to do he believed in, in principle; but he knew from experience that over-haste in legislation makes for frustration of valid accomplishment. He thought the Blue Eagle sensationalism of NRA was the sort of thing which might have been expected of a pack of Boy Scouts. He thoroughly disapproved of the attack upon the Supreme Court. He thought Mr. Roosevelt's purge politics against Senators who disagreed with him was nothing more than bad, cheap politics. He agreed with the fundamentals of the President's foreign policy, but he thought they were not too well applied, except as to Secretary of State Hull's web of trade treaties. For instance, he considered the conduct of the London Economic Conference amateurish and an aggravation of an already dangerous international situation. He was all in favor of the Administration's naval policy.

Now, an amusing aspect of the Roosevelt policies was that, according to internal evidence, Mr. House was mainly responsible for the most challenged and debated of them. He was hoist by his own petard. And the petard was Philip Dru and its radical preachments delivered two decades previously. I do not know whether Mr. House gave one of the original copies of his book to Mrs. Roosevelt, senior, or to the young man who was to become President of the United States. But he most certainly presented a copy to Professor Felix Frankfurter, of Harvard Law School, who found much to admire in Mr. House's rough conceptions for whittling out a better system of social justice. Professor Frankfurter - who is now Mr. Justice Frankfurter, of the Supreme Court - was scheduled to duplicate with Mr. Roosevelt, more than anyone else, including Howe, the part played by Mr. House with President Wilson. But whoever interested the new President in Philip Dru's ideas for remodeling th e United States, it is impossible to compare Dru's suggested legislation with Mr. Roosevelt's and not be impressed by their similarity.

Dru considered the Constitution "not only outmoded, but grotesque." He asserted that "every man or woman who desires work shall have it, even if the Government has to give it." He demanded an eight-hour, six-day week, which, of course, has been out-moded, typical of the way in which the New Deal outran Dru.

And from there, I can't find a way to get access to more. But what's being said here is pretty clear. FDR was surrounded by it. Between Edward House's(the walking and breathing Philip Dru) close presence, and Frankfurter's ownership of a copy of the book, the fact that so much of Franklin Roosevelt's policy choices mirror that of what Dru did is too convient to ignore, even if he didn't ever read the book. These are the things that House believed, and likely espoused in his advisory roles given certain known historical outcomes.

The salient point of comparison is the new redefinition of "Administrator", that is, the leader of the country appoints a group of commissioners/experts to deal with a specific issue. Not to 'administer' the government of a free people, but to be 'administrator' of the people specifically via a centrally planned society. This is right out of the pages of Dru and it's exactly what FDR did. Wilson too. And while we're at it, Obama does this as well.

Philip Dru Administrator was my first audiobook creation, and was partially chosen because it's poorly written. Now, I want to warn anybody who plans on listening to this, that it's extremely amateur. I've gotten considerably better at recording since then, but it is what it is. Just know that that's what you're getting.

For the text of the book, you can get it from Gutenberg or Google Books.

Update: I have been informed of other information in this regard.(and found a bit more)

This is a footnote in Arthur Schlesinger's book, in which potentially a copy of the book was requested.

The Swedish wikipedia page also has some interesting things on it that are not present on the english version.

Mainly, the reference to Herbert Tingsten's book När Churchill grep makten och andra essayer, which according to Google Translate means "When Churchill took power and other essayer" (I would think - When Churchill took power and other essays)

Roosevelt: this book is my "politiska bibel" - Political Bible. It's in there. Page 244.

http://tinyurl.com/6o673b8

Ickes Named U.S. Oil "Dictator"

In the Idaho Times, May 31st, 1941, the following was reported: (direct PDF download)

Ickes Named U.S. Oil "Dictator"

Petroleum Industry In Full Control of Interior Secretary

By T. F. REYNOLDS

HYDE PARK, N. Y., May 31 (U.R) - President Roosevelt today began implementing his proclamation of an unlimited national emergency today by naming Secretary of Interior Harold. L. Ickes virtual dictator of the $10,000,000,000 American oil industry.

...

Mr. Roosevelt, in a letter to Ickes, gave him power only to "make specific recommendations" to federal or state governmental authorities and, to the petroleum industry. But under the state of unlimited emergency proclaimed by Mr. Roosevelt last Tuesday night, there was little doubt that the "recommendations" of the new coordinator or matters of petroleum dispersion and use would amount to a virtual ukase.

A ukase is tsarist lingo. So if you're wondering how or why it is that we now refer to these appointments in modern times as "Czars", here's your answer.

