Class War 2.0
The Marxists in general defined class warfare as being between the haves and have-nots. Later, they expanded the idea to divide people in myriad ways — by race, by sex, and so forth. In the process they invented a number of bizarre mental constructs that have no reality in the physical world, such as “white privilege.”
In this country, the endless quest to create ultimate equality has resulted in our various levels of government becoming the largest employer in the country. In fact, government has been our only growth industry. Of course, the quest for equality will never succeed because nothing in nature is equal, so it is like a quest to make gravity work backwards.
Our various government agencies, school systems and so forth have become both a massive affirmative action program and a refuge for those whose skills have no value in the private sector.
No ordinary employer could afford to hire so much useless dead weight. But government is special. It has the power to tax, and to kill you if you don’t pay up. Hence, it doesn’t have to undergo the rigours of having to deliver a good product at a good price.
And because our government can literally kill to get its money, government employment is the most secure available. In fact, in some government employee unions it’s practically impossible to be fired. Salaries, compared to people with similar qualifications in the private sector, are incredibly generous. The average federal government employee is in the top 5% of all earners. Of course, there is excellent health care accompanied with impressive retirement benefits at a time when most people have no retirement plans at all in their jobs.
So here you have a situation where people who are suffering from serious job insecurity, whose wages have remained stagnant for the past ten years, who have no pensions and whose healthcare availability is shaky being told at gunpoint to pay for the hyper-generous salaries, healthcare and retirements of a bunch of people who are essentially useless.
Class War 2.0 has already shown itself in the Walker recall vote, which Walker resoundingly won. The issue was Walker tried to balance the Wisconsin state budget by bringing certain benefits accruing to government employees more into line with the private sector. The government employees fought back by mounting a recall effort.
In other words, government employees wanted to use government as a mechanism for taking YOUR sustenance away, and giving it to themselves. THIS is Class War 2.0: Government Hacks versus the People Who Actually Produce.
Americans: Fat, Dumb and (un)Happy
by John Young
The Federal Transportation Administration, in response to the reality of the expanding girth of Americans, has proposed raising the average passenger weight for calculating the safe loads of buses from 150 lbs per person to 175 lbs per person. This reflects CDC statistics of average weights of 165 lbs for women and 195 lbs for men.
Likewise, the Coast Guard has raised the estimated per-passenger weight for calculating the seaworthiness of vessels to 185 lbs per person; and the Federal Aviation Administration has raised the estimated weight of airline passengers to 195 lbs in winter and 190 lbs in summer.
Now, buses, boats and planes will be rated to carry fewer total passengers; meaning that delays will ensue, costs will climb, and in order to combat the delays, more buses, planes and boats will have to be purchased. More fossil fuels will be required. The individual cost may be low, but the aggregate cost is staggering.
We can look in a mirror and lie to ourselves; but the cold hard reality is that by these sorts of objective measures, Americans on average are likely the most overweight people ever to have existed on the planet in any substantial number. You don’t have to be a nutritional scientist to ascertain that something is terribly, terribly wrong.
Meanwhile, Newsweek gave 1,000 American citizens the standard citizenship we require of immigrants intending to become citizens. 38% flunked. These are not complicated questions, and they are written at a 6th grade level. A passing score is not very high either. Yet, amazingly enough, people who can’t even tell you how long the term is for a Senator get to vote for Senators. The teacher’s unions should be proud!
As if being fat and dumb were not enough; Americans seem to have hit a perfect 1,000 batting average, because according to WebMD the rate of anti-depression prescriptions doubled in nine years between 1996 and 2005. So we’re happy too.
Yet, people go on thinking that we should keep doing things the way we have been; even though objective measures in all realms indicate our society is in serious, serious trouble. Fat, dumb and happy is how you want your sheep that are prepared for slaughter, and most assuredly NOT how you want a supposedly self-governing citizenry.
And they Said Capitalism Would Bring Freedom to China
by John Young
For decades we have heard proponents of globalism and global trade argue that bringing capitalism to China would painlessly increase the level of freedom in that oppressed nation.
So far, no dice. In fact, it is arguable that matters have gotten materially worse.
The New York Daily News has reported truly brutal conditions for workers in a Chinese capitalist enterprise that subcontracts work for the globalist software giant Microsoft.
