Choose Love

The other day I was taking an Uber to the airport and chatted with the driver along the way. When I mentioned my wife, she asked how long I have been married. I told that this year will mark our 43rd anniversary. She immediately asked how I had managed to stay married for so long.

I told her that every day I chose to love my wife more than I love anyone else.

"Love is a choice." I told her. "It is something you choose. It is not something that happens to you."

Hollywood loves to sell us on the fabulous lie that we fall into (and out of) love. 

While it is true that sexual attraction can happen to you, love cannot. Sexual attraction may involve hormones, pheromones, and other stimuli that bombard you, so in that regard attraction can happen to you. Unlike sexual attraction, love doesn't happen to you, it is something you choose.

And before we move off the topic of sexual attraction, while that can happen to you and catch you unawares, what you do about that attraction is entirely your choice. You can ignore it. Walk away from it. Or, you can indulge it. Regardless, after the initial unexpected jolt, what happens next depends entirely upon the choices you make. So, own it.

When we foolishly and erroneously talk of love as something we fall into or out of, we willfully ignore and excuse ourselves for the choices we make. 

Love is not something you fall into. You are walking down the street, not watching you step and accidently step into an uncovered hole at the bottom of which is a pile of love. Likewise you aren't walking down the street covered in love and fall into a hole and the love you felt for someone is suddenly thrown off, out of reach on the street above you where you walked a moment before.

Let's move off for a moment from the topic of the love that binds the lives of people together in a relationship that brings out the best in both of them. Let's talk about the broader situation where we need to choose to love.

Choosing to love is the hard choice that makes life much easier. Just as choosing to hate is the easy choice that makes life harder.

Today, we are living in a world that is being torn asunder with hatred and enmity. Too often our political and sometimes even our religious leaders teach us that those who don't agree with us are evil and hateful. They are bad people. 

This is taught in political rallies all the time. 

The people in the other party want to destroy you and your way of life. They must be stopped at any cost. Whatever you do to thwart them is good, and whatever they do is always bad. They are a threat to your very existence.

In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus of Nazareth taught that we should love those that hate us and pray for those who despitefully use us. Christ showed that God hates the sin and loves the sinner.

We can, and should, stand up for what we believe is right. However, we must not hate those who don't agree with us. In fact, we must choose to love them in spite of whatever "sin" they embrace and even in spite of however they may "despitefully use [us]."

When others actually harm you, or even appear to be supporting things that may harm you, it is easy to hate them. Unfortunately, when you choose to hate, you fill your life with hate.

Hate is the easy choice that makes your own life hard.

In contrast, when you choose to love, you make a hard choice which ends up making your life so much easier because when your life is filled with love, everything is easier to bear.

Just to be clear, I know that evil is real. I know that there absolute, cosmic standards which differentiate between right and wrong, good and evil. Yes, I believe that both Christ and Lucifer are real individuals, each with their own agendas and followers, both seen and unseen.

I also know that there will come a great day of reckoning where each of us in turn will stand before God and account for our actions, choices, deeds, words, and thoughts in this life. 

While I can see the actions of a person and typically judge correctly if they are good or evil, I can never have the knowledge needed to be able to say if that person is good or evil. That judgement is left wholly to God, because he sees the entire picture of each of us.

The great news is that each of is given the gift of choice. We have our own agency and freedom to choose. However, we don't have freedom from the consequences of our choices. Many of those consequences are as inevitable as the effects of gravity.

When we choose to hate, the consequence is that our thoughts and feelings in all aspects of our lives become tainted with the grit of bad feelings. Too often this results in the destruction of the loving relationships we have in our lives. Then, we end up alone, bitter, and hateful, i.e., full of hate.

When we choose to love, even when unlovely things happen or are done to us, our thoughts and feelings are lubricated with love. Bad things happen, but they don't destroy us. Others try to wound us with their words and deeds, but regardless of the harm they do us, we know that they are harming themselves even more and we feel sorrow for them. 

When we choose to respond with love to hate, it confuses people. It also deprives them of their opportunity to control us. If we only give love for love and harm for harm, then anyone can control us. They can lead us to destruction with words and deeds which appear to be kind and loving. They can drive is to do great evils by prodding us with anger and blatant harms.

I could go on, but I believe I have made my point. I hope you will ponder my points and add your own. 

Our ability to choose how we act, instead of reacting, is a singular quality that sets us apart from the brute animals. The only way we will quell the divisive and violent nature of our society (and our lives) is to choose love.

See Tom's political views on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TomSheppardPoliticalViews/
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
 Godvernment: Government as God

Conspiracy Theory or Fact?

(c) 2014 by Stefan Kunert; Used under license from DepositPhotos.com

When does a conspiracy theory become fact?

