This is what ended the Roman Empire

The "demonstrations last week have finally gotten the attention of our rulers (one could hope). In 1986 an amnesty was announced for illegal aliens which was touted as a solution to stem the tide of "mojados" (wetbacks) into the U.S. That worked swell as the number of wetbacks has since doubled. As pointed out by Mark Krikorian:

This isn’t really about immigration, though — it’s about power.

What we’re seeing in the streets is a naked assertion of power by outsiders against the American nation. They demand that we comply with their wishes and submit our immigration policies for their approval, and implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met. Far from being a discussion among Americans about the best way to regulate immigration, the illegal-alien marches have been marked by the will to power: ubiquitous Mexican flags, burning and other forms of contempt for the American flag, and widespread displays of blatant racial chauvinism and irredentism.

This is precisely the same kind of challenge that aggressive outsiders are making against other parts of the West, including Muslim immigrants in Europe and, in the most extreme form, Palestinians in Israel. Supremacist Muslims have demanded that Europe repudiate Israel, legally prohibit public criticism of Islam, downplay acts of violent Jew-hatred by immigrants, and not deport Muslim illegal aliens. And some Palestinians, of course, demand that Jewish state abolish itself altogether, actually cutting it out of maps of the Middle East (just as illegal-alien marchers in L.A. held signs of North America with the United States crossed out).

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A True California Horror Story

In May of 1994 my wife and I wound up owning a 120 acre ranch in extreme northern California. It was beautiful and overlooking the Klamath river with meadows and lots of timber. We were self sufficient regarding power, water etc. with no grid access. Part of the ranch was on the Yurok Indian reservation and we had an excellent relationship with both the tribal members who were our neighbors as well as the tribal bureaucracy. After moving in we improved the fallen down shack which existed there into a beautiful home.

We utilized the local talent in making property improvements and made several “friends”. During this 10 year idyl it became common knowledge that I had been a peace officer in my prior life. This was necessary in order to explain our not being involved in the widespread marijuana cultivation in the area. This was no problem with any of the local people (with one exception who incidentally is not an indian) as we believe in minding our own business even in an area of intensive clandestine farming.

Due to the “one exception” mentioned above being the part owner of the adjacent parcel of land and using areas of our property as both a rubbish dump and a pot garden I had to regularly patrol the property line. In July of 2002 while on such a patrol I was hailed by him and ordered to leave the area. Being on my own property, I refused and he began shooting in my direction. I was at the time not armed and notified the local “law enforcement” agency. A “deputy” reluctantly responded after several hours and took notes for a “report”. The deputy also “counseled” the shooter (who is by the way an ex felon and admitted shooting at me) and declined to pursue prosecution.

Subsequent to that incident the situation deteriorated steadily to the point where the one mile water line on which we depended for hydroelectric power and irrigation was severed regularly. Also trash and anonymous notes were regularly dumped on the private roadway near our home as well as several hundred shots being fired in our direction. These incidents were reported to law enforcement to no avail. We were also threatened with bodily harm by members of our neighbor’s family. Even with a restraining order in force the local “law” was absolutely useless. Some of our local “friends” ceased to visit us as they were intimidated by our neighbor and his criminal gang consisting of his 3 late teen early twenty aged sons and their criminal associates. These would often get high on “speed” and attempt to run us off our road driving their old junk cars. In May of 2004 we had had enough and placed the ranch up for sale resolving to relocate to Georgia in order to be near family.

In defense of our property several alarm devices both electronic and mechanical were placed to give warning of trespassers. These devices were all placed at least 100 meters within our property lines. When one of them was activated we would arm ourselves and investigate. This occurred many times. In November a deputy with the local sheriff’s department arrived at our gate and advised he was investigating a report of “booby traps” on our property. I advised him that we had no “booby traps” and and he advised me that “a neighbor” had discovered and retrieved a tripwire device armed with a shotgun shell on our property and that this was a “felony” violation of the California penal code. We allowed the deputy accompanied by an “explosives” expert onto the property to search for additional “booby traps” and none were found. The deputy located the spot where the retrieved device had been placed and noted that it had been placed to discharge its blank shell vertically thus being impossible to injure anyone. He advised that he had been given the device by a “neighbor” and would be writing a report for submission to the District Attorney.

The following morning my wife and I were getting ready to place several no trespassing signs on the perimeter of the property when we came upon a vehicle backed up to one of our locked gates. The lock had been cut and the chain had been removed. The neighbor against whom we had a restraining order was entering the vehicle and it began to drive away. I shouted at him to stop and gave chase on foot overtaking it and grasping the door frame enabling me to look inside, recognizing the neighbor and a companion. The vehicle gained speed and I had to let go but it was forced to veer away from the road it intended to take. The vehicle continued down what the driver probably believed to be a dead end and stopped about 75’ from my position. The neighbor exited the passenger door and pointed a rifle at me and fired. At this time I unholstered my .375 mag revolver and fired at him twice apparently missing. He fired again at me and I ducked behind a bush and fired two more rounds at him. He reentered the vehicle and it drove away.

