Mother Earth News Finds an Economic Clue

I subscribe to many periodicals. Some, which I commend highly to your attention, are directly relevant to the business of European Americans United, and include The Occidental Quarterly and Mankind Quarterly. Others pertain mainly to my technical and scientific interests, such as Power Electronics, Electrical Engineering Times, Journal of Organic Chemistry, Scientific American Mind and so forth. But along with this sort of “heavy reading” I subscribe to a couple of magazines pertaining to my hobbies and self-sufficiency; including Backwoods Home magazine (which I highly recommend) and Mother Earth News.

Mother Earth News (MEN) is almost universally identified with the left. When I first subscribed, I suddenly found myself on the potential donors list of every left wing kook politician in existence and started receiving solicitations from far left-wing organizations. The association of MEN with the left is a bit perplexing to start with; and demonstrates just how useless such labels can sometimes be.

Within the pages of the most recent edition of MEN are instructions for homemade bread, detailed information on raising potatoes, raising chickens and building a built-in bed. Past issues have carried articles on how to construct a mortgage-free home. When I think of the left, I think about welfare statism, and the sort of overbearing government regulations that would make raising chickens in your own back yard impossible. I think of folks sitting on the welfare dole and getting fat without ever lifting a finger to help themselves.

Nevertheless, MEN buys into the multi-culti fluff-bunny love for all things which would displace European-Americans in America. That seems pretty stupid to me as a casual look at their advertisers indicates that their buying demographic is overwhelmingly European-American, so without us they (and their advertisers) would go out of business.

Either way, in their opening editorial — “Three Mountains we Must Climb” — they list environmental conservation (with particular note to global warming), population control and economic reform.

Being a critical thinker with a lot of science under my belt, I have to admit that I’m not convinced that global warming — to the extent it may be occurring at all — is substantially affected by human activities. There are much larger and more profound cycles that play out over a geological time-frame (such as ice ages), the causes of which are not known with certainty even by experts. If one doesn’t understand the causes behind the most profound climatological shifts in the world’s history; then such causation cannot be accounted for in calculations purporting to attribute global warming to human activity. So right now, I don’t buy the whole global warming scare.

But forgetting global warming, environmental preservation in and of itself is incredibly important. No matter what, our life ultimately springs from the land, water and air around us; and gratuitously polluting or abusing these diminishes our quality of life and increases diseases and misery. We are a part of nature — and don’t stand apart from it. As a result, no matter how much we may insulate ourselves, nature affects us. So conservation doesn’t need global warming as a justification: it just needs self-interest and a caring about future generations.

One key to conservation is population control. The MEN editorial points out that a simple voluntary mindset of “2 children per couple” would be sufficient to achieve that goal. Well, they miss an awful lot. For one thing, their primary audience of European-Americans has been at below-replacement-level reproduction for quite some time. If that’s true, then why is the U.S. population rising? Because of immigration from areas where a voluntary mindset has little or no effect, and reproduction is limited almost completely by availability of resources. And when they overcrowd and destroy their own corners of the planet and deplete their resources — they move into our corner of the planet.

While I’m sure the ultra-politically-correct folks at MEN would never dare to point it out, the simple fact is that the entire Western world would be at or below replacement level population already if one simple thing occurred: a complete shut down of immigration. And the populations in the other regions would become sustainable if the U.S. and Canada in particular stopped exporting the precious fertility of their soil to Third World countries in the form of crops.

You see, throughout the third world, most areas have long-since exceeded their human carrying capacity. They simply cannot produce enough food for their masses. The United States, Canada and (to a lesser extent) the rest of the Western World makes up the difference — largely through charity. In essence, U.S. taxpayers get taxed to pay for the food that gets sent overseas. Then U.S. taxpayers get to pay higher prices for their own food because of the artificially inflated demand. As I said, most of these third world populations don’t understand voluntary mindsets as espoused by MEN. What they DO understand is insufficient resources; so if we stop exporting our food and shut down our borders to immigration, their populations will drop to sustainable levels.

Of course, the status quo — including MEN — won’t entertain such notions. The big agribusiness corporations won’t stand for it, and the fluff-bunnies who bury their heads in the sand and lie to themselves about the unpleasant realities of human existence would rather die than face such realities.

