Jack Heald

Come Wednesday morning, half the electorate is going hate the President and either the House or the Senate. That hating half believes the other half is the very embodiment of evil in our land.

A rational diagnosis of the situation should lead you to conclude that we don’t have one country anymore; we have at least two: Bluemerica and Rederica.

These are two very different countries with two very difference sets of people.

Bluemerica

Bluemericans believe:

• The government and rich people are responsible for your health, wealth and housing
• Big corporations are evil, big government is good
• The government should allow gays, lesbians, transgenders and bisexuals to marry just as it allows heterosexuals to marry
• White males are oppressors, women and people of color are oppressed.
• The more money you earn, the greater the percentage of your earnings belong to the government
• Guns are immoral
• Capital punishment is immoral; abortion is not
• God is irrelevant
• Most drugs should be legal

Rederica

Redericans believe:

• You are responsible for your own health, wealth and housing
• Big government is evil, big corporations are good
• The government should allow only heterosexuals to marry
• If you’re not a criminal, you have nothing to fear from increased police powers
• If you make a lot of money wearing a suit, you are probably not a criminal.
• If you are a black male, you are probably are a criminal.
• If you served time in the military, you are a hero, (especially if you killed a lot of non-white people in another country.)
• Gun-ownership is not merely a right, it is a requirement in a free society
• Abortion is immoral, capital punishment is not
• God is on our side
• Most drugs should be illegal

Freemerica

As for me, I’m kinda screwed, because I think both of those places are Crazyland. I want to live in Freemerica, where there are only two laws:

• Self-ownership: This means that each individual has the sole and exclusive right to decide what to do with his or her own life, time and property.
• Non-aggression: This means that if you commit an act of aggression against anyone else’s life, time and property, you are legally subject to a forceful and proportionate response.

In Freemerica:

• You are responsible for your own health, wealth, housing and food.
• You are free to enter into any contract of any kind to deliver any good or any service with any other people you wish, provided those contracts do not violate either of the two laws.
• You can create any organization of any size to do anything you want, as long as it doesn’t violate either of the two laws.
• The government has no say in marriage
• You can think or say anything about anyone, as long as you do not violate either of the two laws. (Saying something “mean” about someone is not an act of aggression.)
• You can think whatever you want about God, drugs, guns, gays or whatever, just as long as you do not violate either of the two laws.
• You can build and sell any product or service you wish, so long as you do not engage in fraud or extortion. (Fraud and extortion violate the Law of Non-aggression.)

So on Tuesday, will you vote for Rederica, Bluemerica or Freemerica. I want to know.

When your body is the tool of your trade, anything you do to make that tool perform better – by definition – is a performance enhancer. Drugs are chemicals. Anything the human body is capable of digesting, injecting, inhaling or absorbing is either a chemical element or a chemical compound. There is no objective scientific way to draw a line and put “Performance Enhancing Drugs” on one side and “everything else an athlete eats, drinks, injects, inhales or absorbs” on the other side.

The whole argument about PEDs is ridiculous. Aspirin and Mortrin are drugs which enhance performance by reducing inflammation. Protein drinks are drugs which enhance performance by providing the body with readily usable sources of amino acids to aid in the repair of overused muscles and to help build more muscle. Gatorade is a drug that enhances performance by providing a mixture of water and solids that enhance the cell’s ability to process toxins. Hell, WATER is a drug, (chemical formula H20), that enhances the body’s ability to perform. (See what happens to athletes who perform without it.) Literally everything an athlete ingests, injects or absorbs is chemical and will have some sort of affect on his or her performance.

Lance Armstrong survived testicular cancer by using drugs – “performance enhancing drugs” – and then used his superior athletic ability combined with a world-class competitive spirit and the best drugs money can buy to win the Tour de France seven times. He then leveraged his experience, fame and extraordinary will to win into creating a foundation that raised a half a billion dollars to fight cancer.

But wait – he cheated!

Nope. He did not cheat – even if he took the drugs. (And I have no doubt that he did.) For an act to be cheating, two things must be true:

1. the act must violates the rules and
2. the act must give the athlete an unfair advantage.

Armstrong certainly violated the rules of cycling, but it didn’t give him an unfair advantage since all his competitors were violating the same rules by using the same or similar PEDs. In other words, he beat the rest on a level playing field, even if the height of the field was elevated by certain chemicals which a supra-legal body decided athletes weren’t supposed to use.

