Quote – RAnt(hony)-ings

Tytler (or Tyler) Quote; Heading for Dictatorship?

I keep running across this quote:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, and is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.

This is generally attributed to Sir Alex Fraser Tytler, but it has also been attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (and many others) I’ve even seen a rather lengthy list of titles and a reference location for Sir Tytler (Scottish jurist and historian. Professor of Universal History at Edinburgh University in the late 18th Century. From the 1801 Collection of his lectures) that seems to lend credence to the subject.

It’s a quote that I like and feel sympathetic to. But…

http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html proposes that:

The truth is that despite their frequent use, the author(s) of the
above quotes are unknown. With regard to the first quoted paragraph, the Library of Congress’ Respectfully Quoted writes, “Attributed to ALEXANDER FRASER TYTLER, LORD WOODHOUSELEE. Unverified.” The quote, however, appears in no published work of Tytler’s. And with regard to the second, the same book says “Author unknown. Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. Unverified.”

Yet despite this factual uncertainty, these quotes are not only frequently attributed to Tytler, but just as frequently employ his antiquity as a means of enhancing their reliability. I myself was misled for years before being informed of their “unverified” status.

Has anyone else ever researched the quote? (Snopes has a good piece on the subject as well, hats off to a fellow dancarlin.com forum user for that one) I haven’t, other than to dig far enough to find the above. There is no reference for a collection of lectures that I’ve ever seen. They could be out of print, but they should merit a reference somewhere; if indeed, Tytler is famous for saying the quote that is attributed to him.

Not even the Library of Congress can find the source for the quote, or even the true author. While many in the liberty movement feel akin to the sentiments in the quote, we do ourselves a disservice when we repeat it without knowing the true author; or on what basis we should accept his observations.

True, as was mentioned in a Texas Public Policy Foundation newsletter recently;

While there may be disagreement on the actual author of these words, there ought to be little debate about the pernicious effects of a growing government that numbs its people to the loss of freedom and liberty as it gradually increases dependence. One need not look far to see the many instances where individuals have resigned themselves and relinquished control over important and highly personal decisions. Education is a primary example. Health care may soon be the next.

Yet dependence on government—whether conscious or unconscious—did not occur overnight. Instead, it took years of gradual growth in government’s size and scope. After all, many are unwilling to seriously protest a single small tax increase, forgetting that in the aggregate those increases become real money. Any single regulation may be passable, but it is the force of hundreds of accumulated regulations that begin to cripple an industry and even an economy. Or it is years of expectation that government provides certain services that penetrates people’s minds and softens consideration on the appropriate role of government.

Growing government becomes a powerful weapon against freedom and liberty, as people not only lose sight of those principles, but ultimately back government’s quest to expand its reach.

It’s pretty easy to see why the quote is repeated; the observation could be a truth to be feared, if not merely a myth that seems to be playing out for real right before our eyes.

FFrF Radio: African American Freethought

Podcast Link.

This week’s interviews are with current litigants in state/church lawsuits. This is a recurring show topic on the radio program; not that I’m complaining mind you. It’s just that they seem to blend together after a while.

The quote this week that sticks out?

Concerning the lawsuit asking for the records of visitors to the White House (just another document made secret under the presidency of GWB) and why Ted Haggard was not on the list of people visiting the White House.

Dan Barker: “Ted Haggard was probably visiting Larry Craig’s office”

I’m sure Larry Craig was choking on that one…

2007 Archive episode.

January 6, 2007 – African American Freethought and Atheism

Marion the Barbarian (Pat Robertson) and his latest round of (completely erroneous) predictions for what will happen at the end of the year (that year has passed, and guess what? No Boom)

This weeks guest was Norm Allen, editor of the anthology, African-American Humanism. What can I say? I keep listening to the show because the interviews are generally quite engaging. This one is yet another example. I hope they have him on again.