We have been conditioned to discount and deride accusations of conspiracy. “Conspiracy theorists” are openly derided and automatically depicted as tinfoil hat-wearing near-lunatics. For many years I, like so many others, tended to adopt this same benign disregard for anything labeled a conspiracy or conspiracy theory.

Recently, my thinking was challenged when I read an author who asserted that throughout history conspiracies are the norm, not the exception. I decided to test the validity of this assertion. To do that I started with defining the word conspiracy. This forced me to first look at the definition of the root word, conspire.

A conspiracy is formed when people conspire. Self-referential definitions are meaningless, by themselves. So, to define what is a conspiracy, we must first determine what it means to conspire.

Per Dictionary.com conspire, a verb, means:

1.     to agree together, especially secretly, to do something wrong, evil, or illegal:

2.     to act or work together toward the same result or goal:

In today’s world the terms “wrong”, and “evil” are considered relativistic value judgements; meaning what is considered wrong by one person may be considered right, by another. This is epitomized in the saying, “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”

This means, we must discard those values-based elements from the definition. They become part of the connotation versus the denotation of the word. We all know that the connotation of a conspiracy is that it has bad intentions. Unfortunately, that connotation is preventing us from accurately evaluating the truth of the notion that conspiracies are widespread and normal.

For similar reasons we can disregard the connotation of “illegal.” What is legal varies too widely from one part of the world to another to provide any help with this exercise.  For instance, is countries where Sharia Law prevails homosexuality is illegal and punishable with death, while in the US it is legally recognized as a form of marriage. Because of this variability we must discard the illegal modifier as another value-based part of the connotation rather than a legitimate part of the definition of conspire or conspiracy.

This leaves us with the simple elements of agreeing together, acting or working together, toward the same goal or result. While “especially secretly” is thrown in, that too is more of a connotation than the actual definition. It isn’t reasonable to assert that a publicly viewable conspiracy is less of a conspiracy than a private one. Public or private, they both meet the same criteria of being two or more people working cooperatively toward a common goal.

Per Dictionary.com a conspiracy, a verb and a noun is defined as follows:

1.     the act of conspiring.

2.     an unlawful, harmful, or evil plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.

3.     a combination of persons for such an unlawful, harmful, or evil purpose:

4.     He joined the conspiracy to overthrow the government.

5.     Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.

6.     any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result.

Again, to get at the definition we must strip away the values-based connotations which have been used to modify the definition. When we set aside “unlawful”, “evil”, and “harmful” that also allows us to disregard the adjectives (or adverbs) of “crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.”

All this leads me to the unambiguous definition of conspire (the verb) to be:

·       Two or more people agreeing to do something.

And conspiracy (the noun) becomes:

·       Two or more people cooperating to achieve a common goal

Stripping out relativistic values from the definition, we are left with a definition that can apply as accurately to the Boy Scouts, or the US Senate, as to Al Qaeda.  

Well, perhaps the US Senate doesn’t qualify as a whole because they seldom appear to be working toward the same result or goal. However, the political parties of those Senators certainly qualify as conspiracies. The members of their political parties conspire with each other to do what it takes to elect their chosen minions to public offices and political appointments where those conspirators can work to further the agenda of the political party (the conspiracy).

Interestingly, using this working definition, any business that is more than a sole proprietorship is correctly defined as a conspiracy. Add in the fact that the notes from board meetings of most companies are routinely classified as corporate secrets, we can make a blanket inference that secrecy is the same as “evil, illegal, criminal, fraudulent, etc.

The same could be said of almost any meeting of top government officials (for all countries).

My point?

The next time someone seeks to denigrate a story as a “conspiracy theory” instead of just going along with the potential smear-job consider the fact that the accuser is almost certainly part of a different conspiracy that has its own objective(s) and the conspiracy theorist is gumming things up for the author’s pet conspiracy.

© 2022 Thomas K Sheppard, All rights reserved.

See Tom's political views on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TomSheppardPoliticalViews/
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
 Godvernment: Government as God

The Next US Civil War

Tom Sheppard

12/13/2020

During the first Civil War of the United States of America slavery was a central issue triggering the war.  In like manner, the next civil war of the United States of America will be triggered by slavery.

Where the first civil war was triggered by the issue of chattel slavery, where human beings were owned, bought, sold, and discarded in the same manner as we handle automobiles today, the second civil war will be triggered by economic slavery.

Socialism enslaves the entire populace in much the same manner as serfs were enslaved by the aristocrats.  The aristocrats were the governing class and all the economic output of the serfs was directed for the benefit of the rulers.  Serfs were unable to move from place to place and were committed to whatever role the local aristocrat assigned them.

Socialist countries have operated in much the same manner.  Ordinary people had no freedom of movement with permits and they worked at whatever role the local party leader assigned them.  Meanwhile the fruits of their labors were not shared with them until after the ruling class took their fill off the top.  Whatever dregs remained was "generously provided" by the state for the workers to live on.