KYE Systems is a Chinese sweatshop that handles work for such international corporations as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Logitech and Acer among others. Spokesmen for the company say that their labor practices are fully in compliance with Chinese labor laws; which should tell us something once we see what conditions are like for workers at KYE Systems.
According to a report by the National Labour Committee, a human rights group based in Pittsburgh; KYE prefers to hire only women aged 18 to 25, because it considers them “easier to control.” However, pictures smuggled out of the plant indicate some of the workers may be as young as 14. This is unsurprising as the NLC’s report indicates that KYE also hires so-called “work-study” students younger than 16.
Workers are paid 65 cents and hour, from which ten cents are deducted to pay for food. They work 15 hour shifts six or seven days a week; sleep in bunk-beds with fourteen workers per room; and endure near-constant sexual harassment by guards who do not allow them to talk, listen to music or even use the bathroom during their long shifts.
Cleanliness is at a premium as well; as the workers are limited to sponge baths from a bucket of water. And they likely need showers as temperatures in the plant are as hot as 86 degrees.
Just for the record, women forced to endure groping by armed guards in order to eat, are not free.
We have surrendered our own autonomy and quality of life. And for what? Certainly not for freedom.
Seeds, Hope and the Benevolent Universe Premise
by John Young
Today I planted seeds. There is still a foot of snow on the ground, torrential rains have flooded out roads and we got an inch of sleet last night. Still, today, I planted seeds. I planted them indoors in little containers and put them under close fluorescent lights.
Why?
Because I know that even though the weather today is taciturn; in six weeks it will be smiling on the transplants as I place them in the tilled earth. Planting the seeds now, means I will have the transplants later. And I know that given proper care, those transplants will bring me vital sustenance.
Is it hope that leads me to plant those seeds today? No, it is not. Hope is not required. All that is required is the ability to visualize a value that I wish manifested in the future; and take rational action today that, based upon knowledge of nature, is most likely to lead to that value.
This is the core of the idea of a Benevolent Universe. The Benevolent Universe Premise is NOT the belief in a universe that is benevolent in and of itself. Rather, it is a belief in a universe in which the laws of cause and effect apply; such that an effect can be manifested through creation of its cause. In other words, a benevolent universe is one in which knowledge, reason and foreseeing outcomes is rewarded whereas ignorance, whims and lack of foresight are punished.
So today I planted seeds, not because of hope; but as an application of reason and knowledge in pursuit of values.
There is a lesson here.
2010 will be the last year in which the majority of Americans born are of our genotype. It is a preliminary tipping point that our current President aims to cement through offering illegal immigrants amnesty and even the right to vote. Such a move, if successful, will irrevocably create an environment in which our economic system will be socialist and it will not be reversible any longer through democracy.
This situation is rather dire, because it is a harbinger of the effectual removal of an entire race of people from the planet. No matter where you stand in the political continuum; the removal of an entire race from the planet, no matter the means, is genocide. And when it is an actual planned result of public policy; it is evil.
But how are we to counteract this evil? Hope? No. Through the application of knowledge, reason and foresight.
A Little Education for Closet Pinkos
by John Young
With apologies to Mr. Dawkins, there are three sorts of homo sapiens on this planet; and these sorts exist within every race and religion.
Every person on the planet — without regard to race, religion or intelligence — can be fit into three categories.
1. Sheeple
These are people who have bought into the matrix of lies that surround us and have become so dependent upon the smoke and mirrors that they will defend those lies to the death.
2. Wolves
These are people who will gladly shear sheeple; and the originators and propagators of the matrix of lies intended to give them a constant supply of the productivity and support of sheeple.
3. Humans
Humans are people who have no desire to either shear or be shorn. They want to exist on the basis of their own merit, and cooperate with others to mutual benefit in a symbiotic rather than parasitic fashion.
Wolves fear and loath Humans, and teach their Sheeple to do the same. This is because Humans are truly the origin of all worthwhile values — the values upon which the Sheeple subsist and the Wolves feed. Neither Sheeple nor Wolves understand or acknowledge this, because to do so would be to acknowledge their own lack of moral worth.