The rule he broke was both arbitrary, (exactly what is and is not a PED?), and universally ignored in his sport. Armstrong was the fastest drug-aided cyclist amongst hundreds of other drug-aided cyclists.

Lance Armstrong’s mistake was that he didn’t confess once his career was over.

If I was Lance, I’d come clean now. America forgives scoundrels who don’t raise $500 million for charity. America will readily forgive Lance. We need people like him, regardless of what kind of chemical compounds he used on his own body to help him survive cancer and the Tour de France. Lance Armstrong is a hero.

Get over it, America.

Some utterly forgettable candidate for some useless office used this phrase in an ad recently. It’s alliterative. It’s catchy. It’s pregnant with emotion. But what does it mean? I presume that if we don’t elect the candidate from the ad, then “faith and family” are somehow going to be imperiled. But how? How could electing this man/woman/cephalopod (I forget which) help protect faith and family?

“Faith” is belief in something that cannot be proved. Will The Other Guy make it illegal to believe in things that can’t be proved? Not a chance. The entire US Government runs on faith; it’s not about to outlaw itself.

I know plenty of self-described christians who would welcome the prohibition of Islam, so it can’t be the peril to faith in general they fear, it is only peril to the practice of a particular religion. My guess is that this message appeals primarily to evangelical christians. But what exactly is it they fear? Perhaps they fear that christianity will be outlawed. Although I suppose that is possible, I also know that christianity is one of those religions that tends to thrive under persecution. If that is the case, then anyone serious about the health of the christian faith should not fear such persecution. And conversely, any christian who fears his religion being outlawed is likely just a lousy christian.

The term “Family” is equally plastic. What do they mean when they say the family is under fire? Will The Other Guys make families illegal? No. Perhaps The Other Guys plan to pass laws allowing just anyone to get married. How the marriage of someone else actually imperils the family is beyond me, but I think we all know that “the family is under fire” is actually code for “we can’t let homosexuals marry!”

<Yawn>

I hate double standards. Christians waving their hands about their faith being under fire – when it isn’t – is just stupid. But so-called “christians” getting all frothy in the mouth because homosexuals want government-approved marriage is just plain hypocritical. I know that a lot of christians think that pleasing God is a matter of obeying a lot of rules, but they get their religion all wrong when they do that. Jesus Himself said that loving one another is the second greatest commandment, after loving God. These anti-gay so-called christians who love bombing Muslims on the other side of the world are anything but loving.

So what is it they fear? I have no idea. Do you?

Brad said this morning that he wants to write a book called “Lie!”. The impetus is his realization that – with few exceptions – everyone, everywhere lies all the time about almost everything. We all know that the government lies to us, our employers lie to us, our vendors lie to us, our customers lie to us and we lie to one another in our personal relationships. Lying is so pervasive that it seems at best quaint or naive to expect honesty.

A little less than a year ago, I realized that I was not as honest as I thought. I really didn’t like that. In fact, I hated it so much that I made a promise to myself to always tell the truth.  I’m not doing this for anyone but me. I just decided that the person I want to be is a person who is 100% honest. When I look back on my life, I know it will give me satisfaction to know that I lived, talked and acted honestly.

Looking back on it, I realize that I never actually liked lying – it just seemed to be the best of several bad alternatives. Now that I have made a commitment to myself to always be honest, I like myself better. And that makes me wonder – are there really people in this world who are not bothered when they lie? And if that is so,  wouldn’t that be the very definition of a psychological pathology?

How is it that we are able function with so much dishonesty in our world? What toll does it take on us mentally, emotionally and spiritually to be so saturated in lies? Is lying necessary?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Neither “Governments” nor “Corporations” exist anywhere but in the imagination.  Governments and Corporations are artificial entities that exist merely because we believe in them. They are not like people,  who exist on their own in spite of what anyone else believes about them.

It is our belief in them that grants power and authority to these imaginary entities – power and authority they cannot possess any other way. We give them homage and deference as if they were people. But they are not. If we ceased to believe in them, they would cease to exist. They are not people; they are constructs of the imagination.

These imaginary constructs have no power and no authority on their own because they do not exist on their own.