FDR's 11 Dictators are as follows:

(1) Censorship Dictator (Dictator of Censorship)

(2) Information Dictator (Dictator of Information)

(3) Economic Dictator

(4) Food Dictator

(5) Manpower Dictator

(6) Oil Dictator

(7) Price Dictator

(8) Production Dictator

(9) Rubber Dictator

(10) Shipping Dictator

(11) Transportation Dictator

http://tinyurl.com/7xg42oc

John Rawls vs Ronald Reagan and the Founding Fathers

In one of his most well known speeches "A Time for Choosing", Ronald Reagan said the following: (text)

But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government" -- this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

This is the problem with wealth redistributors. They claim that they don't represent tyranny, they only want to secure man's economic certainty through redistribution, the "end of economic man".(Road to Serfdom, page 210) Yet in their books and speeches where they believe nobody is looking, they put pen to paper that give proof to his words. In "A Theory of Justice", John Rawls writes the following: (page 211)

It is reasonable to assume that even in a well-ordered society the coercive powers of government are to some degree necessary for the stability of social cooperation. For although men know that they share a common sense of justice and that each wants to adhere to the existing arrangements, they may nevertheless lack full confidence in one another. They may suspect that some are not doing their part, and so they may be tempted not to do theirs. The general awareness of these temptations may eventually cause the scheme to break down. The suspicion that others are not honoring their duties and obligations is increased by the fact that, in the absence of the authoritative interpretation and enforcement of the rules, it is particularly easy to find excuses for breaking them. Thus even under reasonably ideal conditions, it is hard to imagine, for example, a successful income tax scheme on a voluntary basis. Such an arrangement is unstable. The role of an authorized public interpretation of rules supported by collective sanctions is precisely to overcome this instability. By enforcing a public system of penalties government removes the grounds for thinking that others are not complying with the rules. For this reason alone, a coercive sovereign is presumably always necessary, even though in a well-ordered society sanctions are not severe and may never need to be imposed. Rather, the existence of effective penal machinery serves as men’s security to one another. This proposition and the reasoning behind it we may think of as Hobbes’s thesis 24 (§42).

So here we establish several things. First, John Rawls is without a doubt a formulator of some scheme of a centrally planned state, a "well ordered society". Second, this language of 'a coercive sovereign' comes right out of Hobbes' blueprint for tyranny, Leviathan.(far too few people IMO look at Leviathan as such a blueprint) But most importantly, we see the propagandizing angle of Rawlsianism(fear of the sovereign) as well as verification that Reagan was right all along. When government sets out to control things(distribution of property) it must set out to control people, and as we've been told, "the coercive powers of government are to some degree necessary".

He again uses this same language a few chapters later:(page 238)

Here the aim is to assure the cooperating parties that the common agreement is being carried out. Each person’s willingness to contribute is contingent upon the contribution of the others. Therefore to maintain public confidence in the scheme that is superior from everyone’s point of view, or better anyway than the situation that would obtain in its absence, some device for administering fines and penalties must be established. It is here that the mere existence of an effective sovereign, or even the general belief in his efficacy, has a crucial role.

Again with the scheming on how best to spend the public's money, and a coercive sovereign to keep the serfs in line. Page 236:

First of all, there is the free-rider problem.5 Where the public is large and includes many individuals, there is a temptation for each person to try to avoid doing his share. This is because whatever one man does his action will not significantly affect the amount produced. He regards the collective action of others as already given one way or the other. If the public good is produced his enjoyment of it is not decreased by his not making a contribution. If it is not produced his action would not have changed the situation anyway. A citizen receives the same protection from foreign invasion regardless of whether he has paid his taxes. Therefore in the polar case trade and voluntary agreements cannot be expected to develop. It follows that arranging for and financing public goods must be taken over by the state and some binding rule requiring payment must be enforced. Even if all citizens were willing to pay their share, they would presumably do so only when they are assured that others will pay theirs as well. Thus once citizens have agreed to act collectively and not as isolated individuals taking the actions of the others as given, there is still the task of tying down the agreement.

A little bit of socialism never hurt anybody. That whole 5th amendment thing, where the people are protected from arbritrary searches and seizures is outmoded. And in order to make all of this work, constitutional government will need to be fundamentally transformed. Page 244: (different link)

The allocation branch is also charged with identifying and correcting, say by suitable taxes and subsidies and by changes in the definition of property rights, the more obvious departures from efficiency caused by the failure of prices to measure accurately social benefits and costs. To this end suitable taxes and subsidies may be used, or the scope and definition of property rights may be revised. The stabilization branch, on the other hand, strives to bring about reasonably full employment in the sense that those who want work can find it and the free choice of occupation and the deployment of finance are supported by strong effective demand. These two branches together are to maintain the efficiency of the market economy generally.