Most people, though not all, have the capacity to become Humans; but choose to remain either Sheeple or Wolves out of laziness or the desire for unearned plunder.
The power to create is the power to destroy. As the originators of values, Humans have the capacity to destroy the civilization they created simply through withholding their productivity. They also have the power to see the Wolves and Sheep for what they are — and hold a mirror up to their faces.
Humans, who are a minority, have to blend in to avoid being targeted for destruction and assume the visage of either Sheeple or Wolves. But let there be no mistake: without the Humans there would be nothing but barbarism. There would be nothing to plunder.
And … closet pinkos are nothing but Sheeple or Wolves. They have failed to understand that the only thing that enables their plans to work at all is the army of disguised Humans out there.
And that army of disguised Humans could destroy them overnight simply by laying down and going to sleep and acting like Sheeple in ALL respects — not just in terms of their publicly expressed thoughts.
Thanksgiving Morning
The first light of the rising sun cast long slanting shadows through the leafless trees as I stood on the small hillock observing my surroundings with care. Dew that had gathered on branches during the night slipped from large branch to twig, gathering into small round prisms that refracted the sunlight until they finally gathered enough mass to break free from the tree tips and fall onto the leaves on the forest floor below. In the stillness of the forest at dawn, the combined falling of thousands of dewdrops at random times made a constant sound that kept my senses alert.
I stood upon sacred ground. Less than two hundred yards to my left, atop a small embankment, lay the family cemetery, with stones so worn with time that only family memory recalled who lay beneath them. Thirty five yards behind me was an old chestnut tree, one of the few to have survived the chestnut blight intact. When we plowed the adjoining fields, we still pulled up rifles and buttons from both the Revolutionary War and the War between the States. My family had made this land their home since at least 1700; and the land retains the memory of the battles fought, the harvests reaped, and the singing laughter of generations of children as they played. For generations, we have drawn sustenance from this land, and it has drawn sustenance from us in turn.
A round was chambered in my Marlin model 336 30-30, but the hammer was still forward. I wouldn’t pull back that hammer until my sites were aligned on the wily whitetail. The whitetail deer is not usually considered a wily quarry. In reality, its superhuman senses and caution can make him difficult to spot. And I had one particular buck in mind this Thanksgiving morning: a magnificent six-pointer who had been leading a small herd of does into our garden for a rather impressive midnight snack.
I had scouted carefully for the past couple of weeks; and knew that unless someone threw off his routine; he’d be stopping by the chestnut tree on his trip from the nearby creek to higher ground any minute. My task was simply to be as still and scent-free as possible so I wouldn’t throw him off. To that end, I had laundered all of my clothing with a bunch of spruce needles in the old wringer-washer; and had bathed myself similarly. I had improvised some camouflage to break up my outline; so as long as I didn’t move or make an unexpected noise; that wily buck should be along.
And so he came. Folks used to hearing the sound of human footsteps might not have noticed because of his cautious approach. He almost seemed to float in, like a ghostly presence as the dew was starting to evaporate from the leaves on the forest floor. A truly majestic creature of creation, to see him barely thirty yards away was awe-inspiring. He would take a step, look around, smell, and then take another. He looked past me several times, and I stood still as stone hardly daring to breathe. I kept waiting for him to settle down and start pawing through the leaves for chestnut burrs; as I knew he had done on previous mornings. Perhaps what little scent I had was making him nervous.
Finally, he gingerly re-oriented his body to get a better look at his trail; I moved my rifle into position, sited, and pulled back the hammer. Because of his angle, this was going to be a neck shot. At longer ranges, I wouldn’t have considered it. But as close as he was, and with the Marlin’s reliable lever action giving me a fast followup if needed, I was ready. I took a deep breath in, held it, and then let it out slowly as my sites settled perfectly where I could break his neck with one shot. Slowly, ever so slowly, I squeezed the trigger until the hammer fell, igniting the primer and sending a 150 grain flat-nosed bullet hurtling toward the buck at 2,100 feet per second.
There was no drama. The sound of the shot still seemed to be reverberating from the surrounding hills while he crumpled in one smooth motion and lay still in instant death. There was satisfaction in a job well-done, but no joy. There is never exuberance in the taking of such a creature; but it was necessary. The damage he was doing to our other food sources combined with the vital nutrients he would provide at the table left me free of guilt, but nevertheless somber as I laid my hand on him and thanked him for his sacrifice. And I assured his spirit that out of respect for his sacrifice, nothing would be wasted and all would be returned back to the land to continue the cycle.
