The Power of Self…

I haven’t written anything in a little while, but today I felt the need to write about what I believe to be true power in our own lives.  I’ve come across many people that say to me “I don’t care what decisions other people make as long as it doesn’t effect me personally” and I have to be honest I understand the sentiment behind that statement, but the ramifications of our decisions sometimes aren’t seen on the surface.  I am a big believer in self governance as well as individual liberty.  However, it’s undeniable that with those God-given rights comes responsibility to ourselves, our families, and our local communities or else we quickly surrender those rights to someone whom doesn’t have our best interests at heart.

 The truth is those decisions we make do effect other people.  Maybe we don’t see it ourselves, but the facts are there that it happens.  Also it really should just be common sense.  I used to be a stock clerk at Publix.  Not a bad job for a 19 year old.  The pay wasn’t very good, but I liked the people and it taught me a little about responsibility.  It’s at this job, though that I really learned to have a liberal mentality.  I always felt like I was underpaid or owed something.  I actually complained to my manager that I couldn’t afford an apartment even if I had a roommate(as if this was his problem).  Basically with this mindset I went from being a very hard worker to very lazy and a whiner at work.  It effected my relationships with my co-workers as well as effected my communication with my managers.  In turn this effected the staff view of me which also effected my mood negatively.  I took this mood home with me and had an attitude problem with my friends and family alike.    It then effected my habits at home negatively. 

This was the result of feeling “owed” certain things from the company.  The minute I felt owed something and wasn’t getting it I put the control over my life in the hands of people that don’t have my best interests at heart(and I’m not saying they should because it wasn’t their responsibility).  Many continue on in life with these same types of habits and wonder why they don’t get anywhere.  So when they aren’t getting anywhere the government seems to feed this entitlement mentality with empty promises.  Some of these promises that are actually upheld that feed this entitlement mentality only vindicates in their minds a broken philosophy of life.  We aren’t owed anything.  Now the decisions they made to let their surroundings control them have now been taken hold by the government.  The government is a monster out of control stripping away the responsibilities of a free people that is mutually inclusive with the rights given to us by God. 

These awful decisions being made by Americans today have now effected their neighbors whether they see it or not.  How does the government pay for these new responsibilities?  Well the first obvious answer is through higher taxation and a more complicated, progressive tax code.  This not only costs another business or person more money in taxes, but also more money to comply with the tax code in general.  This is less money in the pockets of families or business’.  This means less ability for these people to feed and house their own families.  You’re bad decisions are indirectly hurting your neighbor’s chances of the American dream.  Another way this hurts families and business in America is through regulation and mandates.  The government has now taken upon themselves the responsibilities of the individual.  Ironically enough an individual they only see as a drop in the bucket of the masses.  When they take upon these responsibilities it’s based on their own rules.  These new rules always even if they help you will hurt someone else.  These new rules by definition always limit the chances and freedoms of others that had nothing to do with your situation. 

 We always have control over what we do even when we feel differently.  This where true power and liberty comes from.  As I said earlier we can only control that which is within our own power.  We can control how we act and what we do to correct the situations in our lives that we wish were different.  When we can look within ourselves and realize where we are going wrong and where we can correct our behavior then we recognize the abilities we have to effect change in our own lives.  Once we start to realize that the true power we hold is evident in our own abilities as well as recognition of our own faults then not only our lives will improve because of the choice we’ve just made to do for ourselves that which is within our power instead of handing it over to an entity that doesn’t see us as individuals, but the lives of millions of other Americans will improve as well because the decision you made to better yourself and your situation will put less of a burden on your neighbor.  

I believe when a person understands their own mistakes and faults that for the most part the majority of people will better control their approach to life.   I believe there is an absolute irony in the fact that people whom succeed to great levels in the free market are called greedy and yet the people that empower government to take away from those that achieve for their own purposes are considered victims.  To want and demand what others have acquired for themselves is greed no matter how you slice it.  Success and achievement comes not from being perfect, but from recognizing that we have flaws and need to grow and learn as individuals.  When we recognize that we might be the cause of our problems and then make the definitive decision to correct ourselves rather than try to control our surroundings I believe we begin to lose that feeling of helplessness because it becomes within our power to change the situation. 