My wife and I returned to our residence and dialed 911 on the cell phone advising the Sheriff’s dispatcher of what had transpired. About 2 hours later we received a call from the Sheriff’s deputy advising that the neighbor had arrived at the Hoopa station to report that I had shot at him. The neighbor pointed to a single bullet hole in the rear of the vehicle and further stated that he had fired a shot gun into the air to frighten me. He produced a long barreled shotgun and was arrested at that time for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The deputy advised that he would respond to our home to investigate. Three hours later the deputy arrived at our house and I walked him through the location of the incident and at his request produced my Smith & Wesson revolver. He located the cut lock on the ground near the gate and the no trespassing signs which I had dropped to give chase. He stated that the neighbor’s version of the events was substantially the same as ours except that I had fired at him first and that his driver had then stopped the vehicle and he had exited to fire the shotgun into the air to frighten me. The deputy stated that the neighbor had signed a private person’s arrest on me (they apparently removed the handcuffs from him for this purpose) and I was transported to and booked at the Humboldt county jail.

I was released after posting a $50,000.00 bail bond and the neighbor spent the following 6 days in jail. The district attorney declined to prosecute either of us in this incident due to “conflicting” evidence

In early December 2004 the sale of our ranch closed and we have relocated to Douglas County in Georgia. Our attorney advised us that the District Attorney in California filed the “booby trap” charge against me and it would require an appearance in criminal court in Humboldt County, California. It appears that these so called “booby trap” devices are only a criminal violation in California. In late July of 2005 the "booby trap" charge was dismissed at the request if the District Attorney's office due to the "unlikelyhood of a conviction". We have subsequently learned from the buyer of our property that the neighbor and his gang were conspiring to burn us out. The neighbor has committed arson in the area on at least 3 occasions.

The above is a true story.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ


ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

The Witch Doctors

None of the predictions [put forth by enviromentalists who allege the anthropogenic cause of climate change (global warming)] is based on any kind of scientific experiment. Nor could they be. A scientific experiment would require a laboratory somewhere that contained two identical planets, Earth 1 and Earth 2. There would be just one difference between them. The human population of Earth 1 achieves an Industrial Revolution and rises to the level of energy use and standard of living of our own present-day Earth and its likely level of energy use within the next century. In contrast, the human population of Earth 2 fails to advance beyond the energy use of the Dark Ages or pre-industrial modern times. And then the scientists in the laboratory observe that the average temperature of Earth 1 comes to exceed the average temperature of Earth 2 by 4 degrees, and that of its Arctic region by 5 to 8 degrees, and that its sea level proceeds to rise by the number of feet described, while the sea level of Earth 2 remains unchanged.

This is not how such temperature and sea-level projections are arrived at. They are reached on the basis of combining various bits and pieces of actual scientific knowledge with various arbitrary assumptions, which combinations are then fed into computers and come out as the results of “computer models.” Different assumptions produce different results. The choice of which bits and pieces of scientific knowledge to include also produces different results.

The whole current debate/process is reminiscent of witch doctors urging primitive people to sacrifice their sheep and goats in order to mollify the wrath of the gods, today’s environmentalists and their shills in the media and academe repeatedly urge the people of the United States and the rest of the modern world to sacrifice their use of energy and their standard of living in order to avoid the wrath of the Earth and its atmosphere.

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Definition of Terms

Readers of this blog have doubtless encountered the word "collectivism" used frequently. In any discussion/debate it is always necessary in order to avoid acrimony to define the terms to be used. Leonidas will therefore attempt to define some of the terms he uses.

Socialism and fascism are both good synonyms for collectivism. My reason for using the term collectivism is the confusion caused in many minds by the terms fascist and communist. Communism is popularly perceived as the opposite of fascism when in fact both are rooted in the mindset of the individual's subservience to the group. In both systems, the economic functions of society are controlled by the state. In communism/socialism most economic functions are owned and managed by the state and in the fascist system the pre revolutionary "capitalists" are left in place nominally but in fact, strictly controlled/regulated (indeed, sometimes co-opted) by the state. Both systems are the opposite of free market laissez faire which loosely translated means "left alone".

For that reason the term "collectivism" is more useful in recognizing the similarities between communist/socialists (the left) and national socialists/nazis (the right). A good antonym for collectivism is individualism; the recognition of the primacy of the individual.

Good sources for additional explanations of this concept are here: and here:

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Academic Diversity™

A statement from Yale University, defending its decision to admit former Taliban spokesman Ramatullah Hashemi pictured here, explained that he had "escaped the wreckage of Afghanistan." To anyone who is aware of the Taliban's barbaric treatment of the Afghan people, especially women, such words are offensive--as if Mr. Hashemi were not himself part of the wrecking crew. It is even more disturbing to learn that, while Mr. Hashemi sailed through Yale's admissions process, the school turned down the opportunity to enroll women who really did escape the wreckage of Afghanistan.

In 2002, Yale received a letter from Paula Nirschel, the founder of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women. The purpose of the organization, begun in that year, was to match young women in post-Taliban Afghanistan to U.S. colleges, where they could pursue a degree. Ms. Nirschel asked Yale if it wanted to award a spot in its next entering class to an Afghan woman. Yale declined.

Yale was not alone. Of the more than 2,000 schools contacted by Mrs. Nirschel, only three signed up right away: Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, Notre Dame College in New Hampshire and the University of Montana, Missoula. Four years later, the program enrolls 20 students at 10 universities.