I heard someone approaching loudly, slipping and sliding down the hill from the cemetary, and glanced over to see my father. He, too, had been hunting and came to see the results of the unmistakeable discharge of a high-powered rifle. We unloaded our rifles, laid them on the ground; and he took out his hunting knife so we could field dress this fine animal before carrying him back to the farmhouse. All in all, our traditional Thanksgiving morning hunting had proven productive indeed.
Recreational Drug Use
by John Young
I recently received a communication asking what I think of recreational drug use. The short answer is that I believe recreational drug use is self-destructive and incompatible with the mandate in our Statement of Ethics that we each and all make the most of ourselves in every way that we can.
Most people engaged in the use of drugs lie to themselves about the effects, and ignore contradictory inputs. After all, if they admitted to themselves the full reality of the situation, there would be no rational alternative but to cease the activity.
I have seen a great deal of potential destroyed by drug use.
About ten years ago, when I was single, I met a girl for coffee at an upscale coffee house. She described how she had just gotten out of a mental hospital as a result of disorders triggered by illegal drugs, and would probably never be right again. She described how, when she had graduated college with a degree in molecular biology, she had high hopes for solving all manner of problems afflicting humanity, but that now she had her hands full because she had to concentrate just to “keep the table under her food solid.” While I certainly had compassion for her, I didn’t ask her out on a second date.
When I was a kid, an older kid who lived next door went to jail for manslaughter. He and his buds had been smoking dope in the midst of transporting some dope for a party. They came upon a bridge and because of the impairment, hit the bridge railings — which led to one of the passengers having his head sheared off of his body.
And I know a man today who has always had enormous potential as a singer, composer and musician. Yet, he has never gone anywhere because his spare cash has gone into dope and the errors in judgment he has made while under the influence of dope — including shoving his pistol into an unsuspecting woman’s nose and threatening to kill her — have landed him in jail for
years at a stretch. He can’t even obtain a decent regular job, much less fulfill his dreams. And as his recreational drug use has progressed, what potential he had to start with has been diminished day by day through destroying his powers of memory, creativity and concentration.
If you are using drugs for recreation and you believe it is not adversely affecting your potential, you are lying to yourself.
Recreational drug use is simply incompatible with being the best you can be, and is thus incompatible with the EAU Statement of Ethics.
But there is another dimension — the law enforcement angle.
I’ll be the first to tell you that the so-called “War on Drugs” is a sham. The illegality makes drugs expensive and profitable — generating billions upon billions of dollars in black-market profits that are used to fund everything from sex slavery to bribing police. It’s a disaster. And the drug war has served to increase the power of the state enormously; especially with regard to the use of informants, entrapment, and civil asset seizure. It has also provided an impetus leading to the militarization of civilian law enforcement that bodes ill for our future freedom.
So I have real issues with the so-called “War on Drugs.”
At the same time, because these drugs ARE illegal, anyone who uses them is putting his or her money into a ruthless and murderous underground economy whose actions almost universally run contrary to the best interests of our Folk.
Most dope originates outside of the U.S., in places like Mexico and Central/South America. When folks here buy it, the money ultimately goes to fatten the coffers of ruthless criminal gangs who have all but out-gunned the civil and military law enforcement authorities of their respective areas of operations. This destabilizes the region leading to economic displacement and the inability to establish the sort of civil order needed to have a functional society. As a result, millions upon millions of refugees are created.
And where do they go? Why … HERE, of course. Illegal drug use is one of the factors that ultimately fuels both legal and illegal immigration.
Meanwhile, the economy and infrastructure created by this trade creates serious power disparities on our side of the border as well. There are entire sections of California, for example, that have been surrendered to the drug gangs in actual written agreements because it is no longer possible to deal with the problem using civilian law enforcement. Those areas will only grow.
This is just the beginning. The entire organizational culture dealing with drugs for recreational use is brutal and inhumane in the extreme; and includes utter insensitivity to human beings to the extent that summary execution, torture, and sexual slavery are common. And the more drugs we use — the bigger this gets.