    

My Father…

I come to you today with a personal blog.  I don’t write many personal blogs.  It’s not a fear of people knowing something about me or anything of that sort.  It’s just that I don’t feel my life is that interesting.  However, today is different.  I feel God is telling me to write a blog in appreciation to my one of my favorite people.  My Father.  Before I get to the good stuff I will tell you up front that he and I go at it like nothing else.  We are both stubborn as hell and opinionated.  We butt heads quite often and will scream at each other at the top of our lungs.  Say hurtful things(hurtful for other people, but different for us).  Then two minutes later when everything is calm we can have a good conversation, laugh, and have dinner together like nothing happened.  Such is our relationship.  To be honest I think both of us like that kind interaction.

So I was reading on a blog what someone said about “suffering.”  That if we haven’t walked in other peoples shoe’s whom have truly “suffered” that we don’t know what it’s like.  Well I’m sorry I forgot that we all don’t have problems in our lives.  How do we get rid of problems?  Well the liberal answer is to throw money at it because that’s “real” compassion.  The conservative answer is education(not school), empowerment, and community support.  But to keep from getting off point I’ll get back to my father.  When I was about 3-5 years old he worked at Pepsi-Co in the factory.  He worked on the lines.  In fact, I think he set the record for production in a month.  I have no idea if that record is long gone by now, but he is definitely a man that takes pride in his work no matter what it may be at the time.  I remember I was too young to stay home alone and he had to work the night shifts.  I remember my parents waking me up 2-3AM and my Mother taking Dad to work because we only had one car.  Oh how I hated doing that.  Little did I understand that it was much worse for him to have to get up in the middle of the night to go work in a factory for however many hours, but I was just a little kid.  This is a man that worked 6 months on a broken ankle just to be able to afford a new mustang convertable for his wife so she could have something nice.  To this day he still shows those selfless qualities. 

Well one day he came home and gave us the bad news.  He was laid off.  We had no savings to speak of and he had no college education.  We were so broke that some nights I was eating peanut-butter crackers for dinner with water from the sink.  Some nights he would get a can of beets, cook them, and that would be dinner.  Can you imagine a 5 year old kid THANKFUL to have beets for dinner?  We were so poor that we went on food-stamps.  My father worked every job he could find just to find a way to put food on the table and pay some of the bills.  I emphasize some.  We were evicted from a couple places because of lack of funds.  This went on till I was about 10 years old.  Now, we were only on food-stamps for a month though because my father has too much pride.  He then saw an opportunity.

A couple of his friends were in construction and house painting.  He worked with them as hard as he could and learned everything he could from them.  He was a 35 year old man starting over in life with a wife and kid.  After a few years of working for other people he decided to take a risk.  He decided to start his own painting business.  He struggled for quite a while.  There were times we were hoping for just one job to pay the rent.  Nevermind water, electricity, and others we were just hopeful to have a roof over our head.  We did a lot of praying.  Well to finish up this story he has now owned his own business for over 13 years and is doing well.  For his sacrifices and refusal to quit in life I’ll always love him and who he is because I do believe being stubborn can be a very strong asset in life.

So what’s the point of my story?  To be honest it’s a story that shows the difference between liberals and conservatives.  There are MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of blue-collar, hard working Americans that do those same kinds of things in their own lives that my father has done.  Liberals seem content to define “suffering” in their own terms.  Well suffering for my Father was the fear of not providing the necessities for his wife and young child.  Liberals must be pretty arrogant to think that somehow they are special enough or talented enough to achieve in this country and others just can’t do the same for themselves.  They keep making them out to be victims of circumstance.  They keep holding them back by telling them it’s racism, or it’s “the rich”, or it’s society.  It’s just too hard.  Give them a hand out.  Treat them like children.  Where a conservative will tell them that they have the God-given ability to do anything they wish in a country so great as ours.  A conservative will tell them that if someone else can achieve then they can, too.  A conservative looks to empower and help people OUT of poverty.  Not keep them in it and yes liberal solutions do keep people poor.  My Father is just one example of many.  What a little stubborn pride can do for you in this great country.  So why look down on people and assume they can’t do the same?