But MEN mentions a third “mountain” in their editorial which leads me to believe that someone over there is actually reading WVWNews and listening to the Western Voices podcasts. To the best of my knowledge, we are the only organization that has pointed out the flaws of a growth-based economy time and time again. Here is what they said:

“That leaves the third and tallest mountain, economic reform. As our economies are now structured, we depend on population growth to support economic growth. Imagine a world in which demand for all the fundamental human necessities — food, shelter, etc. — were shrinking every year. To sustain our population at lower, healthier levels, we’ll have to invent a human economy that can maintain prosperity without growth. To do that, we’ll need brand new economic tools. We need new systems in which no one is placed at an unfair disadvantage. That doesn’t mean turning to socialism, communism or any other obsolete social system. Instead, we need something new that rewards human innovation without requiring human expansion.”

Naturally, their editorial goes on to discuss surmounting “cultural” barriers and other multi-culti propaganda.

Either way, it is clear that our economic ideas are gaining the attention of not just the traditional right — but the traditional left as well. This is not surprising. At their core, many people on both ends of the political spectrum are simply aiming for human good, happiness and prosperity. Our economic ideas are oriented toward achieving those objectives. So I’m glad that some on the traditional left are finally seeing that socialism and communism are as much dead-ends as capitalism. They are starting to look hard at third-way economic ideas — and clearly doing so through reading our websites as we express these ideas in a unique fashion.

The next thing I recommend, though, to our readers at Mother Earth News is that they read The New Racial Consciousness. In this podcast, I explain (with copious citation) why sustainable economic systems — which depend upon both altruism and cooperation — can only be brought into fruition in a condition of ethnic homogeneity.

The desire for ethnic homogeneity has absolutely nothing to do with mindless hatred for “the other,” and everything to do with understanding that many of the best of human characteristics are most operative in conditions of ethnic homogeneity. You can see this, to this very day, in certain remote tribes. You can also see it, to a certain extent, in countries such as Israel and Japan that have a clear and unambiguous ethno-racial basis and core. The bottom line is that multi-culturalism and multi-racialism are completely incompatible with the sorts of cooperation needed to move to sustainable populations, conservation and economics.

So as a pre-condition of solid economics, sustainable populations and environmental conservation we must also synchronize ethnic and national borders. This will ultimately be to the benefit of ALL unique cultures and peoples.
And this is the fourth and highest mountain that MEN left unstated, and dares not mention.

Give Thanks for Western Civilization!

Every year around this time we are assaulted with all sorts of politically correct nonsense describing how “evil Europeans” came and displaced the holy, harmonious and nature-loving existing cultures of North America.

It’s at times like this when I deeply regret how sanitized the history of this continent has become. You’d think the Indians were all just standing in a circle holding hands singing Koom-ba-ya and communing with Gitchee Manitou in perfect harmony when — all of a sudden — a bunch of blood-thirsty Europeans thrust the idea of violence upon them for the first time.

The reality of Indian violence is beyond the comprehension of the average modern European-American; but I can encapsulate it in a nutshell: it included slavery, cannibalism, head-hunting and human sacrifice on a fairly large scale.(1)

Marvin Harris noted of the Iroquois that they: “… are well known for their incessant warfare and their training of males to be immune to pain. They are also well known for their merciless treatment of prisoners of war. Captives were forced to run a gauntlet, their fingernails were pulled out and their limbs hacked off, and they were finally decapitated or roasted alive at the stake – after which their remains were consumed in cannibalistic feasts.”(2)

Even the founder of Boasian anthropology, Franz Boas noted in his book “The Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians” that eye-witnesses saw human sacrifice and cannibalism on a large scale. According to Boas, the cannibals among the Kwakiutl Indians “Besides devouring slaves … also devour corpses.”(3)

I’m a pretty open-minded fellow; and I’m very open to allowing those who dislike Western cultural norms to live by the norms of other cultures. Usually, I prefer my mother-in-law’s deliciously roasted turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Personally, I’m going to stick with my own culture.

But here is what I prescribe for the dingbats who think of European-Americans as the descendants of an oppressive culture. You need to celebrate Thanksgiving the way it would have been celebrated if Europeans had never set foot upon these shores: enslave each other, then torture each other and finally EAT each other for Thanksgiving. Because that is PRECISELY what would be happening on this continent had Europeans never arrived. Unless you are willing to do that, you need to sit down in a corner, shut your pie-hole and learn something.