The social minimum is the responsibility of the transfer branch

On the next page, the distribution branch is a real winner too:

The second part of the distribution branch is a scheme of taxation to raise the revenues that justice requires. Social resources must be released to the government so that it can provide for the public goods and make the transfer payments necessary to satisfy the difference principle.

This is what a pure economic dictatorship looks like, at least on paper. Your property is merely a dispensation of government. As I noted not long ago, Rawls is not generally in favor of socialism, and throughout the book is quite favorable to markets and market economies. If anything, these contradictions go only to show how right Hayek is in his discourse in Road to Serfdom about how economic dictatorships are still dictatorships and IIRC, end up moving toward total dictatorship anyways due to all the contradictions.

Economic liberty is political liberty. When one is successfully eliminated, the other isn't far behind. Our Founders knew this very well. Economic tyranny tries to cloak itself in stability and security via redistribution, but we know what Benjamin Franklin says about this. Wealth redistribution is what tyrants do, and "Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither".

Ironically, Rawls states in chapter 1 that he isn't setting out to describe a particular form of government, yet as the above demonstrates that's exactly what he does. He also describes the ideal legislator: (page 455)

The best that the ideal legislator can do is to design social arrangements so that from self- or group-interested motives citizens are persuaded to act in ways that maximize the sum of well-being.

This is more along the lines of what I was taught about Rawls in my classes. Social justice and the necessity of it. Wealth redistribution. Just as Rawls relies upon Jean Jacques Rousseau and Hobbes without regard for the fact that these two men espoused tyrannical ideals in their writings, so too did my classes gloss over these facts. Which is why I have brought it up. You're gonna need to discuss with your college age kids why Rawls is a problematic "philosopher" for any number of reasons, and here's the page numbers and words so you can(if at a minimum start to) do it effectively.

http://tinyurl.com/7gwo2uz

"Everyone gets a trophy" syndrome - where does this idea come from?

Are you sick and tired of seeing everybody get a trophy? Everybody's a winner even though they aren't? Let's just call it a tie, even when one clearly was smarter or faster?

Yesterday, I stated that John Rawls concept of the 'natural lottery' is the biggest thing that got my attention in his writing. This is a close second. Before I proceed here, I need to stipulate that I'm not laying the blame solely at Rawls feet, because I cannot prove that. But what I am doing is saying that the idea is here, in 1971, at least. But hopefully by putting this on the map someone with far greater capability for research can dig out the roots, because the way this is written it appears as if Rawls is referencing others. And unsurprisingly, it comes from academia and progressive professors.

In John Rawls book "A Theory of Justice", on page 276 he writes the following:

As we have seen, it is incorrect to say that just distributive shares reward individuals according to their moral worth. But what we can say is that, in the traditional phrase, a just scheme gives each person his due: that is, it allots to each what he is entitled to as def ined by the scheme itself. The principles of justice for institutions and individuals establish that doing this is fair.

Now it should be noted that even though a person’s claims are regulated by the existing rules, we can still make a distinction between being entitled to something and deserving it in a familiar although nonmoral sense. To illustrate, after a game one often says that the losing side deserved to win. Here one does not mean that the victors are not entitled to claim the championship, or whatever spoils go to the winner. One means instead that the losing team displayed to a higher degree the skills and qualities that the game calls forth, and the exercise of which gives the sport its appeal. Therefore the losers truly deserved to win but lost out as a result of bad luck, or from other contingencies that caused the contest to miscarry. Similarly even the best economic arrangements will not always lead to the more preferred outcomes. The claims that individuals actually acquire inevitably deviate more or less widely from those that the scheme is designed to allow for. Some persons in favored positions, for example, may not have to a higher degree than others the desired qualities and abilities. All this is evident enough. Its bearing here is that although we can indeed distinguish between the claims that existing arrangements require us to honor, given what individuals have done and how things have turned out, and the claims that would have resulted under more ideal circumstances, none of this implies that distributive shares should be in accordance with moral worth. Even when things happen in the best way, there is still no tendency for distribution and virtue to coincide.

Does it really surprise you that the "all are winners" mentality is rooted in wealth redistribution? It shouldn't. The progressives have long known that if they want to wear us down as a people and remove our industriousness, they need to do it at the school level. Wilson said this as plainly and openly as possible.

Again, I hope people won't automatically run around proclaiming this(page 276) the absolute source of the concept, because that is yet to be proven. What is proven, is that this man knew of an idea that he may or may not have seen written from another one of his academic buddies, and wrote it down here in this book.