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Circling the Bowl in South America

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's soon to be president for life is in the process of adopting the big city machine politics of Chicago and Kansas City. Auditors from the Costa Rica-based Electoral Consulting and Promotion Center analyzed samples of thousands of voters last year to reach their conclusions, officials said. The center is part of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights and functions as an association of electoral agencies in Latin America.
54,900 dead voters are on the Venezuelan voting rolls, and about 39,400 others whose deaths have yet to be confirmed but are listed as being older than 100. These "voters" are mostly residents of the "ranchitos" (the slums on the hillsides of Caracas and Puerto La Cruz) The Chavez government has recently purchased several hundred thousand AK-47 automatic rifles for distribution to the People's Militias. Meanwhile large numbers of Venezuelan middle class are fleeing to Colombia and Brazil. This is sad as Venezuela was a prosperous and charming country.

Regulators of Victimless Behavior

It looks like the government regulators of voluntary business transactions are leaping into warp speed mode yet again. The beauty of free enterprise capitalism is that each transaction is a win/win situation. A buyer offers to buy a product/service for cash or barter and a seller is willing to make the exchange. The terms of the transaction are agreed upon and both parties are happy. Enter the collectivist regulators who must tax, prohibit or license the activity. An example of this outrageous propensity is illustrated by a recent posting in the Florida area on the popular Craigslist.com states:

"Upscale executive seeks beautiful female 18-24 to live in his luxury condo in Coral Gables for $1/month in exchange for some light duties. Help take care of dog, cook occasionally. Sex 2x/week. Serious inquires only. Please email a picture for consideration."

Leonidas suspects that variations of these transactions have been going on since Adam and Eve but the shrill outcry of the collectivist regulators/prohibitionists who wish to interfere with behavior which injures no one has predictably surfaced. When will the collectivists cease attempting to enforce their values on the citizenry?

"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
Robert Heinlein

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Problem/Solution?

Australians Hunt Down Toxic Toads

_{March 18, 2006}

BBC News, Darwin

Residents in Australia’s Northern Territory are staging a day of action to stop marauding cane toads. They are being encouraged to hunt and destroy these toxic pests, which have spread in plague-like numbers across tropical Australia. The cane toads were introduced from South America 70 years ago in a failed attempt to eradicate cane beetles.

They are big, ugly creatures and their advance has taken them to the outskirts of Darwin. Residents are being urged to defend the front-line on “Not In My Backyard Day”, which is sponsored by the Northern Territory government. Federal MP Dave Tollner says that the toads deserve no mercy.

“I suggested that people should hit them with golf clubs or cricket bats or, you know, lumps of wood - whatever was at hand. “Other people have suggested that you should put them in a box and then gas them with the exhaust of your car. The RSPCA also suggests chemical euthanasia. “You know, to me it seems far easier just to flog them over the head with a lump of wood,” he says.

The toads have become a serious hazard to local wildlife. Crocodiles have died after eating their toxic skin, while lizards have been no match for them either. Safe to say that cane toads have few friends in Australia’s lush tropics. “I think they’re really disgusting and the only fun bit about them is squashing them and killing them,” a schoolgirl says. Asked whether she thinks that is a bit mean, she replies: “No, not to me… Because cane toads are disgusting!”

Australia’s RSPCA believes that these warty creatures are a menace and should be destroyed. It recommends that they be smeared with hemorrhoid cream (Preparation H). It contains a local anaesthetic that induces a coma. The toads are then placed in a freezer and the job is done humanely.

Leave it to the leftists to omit the cost/benefit consideration.

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Let the Revolution Begin!!

Congressman Lindner (R) Georgia has introduced legislation in the House to end the income tax. It is worthy of our support.

Brief Summary Of The FairTax Plan

The FairTax proposal is a comprehensive plan to replace federal income and payroll taxes, including personal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security/Medicare, self-employment, and corporate taxes. The FairTax proposal integrates such features as a progressive national retail sales tax, dollar-for-dollar revenue replacement, and a rebate to ensure that no American pays such federal taxes up to the poverty level. Included in the FairTax plan is the repeal of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. The FairTax allows Americans to keep 100 percent of their paychecks (minus any state income taxes), ends corporate taxes and compliance costs hidden in the retail cost of goods and services, and fully funds the federal government while fulfilling the promise of Social Security and Medicare.

Americans take home their whole paychecks.
Not only do more Americans have jobs, but they also take home 100 percent of their paychecks (except where state income taxes apply). No federal income taxes or payroll taxes are withheld from paychecks, pensions, or Social Security checks.

No federal sales tax up to the poverty level means progressivity like today's tax system.
To ensure no American pays tax on necessities, the FairTax plan provides a prepaid, monthly rebate (prebate) for every registered household to cover the consumption tax spent on necessities up to the federal poverty level. This, along with several other features, is how the FairTax completely untaxes the poor, lowers the tax burden on most, while making the overall rate progressive. However, the FairTax is progressive based on lifestyle/spending choices, rather than simply punishing those taxpayers who are successful. Do you see how much freer life is with the FairTax instead of the income tax?