Congress Ignores History…

I remember an interview with Denny Hastert on the Mark Levin radio program.  As we all know he is the former speaker of the house and actually taught economics in high school.  I recall him saying “I thought teaching economics to 16 year old would be the toughest thing I’d ever have to do until I got into Congress where I had to teach actual congressmen how economy works.”  It really goes to show you that we do not elect the best and brightest of the population.  I’d argue that the best and the brightest of our population are in the Military, but that’s another story.

I used to try and give these people the benefit of the doubt.  I used to say “we’ll they’ve bought into a philosophy on economics that just doesn’t work.”  I’m starting to see that I’ve misjudged these people and gave them too much credit.  It appears to me that these people make economic law only on the “what should happen” basis of self morality that violates the law of unintended consequences.  Where do these people’s beliefs come from?  Well they come from the typical “Demand Side” economic fallacies of John Maynard Keynes.  To basically sum up his views of economy he says that government should cover the areas where the “free market fails” and we see that concept applied even by Republicans today.  Look at health-care(which is not run by the free market) and the mortgage problem.  What is the overwhelming ideas that democrats offer?  More government intervention.  In health-care they wish to give government total control.  Well we see what’s going on around the rest of the world even in the most of industrialized of nations with their government health-care programs.  The facts simply do no matter to the democrats because as I said they work on a self morality basis of economic policy rather than common sense.  Now as we see with the mortgage problem in this country even Republicans run to the table to freeze interest rates and create a moratorium on foreclosures. 

Congress seems to create situations to hurt our financial institutions even worse than they have hurt themselves with bad loans(even if Congress DID implore them to make it easier for poor people to get those loans).  They make it so the lenders take massive financial hits and then their solution to the problems they create for the lenders is to bail them out with borrowed money which in turn hurts the value of our dollar.  Therefore it still in the end causes too many problems for Government to fix and they shouldn’t be meddling anyways.  It appears to me that our respective leaders are creating the same conditions as 1929.  Congressman Tom Feeney whom is an excellent economist came to my republican party meeting and told us his concerns.  He says because of Congress’ actions instead of having what would possibly could be a 2 year recession will end up being a 10 year depression.  I fear he is right as they continue to ignore history. 

So what caused the depression of the 1930s?  Was it just bad business deals?  Well that is part of what created the recession.  It’s common business cycle.  A recession doesn’t even mean the economy is bad in every case.  As we have seen in history with low tax rates the economy always springs out of a recession in glowing numbers.  So why not 1929?  The myth is that FDR’s policies saved our economy.  Well that’s not exactly accurate.  FDR continued upon and added to the failed policies of progressive Republican President Herbert Hoover.  If you look back at the policies then and compare them to today’s proposed actions there is an extreme parallel.  The only advantage we have today is that our economy is more dynamic, more technologically advanced, faster, and more globalized than that of the 1920’s economy. 

 So what did Herbert Hoover and FDR do to create a depression?  Well first of all Hoover got business leaders together and implored them to refrain from cutting wages, arguing that high wages were the way out of the Depression so as to give consumers some buying power.  This ignores the fact that wages are a cost of doing business in a time where business’ were struggling to stay afloat.  Hoover demanded high wages while prices were rapidly declining.  Business honored Hoover’s request and the predictable consequence came about.  Mass unemployment.  As historian Thomas Woods puts it:

“Hoover’s mistake was to presume that high wages were the cause of American prosperity rather than a reflection of that prosperity.”

How does that compare with today?  Well look at the mortgage problem.  Their big suggestion is to freeze interest rates of those struggling to keep their home before they rise next year.  Well this is again when prices of homes are declining so the lender takes the big hit financially as contracts are essentially adjusted for them from an outside source.  What does this cause?  Well the predictable consequence is that new home mortgage rates will rise considerably.  That will lead to less incentive in buying homes.  Now the big lenders are willing to comply with these sets of rules(as were business’ back in the early 30’s) because they can afford it and even if they can’t they know Government will bail them out anyway.  Which leads me to my next point.  Hoover also spent big money to attempt to prop up failing business.  These business’ either went bankrupt or were crushed under a load of debt.  Remember this was financial assistance they needed because of the conditions created by government intervention.  Hoover also spent big dollars on unemployment benefits(unemployment his policies created).  To parallel today’s congressional “heroics” they have offered both government financial bailout of failing business as well trying to push through unemployment relief in their most recent economic stimulus package.  The situations are not exactly the same, but the principle philosophies are absolutely identical. 