The Porgy and Bess song “It Ain’t Necessarily So” sung by Sammy Davis Junior as Sportin’ Life is also featured.

Evolution vs. Creationism

When I posted the rant on Evolution, I never expected this guy would have an objection to the content,

See my article Evolutionism vs. Creationism

So I read it. Like so many things friends tell me I should read because I’ll agree with it, I didn’t get past the opening without finding something to quibble with. Here’s the quote:

…whether a “creation” model deserves at least equal billing as an alternative theory to evolution. It does, but not in a way that would please the religious advocates of a biblical form of such a model.

I could not disagree with that opening statement more.

Occam’s razor (as he rightly point out later in the article) rules out external actors (like gods or George) because of the impact that such a thing would have on other theories or models.

People can believe pretty much anything they like, but the physical universe behaves in scientifically predictable ways. Creationism is a belief system, not to be mistaken for science; and therefore has no place in a science class at all.

Contamination and alien invasion, or even God did it can have a place at the science table when they can come up with testable theories. Until then, I’m siding with the Pastafarians and insisting that it is the blessings of his noodly appendages that should be taught alongside other forms of creationism, if we are going to be teaching creationism.

…which doesn’t even come close to real science.

The cover article in the Dec. 2007 issue of Scientific American, Are Aliens among Us?, [abstracted here] discusses some of the alternatives to a single descent tree, including one I discussed in my article, “mirror” organisms. Any neutral scientific approach must always consider the possibility of contamination. All we need is evidence of organisms that can’t be placed in a single descent tree. So far no one has found any, but the subject will become more important as as explore space and begin to inadvertently cause biological contamination incidents.

…And without evidence, that pretty much covers classroom discussion. I’m not arguing against teaching critical thought, I’m arguing against teaching mythology as science.

Whether the molecules are right or left handed, natural selection will still occur, if more complex organisms occur.

Such questions also arise in the examination of paleoarchaeological evidence from the last one or two million years when variants of homo began to modify other species in their environment. If one finds some wheat or corn seeds, are they naturally evolved or human bred? Is that stone with a sharpened edge an early tool of hominids, or just an accident? Is that invasive species just something brought in from another place, or something manmade? E.g. Caulerpa taxifolia. For that matter, are those hominid specimens naturally evolved or the result of social selection within the hominids?

All of which speaks more to the fallacy of excluding the actions of the human population at large from the group of events deemed natural, than it does to errors in evolutionary theory. We aren’t the only species on the planet to use tools and we aren’t the only species on the planet to modify other species to suit our needs.

As a species we are as natural a phenomenon on this planet as any of the others who came before us. It shows our own inflated sense of self to think otherwise. It’s an important datum to note where the influence comes from; but it doesn’t make the effect any less natural, or any less evolutionary.

I will never understand the problem with Americans and evolution. How so many people can doubt a science that is so easily demonstrable is beyond me. How do you explain dogs? Other domesticated species who have evolved a dependence on humans? Is the human species a stand in for god? Then how are we able to manipulate other species?

I don’t know that the friend I quoted above has a problem with evolution so much that he doesn’t want to exclude other theories, but I have yet to see any other theory produce a single shred of evidence, whereas the evidence for evolution can be stumbled over as easily as the dog that lays down behind your feet.

Editor’s note. I am in debt to Jon Roland for challenging me to think more critically over the years as well as for his legal opinions that have helped keep me from being abused by lenders who use the law to steal from people who have nothing left to steal except their continued existence. But the Dunning-Kruger effect is on display in many of his articles on subjects that he really doesn’t know enough about to speak knowledgeably. He has wisely pulled his article on evolution down off his website, but there is still a copy available on archive.org if you want to go read it. I changed the link to point to it, and cleaned up some of my horrendous wordsmithing in this early article.

Anarchists Object to Ron Paul

Fishing through my gMail garbage the other day, I came across a post that one of my anarchist antagonists had forwarded to a list that I used to run. It contained a link to an article written by Per Bylund, an anarchist that I’ve had occasion to spar with in the past.