Today, in America we see a huge rise in ignorant youth led by calculating oldsters into embracing socialism.  I call them ignorant youth because they seem utterly uninformed about the horrors, depravity, scarcity, and oppression which socialism has inevitably visited on every country where it has been implemented throughout history.  I call them calculating oldsters because they are generally baby boomers who have been thwarted by democratic institutions and the US Constitution in their desires to exercise life and death power over others and understand that only by overturning the US Constitution can they gain the power they so desperately crave. Many of them even feel that they deserve this power because they are so much smarter than everyone else and should rule over us because of that virtue alone.  These power-hungry socialist leaders presume that they know what is better for us than we ourselves can decide.  They see us as the ignorant, unwashed masses who will only prosper under their benevolent despotism.

The ignorant youth and calculating, self-infatuated oldsters are all victims of their own echo chambers.  They surround themselves with like-minded and sycophants and banish all opposing voices.  Then, they point to the overwhelmingly supportive voices around them as evidence of the correctness of all their assumptions.

Unfortunately for them, there are three primary facts which they are ignoring at their own peril.  The first is that the actual number and percentage of Americans who fall into the category of "unwashed, ignorant, masses" are extremely few and most of them are in the camp of the socialists because the false promises of stolen wealth are more attractive than the prospect of having to work hard for a better life.  The silent majority who oppose the depredation and economic enslavement of socialism are far from being ignorant, they are however, long suffering, patient, and generally civil.  However, there is a wise saying that the socialists should remember, "beware the wrath of a patient man."

The socialists envision themselves as a storm of social change led by social justice warriors (SJWs).  Just as the swirling leaves dancing in the wind amid the first raindrops are just the harbingers of the real storm so too are these SJWs and their socialist overlords no more than leaves in the wind.  When the real storm comes, it will be the silent majority of freedom-loving Americans who are the storm.

The SJWs and socialists jeer at the silent majority and chant "Beware, the storm is coming."  The silent majority quietly whisper back, "We are the storm."

See Tom's political views on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TomSheppardPoliticalViews/
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
 Godvernment: Government as God

Why is Roe v Wade Important? It's not what you think.

Photo (C) DepositPhotos.com

Tom Sheppard

10/21/2020

As the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett proceed there has been a lot of chatter in the news about Roe v Wade.  For many years now, as candidates for the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) have been considered their stance on the landmark case of Roe v Wade has been used as a litmus test to determine if they would have support from liberals and Democratic politicians.

Most of us hear "Roe v Wade" and we translate that into "Pro-Abortion and Anti-Abortion."  Unfortunately, we are missing the mark.

Most people know that Roe v Wade is the case where SCOTUS determined that women have a right to abortion on demand.  This 'right' can be phrased as reproductive rights, or the right to control her own body, or abortion rights.

When most of us hear about Roe v Wade, and whether or not someone supports it, our minds are focused on the topic of abortion.  However, the real importance of Roe v Wade is not about abortion.

When politicians focus on the potential of overturning Roe v Wade, they are not actually worried about abortion.  

The biggest issue embedded in Roe v Wade is not abortion.  The biggest issue is whether or not the judiciary branch is allowed to violate the Constitutional separation of powers and create laws in addition to interpreting the laws. 

As divisive and important as is the issue of abortion it is being used to mask this much bigger problem.

Abortion and Inalienable Constitutional Rights

Regardless of the moral issues of abortion, fundamentally it is a medical procedure.  It it irrefutable that the Constitution is silent of medical issues.  It neither grants, nor denies any medical procedure.  In short, our medical care is not one of our inalienable rights.

Similarly, the Constitution is silent on matters of financial security.  While we have the right to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (as noted in The Declaration of Independence) nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, or the Bill of Rights is there any acknowledgement that financial security is a basic right.  

Separation of Powers

The biggest issue embedded in Roe v Wade is the separation of powers.  

In a monarchy the king or queen hold all three powers of government in themselves.  The monarch writes the laws, enforces the laws, and interprets (judges) whether or not the laws are being applied correctly. 

The separation of these powers out of the hands of monarchs are the greatest accomplishments of Western Civilization.

The importance of the Magna Charta is that King John was forced to give up both judicial power and legislative power.  The right to trial by a jury of peers was a direct removal of judicial power out of the hands of the King.  The perpetual establishment of Parliament was a direct removal of legislative power out of the hands of the King.

When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they built a government that exercised all three of these governmental powers in ways that allowed each branch of government to serve as a check on the power of the other branches.

In recent years we have seen substantial erosion of the separation of powers in several ways.