When the government says, “Pay your taxes!”, it is not really “The Government” speaking; it is a merely a person – a person cloaked in a long, black robe or sporting a shiny badge on his chest or wearing a special hat.  Neither the robe, nor the hat, nor the badge give that person any particular power or authority; it is our collective belief in some sort of unseen, almost supernatural entity called “The Government” that gives that person in the silly outfit any power at all.

(Or more accurately, the combined power of a whole bunch of people.) When a corporation says, “We cannot refund your money”, it is actually a person saying that.

The reason “You can’t fight City Hall” is because City Hall does not actually exist. But you can fight people.

(Fred Reed served as my inspiration for this piece. Credit to him.)

Who do I vote for? More to the point, who can I vote for? The candidates all want things I don’t want, and don’t want things I do want.

I want a government limited by the constitution. None of them want that. (Except Ron Paul.)

I want to end the empire, shut down our foreign military bases, and bring our troops home. None of them want that. (Except Ron Paul.)

I want money I can count on instead of this funny stuff that the Federal Reserve creates out of thin air. None of them want that. (Except Ron Paul.)

I want to end the police state, eliminate the TSA, repeal the Patriot Act and shut down the DEA. None of them want that. (Except Ron Paul.)

I want the government to quit protecting the criminals who have bankrupted us. I speak of the CEOs of Citibank, BofA, Goldman Sachs, MF Global, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, AIG and the like. None of them want that. (Except Ron Paul.)

I want the IRS eliminated. I can live with a national sales tax in exchange for losing the income tax. None of them want that. (Except Ron Paul.)

I want the government out of my bedroom, out of my kitchen, out of education and out of healthcare. None of them want that. (Except Ron Paul.)

Obama is exactly what I thought he would be: more of the same. More war. More debt. More government. Less freedom. Less openness. Less honesty.

So I’d like to hear from you, my loyal reader. Who do I vote for?

Because stuff like this seems to just keep happening.

And the reason I think it is important is because the people who are committing these frauds ALSO want to circumscribe our lives and tell us what we can eat, where we can live and how we can spend our own money.  (I inherited my mother’s radical independence and my father’s stubbornness and persistence. I think it’s a pretty useful combination.)

Lacking an understanding what money is and does, you cannot begin to understand why gold is historically the best money. The qualities that all good money will ideally posses are:

1. Durability – does it rust? rot? corrode? melt?
2. Divisibility – does its value change when divided into smaller units? Two halves of one cow is not nearly as valuable as one whole cow.
3. Portability – Can it be easily transported?
4. Non-counterfeit-ability – the reason for this attribute should be obvious
5. Homogeneity – are different units of the same size essentially identical? Not all oranges are identical, nor are all cows. OTOH, gold is gold is gold is gold.

Gold has been the preferred form of money for 5000 years because it is a commodity that possesses all of these qualities.

All fiat currencies are portable, homogenous and divisible. But they are easily counterfeit-able, (just crank up the printing press and make more!), and not remotely durable.

Look at the list of hard commodities traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and you will see things that have been used as money over the millenia. They all have drawbacks of one sort or another, except for gold.

Silver is closest, but it has industrial as well as monetary uses. This dilutes its value as money. Platinum is similar to silver, but much rarer than gold. In fact, all the industrial and rare-earth metals share gold’s qualities, but they all have significant industrial use. Gold is nearly useless as an industrial metal. Strangely, that lack of industrial value actually increases its usefulness as money.

Oil is very close as well. It doesn’t degrade over time, is very easily divisible, and impossible to counterfeit. But because it is a liquid, it tends to be difficult to transport. And of course, like silver, it also has great industrial use.

Salt used to be money, but it lacks durability. Get a good rainstorm or flood and your money literally dissolves before your eyes. Livestock and agricultural commodities have also been used as money, but they all lack one or more of the qualities that gold possesses.
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Commodity-based monies impose fiscal discipline on governments. If a government wants to run a deficit, they have to come up with a way to collect actual money. They can take it from the people by force, but they cannot create it out of thin air.

Imagination-based monies, (fiat), impose no such discipline. With a fiat money, government is free to run up huge debts, and then pay them off with money they create out themselves. This makes it much easier to do incredibly stupid things, like start crazy wars, support military bases in 159 countries around the globe, and bail out giant banks that make crazy, risky bets and lose.