Apparently Mr. Bylund has a problem with Ron Paul. I think that’s a major selling point in Dr. Paul’s favor, myself. Here’s a quote from the piece, located here:

The major problem lies in the effect Ron Paul has on the people already identifying with or being part of the libertarian movement. Many libertarians seem to have set their libertarian projects aside in order to work for Ron Paul. They not only work for his presidential campaign, but seem to adopt his views – even anti-libertarian views such as Paul’s stand on abortion and increased border control. Arguing Ron Paul’s case to the general public as well as to the members of the GOP, they take a few steps toward statism (while the opposite would be both better and more honest, considering their libertarian values) – and come to believe in it.

Calling a minarchist a statist as he does in the article, is an insult to anyone who understands the basic principle “power abhors a vacuum”. As I noted previously Mr. Bylund is engaged in propagandizing, and radically oversimplifies what it means to be libertarian, and what libertarians believe. I’m not going to bother going over all that again. Suffice it to say, Methinks [he] doth protest too much.

The Anarchist segment of the ‘libertarian movement’ has been whining about the influx of new people virtually since the name libertarian was coined; and they will continue to whine every time someone dares to make progress, gains popularity, and attracts new people to the ‘movement’. They’d like to impose a litmus test on all new members, just to make sure their views are libertarian enough, before they can call themselves libertarian (am I the only one who sees the irony in this?) and some of them would be quite happy to keep their quiet little debating society to themselves.

For my part, I welcome anyone who wants to make room for freedom in this country again. I’m glad that the Anarchists have a problem with Ron Paul. I hope they get mad, take their toys, and go home. Maybe they’ll finally give up their stranglehold on the Libertarian Party (loosely affiliated with libertarianism in general) and let it have the breathing room necessary to effect the kind of change that Ron Paul had to go outside of the LP to accomplish. Which is the saddest statement of all.

Calling Ron Paul a statist is putting him under the same label as Hitlery (most likely our next president. The press has already nominated her) and her openly socialist agenda. It’s laughable, like most anarchist theory is.

Auction of Seized Silver

OK, this is a bad turn of events. The silver that backs the eLD and certificates is already being set up for auction by the FBI. If you have certificates or had eLD at libertydollar.org, then you need to file to demand the return of your property, the silver that backed your electronic and paper Liberty Dollars. Don’t let the theft of your property by the FBI go unpunished. Hold their feet to the fire and demand it’s return.

Now hear this! The government is moving aggressively right now to steal your property!! Please join the Lawsuit to recover the wrongful seizure of your property. If you have not signed up for the Wrongful Seizure Lawsuit (Class Action Lawsuit) do it NOW. It is the only way to get your property back. Please take action immediately! Click HERE to sign up!
libertydollar.org

Editor’s note. I found the archive at libertydollar.org where these later alerts are kept. I will be truncating the ones I find and linking to the archive so as to stop promoting Bernard Von Nothaus’ silver schemes with this blog.

Water-boarding is torture

On Veteran’s day, just a quick quote:

French journalist Henri Alleg was a victim of water-boarding torture in 1957. His description of it is chilling. His torturers strapped him to a plank, put a cloth over his face, and turned on a water faucet over his head. Here is what followed, in his own words . . .

“The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I couldn’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save me from suffocation. In spite of myself, the fingers of both my hands shook uncontrollably. “That’s it! He’s going to talk,” said a voice.

“The water stopped running and they took away the rag. I was able to breathe. In the gloom, I saw the lieutenants and the captain, who, with a cigarette between his lips, was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw out the water I had swallowed.” [Source: Wikipedia]

Water-boarding is torture. Water-boarding is a crime. Our government is committing crimes.

Sadly, many retired military officers say that our soldiers now faced increased risk of being tortured in the same way we are torturing others.