No tax on used goods. The amount you pay to fund the government is totally visible.
With the FairTax you are only taxed once on any good or service, the sales tax is charged just as state sales taxes are today. If you choose to buy used goods - used car, used home, used appliances - you do not pay the FairTax. If, as a business owner or farmer, you buy something for strictly business purposes (not for personal consumption), you pay no consumption tax. When you decide what to buy and how much to spend, you see exactly how much you are contributing to the government with each purchase.

Retail prices no longer hide corporate taxes or their compliance costs, which drive up costs for those who can least, afford to pay.
Did you know that hidden income taxes and the cost of complying with them currently make up 20 percent or more percent of all retail prices? It's true. According to Dr. Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University, hidden income taxes are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices - from an average 22 percent on goods to an average 25 percent on services - for everything you buy. If competition does not allow prices to rise, corporations lower labor costs, again hurting those who can least afford to lose their jobs. Finally, if prices are as high as competition allows and labor costs are as low as practical, profits/dividends to shareholders are driven down, thereby hurting retirement savings for moms-and-pops and pension funds invested in Corporate America. With the FairTax, the sham of corporate taxation ends, competition drives prices down, more people in America have jobs, and retirement/pension funds see improved performance.

The income tax exports our jobs, rather than our products. The FairTax brings jobs home.
Most importantly, the FairTax does not burden U.S. exports as they are with the current income tax. So the FairTax allows U.S. exports to sell overseas for prices 22 percent lower, on average, than they do now, with similar profit margins. Lower prices sharply increase demand for U.S. exports, thereby increasing job creation in U.S.manufacturing sectors. At home, imports are subject to the same FairTax rate as domestically produced goods. Not only does the FairTax put U.S. products sold here on the same tax footing as foreign imports, but the dramatic lowering of compliance costs in comparison to other countries' value-added taxes also gives U.S. products a definitive pricing advantage which foreign tax systems cannot match.

The FairTax strategy is revenue neutrality: Neither raise nor lower taxes so consumer costs remain stable.
The FairTax pays for all current government operations, including Social Security and Medicare. Government revenues are more stable and predictable than with the federal income tax because consumption is a more constant revenue base than is income.

For example, if you were in a 23-percent income tax bracket, the federal government would take $23 out of your paycheck for every $100 you made. With the FairTax, if the federal government gets $23 out of every $100 spent in America, the same total revenue is delivered to the federal government. This is revenue neutrality. So, instead of paycheck-earning Americans paying 7.65 percent of their paychecks in Social Security/Medicare payroll taxes, plus an average of 18 percent of their paychecks in federal income tax, for a total of about 25.65 percent, consumers in America pay only $23 out of every $100. Or about 30 percent at the cash register when they elect to spend on new goods or services for their own personal consumption. And this tax is collected only on spending above the federal poverty level, providing important progressivity.

Tax criminals - don't make criminals out of honest taxpayers.
Today, the IRS will admit to 25 percent non-compliance with the code. FairTax.org will be generous and simply take the position that this is likely a conservative estimate of the underground economy. However, this does not take into account the criminal/drug/porn economy, which equally conservative estimates put at one trillion dollars of untaxed activity. The FairTax will tax this - criminals love to flash that cash at retail - while continuing to provide the federal penalties so effective in bringing such miscreants to justice. The substantial decrease in points of compliance - from every wage earner, investor, and retiree, down to only retailers - also allows enforcement to concentrate on following the money to criminal activity, rather than making potential criminals out of every taxpayer struggling to decipher the current code.

Additional FairTax Facts
=============================================
Creates jobs where the current system destroys jobs. By stripping out hidden federal income taxes and compliance costs, the FairTax makes US goods more competitive overseas and more affordable at home, thereby sharply increasing job creation while sharply reducing our trade deficit.

Gives workers their entire paycheck. No Federal witholding. What you earn, you get.

Eliminates Social Security witholding, the most regressive tax of all, while ensuring the system fullfills its promise to one generation without being a terrible burden on the next.

Eliminates hidden taxes due to corporate taxes and the cost of compliance for both retail and wholesale goods and services.

Dramatically lowers effective tax rates for lower and middle income persons and families; a rebate completely eliminates taxes for people at or below the poverty level. No other tax plan does so much to empower people to climb out of poverty.

Eliminates taxes on education. Education is seen as an "investment" in the individual and is therefore tax-free.

Allows families to save more money faster for home ownership, education, and retirement.

Allows homeowners to pay their entire house payments with pre-tax dollars; a vast improvement over the current home-interest deduction.

Frees up a great deal of valuable time wasted on filling out cumbersome and inscrutable IRS forms throughout the economy. A value estimated at over $250 Billion. (about 3% of the GDP)

Raises the same amount of money to finance the federal government as the current income tax system.

Taxes the Trillion Dollar (yes Trillion, with a T) underground, criminal, and drug economy.

Makes future taxation of income unconstitutional by supporting the repeal of the 16th amendment; returning our government to the financial principals intended by the founding fathers.

Contact your congresscritter today and demand that it co sponsor the bill.

Karl Marx vs John Locke

Leonidas believes the below excerpted TCS Daily essay by Arnold Kling is a valid account of the so called "liberal" versus "conservative " (left vs right if you will) debate that seems to rage around so many social and political issues these days.