The Executive Branch Has Legislated

Executive Orders and regulations have the power of legislation.  When they are promulgated as clarification of implementation of legislation that may be proper.  However, in recent years we have seen Executive Orders from Presidents of both parties enacted in the absence of legislation.  The so-called Dreamers Act of DACA is one such order which, strangely, SCOTUS sustained as lawful when a subsequent President attempted to remove it through an Executive Order.

The Legislative Branch Has Executed

Recent years have seen the Legislative Branch enact laws to take over certain powers of the Executive by curtailing the Constitutional powers of the Executive relative to dealing with other nations.

The Judicial Branch Has Legislated

Here is the crux of this discussion.  When the Judicial Branch legislates, there is no effective check on their power by either the Executive or the Legislative except through defiance, censure, or attempts at counter-legislation.

They Key Question in Abortion

The pivotal issue of abortion revolves around the rights of the unborn.  The rights of the unborn hinge, in turn, on the question of when does the unborn become a "person."  Once the point of personhood is reached, then all the protections of rights by the State come into play and the rights of the mother versus the rights of the child must be mediated.  Today, many believe personhood is established at conception.  Others argue it happens only at birth.  Still others take stances in between those two extremes.

This question of personhood was the key issue for abortion debates in states across the US until SCOTUS codified it at the start of the third trimester, based primarily on the notion that from that point forward the unborn might survive outside the womb, albeit with assistance.  This survival concept is referred to as viability.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/#tab-opinion-1950137

"To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. Conn.Stat., Tit. 22, §§ 14, 16. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. [Footnote 1] While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today. [Footnote 3-2] Indeed, the Texas statute struck down today was, as the majority notes, first enacted in 1857, and "has remained substantially unchanged to the present time." Ante at 119.

There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter."

When SCOTUS decided Roe v Wade they established a right which had been rejected as such by the Founders.  From the previous quote, the research of Justice Rehnquist revealed that the Founders reasonably knew about laws on the books controlling abortion, yet they did nothing to establish it as a legal right.  I will grant here that at this point in time the rights of women were largely neglected.  They had no vote and their property rights were often violated.  So, it is arguable that, in this instance, the right to abortion was being ignored. 

If a woman's right to abortion were the only issue with Roe v Wade, I would happily leave it there and focus this discussion on the crux of that matter, i.e., when does the right of a woman for an abortion conflict with the right of the child within her to not be deprived of life without due process?  That is the real question behind the question of viability and personhood.

To be blunt, science cannot answer the question of personhood.  Science is unable to accurately determine when a 'fetus' becomes a person.  Religion too has difficulty in this arena.  Short of God granting a direct and incontrovertible revelation detailing when the spirit becomes a permanent tenant in the body there is no way for us to know when the transformation occurs from mere flesh and bone to a living soul.

The debate over personhood is critical because personhood is necessary for legal acknowledgement and protection of rights.  In other words, the right of a woman to end a pregnancy infringes on the right of a child to life at the moment the child becomes a person.  If that personhood doesn't occur until birth, or if it occurs at conception, then the rights of the woman must be balanced against the rights of the person being born.

Some of the research by the majority opinion on Roe v Wade makes it clear that religions too, including Christianity and Judaism have differed in their views over time.  Traditionally, they focused on the moment of birth, or when the baby "quickens" and begins to actively move and respond to external stimuli while still within the womb.  The focus on personhood at conception is a relatively recent standard for religion.

Because the debate over personhood is so critical (and essentially unknowable) it becomes a matter of conscience and is appropriately left to the People to decide as they debate, implement, and amend laws intended to protect the right to life of an unborn child within their various states, or even at a national level through the Congress of the United States.

They can change these laws as their understanding changes.  They can elect or throw out representatives who support or oppose their views, and thus the rights of women and unborn children can be dictated by the collective conscience of the People.

When SCOTUS ruled in Roe v Wade, they took this debate out of the hands of the People.  Rather than letting the People use the legal means available to them through our Constitution, by judicial fiat SCOTUS wrote law to establish a legal thresholds for abortion across all the States at once.  

In Roe v Wade SCOTUS ruled that during the first trimester of pregnancy it can be terminated at the will of the woman without any prohibition.  During the second trimester some concerns had to be addressed, and during the third trimester the only justification was the choice between the life of the mother and the life of the unborn.  

Justice Rehnquist's dissent puts the point on this issue.  "The decision here to break pregnancy into three distinct terms and to outline the permissible restrictions the State may impose in each one, for example, partakes more of judicial legislation than it does of a determination of the intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment." [my emphasis]

To be clear, the real reason why Roe v Wade is important to liberals is not because of abortion.  Liberals want Roe v Wade to be considered inviolate because it establishes a precedent of judicial legislation. 