If you cannot appreciate European culture, European-Americans and Western civilization, you need to volunteer to be enslaved, tortured, killed and eaten — because that’s what the “superior” Indians would have done to you. The only reason you are alive to make a whining nuisance of yourself is because European-derived people have a unique tolerance for such misbehavior. Be thankful — VERY thankful — for Western Civilization; because without its protection, the Indians would be picking your meat out of their teeth in no time flat.

So tomorrow for Thanksgiving, I will be sitting down at a nice table, and eating a delicious turkey with stuffing. And I will give thanks for Western Civilization because I’d much rather be eating a turkey than my next door neighbor. He looks pretty tough and stringy.

(1) Feldman, G. F. (2008), Cannibalism, Headhunting and Human Sacrifice in North America

(2) Harris, M. (1978), Cannibals and Kings, The Origin of Cultures

(3) Boas, Franz (1897), “The Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians” p. 441

Invention Continues …

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve switched to the Arduino platform for embedded systems development because that will allow other EAU members to duplicate my electronics products more easily. These will be licensed under a modified Creative Commons license that allows any EAU member to duplicate or enhance the designs either for themselves or for profit so long as the original creator is noted and improvements are put back into the knowledge pool.

The good news is that my latest Arduino-based design is nearly complete. A couple of prototypes are working fine in the field and I should have some professionally made printed circuit boards delivered next week. If these work as they should, we’re only a couple of weeks away from me uploading a zip file to our members-only site that includes schematics, printed circuit files, software/source-code, descriptions and pictures.

Oh — what is this device you ask? You’ll just have to wait to find out. It’ll be put on the members-only site. Membership, after all, has its privileges.

Tomorrow there will be no Winners

It’s election eve, and tomorrow there will be no winners among patriotic Americans. Certainly, this or that candidate of the oligarchy will win in a spoils system that allows the winners to enrich the coffers of supporters and hangers-on at public expense. But among patriotic Americans — those of us who can see the founding fathers as ancestors, speak English, pay taxes, obey the laws — there will be no winners in tomorrow’s election.

The two major party candidates are, in and of themselves, evidence that “democracy” in this country has become a cruel caricature of itself.

On the one hand, we have the representative of the Republican National Committee, Inc., John McCain. For the past two decades he has proudly and loudly thumbed his nose at even the most basic conservative principles in order to earn the status of “maverick” and become a media darling. Before he co-sponsored an amnesty for illegal aliens with Ted Kennedy, he had infamously empowered George Soros‘ 527 groups while dis-empowering the NRA through his euphemistically entitled “Campaign Finance Reform” act. Most tellingly, John McCain has appeared in advertisements lobbying for civilian disarmament on behalf of a Handgun Control Inc. spin-off deceptively named Americans for Gun Safety. Try not to act surprised if traditional conservative voters aren’t ready to “crawl across broken glass” to cast their votes.

On the other hand, we have the representative of Democratic National Committee, Inc., Barack Obama. Senator Bernie Sanders is a self-described socialist; and Barack Obama has managed to be the only Senator with a more leftist voting record. If he walks like a socialist and he votes like a socialist — he’s a socialist. Thus, some of his more sordid associations ought not be surprising. Along with kicking off his political career in the living room of an unrepentant communist domestic terrorist, he spent two decades in Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, where he literally affixed his signature to a so-called “Black Value System” that specified the “destruction of the white enemy” as a goal of his deity. And, to this date, he still has not even provided evidence of being eligible to be President on the basis of his real birth certificate.

In sum, both of these candidates are domestic enemies of the Constitution of the United States of America; and obviously so to anyone paying attention. Therefore when either of them wins the election, it will be a sad day for this country indeed. The idea that either of them will raise his right hand on January 20th and swear to “uphold and defend the Constitution” is just further proof of both their individual moral bankruptcy and the sheer idiocy of those who voted for them in the primaries.

Meanwhile, both voter fraud and ballot destruction have become major problems. Groups such as ACORN have registered untold hundreds of thousands of voters — many of whom are too young to vote, dead or nonexistent, and will nevertheless show up to cast their ballots. Many have already done so via liberalized absentee voting procedures. In a small town in New Hampshire, a scandal erupted when an entire family voted for Ron Paul during the Republican primary, and then discovered that when the town’s votes were reported, none were reported for Ron Paul.