"the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute"
-- Maureen Dowd, the New York Times

"Maureen Dowd's statement is Marxist. No, she did not advocate revolution by the proletariat. She did not say that we ought to have a Communist state. But her famous remark that someone in a particular class of victims has "absolute" moral authority is derived from "folk Marxism," as will be explained below.

...[T]he views of important thinkers become distilled into folk beliefs and these folk beliefs shape our societies. John Locke and Karl Marx are two thinkers whose enormous influence can be described using this model.

Folk Locke-ism

Seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke's theory of government influenced America's founders. Beliefs that Locke helped to encourage include:

-- individuals have inalienable rights
-- those who govern have obligations to the governed (and not just vice-versa)
-- government's rightful powers are limited, not absolute

As Americans, we cannot conceive of ourselves submitting meekly to tyranny. We cannot picture a regime like that of North Korea or Saddam Hussein's Iraq taking root in our soil.

By maintaining our Lockean tradition, we have built a vibrant society and a prosperous economy. Limited government has allowed innovation to flourish in a peaceful, gradual, evolutionary way.

Folk Marxism

Folk Marxism looks at political economy as a struggle pitting the oppressors against the oppressed. Of course, for Marx, the oppressors were the owners of capital and the oppressed were the workers. But folk Marxism is not limited by this economic classification scheme. All sorts of other issues are viewed through the lens of oppressors and oppressed. Folk Marxists see Israelis as oppressors and Palestinians as oppressed. They see white males as oppressors and minorities and females as oppressed. They see corporations as oppressors and individuals as oppressed. They see America as an oppressor and other countries as oppressed.

Folk Marxism helps to explain the pride and joy that many people felt when Maryland passed its anti-Walmart law. They think of Walmart as an oppressor, and they think of other businesses and Walmart workers as the oppressed. The mainstream media share this folk Marxism, as they reported the Maryland law as a "victory for labor."

The folk Marxist view of Iraq is that the United States is the oppressor, and the groups fighting the United States are the oppressed. At the extreme, Michael Moore and Ted Rall have made explicit statements to this effect. However, even reporters in the mainstream media who are not openly supporting the enemy take this folk Marxist view when they refer to "the insurgency."

If you think about it, the forces fighting America in Iraq consist of former oppressors and would-be future oppressors. But because America is a rich, powerful country, the folk Marxist instinct is to romanticize ("insurgency") the real oppressors and to demonize ("occupation") the real liberators.

I am not saying that only a folk Marxist would oppose the way we went to war in Iraq or the way that the war has been conducted. However, I would say that it is striking that the basic narrative of the war coming through the mainstream media is folk Marxist. This is particularly true in Europe, where the folk Marxist view of America's presence in Iraq appears to be broadly and deeply held.

The rationale for tax cuts -- "It's your money" -- makes sense to folk-Locke-ism. It drives folk Marxists crazy.

Folk Marxism can explain why some environmentalists do not like using taxes to control pollution. If you think of polluters as the oppressors and everyone else as the oppressed, then merely taxing pollution is not morally satisfying.

The Consequences of Locke and Marx

The differing consequences of Locke and Marx are not an accident. Under folk Locke-ism, each individual has moral standing. We all are endowed with rights, and we all are obligated to follow the law. It should be no surprise that the principle of equality before the law would lead individuals to focus on mutually advantageous interactions. It should be no surprise that inequality before the law, such as the Jim Crow South of 50 years ago, would come to be regarded as a blot and a national disgrace.

Under folk Marxism, the oppressed class has inherent moral superiority to the oppressor class. Class membership trumps individual character in determining moral standing. It inverts Martin Luther King's call to judge people by the content of their character.

Even when Marxism does not lead to tyranny, it retards economic growth, as the stagnation of continental Europe indicates. If you believe that the poor are oppressed and the rich are oppressors, then your impulse is to penalize work, risk-taking, innovation, and saving -- the engines of economic progress. As entrepreneur Paul Graham put it,

"So let's be clear what reducing economic inequality means. It is identical with taking money from the rich...It sounds benevolent to say we ought to reduce economic inequality. When you phrase it that way, who can argue with you? Inequality has to be bad, right? It sounds a good deal less benevolent to say we ought to reduce the rate at which new companies are founded. And yet the one implies the other."

Marx and the Academy

The vast majority of college professors are folk Marxists, even though they do not advocate for Communism. Their folk Marxism is dangerous because they do not even realize the extent to which it colors their world view. Although the academy is also the last bastion of avowed Marxists, it is not the overt Marxists who trouble me. They are not winning converts.

Every day, in big and small ways, academic speech reinforces the view that the world consists of oppressor classes and oppressed classes. Folk Marxism is so automatic and so pervasive that it effectively goes unnoticed.

I would consider it a great step forward for liberals in the academic community to acknowledge the existence of folk Locke-ism and folk Marxism.

The danger of folk Marxism in the academy today is that it is implicit and unrecognized -- and therefore unquestioned."

Arnold Kling is author of Learning Economics.

(Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series on the effects of ideas on the popular mindset.)

“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.” ~ John Locke

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Muslimsk våldtäktsvåg i Sverige.