Two Steps to Monarchy

The United States of America rebelled against Great Britain because they felt that their rights were being trampled upon.  When the Founders crafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights it was to establish a government which would protect the rights of the People from injustice by their government.  They rejected monarchy, democracy, pure republicanism, and other forms of government and instead opted for a Constitutional Republic.  

A republic allows the people to elect representatives who govern on their behalf.  A Constitutional Republic limits what those representatives can do in the name of the the People.  Unfortunately, as our country has grown is size our government has also grown in complexity.  The size of the Executive Branch has grown along with our country and the need to execute the laws has morphed into the creation of regulations which have the force of law.  This has led to the rise of an army of government bureaucrats whose sole reason for existing is to create, administer, and adjudicate the regulations of our government.

At any point we are just two steps away from being hurled from being a constitutional republic into becoming a de facto monarchy.  Those two steps are the absorption of the powers of government from one branch of government into the other. 

There are some who argue we are already dealing with lots of little monarchs in the form of unelected government bureaucrats who can write regulations, enforce those regulations, and rule on the proper application of those same regulations.  https://youtu.be/ZwmUH5AGydQ 

Source: PragerU

Fortunately, Congress has enacted laws which can be used to limit regulations allow Congress to review and strike them down, although it hasn't happened very often.

However, when the judiciary legislates, there is no one outside the judiciary who has the power to nullify or roll that back. Congress can pass laws to contradict or clarify, but a legislative judiciary can simply ignore all that and rule according to their own whims, rather than limiting themselves to their legitimate role.

Conclusions

Judicial legislation is a serious threat to our rights because it violates the separation of powers in the US Constitution.  It removes one of the essential checks and balances designed to protect us from a rapacious government.

The real importance of Roe v Wade is not whether or not a woman has a right to an abortion.  The real importance, and the reason liberals use it as a litmus test, is that the way the decision was framed was a broad act of judicial legislation.  As such, it is a key lever progressives want to keep using to subjugate individual rights and individual will to their own will and whims.  When a candidate for SCOTUS embraces Roe v Wade, they aren't embracing abortion.  They are actually embracing judicial legislation.

See Tom's political views on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TomSheppardPoliticalViews/
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
 Godvernment: Government as God

Left vs Right Politics and Libertarians

Tom Sheppard

1/16/2017

I am sure you won't be shocked to know that recently I have been exchanging some ideas online about politics with a variety of people.  During one of these exchanges, while we were discussing what is politically left and right, I found and posted the chart above showing politics as a spectrum from left to right with the axis reflecting the degree of power given to government versus individuals.

A friend countered with a diagram created by the founder of Libertarianism showing politics on two axes.  I have spent some time considering both and this post reveals the results of both my research and my thoughts on these two diagrams.

The Nolan Chart is named after David Nolan, founder of the Libertarian Party.  When looking at the Nolan Chart, you should first realize that it is a propaganda piece, devised by Nolan to attract people to Libertarianism.  It is not necessarily an accurate, unbiased view of the political spectra.  If it were unbiased, just above the image of the Statue of Liberty, at the apex of Personal Freedom and Economic Freedom would be the word “Anarchists” or their symbol.

For clarity about why I say this should be positioned there, here it the Wikipedia dissertation on Anarchism.

Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions. These are often described as stateless societies, although several authors have defined them more specifically as institutions based on non-hierarchical free associations.  Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful. While anti-statism is central, anarchism entails opposing authority or hierarchical organisation in the conduct of all human relations, including, but not limited to, the state system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism 1/11/17

As you can see from this definition, Anarchism advocates a stateless society where each individual is sovereign and self-governing.  

So, the true apex of this diagram should rest on Anarchism, not Libertarianism.

Self-governance is a key tenet of Libertarianism.  The notion being that any "crime" which only harms the individual is not something the state should govern or limit.  Hence, the Libertarian push to end the "War on Drugs" and legalize drugs as well as a host of other "victimless" crimes. Under Libertarianism, the legitimate role of government exists, but is limited to protecting society from predations, be those from other states or from individual or groups within the state.  Libertarianism expects everyone to be on their best behavior.  As do the Anarchists.

I suppose it is the issue of the need for the state that becomes a primary differentiating point between Libertarianism and Anarchism.  From the Nolan Chart it is inferred that the state continues to exist.  

I had to study the Nolan Chart for quite a while before it finally hit me what was really bothering me about the chart.  At the bottom of the chart you see two, diverging statements about freedom.

Going from the bottom toward the Left it reads "more personal freedom".  Going from the bottom toward the Right it reads, "more economic freedom."

I recalled having read that economic freedom has been found to precede personal freedom, so it seemed to me that this divergence of personal versus economic freedom was totally wrong.  Not trusting 100% to my memory, I did some research.  I found this very interesting treatise on economic freedom called "Freedom and Prosperity" by Jake Dubuque and "The Benefits of Economic Freedom A Survey" by Niclas Berggren.

