Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Hello World

An appropriate first post, I suppose, given this name of my blog. This is a forum for me to vent, rant over, muse about, and comment on whatever I deem important. It may impact my future political career, but so be it.

About me: I am an engineer, a husband, and a father. I own my own home, and borrowed less money than I qualified for to buy it. I remember communism, and heralded its fall. I am an Army brat. I do not suffer fools lightly. I enjoy making do computers what I want them to. Should someone one day bestow upon the title of 'hacker', I would not mind. I refuse to call the modern American Left "liberal". Thomas Jefferson was a liberal. Hamilton and Madison were liberals. The modern American Left is a collection of socialists and communists who can't really admit to what they are for fear of losing power (and they're right on that). The astute among you will recognize the difference between classical liberalism and modern American Leftism.

For those who don't get the programming reference, Static Void Main is the first piece of code executed by a C program, or the "entry point". Coincidentally, it's also the exit point. Beginning and end.

The rules: feel free to comment, but have the spine to at least use your real first name. I have. Obvious astro-turfing and mindless spouting of talking points will be met with swift deletion (see above).

First comment: why socialism fails, and why America is in trouble if Sen. Obama is elected.

Socialism, and by extension any form of collectivism, fails because it fails to address one of the most basic of human drives, that of self-interest. Humans are by nature individuals, and act individually. To get people to act in a coordinated group for any lengthy period of time requires harsh training to break down the individual (witness U.S. Army Basic Training) or force and coercion applied oppressively and over a long period of time (the Soviet Bloc, what developments we are aware of in Venezuela). Conversely, capitalism thrives when people act in their own self-interest.

If Sen. Obama is elected, he will govern (and I use that word loosely) unopposed. Both the House and the Senate will have liberal majorities, and some are predicting a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Should this happen, I predict a return to the Carter-era trifecta: high interest rates, high inflation, and high taxes. Obama will have no problem defining down "rich" until those even the most left-leaning economist would define as "middle-class" will be paying high taxes. Why wouldn't he? He's demomstrated on a number of occasions, the most heavily publicized being his exchange with Joe Wurzelbacher of Ohio, that he is very much in favor of income redistribution. Leftists can justify it however they like: a rose by any other name still has thorns.

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