De svenska flickorna Malin och Amanda var på väg till en nyårsfest när de blev attakerade, våldtagna och halvt ihjälslagna av fyra Somaliska invandrare. Sveriges största tidning presenterade våldsmännen som “två män från Sverige, en från Finland och en från Somalia, ett bevis för hur censur hanterar nyheter relaterade till immigration i Sverige. Liknande händelser rapporteras så chockerande ofta att man befarar att lag och ordning håller på att bryta fullständigt samman i landet. Antalet våldtäktsfall har tredubblats på lite över 20 år. Våldtäkter mot barn under 15 år är 6 gånger så vanliga som de var för en generation sedan. Så gott som alla andra sorters våldsbrott har också ökat kraftigt. Otryggheten sprider sig i de flesta områden både på landsbygden och i förorterna.
Enligt en ny undersökning från Crime Prevention Council, Brå är det fyra gånger troligare att en våldtäktsman är född utomlands, jämfört med en person född i Sverige. Invandrare från Algeriet, Libyen, Marocco och Tunisien dominerar gruppen av våldtäktsmisstänkta. Enligt denna statistik är nästan alla våldsverkare immigranter. I Norge och Danmark vet vi att icke-västerlänningar, vilket oftast betyder muslimer, är starkt överrepresenterade i våldtäktsstatistiken. I Oslo var två utav tre invandrare inblandade under 2001. I Danmark var siffrorna detsamma och även högre i Köpenhamn, där tre utav fyra anklagade var invandrare. Sverige har ett högre antal invandrare, inkluderande muslimer, än något annat land i norra Europa. Siffrorna där är troligen lika höga som bland deras skandinaviska grannar. De aktuella siffrorna är förmodligen högre än vad myndigheterna rapporterar eftersom de inte inkluderar andra generationen invandrare.. Advokat Ann Christine Hjelm som har utrett brott i Svea hovrätt fann att 85% av skyldiga våldtäktmän var födda utomlands eller av utländska föräldrar.
Några muslimska immigranter medger öppet sin dubbelmoral. En islamsk “mufti” i Köpenhamn orsakade vilda protester när han förklarade att kvinnor som inte bär huvudduk ber om att bli våldtagna . Tydligen är han inte ensam om att tänka så. “ Det är inte lika fel att våldta en svensk flicka som det är att våldta en arabisk. Den svenska flickan får hjälp efteråt och hon har förmodligen knullat tidigare. Den arabiska flickan får problem med sin familj. För henne är det skamligt att bli våldtagen. Det är viktigt att hon förblir jungfru tills hon gifter sig.”
Det var inte någon tillfällighet att flickan som blev våldtagen i Rissne var svensk-det framgår tydligt vid diskussionen med Ali, Hamid, Abdallah och Richard. Alla fyra har en nedvärderande syn på svenska flickor och tror att denna attityd är vanlig bland unga män med invandrarbakgrund. “ Det är alltför lätt att få tag på en svensk hora...flicka, menar jag” säger Hamid och skrattar. “Många invandrarpojkar har svenska flickvänner när de är tonåringar men de gifter sig med en proper flicka från sin egen bakgrund, en som aldrig varit med en man. Det är vad jag kommer att göra. Jag har inte mycket respekt för svenska flickor. Jag antar man kan säga att de blir knullade i bitar”
Antalet våldtäkter som begås av muslimer i västvärlden är så extermt höga att det är svårt att se dem som tillfälliga individuella händelser. De påminner om krigshandlingar, Muhammad hade sex(våldtäkt) med många av sina slavflickor/konkubiner. Det är fullständigt tillåtet både i Koranen och i sunna. Om man antar att många muslimer i Europa ser sig själva som en erövrande armé och att europeiska kvinnor bara är krigsbyte är det helt förklarligt och det följer islamska lagar. Västerländska kvinnor ses inte som individer av de flesta muslimer utan som “dessa kvinnor”; de kvinnor som tillhör de otrogna. De är krigsbyte på samma sätt som deras land en gång kommer att falla i islamska händer, allt enligt tron. Det är inte fel utan ett idiologiskt ursäktat brott i muslimska ögon. Attacker av de otrogna räknas inte som brott. Västerna kvinnor är billiga och irriterande. Vi muslimer är här för att stanna och vi har rätt att dra fördel av situationen. Det är vår syn på saken som räknas. Västvärldens varor liksom det land där vi nu lever tillhör Allah och de bästa av män; hans rättrogna. Västvärldens kvinnor tillhör också oss; vårt framtida krigsbyte. Det är inte underligt att det ör ett ökat misstroende mot muslimer bland svenska och europeiska invånare.

A Lesson Seldom Learned

Most of us have heard the old aphorism that the military is always preparing to fight the previous war. It happened to France and Britain in the 20th century. There is however, no clearer instance of this truism than the 2003 war in Iraq. Saddam prepared to refight the Gulf war of 1991 and did not take the threat of a U.S. invasion seriously. He knew the blow was about to fall but prepared to suppress a Shia uprising instead of allowing his military to defend against the Americans in April of 2003.

As American warplanes streaked overhead two weeks after the invasion began, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders. He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses and permission to blow up the Euphrates River bridge south of the city to block the American advance.

But Saddam Hussein and his small circle of aides had their own ideas of how to fight the war. Convinced that the main danger to his government came from within, Mr. Hussein had sought to keep Iraq's bridges intact so he could rush troops south if the Shiites got out of line.