Taken altogether, things have become so bad politically that many have given up on ideas of reform, and embraced secession and the destruction of the federal union as the only real solution.

But all is not lost.

Because we find ourselves in the ironic position that, as people lose faith in the status quo, they will be more receptive to our message. They will also become more receptive to third parties.

And don’t forget — no matter what the results of the election tomorrow, a vote for Chuck Baldwin will not be wasted.

Jesse Jackson (Unintentionally) Highlights Something Interesting

A recent article in the New York Post (10/14/2008) quotes Jesse Jackson at the World Policy Forum in France saying that, under an Obama administration, “decades of putting Israel’s interests first” would end. He further noted that “Zionists … have controlled American policy for decades.”

His assertion of Zionist control is inaccurate, though Walt And Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy certainly establishes that the Israel Lobby (in various forms) certainly has substantive influence. Influence and control are two different things — and it is important to understand the distinction.

Because Jesse Jackson doesn’t understand the difference between control and influence, his conclusion is incorrect. Control is obvious, and it can be seen as directly as the laws of cause and effect. Control is causation. Influence is less obvious, and can be seen only in terms of patterns and trends, and is much more akin to the idea of probability in quantum mechanics. Influence is correlation.

Ending or reducing control is easy — because there is an immediately visible feedback loop of cause and effect that can be observed to measure success. Ending or reducing influence, on the other hand, can be like nailing jelly to a tree because its source and effects are far less obvious.

Ending or reducing so-called “Zionist” influence in this country is extremely unlikely under an Obama administration because even folks like Jesse Jackson misunderstand the intermingling of Americanism and Zionism and the strong parallels between the two.

The first thing to be understood is that “Zionist” is not a polite way of saying “a subset of especially bad Jewish people” — even when certain people intend it to have that meaning — because many Jews are not Zionists and many Zionists are not Jews. Many people in this country — of every ethnic and political persuasion — are Zionists. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, “Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel.” If you were to ask European-Americans if they support Israel and its development, quite a few would answer in the affirmative. Whether they should or not is a story for another day, but the simple fact is that they do. That makes them Zionists.

I think the reasons why many folks of Jewish ancestry would support Israel are fairly obvious and understandable. Israel serves as a reservoir of Jewish genes that assures the continuity of the Jewish folk no matter what may happen in Diaspora. Every race and people should, in order to prevent genocide and promote important human biodiversity, have an equivalent of Israel. (Though without the presence of what Jimmy Carter characterized as apartheid.)

But the thing that makes the phenomenon of Zionist influence so hard to quell lies deeply in the European-American psyche — pre-dating Theodore Herzl and philosophical Zionism by hundreds of years. In very important ways, Zionism existed among European-Americans long before Jewish folks had even considered the idea.

European-Americans came to North America under many different conditions and for many different reasons. Our ancestors came here as members of dissident religious groups that were persecuted in our European homelands. Our ancestors came here to practice their religions freely without fear. Many of our ancestors came here to populate debtor’s prisons in the Carolinas. And far too many of our ancestors came here in chains in the holds of ships where they were forced to endure the Atlantic passage on meager rations in disease and rat-infested holds from which many did not emerge alive.

But pretty much across the board, America was seen in terms of the biblical metaphor of Exodus: the Promised Land. You can see this in journals, logs, and letters of the time; and the theme repeats itself continuously. The idea of North America fulfilling the role of Promised Land for the European diaspora, replete with endless Old Testament biblical references, was a dominant aspect of the thought processes of our ancestors who came to this continent from Europe. The idea of Manifest Destiny drew its primary strength from this conviction. North America was the New Israel, and members of the European diaspora were the new Jews. We (European-Americans) were the new Chosen People, and North America was the Promised Land, delivered to us through divine Providence, and flowing with milk and honey.

Thus it is no mistake, when you look at a map of the United States, to see towns with names taken straight out of the Bible, with a preponderance from the Old Testament: Canaan, Lebanon, Hebron, Bethel, Goshen, Jericho, Eden, Nineveh, Sharon, Zion, Shiloh, etc. There are literally thousands of cities, towns and landmarks in the United States whose names were directly derived from the Bible. The preponderance of Old Testament names is living proof of the mindset of a great many of our ancestors. Anyone who has paged through birth and death records will find that a large proportion of our ancestors had names like Samuel, Isiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Adam and even Moses. Our ancestors weren’t Jewish of course; but, in a certain way, they thought of themselves in similar terms.