Support Ron Paul, Support the troops (after all, they support him) and urge passage of Ron Paul’s “American Freedom Agenda Act”

Guitartown Auction Results

Cybertar sold for a respectable $5,500 last night. I’m not going to complain about that price, although the artist did. I tried to explain to her that she didn’t go for the cute factor, didn’t have a famous person’s signature on the sculpture (and wasn’t already famous herself. Yet) or incorporate a famous person in the composition (although it does say “Dell” in about 4 places) and didn’t do the cultural equivalent of scream “Keep Austin Weird” somewhere in the piece. If she had done that, a five figure price would have been guaranteed.

This observation lead to jokes concerning incorporating flashing LED’s into the body of the guitar, something that would be bound to get any geek to pull out his wallet. LED’s that spelled out “Keep Austin Weird”? Top seller

The full results of the auction can be found at the Julien’s website. A grand total of $693,000 raised for charities in and around Austin.

The big winners of the night were also the ones that I personally found most impressive; Trip to the Light Fantastic, Reflections of Austin and Striking Texas Gold. The reason they are impressive might not be apparent in the photos. All of them are 360 degree mosaics (all of the surfaces are covered) of tiny little pieces of glass or stone, all of them meticulously glued into place by hand. How they got them finished in the time allotted is a mystery to me.

Most underrated painted guitar: Fractal; it’s a picture, inside a picture, inside a picture, inside a guitar. Or maybe I just looked into opposing mirrors too much as a child.

Most underrated sculpture: Gibson Tree; This sculpture was featured on the cover of XL, and it still didn’t draw more than a 10,000 price. This was also an impressive display in the amount of time invested by the artist (the stand was molded to look like a tree trunk that the guitar had been carved out of) If any artist at the auction had reason to be disgruntled, this artist does.

Several of the guitars were donated back to the city for redisplay on the streets of Austin. While I can appreciate the charity of this action, I have to wonder who will be responsible for maintenance of the artwork once it’s back out on the street. I can’t imagine that the artists will be willing to continue maintaining the art for free; and as a libertarian, I don’t really think the gov’t should be saddled with this cost to be paid for at taxpayer expense. Maybe a private organization will step forward and offer to maintain the art, as has been done in other cities with public art displays. Only time will tell.

I left out the T-shirts. While at the auction, we stopped at a table for Wiskyclothing.com. They were selling T-shirts with a nice guitar collage on them, as well as shirts with your favorite guitar only. To quote S.C. Essai:

They are a bit pricey but then again… they are very very nicely printed. Not iron on transfer like Cafe Press. They “FEEL GOOD” is the best way I can describe them. They are printed on very comfy and durable t-shirts. I checked it out myself.
So.. what the heck.. feel like it ? Buy a shirt!

…and yes, the artists get a commission on shirt sales; so I’ll be buying at least one.

Remember all those funky 10-foot-tall guitar sculptures that were standing around town most of the year? They were part of a public arts project sponsored by – who else? – Gibson Guitar, to brighten up our cityscape for a year (and get the name of Gibson out there, natch). They were plucked from their perches a few weeks ago, so they could be auctioned off for charity, and so they were on Oct. 17. A crowd of 500 packed GSD&M’s Idea City to bid on (and watch others bid on) the 35 10-foot-tall guitars and 30 regular-sized guitars that had been transformed into works of art. Lone Star songster Ray Wylie Hubbard served as emcee, while international auctioneers Julien’s Auctions supervised the sales. They were brisk – Reflections of Austin, by Shanny Lott, and Striking Texas Gold, by Diane Sonnenberg, went for $55,000 apiece – and overall the Austin GuitarTown Auction Gala brought in $589,000. That wealth will be spread among four area charities: the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, the Austin Museum of Art, American YouthWorks, and the Austin Children’s Museum.
Austin Chronicle, GuitarTown Project: Going, going, gone!

Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. –George Santayana

This struck me as an appropriate quote to answer the inevitable questions of “why” one would go back in time and tarnish the good name of FDR by equating him with Hitler and Mussolini (and to some extent, Stalin) I have long thought that Roosevelt’s reign as president was anything but good; and it would be hard to paint many of his actions with a more dingy color than the facts already contain.

However, there are socialist instructors in our gov’t run schools to this day, and they insist on placing FDR on a pedestal and crediting him with ending the Great Depression and saving the world from fascism; when nothing could really be further from the truth.

Here’s a snippet from the review of the book Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933 – 1939, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch over at CATO’s website:

FDR himself praised the Prussian-German model: “They passed beyond the liberty of the individual to do as he pleased with his own property and found it necessary to check this liberty for the benefit of the freedom of the whole people

DownsizeDC.org: Your questions answered

I’m always a sucker for an Orwell quote:

“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”
~ George Orwell

Shining a little light on the proof behind assertions made by DownsizeDC dispatches of late. Read more if you need proof concerning our meddling in the Middle East, or the true nature of relations with Iran, or who really runs the Iranian gov’t.

Sick(o) in America

John Stossel picks up the gauntlet that Michael Moore threw down, and slaps him silly with it; in less time than it takes to watch the overrated ‘documentary’ Sicko. Here’s a quote from the online article,

There are many problems with health insurance, but that doesn’t mean we should put the government in control. If it’s decided that health care should be paid for with tax dollars, then it’s up to the government to decide how that money should be spent. There’s only so much money to go around, so the inevitable result is rationing.
It’s just the law of supply and demand. Lowering prices increases demand. Lowering the price to nothing pushes demand through the roof. Author P.J. O’Rourke said it best: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”
When health care is free, governments deal with all that increased demand by limiting what’s available.
20/20 – Stossel – American Health Care in Critical Condition

I have watched both Sicko and Stossel’s 20/20 special. While the interviews with the individuals struggling with the problems of the healthcare system were emotionally compelling in Sicko; as usual, the emotional argument is used to blind the viewer to the real culprit in the problem.

Sick in America, John Stossel’s response to Sicko, lacks none of the passion that Micheal Moore pours into his film, and yet deals in clear truths and verifiable facts. He discovers the real culprit behind the healthcare crisis. The real culprit is government.

The Canadians lamenting the lack of insurance coverage in the US is a classic example of using emotion to obscure the real problem. Why doesn’t the Canadian socialized system pay for services rendered in the US? Or any other country? If it was truly free service for their citizens, it would be free wherever the need arose. This is true of all the socialized healthcare systems across the world. There is no charge to the end user, provided he goes to a funded provider; and that’s the catch. The government pays for the service through taxes, and rations the healthcare that is available based on the funds that are provided.

This is also why drugs are cheaper in other countries. Prices are artificially lowered through agreements with those countries single payer systems. This should explain why the pharmaceutical companies don’t want to you to import Canadian drugs into the US. At some point they will simply stop providing the medication at reduced prices, since they can no longer profit from it’s production. Profit is why anyone engages in business in the first place, and healthcare is a business.

The one thing Moore got correct in Sicko was the scathing criticism of the current health insurance system. Once again, he missed the real culprit. Government regulation has created the current health insurance system. HMO, PPO, etc. Just more three letter acronyms for government created systems. If you agree to be covered by an HMO, then they, like the government in other countries, tell you who can treat you and for what.

I love the fact that he spent so much time in Europe. What a beacon of economic health France and the other European economies are. I also love the way he never addresses how much they pay in taxes for the lavish services provided. Sadly, it’s not that much more than we do here in the US for the lack of services that we have. That doesn’t mean we should pay more for better service. Logic should dictate that we demand to pay less, and provide our own ‘safety net’.