General Hamdani got little in the way of additional soldiers, and the grudging permission to blow up the bridge came too late. The Iraqis damaged only one of the two spans, and American soldiers soon began to stream across.

To protect Baghdad, Mr. Hussein selected Brig. Gen. Barzan abd al-Ghafur Solaiman Majid al-Tikriti, a close cousin, to head the Special Republican Guard even though he had no field experience, had failed military staff college and was a known drunkard. Asked about his military skills, General Tai laughed out loud. Even so, the Special Republican Guard commander was closely monitored by Mr. Hussein's agents and later told American interrogators that he had held the most dangerous job in Iraq. "They watched you go to the bathroom," he said. "They listened to everything you said and bugged everything."

Once the war began, field commanders faced numerous restrictions, including bans on communications, to minimize chances of a coup.

"We didn't believe it would go all the way to Baghdad," a senior Republican Guard staff officer later told his interrogators. "We thought the coalition would go to Basra, maybe to Amara, and then the war would end."

This micromanagement played into the hands of the coalition.

hat tip/ rantburg

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Ny vapendragare New team member

Chewbacca kommer då och då att hjälpa ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ att kampen.

Henceforth Fighting in the shade will be joined by Chewbacca.
Welcome aboard Chewbacca!

Shameless Book Promotion

Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton

Since the rise and fall of the Nazis in the midtwentieth century, fascism has been seen as an extreme right-wing phenomenon. Liberals have kept that assumption alive, hurling accusations of fascism at their conservative opponents. LIBERAL FASCISM offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg shows that the original fascists were really on the Left and that liberals, from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton, have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism.

Goldberg draws striking parallels between historic fascism and contemporary liberal doctrines. He argues that "political correctness" on campuses and calls for campaign finance reform echo the Nazis' suppression of free speech; and that liberals, like their fascist forebears, dismiss the democratic process when it yields results they dislike, insist on the centralization of economic decision-making, and seek to insert the authority of the state in our private lives-from bans on smoking to gun control. Covering such hot issues as morality, anti-Semitism, science versus religion, health care, and cultural values, he boldly illustrates the resemblances between the opinions advanced by Hitler and Mussolini and the current views of the Left.

Impeccably researched and persuasively argued.

hat tip/ john ray

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The Religion of "Peace"

Sweden is the country from which Mrs. Leonidas hails. Her best friend was a local committee member of the Communist Party there and has since switched her "activism" to the feminist movement in that benighted nation. She is adamant that all of the ills of the world can be laid at the door of the U.S. (especially George W. Bush).
Sweden now allows uniformed on duty police officers to wear turbans. Are female officers allowed to wear burkhas? The victim pictured here was raped and beaten (in Sweden) for being "not properly veiled".

Sweden has allowed more muslim immigrants proportionate to its population than any other European country. Political correctness there does not allow the naming of crime perpetrators or their ethnic affiliation in the media.

"Every Muslim male and female that I have interviewed has experienced being beaten as a child and have witnessed the beating of their mother."

Dr. Nancy Kobrin

This is only the beginning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of the bitter cup, which will be proffered to us year by year, unless by supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.
Winston Churchill 1938

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Collectivist Dictator at Work

The former African country of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) has been ruled many years by the collectivist racist Robert Mugabe. By pursuing a policy of land siezure from the white farmers for redistribution to illiterate black "veterans" of his "revolution", the land is no longer feeding the once prosperous nation. The following letter illustrates the plight of Zimbabwe's citizens:

Tuesday 7th March 2006

Dear Family and Friends,
This letter is being sent out three days later than normal because I am now entering the 92nd hour with only enough electricity for lights in my home. At midday on Friday the voltage to my home crashed and the power is insufficient to heat the water geyser, run a fridge or stove or even boil a kettle. 25 telephone calls to the electricity supplier in the last four days, a personal visit to the faults office, a number of offers to provide fuel or go and collect electricians are all to no avail. In the villages less than 15 kilometres out of Marondera there is also no electricity which means the grinding mills are not working. I was told by a friend that there are scores of people now going without food and that the atmosphere is extremely tense.

This morning there is literally mud coming out of the taps in my home which means there are problems pumping water too. Zimbabwe is now entering the darkest of days. It is hard to describe how anyone is surviving now and this week I had the most amazing encounter which helped me put my own problems into perspective.

Standing at the entrance gates of a wholesaler there was a thin, gaunt, tired looking man. On the ground next to him was a small pile of empty cement bags. He bent and picked up a bag and held it towards me, asking me to buy it. An empty cement bag, turned inside out and with two crude holes cut into the top for handles. "Only thirty thousand dollars" the man said to me. This was literally just an empty cement bag, it hadn't been sewn, reinforced or even cleaned very well. I could think of no earthly reason why I would want an empty cement bag but the look in the mans eyes, the slight trembling of his hand and the thinness of his body gave me a whole lot of reasons. I gave the man forty thousand dollars and told him to keep the change. I took my cement bag and the man called out "God bless you, thank you," as I walked away. We both knew that the money I'd just handed over would buy the man just half a loaf of bread but to me, and obviously to him, selling cement bags enables a sliver of dignity to be maintained. Please keep the people of Zimbabwe in your thoughts and prayers in these very hard times and thank you for reading.
Love cathy.