Biblical sensibilities, and particularly Old Testament biblical sensibilities corresponding to the Jewish Torah and Tanakh, formed the core of the mindset of many of the earliest European-Americans coming in through Plymouth and Jamestown. You can see the depth of Old Testament biblical influence in the old so-called “Blue Laws” that mandated keeping the Sabbath (and certain other commandments) with a zeal practically indistinguishable from Ultra Orthodox Judaism. For many years, the divorce laws in the United States mirrored those that exist in Israel today.

It is important to keep these aspects of the history of Americans in mind when trying to fully grasp the idea of Zionist influence. You see, Americans have a long history of relating both intensely and personally with many of the stories, ideas and narratives that form the core of Judaism and give rise to Zionism.

Because of these similarities, it is extremely easy for folks whose loyalties lie with Israel rather than the United States to manipulate Americans through a call to commonality. There is commonality in the tales of establishing a homeland after fleeing oppression or persecution, a deep resonance with the David and Goliath story, and a nearly innate sympathy with the people whose narrated past was adopted by many of our ancestors as their own. Naturally, people affiliated with organizations such as AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee work to foster and intensify such feelings.

Of course the Old Testament wasn’t the only source of inspiration for our European-American forebears. Throughout the country we find places named after Greek and Roman cities such as Athens, Carthage, Troy and Rome ; our buildings and monuments reflect the sensibilities of the Greek and Roman polytheists; our mottoes are largely expressed in the classical Latin of the Roman Republic and many of our heroes were named after mythological and historical figures such as Ulysses. Likewise, New Testament influences made themselves felt in laws named after Jesus’ parables — like Good Samaritan Laws, charitable endeavors on a scale beyond anything the world had ever before seen, and a host of children named after Apostles, Saints and Popes.

So the European-American zeitgeist cannot honestly be seen as arising entirely from Old Testament archetypes. Rather, as a new experiment in self-government arising at the height of the Enlightenment when all of the older Greek philosophers were being re-read for perhaps the first time in hundreds of years; and with a host of manifestations of Christianity with varying loci of scriptural emphasis … the European-American zeitgeist arises from a mixture of influences and narratives; but only a person ignorant of our history would miss the undeniable influence of the Old Testament.

A while back I took the time to read all of the articles of secession passed by the various Southern legislatures. Easily two-thirds of them made reference to the institution of slavery as having been divinely ordained and a precious gift of deity. Where is the institution of slavery established in the Bible, along with all of the rules governing its exercise? In the Pentateuch, of course. That part of the Old Testament also known as The Torah.

This is something that Dr. Tomislav Sunic has dealt with at some length in his recent book Homo Americanus; though he comes at it from a somewhat different direction. Our approaches to the subject differ, but many of our conclusions are similar. Specifically, that Christianity, as practiced by most of our European-American forebears, was of a strongly Jewish flavor that didn’t exist in continental Europe.

As James Russell described in his book The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity; when Christianity came to the heart of Europe, its emphasis and practice were transformed from that of a breakaway sect of Judaism to a religion that absorbed not just the pre-Christian extrinsic manifestations of the European folk-soul (such as the solstice and equinox holidays); but also maintained a body of philosophy as a lens through which scripture was viewed so that the emphasis and meaning of scripture were interpreted in a European rather than Middle Eastern context; and in which explicitly relating to the Old Testament was practically non-existent. Thus the medieval Christians of Europe didn’t see themselves as de-facto extensions of Judaism; but rather as its repudiation.

This changed with Martin Luther who, in spite of his extensive scholarship, probably failed to understand the consequences of his religious advocacies. I don’t want to cover the entire story of Martin Luther, but suffice it to say that he is responsible for many of the principles of language translation, the standardization of the German language and a host of other positive accomplishments. Moreover, the motivations that led to his religious advocacies were founded in true concern over abuses by the dominant religious authorities of his time. But those factors notwithstanding, by translating the Bible into the vernacular, putting forth a view that scripture should be individually interpreted and understood by each person and furthering the idea that every person of faith was an ipso facto priest … he managed to strip away the distinctly European philosophical lens through which scripture had been viewed in times past, thereby leaving many of our ancestors, for the first time, with an unfiltered Hebraic scripture from which they were to draw their own opinions.