 That’s not all!  Hoover also increased the overall tax rate from 25% to 63%.  He either created new or raised existing taxes on: corporations, estate, gifts, cars, tires, gasoline, toiletries, electric energy, luxury items, bank checks, telephone, telegraph, and radio messages.  I don’t think I have to let you know the tax increase proposals of today’s left.   So let’s get this straight.  President Hoover raised taxes on failing business’ and struggling consumers all the while using the taxpayers money to prop up said failing business’ as well as dictating to them how they would run those business’.  It’s no wonder how such a blind, ignorant, and dumb philosophy fails and it the same philosophy will predictably fail today as well.  FDR continued and added on to these policies throughout the 1930s.  The average unemployment rate for that time was steady at 18% and that was with a much smaller population than today.  The interesting thing is that when the economy was hurting in 1920 President Harding’s strategy was only to tighten the government’s “purse strings” by cutting spending.  The economy began roaring within a year.  As we see the parallels between the policies of Herbert Hoover and today’s congress(as well as President Bush in some cases) it becomes more and more apparent that they have ignored history.

I’m No Republican…

I wrote a blog a while ago talking about “Republicanism.”  To basically sum it up very shortly I asked what republicans stand for in their beliefs.  I still have no idea.  However, the fight seems to continue.  I’m voting for John McCain, but I’m also being intellectually honest about how I feel regarding his candidacy for President of the United States in the party that I most identify with in my beliefs.  However, some “republicans” take issue with the fact that I still don’t line up with their thinking in completely getting behind McCain rather than just being terrified of an Obama Presidency.  I mean that basically is why I am voting for McCain in the first place is because the other option is just something I don’t even want to think about in the short term. 

So I’ve been questioned about my loyalty to the Republican Party.  I’ve been asked “aren’t you a Republican?” and “Aren’t you loyal to the party?”  I went on to think about it for a while and I came to the conclusion that no I’m not.  I’m not just blindly loyal to the Republican Party.  I have my set of beliefs and principles and as I said earlier right now the Republicans are the ones I most identify with, but if we are moving towards the center I decided I have two options.  I can either sit back and just leave the party(and I have thought about that believe me) or I can get involved and give conservatism another voice.  After careful deliberation I decided the latter of the two was the best option because I refuse to sit by and watch moderates decide my choices for me or at least decide my choices without me getting a word in the conversation.

So I went and joined the republican party here in Florida.  I don’t mean I registered to vote I mean I actually joined the party and am attending committee meetings.  I have to say it was at that point I came to the realization that these people don’t understand how to fight socialism, but  I won’t stray into the details of that until later blogs because I don’t want to get off point.  I am only a Republican as long as they keep to conservative values.  However I have to say that if the democrat platform drastically changes to:

• Limited Federal Government
• States Rights
• Individual Liberty
• Less Government Programs
• Lower Taxes or Tax Reform in general
• Pro Growth Economics
• Free Market Solutions
• Defense of the sanctity of Marriage and Life
• Originalists Justices
• Strong National Defense

Along with some other things then guess what?  I’m re-registering as a Democrat so how can I rightfully call myself a Republican or be beholden to the party in general?  I mean John McCain is one thing, but imagine if the candidate were Olympia Snowe or Arlen Specter?  Would these Republicans be saying the same thing?  Just support the Republican Party?  It’s thoughts like these that make me believe that these Republican followers simply have no values at all.  So my values have led me to believe that no I’m no Republican, but I fight for conservative values within the party that gives us the best chance.

 I know this may seem such a bland conclusion to come to, but just to get a little personal here let me just say that I used to have a very liberal mindset before I was at all educated.  I’m 24 years old and only about 4-5 years ago I had no idea about politics or political philosophy.  I used to really be behind everything republicans did as I started on my venture into right-leaning politics and now as I know more and more republican people I feel like I’m passing a lot of them as they still just sit back and do whatever the republicans say and will defend their actions to the end.  They now scold people like me for having values that I believe in with all of my heart and mind.  I love to talk with many of the people I’ve met here on myspace that I feel are true conservatives because we care about real issues not walking party lines.  I guess that’s why more and more I realize I try to be a conservative voice within the party rather than a Republican myself.