But in modern America circa 2012, where is this mentality pushed the most? Some may say little leagues, but this is not accurate. Little leagues get it from somewhere else: the schools. Kindergarten all the way up to colleges.(I didn't get this part of Rawls ideals in my college classes, but I was taught Rawls. That's why I read him in the first place)

It's the schools who are throwing red ink overboard because it's too hurtful.

It's the schools who are pushing very hard this whole "self esteem" nonsense.(I found way too many articles to reference just one, sorry)

It was the schools who banned dodgeball.

It's the schools who have gotten rid of A, B, C, D, and F in favor of S, N, and U. In some places, the letter grading system is being scrapped altogether in favor of some weird numbering system. Note why the school system has proposed this: psychological reasons. It's too harsh, like red ink. And note the numbers: 3, 2, 1. But the numbers are not being used how you may think. The school system is teaching that if you're number 1, you're the loser. And if you got the 3, you're the winner.

There's a 3 for being on or above grade level academically, a 2 for being less than a year below grade level and a 1 for being more than a year below grade level.

What might go a long way toward actually diagnosing/curing this problem is recognition that America does not have public schools. These are government schools doing this. Government schools, full of big government nanny state progressives, who are polluting the youth of America with all of this.

What America desperately needs is a separation of schools and state. The colleges formulate these ideals, and 30-40 years later, they're widely implemented and highly destructive.

http://tinyurl.com/7aromy3

Luck totalitarianism and the "accidents of nature"

As I set out to read John Rawls' words, this was what struck me more than anything else - "natural lottery". So yet another progressive thinks we need a centrally planned state. Big deal. What sets Rawls apart is that he charted a whole new course and formulated a whole new conception, which is still being taught in universities to this day. In "A Theory of Justice", on page 73, Rawls writes the following:

Free market arrangements must be set within a framework of political and legal institutions which regulates the overall trends of economic events and preserves the social conditions necessary for fair equality of opportunity. The elements of this framework are familiar enough, though it may be worthwhile to recall the importance of preventing excessive accumulations of property and wealth and of maintaining equal opportunities of education for all. Chances to acquire cultural knowledge and skills should not depend upon one’s class position, and so the school system, whether public or private, should be designed to even out class barriers.

While the liberal conception seems clearly preferable to the system of natural liberty, intuitively it still appears defective. For one thing, even if it works to perfection in eliminating the influence of social contingencies, it still permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents. Within the limits allowed by the background arrangements, distributive shares are decided by the outcome of the natural lottery; and this outcome is arbitrary from a moral perspective. There is no more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune.

Hows this for a dangerous tyrannical idea? If you're born into the wrong family, you should be punished for it. There is of course more, I hope others will follow the various links and read on. Rawls doesn't fully lay out his thoughts on the "natural lottery" in A Theory of Justice under that specific banner, watch the language shift. Like all progressives, they play word games. Later on in the book, he develops his thoughts under the concept of "desert".[By "moral desert", he means what you've earned. Think of the phrase "get one's just deserts and get one's just reward(s)"] He uses other phrases as well, which I will bring up. What he's doing is striking at the very heart of "earning" and "private property" by questioning the very beginnings of life at the individual level. Let's use a real life example:

Because Bill Gates was born to a middle class family, he had a garage with which to start his business and build his dreams, while elsewhere there are people being born who are so poor they don't even have a garage. Ergo, Bill Gates didn't really "earn" what he earned. It's there for the taking! Government can come in and distribute it, government MUST come in and distribute it as these are ill gotten gains. It's the natural lottery. I did not overstate this. On page 310 Rawls writes the following:

There is a tendency for common sense to suppose that income and wealth, and the good things in life generally, should be distributed according to moral desert. Justice is happiness according to virtue. While it is recognized that this ideal can never be fully carried out, it is the appropriate conception of distributive justice, at least as a prima facie principle, and society should try to realize it as circumstances permit.

Now justice as fairness rejects this conception. Such a principle would not be chosen in the original position. There seems to be no way of defining the requisite criterion in that situation. Moreover, the notion of distribution according to virtue fails to distinguish between moral desert and legitimate expectations.

And again: (page 274)

no one deserves his place in the distribution of natural assets any more than he deserves his initial starting place in society.

See. Bill Gates didn't earn that garage, therefore he didn't earn what he worked his entire life to build. He was simply born, he had no "legitimate expectation" to that garage. There are children in slums who also have realistic and legitimate expectations of all kinds, which is why we need distributive justice. The Wikipedia page for Desert(philosophy) doesn't cite chapter, page, and words as I have done, but does note the same conclusion.