In most of Judaism, the Hebraic scriptures are informed, interpreted and expanded upon by a supplementary text written by Jewish biblical scholars known as the Talmud; and by an oral tradition that is said to pre-date the written Torah. Thus, no matter what the written scriptures may say, there is plentiful room for philosophical interpretation to keep the end result true to the intent of the religion as a group evolutionary strategy.

Up until Martin Luther, while Medieval Christianity didn’t draw from the Talmud (which Luther condemned as being filled with lies), it DID draw from an analogous body of literature and thought composed by far-seeing theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, Augustine of Hippo, Albertus Magnus and others. This body of literature served a purpose for European Christianity very similar to that served by the oral law and Talmudic scholarship for Judaism. It helped to keep European Christianity focused on a distinctly pro-European path. Obviously, this system was imperfect; but when Martin Luther appointed each individual person as the arbiter of scriptural truth — that body of knowledge became superfluous and was largely discarded.

Bereft of the foundation of hundreds of years of Euro-centric scholarship, many new branches and interpretations of Christianity took on a cast that was influenced by the un-mediated interpretation of Hebraic scriptures that lacked a European cultural anchor — thereby setting the stage for a group of Europeans who considered themselves to the the true Chosen People sailing for their own Promised Land, and entrenching specifically Zionist ideas within the early European-American psyche. It is thus no shock to discover that the number of Christian Zionists in this country is larger than the number of Jewish folks who explicitly self-identify as Zionists. (As a side note, consider that at one time the theory that the English people were the true Jews spoken of by the Old Testament was quite popular.)

This is an important factor in understanding Zionist influence because the number of people in the United States who are specifically and explicitly beholden to Israel is relatively small — certainly no more than 2% of the population, and likely a lot less. Compared to the 98% or more of the population that lacks such explicit loyalties to a foreign state, such a small population is relatively powerless — especially in a democracy — without incredible leverage. Wealth differential, beneficial symbiosis with owners of mass-media and similar factors can only provide so much leverage. The primary leverage comes, as I described above, from the long acquaintance and implicit acceptance of Zionist ideas among European-Americans that pre-dates modern Zionism. In other words, many of our people — with names like Samuel, Sarah, Levi, Rachel and David, living in towns like Canaan, Sharon or Shiloh and reading weekly from a non-mediated Tanakh — are implicitly predisposed to accept the explicit arguments of Zionists, thereby multiplying their effective power by a factor of 20 or more.

What I am saying, then, is that the Israel Lobby — composed of a very small number of activists — gains its primary power through US, and retains that power through OUR sanction. The moment sufficient numbers of European-Americans explicitly reject the idea of congruity between the American and Israeli narratives, the Israel Lobby will crumble to dust of its own accord.

Until that time, despite Jesse Jackson’s attribution of near-messianic powers to Barack Obama, he will be unable to substantively reduce the power of Zionism. At the one-on-one level of politicians, Zionist lobbies will hold sway in this country as long as it doesn’t create a dramatic electoral liability.

That is to say that a lobby for a foreign state can only use money and/or threats to secure favorable votes from politicians so long as the electorate does not strongly oppose those votes. If Americans were to decide that the American narrative was far from congruous with the founding of the modern State of Israel, and that uncritical support of Israel might even be contrary to America’s best interests — and if they were to decide this to be a hot-button issue determining their votes in elections — all the lobbyists in the world would be powerless to effectuate their desired ends among our political class.

But such a repudiation of Zionism has not gained currency among most voters. As a result, explicitly pro-Zionist lobbies composed of Christian Zionists, AIPAC and many others hold sway. Barack Obama could, conceivably, reject their overtures — though I consider that unlikely for a candidate so gutless that he voted “present” 130 times. But even if he did, as long as the bulk of the American people see the Israeli narrative as their own; the lobbies need only appeal to the American people to bring politicians back in line.

Barack Obama, even on his best day, doesn’t have the power to change that.

But WE do.

There’s nothing wrong with the Jewish people wanting their own state. That’s very normal and in some cases even laudable. (Though I have certain ethical qualms with the details of how Israel is run.)

But there is something VERY wrong with a United States citizen of any ethnicity relating so strongly to a foreign country — ANY foreign country — so strongly that they would willingly subjugate the interests of the United States in its favor.