Berggren provides some useful definitions.  He defines economic freedom as "a composite that attempts to characterize the degree to which an economy is a market economy—that is, the degree to which it entails the possibility of entering into voluntary contracts within the framework of a stable and predictable rule of law that upholds contracts and protects private property, with a limited degree of interventionism in the form of government ownership, regulations, and taxes. This is a negative concept of freedom: freedom to do something without being hindered, as opposed to freedom in the sense of having access to actual opportunities to do something ."

Key pieces of this are the "predictable rule of law that upholds contracts and protects private property" and "a limited degree of ... government ... regulations and taxes." [my emphasis]

He also defines political freedom as "participation in the political process on equal conditions, actual competition for political power, and free and fair elections" and adds the dimension of civil freedom, which he defines as "protection against unreasonable visitations, access to fair trials, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech." 

His definition of civil freedom seems to align somewhat with concept of personal freedom on the Nolan Chart.  However none of this addresses the incongruity of having personal freedom diverging from economic freedom.

Milton Friedman in his book Capitalism and Freedom explained that “the fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority.  The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated."

Logically, this is as true for personal freedom as it is for economic freedom.

Dubuque, notes that, "Freedom House’s Freedom in the World index is used to measure political freedom, while The Index of Economic Freedom, produced by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal measure the second variety of freedom.  These indices are compared to the GDP per capita of each country.  The results indicate that there is a significant correlation between each variety of freedom and wealth."[my emphasis]

The two indices of freedom, seem to buttress each other in every instance.

In addition to these contemporary studies which are conducted each year, many have looked at history and noted the direct correlation between economic freedom as a significant prerequisite to personal freedom.  In a Readers Digest article in July 1941 Max Eastman noted that “[Marx] is the one who informed us, looking backwards, that the evolution of private capitalism with its free market had been a precondition for the evolution of all our democratic freedoms.  It never occurred to him, looking forward, that if this was so, these other freedoms might disappear with the abolition of the free market."

Any student of western history can note how the rise of the merchant class preceded and led to the ultimate destruction of the system of serfdom which was the hallmark of the Dark Ages of Europe. The wealth of the merchants eventually put them on equal footing with the nobility and the increasing dependency of the nobility on the wealthy merchants forced them to concede the protection of law and receipt of freedoms which eventually trickled down to the commoners and liberated the serfs.

From history and from research it becomes clear that personal freedom and economic freedom do not diverge as shown in the Nolan Chart.  Rather they travel in the same direction. 

We now have uncovered two fundamental lies in the Nolan Chart.  The first is that the chart omits its true apex as Anarchy and the second is that the Left is not a protector of personal freedom.

Dubuque shows how this view that the Left is a champion of personal freedom arises from a contradictory reading of the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, which was adopted 1948 by the General Assembly of the newly formed United Nations.  He notes that the rights noted can be summed up into three categories:

1. Everyone is entitled to the rights set forth in the declaration and that discrimination before the law is unacceptable.
2. Everyone has personal rights, including the rights “to life, liberty and security of person,” in addition to the rights to privacy, education, religious freedom, freedom of expression, and the right to own property.
3. Everyone is entitled to participate in government, either directly or through elections.

Modern Progressivism/Socialism embraced by the political left asserts that none of these freedoms noted above can be truly enjoyed if the individual lacks the basic necessities of life.  They take Maslow's Hierarchy Needs and hold society responsible through the power of government coercion to see that the foundational needs are met so that the self-actualization needs at the top of the hierarchy can be met for everyone.

While this is helpful to understand why the Left manages to appeal to many people it doesn't directly rebut the lie shown at the bottom of the Nolan Chart.

Dubuque speaks to that directly: 

If the socialist ideal of economic security for all is realized through a centrally administered economy, then freedom from necessity does not create freedom in any real sense of the term.  While socialists can argue that physical depravation severely constrains individual freedom, the material security that their philosophy provides does not liberate the individual.  Instead they are made dependent on the state.  Even though the state’s motives might be altruistic, it still must have the power to enforce the regulations or central plan of the economy.  With such a concentration of power in government and the state of dependency it creates, the individual cannot be described as politically or economically free.  It doesn’t matter whether the government is a dictatorship or democratically elected by the majority; the state is totalitarian. As Milton Friedman writes, “fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions.  One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state.  The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace.”This simple characterization pointedly distinguishes between the two philosophies of economic organization available to governments.

[my emphasis]

This makes it clear to me that the coercive level of the state is the correct axis to apply to the political spectrum, rather than the double axes portrayed in the Nolan Chart.  The coercive power of the state must decrease to allow both personal and economic freedom and is an inverse of those two factors.