I’m sure it never crosses whatever passes for a mind in a recreational drug user; but every penny he spends on his “recreation” ultimately goes to support murder, extortion, bribery, rape and more on a grand scale. Contributing to this — voluntarily — is unconscionable.
In an ideal dope-user’s world, maybe things would be different. But we don’t live in that ideal world. Instead, we live in a world in which our decisions make a difference in other people’s lives; and in which buying some marijuana today contributes to a little girl getting raped tomorrow.
Think about it.
Where has John Young Been?
It’s good to be able to post again!
My regular job had an extended emergency that kept me working as much as 36 hours at a pop without rest.
Then, and this is predictable, I got sick. What started as a cold ended up as pneumonia.
But meanwhile, I have been researching a podcast that will be posted this weekend that I’m sure you’ll find very illuminating! This one has sixty-eight citations — so I hope you’ll find what I didn’t accomplish in terms of frequency will be more than balanced by quality and thoroughness.
Now the crisis at work has finally passed, the illness as been beaten with antibiotics and I’m catching up. Soon, you’ll be hearing from me just like usual!
Who is John Young?
Someone has asked me about these mysterious signs that just keep popping up along highways and byways throughout the country. The illustration shows one of them.
With all due respect to Ayn Rand, this seems to be derived from the famous “Who is John Galt?” from her novel, Atlas Shrugged. The novel depicts a world in which the goose that lays the golden egg finally has enough and goes on strike. What our government and corporations have lost sight of is the fact that European-Americans are the goose that lays the golden egg in this country, and by displacing us and denying us civil rights and protections afforded to other ethnic groups, they are ultimately creating a strike in numerous spheres. This country will not survive that strike.
Located in Vermont
The Taxman Cometh
by John Young
April 15th has come and gone. Every year, I spend money on proper tax software and file a tax return somewhere between twenty-five and thirty pages long. It’s usually a pretty depressing exercise because I get to add up just how much of my hard-earned money goes to a government that hates me.
Fundamentally, I don’t have an issue with paying taxes in order to keep my borders safe and keep criminals in check. Certainly, I dislike a number of details of the income tax that I’ll be discussing in a moment; but I believe that as a citizen I’m obligated to pay for the men and women who stand ready to do violence on my behalf so I can sleep safely in my bed at night.
The trouble is, I’m obviously paying a lot more than should reasonably be required; and I’m furthermore paying it through a set of tax regulations that is so ridiculously complex that I sometimes experience doubt as to their meaning.
And that doubt can be quite fatal because our IRS has the charitable impulses of Genghis Kahn combined with the sense of humor of an atomic bomb and the sensitivity of Torquemada. So whenever in doubt, I make the decision that yields the highest tax payment. If you call the IRS for help, you usually get someone who is barely literate and whose advice, if you follow it, cannot be used in their own special court system to establish that you were acting in good faith.
A few years back, Money Magazine had 50 CPAs independently do the taxes for a hypothetical family of four. Although all 50 CPAs had the same data, they came back with 49 different answers as to the total tax due. Only one of these trained professionals who had years of training plus objective testing under their belt achieved what the IRS considered to be the “correct” answer.
If 49 out of 50 trained professionals can’t get the right answer — what are the odds that an ordinary person will? For all practical purposes, the odds of getting it right are pretty close to zero; no matter how hard you try. That’s why I use professional software and buy audit defense every year. Sometimes, if something out of the ordinary has occurred, I pay a professional. Even at that, odds are that there are probably a few errors in the software or the professional is one of the 49 out of 50 who will mess up, though I have no way of knowing whether those errors affect my particular circumstances or not.
And this is my single largest indictment of the income tax: it turns every taxpayer into a “not yet charged” criminal. Every taxpayer in the United States, at some point, has a fear in the back of his mind regarding the income tax; because pretty much every taxpayer has no choice but to get something wrong on his income tax forms. The IRS has its own courts for trying cases, and on top of that all of the wages of the entire judicial branch of government depend on the income tax so the conflict of interest is quite intense, and always stacked against the taxpayer unless he has special pull or connections. (A certain Secretary of the Treasury comes to mind.) So at any moment in time, any taxpayer’s name can be pulled out of a hat as the subject of an audit or other extraordinary treatment.