That is something that needs to be changed.

Parasites to Seize 401(k)s

I’ve described, at great length and with detail, what is wrong with Social Security. The core issue is inflation brought about by a combination of fiat currency and a government that wants to spend (get power) with taxing (suffering consequences).

The inflation creates a situation where the only way to pay for social security (which would otherwise work just fine) is to have an infinitely expanding tax base. Obviously, this is impossible; and if anything the pool of people being taxed has shrunk over the years until, if Obama’s latest proposals are enacted, the majority of voters will finally draw more from government than they contribute. So in such an environment, and when faced with the prospect of having to repudiate their communist principles in order to set things right, legislators are prone to opt for measures that are even more communistic and draconian than those that already exist.

One thing you can count on is that the commies always wait for an ideal opportunity to strike — and right now, with the market down and people having short memories, they see such an opportunity.

Over the long run, the stock market has been the most worthwhile investment a person can make. If you had invested $1,000 in blue-chip stocks in 1982, despite the ups and downs of the market, you would have over $8,000 today. If you had put that money in a savings account at 3% interest, you would have about $2,200 today. If you had put that money in gold, you’d have around $2,500 today.

In other words, historically, when money is invested for the long term, the single best place a person can put money is in the common stock of solid companies. It’s just that simple.

But most people don’t have a long time horizon. All they know is that their 401k is worth 33% less than it was a year ago. In their mind, they have “lost” that money; which shakes their confidence in the stock market as a whole. This is especially the case for people who are close to retirement age and are much more interested in security. Though, I should point out, well-proven investment strategies have long advocated that the closer you get to retirement age, the less of your money should be in stocks. That’s because, taken on the short term, stocks are quite volatile — they’ll gain or lose 10% in a day. As you get closer to retirement age, the risks of volatility outweigh the benefits of gains, and smart folks move their money from stocks to either bonds or even money market accounts.

Either way, many folks aren’t knowledgeable about that stuff, and are either unnecessarily worried about their current portfolio value or left their money in stocks right up until the time to retire. So, in their minds, they’ve been fleeced — even though, taken over the long range, anyone who has been saving for 30 years via the stock market has had returns more than double the compound rate of even real inflation. (Real inflation is 5% higher than what the government reports.)

So they are ripe for the next attack. That next attack from the commies cuts right to the core of wealth by putting 401Ks under the Social Security Administration and giving back a “guaranteed 3% annual return, adjusted for inflation.” In addition, 401Ks would no longer be tax deductible and when you died, half of it would be seized by the government. No, I’m not kidding. Just look at this article.

When you see the article, the language used by proponents of this plan and their Democrat/Communist partisans should make your blood boil. They talk about the fact that 401K contributions are deductible as being a “government subsidy.” It’s only a subsidy under one condition: that everything I earn belongs to the government by right. And there is only one form of government where this is true: communism.

Let me make it clear to these communist idiots: Hey! Commie Idiot! What I earn is mine! Everything taken from my paycheck subsidizes YOU. You are subsidized by my hard work. Or, to put it another way: I am productive and YOU are a parasite. Letting me keep what I have earned by the sweat of my brow is not a subsidy, it is JUSTICE. And de-funding your miserable existence on the back of hardworking people would likewise be JUSTICE. Be careful how far you push the goose that lays the golden egg.

Arduino Embedded Systems Design

I really enjoy engineering generally, and electrical engineering in particular. My favorite toys for such endeavors are transceivers and embedded systems. For about a zillion years I worked mainly with Z80s and the like, but a few years back I switched to PIC microcontrollers. In recent times, I’ve migrated to Atmel’s 8-bit RISC AVR platform.

AVR development is already easier and cheaper than PIC development right out of the box, along with full-fledged free C compilers (AVR-GCC) and the whole nine yards.

But, now along come the Italians and give us something really cool and really nifty: Arduino.

The Arduino platform — complete with free software and libraries for all the most common stuff — makes embedded development incredibly inexpensive and ridiculously easy. (At least, for folks who are into that sort of thing.)

Now — you may ask — what does this have to do with the normal subject matter of my blog?

Well, for one thing, no rational person is one dimensional. But, for another … it just so happens that I invent all kinds of stuff — hardware, software, gizmos and you name it. 99% of the time, I just use whatever I invent for my own purposes or even put it into the public domain.