Now of course, what this ignores is the wishes of Bill Gates' parents. What Rawls' is doing is restarting everybody's lives on day one. Parents have the right to work their entire lives and can do anything they wish with their earnings, except pass it on to their children. That just won't work and it must be stopped. On page 88, Rawls makes clear what he means by justice as fairness:

The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action. In justice as fairness men agree to avail themselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benef it. The two principles are a fair way of meeting the arbitrariness of fortune; and while no doubt imperfect in other ways, the institutions which satisfy these principles are just.

And from page 86:

First we may observe that the difference principle gives some weight to the considerations singled out by the principle of redress. This is the principle that undeserved inequalities call for redress; and since inequalities of birth and natural endowment are undeserved, these inequalities are to be somehow compensated for.

Now keep in mind, Rawls wrote all of this in the early 70's. There are different variations of this theme, of being a beneficiary of something you "didn't earn". Father Michael Pfleger has a similar view, but he applies it to the whole of society:

Unless you are willing to give up the benefits, then you must be responsible for what was done in your generation! ‘Cause you are the beneficiary of this insurance policy!

One would wonder if Pfleger would've hung Stalin's children for all those people that he murdered en mass. Or, should successful blacks in America also give up what they didn't earn? Of course, while Rawls is plotting and schemeing against the successful people around him, he doesn't say a word about his own parents who were successful themselves, and passed on their earnings to him. He was the beneficiary of the very thing he detests, I wonder if he ever held himself to the same standard.

Now I don't immediately know where the roots of what Pfleger said go back to, but the point is the same. These are poisonous ideals aimed at the destruction of private property and thus, individual liberty. The goal is the creation of a "well ordered society"(Rawls' phrase) and in the end you and I would end up suffering because of it.

http://tinyurl.com/7rc6aez

Socialism restricts the redistribution of wealth

There are times when things get shuffled around, put in a drawer, forgotten. I meant to get back to this in a much more timely fashion, but it just never happened.

John Rawls' most well known work, "A Theory of Justice", is where he writes the following: (page 242)

It is necessary, then, to recognize that market institutions are common to both private-property and socialist regimes, and to distinguish between the allocative and the distributive function of prices. Since under socialism, the means of production and natural resources are publicly owned, the distributive function is greatly restricted, wheras a private-property system uses prices in varying degrees for both purposes. Which of these systems and the many intermediate forms most fully answers to the requirements of justice cannot, I think, be determined in advance.

Rawls last line in particular is alarming: "Which of these systems and the many intermediate forms most fully answers to the requirements of justice cannot, I think, be determined in advance"

So what.... the planners are just going to have to conduct a series of social experiments in order to make sure they get it right? At the cost of whose life, liberty, and property? Hasn't enough destruction been wrought out in America at the hands of progressives and their schemes? Oh well, I suppose. Just as long as the Rawlsians achieve their "well ordered society"? See my prior posting, he uses this phrase over 70 times in the book. Justice? Screwing around with people's lives just to achieve your utopian view is not just. This is not just.

Rawls is correct though, in that socialism would restrict wealth redistribution, as the state would suck all it up indefinitely. This is actually something you can verify across the wider socialist world, by noting how often socialists will complain about the 'excesses of capitalism' and so forth - it produces more and they know it. So did Rawls. Which produces a very fascinating contradiction in this book of his, A Theory of Justice. How does a would be planner properly plan society - a "well ordered society" - without growing government so large so as to end up as a tyrannical socialist regime? On page 241, he writes:

In conformity with political decisions reached democratically, the government regulates the economic climate by adjusting certain elements under its control, such as the overall amount of investment, the rate of interest, and the quantity of money, and so on. There is no necessity for comprehensive direct planning. Individual households and firms are free to make their decisions independently, subject to the general conditions of the economy.

This is too contradictory to stand, which is possibly why Rawls' theories remain a creature of college indoctrination and nothing more. So 'comprehensive direct planning' isn't necessary, how about indirect? How about piecemeal? Some form of planning is clearly necessary, otherwise you don't have a "well ordered society". 40 years after being published, these ideas are still being pushing in academia which is why I have no intention of letting it go.

I'm not in the class anymore where Rawls was a hot topic, which is what made it easy for me to forget about this. But this sounds a lot to me like the earlier progressives who wanted a more activist government, but weren't socialists either.

Should the colleges ever become successful in indoctrinating enough utopian Rawlsians, hopefully someone will find what I'm attempting to do here, and be prepared to deal with this at that time.

http://tinyurl.com/79dvrlz