The current exchange rate: $1.00 U.S.= 99,202.00 Zimbabwe
h/t: John Ray

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Hitler Was a "Progressive"

Christian Hartsock, writing in ChronWatch uses an interesting word to describe collectivists. He uses a term coined by Bruce Walker, author of “Sinisterism: Religion of the Lie". The word sinister comes from the Latin word for left. Referring to what Leonidas calls “collectivists”, he includes liberals, progressives, socialists, fascists and Marxists as epitomized by such luminaries as Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, Franco, Mao and Peron.

In my humble opinion, Sinisterism has been the central governing element of Nazis, Soviets, fascist dictators, militant secularists, radical liberals, and the pathetic lowlifes at the ACLU. Their collectively shared hatred for God, Christianity, moral values, and the value of human life instills in them a spirit of Sinisterism. Contemporary liberals have sought to eliminate acknowledgment of the prevalence of Sinisterism by coming up with labels to equate Nazism with fascism, Christianity and conservatism and liberalism with liberty and liberation. But as Walker writes, “The term ‘liberal’ has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with coercion.”
Furthermore, Walker effectively deconstructs the semantic stigmas deceptively conjured up by liberals to euphemize their inherent evil. As he writes: “The reality is that Sinisterists sometimes call themselves ‘socialists’ or ‘liberals’ or ‘progressives,’ and that they sometimes call themselves ‘Marxists’ or ‘Trotskyites’ or ‘revolutionaries,’ or that they also sometimes call themselves ‘fascists’ or ‘national socialists’ or ‘Phallangists’ but they are all sibling Sinisterists.”
When liberals are not trying to pass Nazism off as “fascism,” they are attempting to pass it off as an extreme form of “conservatism” and an inexorable byproduct of Christianity. In 2003, on his show ''Scarborough Country,'' former congressman and current MSNBC personality Joe Scarborough shed light on a college textbook that grouped Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as “conservatives.” Now how exactly could Hitler, a vegetarian who was a strong supporter of social welfare programs, gun control, animal rights, government funding for the arts, and bans against smoking in public get away with being called a “conservative”?

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Liberty circling the bowl?

Assemblyman PETER J. BIONDI (R) of the New Jersey Legislature has introduced a bill which would effectively end anonymous posting on the internet. It is unclear to Leonidas what effect such legislation, if enacted, would have on the internet outside of New Jersey but at the very least is an invitation to the U.S. Congress to intervene in the issue due to interstate commerce/communication issues.

Such a concept is chilling to defenders of free speech for several reasons. For example, many postings on the internet are, by their nature, offensive to various groups or individuals. Under terms of this proposed law a group wishing to inflict retaliation including physical harm for opinions expressed would have little difficulty in locating the subject of their rage.

There are currently at least a dozen European cartoonists and their families in hiding for fear of physical harm as a result of simply publishing unamusing depictions of a religious figure.

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"Education" in public schools

There seems to be an emerging flap over lectures given in a 10th grade “Geography” class in Colorado. From listening to the tapes of some of the lectures, it appears that “geography” was the least of what was being “taught” by the instructor. Much of the material presented as “fact” would be categorized by any informed observer as debatable at the very least. The problem of course is that the students were in fact being propagandized by a collectivist instructor. Interviews with students other than the whistle blower reveal that these views are common to a majority of the faculty in this public school. Leonidas is willing to make a prediction in this instance, and it is that tape recorders will be banned from class rooms henceforth in this institution of “learning”. Home schooling anyone?

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Liberty, More to be Preferred than Democracy

Fran Porretto at Eternity road makes a very appropriate distinction between "democracy" and a constitutional republic. The early democracies decided ALL issues by votes in the "ΑΓΟΡΑ" (agora). Generals in wartime were elected and occasionally even executed at the pleasure of the mob. Democracy was not suitable and indeed did not survive with the development of larger political entities hence the emergence of Republics, Empires and the larger kingdoms.
Read the whole thing.

The early Greek city-state democracies were true democracies. Popular sentiment was sufficient to make laws on any subject whatsoever, without limits. The form proved unsustainable, and survives nowhere in our time.

The United States, though often called a “democracy,” is actually a constitutional federal republic, some of whose corrective mechanisms—regular elections—have a democratic flavor. The mere existence of our Constitution, particularly its many guarantees of individual rights and denials of power to various levels of government, saves our government from being a democracy. All Western countries currently called “democracies” have constraints of this sort, though in several cases they’re not formally written out.

But even in the modern meaning of the term, where the popular will is well hedged about by constitutional and traditional constraints on the exercise of power, there are legitimate questions about whether democracy conduces toward the improvement of a polity. Certainly such questions are entertained regularly in the United States; when the subject is the Islamic Middle East, or the effect of Islamic penetration of Western nations, they should receive even sharper attention.

The most prominent current case study is, of course, Iraq. Despite its recently approved constitution and the governmental structure it has adopted, that nation is in fearful danger of being ripped asunder by sectionalism and sectarian strife.

The debate as to persevere in the establishment of consensual government in the middle east is a legitimate one and will rage on for the time being. The serious situation in Europe is another issue again.

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