Ideo/theologies

May 8, 2013

Sex Has Nothing To Do With Economics

By Don Kirk in Conservatism, Economics, Keynesian Myth-Math, Left-Liberalism

In the “kerfuffle” over linking John Maynard Keynes’s sexuality with his famous focus on short-term fiscal policies, Bruce Bartlett has a piece in The New York Times. In Mr. Bartlett’s view, the kerfuffle misses what is more important: Keynes’s recommended stimulus of aggregate demand by government spending is needed now more than ever, because the stagnant American economy is in Keynes’s “liquidity trap.”

Although Keynes is identified with the political Left, there have been a large number of Keynesians–such as Mr. Bartlett–who are from the political Right. Three of the top six Keynesian presidents were Republicans, and they would be vociferous in denying that they support Fabian socialism. Yet Keynesianism is the intellectual force behind Fabian socialism’s incremental attempt to institute socialism without a violent socialist revolution (found on page 375 of Keynes’s General Theory).

It does not matter what Keynes’s sexuality was, and it does not matter whether the call for fiscal stimulus comes from a socialist or a capitalist. What matters is that the RETURN on the taxpayer’s money in the stimulus is greater than the cost. There is no example of the dollar benefit from the many Keynesian stimuli attempted over the past decades being in excess of the dollar cost. Therefore, Keynesian fiscal stimuli are identified as “death spiral” economics, where every dollar spent on stimulus returns less than a dollar to the taxpayer.

Keynes’s Fabian socialism ‘toilet-flushes’ an economy, completely counter to its intent to stimulate an economy. Taxpayers receiving back only 95, 90, 80 cents back on every tax dollar spent in fiscal stimulus means the taxpayer is steadily going Keynesian broke.

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February 24, 2013

Rain = Snow

By Don Kirk in Ideo/theologies, Rationality vs. Irrationality

Increasing carbon dioxide levels will lead to less snowfall worldwide, say scientists

The Science Recorder reports today that the amounts of snow will likely decline because of increased carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere. They fail to mention–so conveniently–that the amount of rain will likely increase. Once again, the ideological true-believers filter facts in order to scare-monger policies that fuel their ideo/theological agenda.

So long as the amount of precipitation in a given area of the globe is the same, except for in the Arctic or Antarctic (which are actually deserts, where it doesn’t ever rain), it does not matter whether the precipitation falls in the form of frozen or liquid water. The report never claims that precipitation will decline; only that snowfall will be less.

Frankly, humans prefer falling rain to falling snow, so why the apocalyptic anxiety? Perhaps the anxiety is because the priests and priestesses of ideo/theological environmentalism are compelled to preach fear in order to assert dominance and control over their frightened congregations. If this is accurate, then the apocalyptic priest—whether on the socialist Left or religious Right—is a closet sadist.

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February 22, 2013

Lost Republicans

By Don Kirk in Conservatism, Philosophy of Freedom

Today is the anniversary of the Republican Party, born at convention in Pittsburgh in 1856. The impending war over slavery–the fight for human freedom–was the impetus for the rise of the Republicans.

Now with so many Keynesian (Fabian socialism) Republicans dominating the party (both Bush and Romney are big-government Keynesians), they have rather lost their founding guiding light, haven’t they?

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January 20, 2013

The Anti-Intellectual “Settled Science.”

By Don Kirk in Ethics, Ideo/theologies, Ideological Monism

Every time an ideologue wants to shut down honest debate over honest differences in opinion about science, the call of “settled science” is used as a form of intellectual blackmail. A more scientific truth would point out that science is never ‘settled,’ and it is bad science to say that it is.

Case in point is the photo above from the website Space.com of the newly discovered massive cluster of suns which is more than four billion light years across. Nothing in current science theory explains how such a massive congregation of suns and super-giant black holes can even exist. Nothing discovered before now is even close to four billion light years in size, so this discovery shatters much of existing cosmological theory about the size of the universe.

The argument of “settled science” is the arrogance of the intellectually rigid, and the intellectually rigid are forever ideologues, whether they are scientists or not.

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January 6, 2013

Libertarian Legalization

By Don Kirk in Ethics, Libertarianism

Nobel laureate in economics, Gary Becker, had an Op-Ed yesterday in the Wall Street Journal highlighting some of the most deleterious unintended effects of the War on Drugs. Dr. Becker is a famous conservative economist, so his views reflect a growing appreciation that it is time to bring the War to an end.

California already has ‘medical’ marijuana available, and it’s clear that the California legalization of marijuana use for restricted medical purposes is simply a sham. Colorado voters just approved marijuana use, and pot-entrepreneurs are securing business permits and shop locations to service the many Coloradoans who want to smoke up rather than drink down their recreation. The voters who are approving marijuana initiatives that legislators refuse to, are in States with a large college student population and a large tourism industry.

This legalization move in two western States likely portends a flood of similar voter-approved ballot initiatives in other States over the next decade. Purple States (‘swing States’) Nevada and Florida and New Mexico appear to be prime candidates for the next wave of legalization initiatives. A very experienced national lobbying group for legalization now has some success under its belt that it can use to get the marijuana initiatives before the same voters who once turned them down.

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December 19, 2012

Propaganda as Science

By Don Kirk in Ethics, Ideo/theologies, Ideological Legal-Corruption, Left-Liberalism, Politics

These are two views of gun use in mass murder in the United States. It’s not exactly lying with statistics, but note the ideological discrepancy. The Mother Jones chart is from a Left-liberal media, and measures “spree” killings of four or more people. The bottom chart is from Northeastern University criminologist, Dr. James Allen Fox, and measures all mass murders using guns.