Note that the very first chart shows that our Constitutional Republic is actually to the right of Democracy.  This is because democracy, as was recognized by the Founding Fathers, quickly devolves into the tyranny of the majority and destroys the rule of law.

Our Constitutional Republic is the only form of government which is stable enough and strong enough to protect the rights of the individuals with the rule of law by limiting the coercive power of government.  W. Cleon Skousen had it right when he called the establishment of the United States Constitution a 5000 Year Leap in political freedom and government.

Finally, my research led me to the chart below.

This chart explains why so many people today are laboring under the mistaken assertion that Fascism is an artifact of the political right instead of the left.  Their teacher in school said it was that way and they never bothered to examine the premise for themselves and learn the truth.

Some might wonder that I would so indict our educational institutions.  Consider for a moment the significant influence that began to appear in our colleges and universities in the 60's and 70's.  The students who protested against the establishment of those days were heavily influenced by Marxism.  For decades now, they have been running our colleges and universities and educating the teachers who educate our children in public schools.  Considering that, is it really a surprise that we find our educational curriculum today is not only ignorant of many historical facts, but teaches not only falsehoods and has established a system which punishes independent thought and rewards the adoption of what the teachers promote as societal norms.

Conclusions:

1. The Nolan Chart is deceptive
1. it omits its true apex of Anarchy
2. it falsely portrays a divergence of personal and economic freedom
3. the introduction of two political axes is useless and is an artifact solely to convey the incorrect notion that Libertarianism is a "centrist" approach to political positions.
2. The "True Political Spectrum" is a more accurate and useful depiction of the political spectrum
1. the coercive power of government is the central issue of both political and economic freedom
2. the protections afforded to our economic and person freedoms are far to the right of the predatory policies of democracy, corporatism, fascism, socialism, progressivism, communism and all other forms of totalitarian political positions.

There are other conclusions you may draw, but I am highlighting these as central to my discussion with my friends.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

(c) Copyright 2017 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Benefits for Freedom

(c) Copyright 2015 Despair.com

Today, many people are signing up for lots of government benefits.  And our leaders in Washington, both those on Capitol Hill and in the White House, keep lining up bills to protect us from threats that are both real and imagined, and along with each protection comes a list of things that ordinary Americans can no longer do without breaking the law.

I call this exchange of government benefits for our freedoms, Esau's Bargain.  This is based on an event that is described in The Old Testament.

Esau Selling His Birthright by Matthias Stom, 17th Century

 ... Esau came from the field, and he was faint: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint... 

     And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. 

     And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?    And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. 

    Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

Genesis 25:29-34

Later on, when Isaac, Esau and Jacob's dad, wanted to give his son's a blessing all this came back on Esau and he got pretty angry about it.  So angry, that Jacob had to leave home for quite a few years before his brother Esau cooled down about it.

So, what Esau despised when he was hungry, he valued later on.  But, then it was too late.  The deal was done, and he could not reclaim his birthright.

Today, we are giving up our birthright as Americans, the freedoms we enjoy under the Constitution, in exchange of a big bowl of government sponsored benefits soup, just like Esau did.  And as each freedom is taken, we are not likely to be able to get it back, just like Esau.

I could point to all the body searches we now go through just to take a flight today, but as intrusive as that is, it won't be going away anytime soon.  Since Esau didn't ask to borrow Jacob's sword, let's look at the bowl of soup instead.

Obamacare - quaintly called The Affordable Care Act is one of the biggest exchanges of benefits for freedom in the history of our country - so far.

A few years ago, if you were young and healthy and didn't feel the need to buy health insurance, that was your choice.  Starting this year, the government will be getting reports from all the insurance companies listing who are their customers.  The IRS will cross-check those lists with tax returns.  If they find a taxpayer who doesn't have health insurance, they will impose a fine on that taxpayer.

Last year, the fine was pretty trivial and it was only levied on those who didn't have insurance and told the government the truth.  This year, the fine gets a lot more severe, and Uncle Obama has a way to see if you are lying.

A few years ago, if you didn't need or want maternity insurance - which was generally only purchased by folks who were planning to have a baby, you didn't have to get it.  Considering the fact that a huge segment of our population today is made up of Baby Boomers, thousands of whom reach retirement age each day, there are a lot of folks who aren't going to have any more babies.  And yet, we all get to pay for Maternity Coverage, because those are the rules imposed on us by our people in Washington.

To be very blunt, the whole case for health insurance is totally messed up.  I would use stronger language, but I try not to use foul language.

The first problem with health insurance is that most people totally misuse it. And, that makes the costs for insurance to shoot through the roof.

Insurance companies are better than the best professional gamblers.  They hire super mathematicians called actuaries to sit around all day and calculate the odds for and against them having to pay a claim for any given condition, disease or event.  If the actuaries do their job right, and they do, the insurance company takes in more money in premiums than they pay out in claims.  A little known fact is that those insurance companies then invest the difference between what they pay out and what they take in and they make money on their money.  That is how they stay in business.