Let’s make something clear here; we are not Kaiser Permanente (Moore’s whipping boy of choice) In fact, the healthcare industry itself is not Kaiser Permanente. Based on the criminal behavior documented concerning Kaiser Permanente, I would think there would be charges filed somewhere against them. But then, their behavior is regulated and endorsed by the government. The same government that Moore thinks we should hand over the rest of healthcare to.

Only a dedicated socialist, like Micheal Moore, would consider it an indictment that we provide healthcare to prisoners, people held against their will (and as far as Gitmo detainees are concerned, held without charges) prisoners have no ability to provide for themselves, while citizens of the US do without healthcare; and, of course, the Cuban government bent over backward at Moore’s request to treat his boatload of sick people. What a media coup that is. Cuba heals the sick overlooked by America’s evil capitalist system. Especially the neglected Ground Zero workers.

My sister spent several years at Ground Zero, helping with the clean up effort. She, along with thousands of others still suffer from the after effects of being exposed to the air around Ground Zero. Health problems that the government still denies has anything to do with working at Ground Zero. The government has lead the way towards disenfranchising those heroes of Ground Zero. The insurance companies are simply following the government’s lead, just like they always have.

Except that the system might be evil, but it most certainly isn’t capitalist. All of the government managed systems are no different from the fascist corporatism of Il Duce‘s Italy; just another variant of socialism. Yes, the system currently in place is already a compromise. See how well it’s working? Don’t you want more of the same?

I’d like to speak for a significant portion of America’s uninsured. We don’t want universal health care. Some of us are uninsured by choice. The cost of insurance outweighs the benefit provided by insurance. (The only way the cost is justifiable is if a family member has some long term expensive-to-treat disease, and then the insurance company disallows coverage based on some obscure clause in the policy. I have seen this happen before) Forcing us to contribute to a universal system through a greater tax burden will simply drive us further into poverty. We want the freedom to choose what we want insured, and to get the same tax benefits as any other insurance provider. We want to negotiate prices directly with our doctors and hospitals, and we want the choice to remain uninsured if we deem it necessary.

Let charity provide the ‘free’ services. Only charity really can. All other arrangements involve the use of force on one or another of various groups. This is unacceptable to those of us who believe force should not be involved in normal social relationships.

It’s worth mentioning that I followed the sentiment of Michael Moore in his film, and refused to pay for the privilege of viewing his film, just as he does not wish to pay for the privilege of getting healthcare service. Instead I found an alternative source for the material. Anybody with access to a torrent program may do the same. I don’t reward thieves for promoting government as their method of choice.

John Stossel’s special has been broken into segments and is available on YouTube. Let him know you support his views by contacting him at ABC. There’s also a blog entry over at Downsize DC on the subject of the healthcare system, as well as an entire section of the website over at CATO.

CATO Weekly Video on the subject of “Sicko”

There really is no excuse to be uninformed on the subject.

Editor’s note, 2019. Hard to believe that the guy who wrote this was applying for disability while he was typing it. Most of my early writings on the subject of government programs have proven to be misguided at best, hypocritical at worst. Hypocritical, like the above post. Another one of those posts that I’d rather hit the delete button on than write an apology for. Oh well. The Bowl of Crow covers this too.

I still don’t think much of Michael Moore or his documentaries. It just so happens that his opponents are even more jaded and hypocritical than he is. Just watch anything by Stossel since joining FOX news and you will see just how dishonest his presentations have become. Possibly always were.

To use the phrase socialized medicine is to repeat oneself needlessly. All medicine contains costs borne by the public at large. All of it. It is a classic case of an economic externality, which is why businesses toss the cost of healthcare around like a hot potato. No one wants to foot the bill, therefore everyone must be forced to foot the bill. How that cost is paid equitably, while providing access to limited facilities equitably? How can these costs and benefits be spread across the world, granting every living person access? Those are the really hard and important questions. Questions that I am finally fully cognizant of lacking the knowledge and expertise to solve. It’s about fucking time, if I do say so myself.