Mother Jones is committed to the democratic socialist agenda of gun control, so they use an accurate chart of increasing ‘spree’ mass murders. The criminologist has no ideological agenda, so his accurate chart reflects no increase if the measure is gun use in mass murder overall.

They are both honest charts of empirical data. But the careful selection of the data in the first chart makes an agenda, so its filtered and slanted use is propaganda, not science.

Typical. All too typical. Not exactly corrupt, but legally-corrupt it is.

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December 2, 2012

Liberals Bail to Canada, Conservatives Invoke the Constitution

By Don Kirk in Conservatism, Left-Liberalism, Philosophy of Freedom, Political Theory

In the 11/27 Human Events, a magazine for staunchly conservative intellectuals, Jarrett Stepman makes a detailed historical argument against recent calls by conservatives to secede or nullify the growing progressive legislation in the United States. When progressives–a.k.a., liberal or democratic socialists–lost presidential power in the United States from elections in 2000 and 2004, many called for liberals to move to Canada.

Conservatives, in contrast, in losing presidential elections in 2008 and 2012 are calling for nullification or secession, two failed theories settled during the Civil War, that will permit the conservatives to stay where they are instead of moving to ideologically compatible climes.

The issue is actually freedom, although the conservatives, without freedom as a philosophy, cannot see the true nature of the controversy. My comments to Mr. Stepman’s article:

“Conservatives are deep in the weeds when they argue for secession or nullification, resurrecting arguments settled long ago to satisfy their dislike for current progressivism. The key is to avoid basing their secessionist/nullification arguments on the Constitution, but instead, base their argument on the Declaration of Independence. If a large majority of the people of New Hampshire, for example, truly object to the long-term goals of achieving a national ‘democratic socialism’ by the growing progressive movement, they should declare themselves to be independent from the United States and establish a new sovereign nation, a very formidable political task.”

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November 26, 2012

Utopian Nihilism

By Don Kirk in Foreign Affairs, Ideo/theologies, Socialism's "intellectual suicide"

The environmentalist movement is meeting in Doha again this week, and they perceive that the world-wide economic downturn is now a higher priority in governments than reducing hydrocarbon use. To reach the environmentalist goal of reducing global temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius, the amount of burning hydrocarbons would have to be reduced by 1% per year until they are eliminated by the end of this century. Since the world’s economies are not going to self-destruct by banning hydrocarbons in the name of “shared sacrifice,” philosophically the ideo/theology of apocalyptic environmentalism is the idealism and utopianism of nihilism.

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November 21, 2012

Divide and Conquer

By Don Kirk in Ideo/theologies, Philosophy of Freedom, Political Theory

My comment today at Dennis Sanders’ blog, Big Tent Revue:

An argument could be made that “diversity,” pluralism, and trust of your fellow citizens is better found in a coalition of center-Left with center-Right than it is within the ‘big tent’ concept of the two major parties in American politics. So long as the center-Right and center-Left mutually agree to the bifurcation of the large moderate middle in our national politics, they help institutionalize and insulate the ideological extremes which now dominate in the two ‘bases’ of the duopoly. The “moderate middle” in the American electorate is larger than either of the two bases (40% versus 30% and 15%), so the two extremes must keep the moderates divided (20% in both parties) in order to continue to win elections and establish national policy. The resulting policies are forever pendulum swings between the ideological extremes of ‘democratic socialism’ and ‘religious nationalism.’ Frankly, the success of growing extremism in our politics (for forty straight years) is made possible by the acquiescence of the two centers to refuse to join the other center in a coalition of people who much more closely share values and think alike than either center finds in their respective party. So long as conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans and lite-Libertarians refuse to coalition into a new moderate party of liberty-loving fiscal conservatives who are socially moderate, the insults and hate they experience from the ‘base’ of each of their parties easily marginalizes their shared values and especially their shared ability to halt so much social regress created by the duopoly extremes, made in the Orwellian double-speak of social progress.

Divide and conquer works, so long as those divided refuse to coalesce.

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November 20, 2012

Crash & Burn

By Don Kirk in Conservatism, Philosophy of Freedom, Politics

My Sony Vaio crashed and burned two weeks ago. Put it into Best Buy for repairs and flew off to the piney woods of Georgia. When I returned to the Sierras, the Vaio was still not repaired. Gave them an effin’ Microsoft recovery disk and trudged home, still married to Windows Office and Word.

Best Buy then called to come pick up the ‘recovered,’ repaired computer. Got it home and turned it on. All I had was a blank, black page with a lonely blinking cursor. Took the effin’ Vaio back to effin’ Best Buy, bringing them–again!–the back-up hard drive they did not ever use to restore my data.

On the third trip, today I picked up the effin’ Vaio. Clearly I can now operate, but the email and ‘Favorites’ are still waiting to be restored. After the same thing happened at around the same time-length of ownership to all three different computers I have owned, I am convinced the computer manufacturers have built two-year obsolescence into their products.

Congratulations to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party for winning two weeks ago. Obviously, they did not run their successful campaign using a Vaio computer. Condolenses to Mr. Romney and the Republicans, but until conservatives decide to agree with John Stuart Mill that a woman is sovereign over both her body and mind–a freedom of philosophy tenet–the conservatives will continue to lose close national elections.

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