Ordinary people have totally screwed up health insurance, because instead of using it as a safety net against some really big, bad event, they have used it like a Christmas Club.

You may (or may not) remember the Christmas Club your bank or credit union used to offer.  The idea is simple.  In January, you figure out how much you are going to spend at Christmas and then each month you deposit one twelfth of that amount into a special savings account.  Then, when Christmas time comes, you close out your special Christmas Club account and spend your money.

This is what people have unwittingly been doing with their health insurance.

Remember what I told you about what actuaries do?  If the bank were using actuaries to see what money they could make on Christmas Club accounts the actuaries would tell the bank that the odds that the Christmas Club accounts will survive beyond a year are something only slightly higher than zero.  This means that the bank cannot afford to put that money into a loan to some customer unless the loan will be repaid before the Christmas Club account is cashed out.

Let's go back to Maternity Coverage again.

People who buy Maternity Coverage are usually planning to have a baby.  Actuaries know this, so the odds the insurance company will have to pay a claim to someone who takes out the coverage is pretty close to 100%.  It is only reduced by the probabilities (which the actuaries will calculate) that a person cannot have a baby, or dies before they have a baby.

What this means to the insurance company is that they have to charge more in premiums than they believe they will have to pay out in Maternity  Coverage claims.  So, what you get when you buy Maternity Coverage is a Christmas Club, with a surcharge (because the insurance company still has to pay it's people and make some profit, even after they pay out your claim).  With this Christmas Club, you pay in for about a year and at the end of that time, if all goes according to your plan, you get to come home from the hospital with a baby and without a big hospital bill to go along with it.

Of course, instead of paying the surcharge to the insurance company, you could have found out what it would cost for the doctor and hospital for a delivery, divided that figure up by at least 9 months, and then opened a savings account where you deposited that money each month.

Then, in about a year, you could come home from the hospital with a new baby and no big hospital bill, because you had the money to pay in cash (and it is less than what the insurance company would have been forced to charge you).

But, what if something goes terribly wrong?  THAT IS WHAT INSURANCE IS FOR!

At the same time that you are putting aside money each month, you should also be buying a Major Medical insurance policy.  These policies will pay your medical bills if something unexpected happens.

Those crafty actuaries calculate the odds that something will go wrong, and tell the insurance company how much they need to get to hedge their bets.  And they are betting that nothing major will go wrong - and most of the time they are right.  Because they are right most of the time, the insurance company makes money and can keep offering major medical insurance policies.

I could show you how this same thing applies to dental insurance and vision plans as it does to Maternity Coverage.  But, the chances are if you haven't gotten my point by now, you won't.

And here is point #1 - the whole scare about the spiraling costs of health insurance is a manufactured crisis that has its origins in people being ignorant about how they use their health insurance.  Yet, this was one of the main drivers the folks in power used to convince folks that forced insurance (socialized medicine) was a good idea.  Never mind the fact that it pretty much stinks everywhere it has been implemented.  Its only fans tend to be the politicians who put it in place and the bureaucrats who make their livings running it.  Even the doctors and nurses hate it.

Point #2 - those in power want more power.  Some of them want it because they think they are so much smarter than everyone else that they have an obligation to protect us from our own foolish actions.  They take away our freedom of choice for our own good.  Unfortunately, that has several really bad consequences.

A) People who are temporarily saved from the consequences of their own actions begin to believe that there are no consequences for bad choices, and so they make more bad choices.

B) People who get power by helping others avoid the consequences of their actions get reinforcement that they are doing something good when they look at all the bad consequences they have helped people avoid.

C) Bad consequences are eventually going to happen, no matter what.  And the natural law called the Conservation of Energy says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - this ensures that when the bad consequences finally do happen, they will be really big, because they will contain the built up energy from all the consequences from bad choices that were temporarily avoided by some government program.  And when that stuff finally hits the fan the people who have been trained to make poor choices are going to blame the people in power for the pain they are feeling for the consequences of their actions and they are going to be very hurt, very angry, and a whole lot of people.

And when "C" finally happens, there will very likely literally be blood in the streets, only it will be on a scale that will make the riots in LA and Ferguson look like a Sunday picnic.

It is because I want to avoid that really bad pile of consequences that I am urging people now to make good choices and choose to defend our constitutional rights in every way we can and on every front.  Don't surrender your freedom for a bowl of government benefits soup.

By the way, if you think I am making all this insurance crap up, I'm not.  I have spent many years working in the insurance business.  Or, if you don't believe me, call up your insurance agent and ask him if I am giving you the straight scoop.  If he's honest, s/he will tell you what I just did.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.