And this “extraordinary treatment” to which I refer is my second indictment of the income tax. The IRS is one of the most casually evil branches of our government in that it is staffed with people who have almost unlimited power to make a taxpayer’s life miserable. While not all IRS employees take delight in the torture they are permitted to inflict; far too many gain a thrill from the absolute corruption they embrace as a result of their absolute power. The IRS has the power to do things that no other branch of government is allowed to do. They can seize your paycheck and your bank accounts with minimal notice and without a warrant or even due process in a court of law. If you owe them $3,000 and can’t pay it immediately, within just a few months they will add penalties and interest that turn the original debt into $15,000 or more. If your house gets foreclosed or your business is destroyed and (like too many) you commit suicide just to escape them — they can seize the proceeds of your life insurance and leave your widow penniless. And, in fact, they routinely do ALL of these things, and more. Their harassment extends even beyond the grave. Even worse, if an IRS agent with a conscience decides to blow the whistle on this outrageous activity, his career will be destroyed. In essence, for owing a few hundred dollars in taxes a taxpayer can receive treatment at the hands of the IRS that would make even a death row inmate blanch.
These two factors, in and of themselves, would be sufficient cause to repeal the income tax and abolish the IRS in its entirety even if the amount of taxes we owed was only $1/year. But, of course, we owe much more.
When I say “we” I am making a big assumption. I’m assuming that you, the reader, pay taxes too. Not too long ago, that was a fairly safe assumption; but today it is pretty much an even bet. By the time the latest Obama outrage has passed through Congress and taken effect, fully 50% of wage earners will effectively owe NO income tax whatsoever, leaving the remaining 50% of us to shoulder the burden not just for ourselves, but for the non-taxpaying wage earners along with the usual free-riders in government hack jobs, non-governmental agencies and the welfare industry. In essence, this means that over 50% of the adults in this country will have no direct stake in the cost of government since someone else will be paying the freight. I’m betting that if you are reading this, odds are that you’ll be joining me in paying the freight for everyone else.
And what amazing freight it is! Adding up my property tax, state income tax, federal income tax, FICA and Medicare alone — the lovely government has taken roughly 40% of my income. When you add the gas and sales taxes (I drive a lot), it comes to 43% of my income. And that’s not counting all of the hidden taxes. Amazing, though, isn’t it, that I have to pay so much of my income?
If the numb-skulls in Washington want the most impressive stimulus package ever seen; all they have to do is shut themselves down and leave my paycheck alone. Because by doing that, they would nearly double my disposable income overnight – and not just mine; but the income of millions of Americans as well. But, I digress.
What am I getting in exchange for all of this money? Well, let’s see.
1. I am getting borders that are so completely unsecured that as many as 5,000 illegal aliens a day pass over the border into Arizona alone. I also get, as head of homeland security, the woman who oversaw the security disaster in Arizona: Janet Napolitano. Now, it seems, due to our lax border security with Mexico, my fellow Americans may experience death from swine flue.
2. While I have to scrimp and save in order to afford payments for dental bills; I get the pleasure of providing unlimited free medical care to our own native crop of welfare layabouts (and this includes most of the bureaucrats in Washington) but also for illegal aliens and every dusky featherless biped who happens to have the good fortune of not speaking English.
3. After paying $650/year in gas taxes, $190/year in vehicle registrations and $800/year in tolls for my tiny 40mpg car; I get the privilege of driving on roads that are so poorly maintained that I have to ALSO pay for a new four-wheel alignment twice a year.
4. I get to pay for “Fusion Centers” and the Department of Homeland Security to label me a “likely terrorist” because I have an honorable DD-214.
5. I get to pay for multi billionaires to jet all over the world on my dime because their global Ponzi schemes are “too big to fail.”
6. And more, and more, and more — virtually NONE of it pertaining to the actual functions government is empowered to provide under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, and virtually all of it misdirected to assist a globalist oligarchy or harm America’s founding peoples.
Don’t get me wrong — I have disagreements with “our” government all year long. But right around tax time, when I see how much they are shaking me down, those disagreements take on a special tinge of disgust.
yjohn.wordpress.com 