But here’s the cool thing about Arduino (and Freeduino). By using Arduino as a common reference platform, it will make it easy for me to express at least a subset of my inventions in a form that can be easily duplicated by people who don’t own a bunch of specialized hardware. All they need to get is an Arduino, a Shield and the parts that I specify — hook them up the way I illustrate, and program the beast using the software I provide (which they can update) and — shazaam — they can duplicate my work.

What this means is that, using the Arduino as a reference platform, it will be practical to share a subset of my inventions via the EAU Members-Only website. Why? Because I’m always talking about things like starting a home business, making your home the center of your family’s economic life and that sort of thing. By providing some of my inventions to members via the EAU Members-Only website, any member who wishes to use those inventions as a means of starting a home (or other) business — or just to add to his/her own level of self-sufficiency — can do so.

This is called in-group altruism. It’s adaptive.

The first Arduino gizmo I’ll be posting is a device that I’m designing for my chicken coop that turns on brooder lights at very low temperatures to keep my chickens from freezing and keeps their water at around 40F in the winter. This general design could be adapted for about a million other purposes. There’s no real rocket science involved — I just haven’t found a device in existence that does what I want, so I’m making my own.

So you’ll see the first designs of this sort up on the EAU Members-Only website in about a month.

The Home: Asset or Liability?

A single family home these days is quite expensive. In fact, compared to median wages, it’s more than twice as expensive as it was just 30 years ago; even considering the “housing slump.”

When you buy a house, no matter how you slice it, it’s going to cost a LOT of money.

Rather than buying a house as a “tax deduction” or because you think it will appreciate (maybe it will, maybe it won’t), you should look at a home as though your family is a business and the buildings and land are a capital investment. You should then look to see in what ways that capital can generate revenue that offsets the costs.

For our ancestors, their homes were not simply hotels where they slept when not busy elsewhere. Their homes were the center of their economic lives — a center of production where raw materials were converted to useful products. All over America, pharmacists lived in apartments over top of their shops — where they actually compounded many of their own medicines. Blacksmiths practiced their trade out back. Attorneys had their offices in a first floor room of the house. Practically everyone had a garden out back, the basement was used as a root cellar to store produce and the kitchen generated nearly every meal that was consumed.

In other words, homes were not merely a cost center — they were a revenue center as well. By arranging affairs in this fashion, our ancestors were much more economically secure in terms of the basics of food, shelter and clothing.

One of the problems we face today, as a people, stems from the fundamental way in which we view our home. We think bigger is better, and we think that the best use for acreage is growing grass for which we buy seed, and then buy expensive mowers to cut. This is a mode of behavior that only makes sense for the independently wealthy. For people who actually have to work jobs — it’s a senseless waste. Instead of the home helping the homeowner — it turns into an endless pit of expenditure from which little is recovered.

Oh — you at the back of the class — what’s that? You say the home will appreciate in value?

Okay. Fair enough. Let’s subject this “appreciation in value” to the test to see if it justifies the bushels of money.

Pretend you bought a house in 1978 for $120,000 and that it is now worth $250,000. At first glance, this looks like you are putting $130k in your pocket in pure profit. But are you?

Well, first off, you paid $839/month for 360 months for that house — which comes to $302,000+. So — now where’s your big profit? And then, over that time, you paid property taxes every year; you paid for insurance and the whole nine yards. You probably spent thousands of dollars over thirty years planting grass seed and mowing the lawn.

The bottom line is that buying property for the purpose of realizing a capital gain through appreciation may work for some people in some markets, but is truly no different from betting on the stock market. Maybe you’ll win, maybe you’ll lose. But, in a sense, it is even WORSE than betting on the stock market because most people don’t borrow the money they are using to gamble there. By borrowing the money, you essentially eliminate any gains you would have made by appreciation.

The only way for property to make sense is for it to be viewed as a capital asset that will be USED to accomplish something.

Obviously, when you buy a home you are using it to replace paying rent. So that’s some return there. If you also use it as a place to perform oil changes and minor repairs for the cars in the family, that’s a positive benefit. If you use it as a place to grow and preserve food, that’s a benefit. If you use it as a source of fuel for the wood stove, that’s a benefit. If you use it as a law office — that’s a benefit. If you use it as a place to produce nifty new rifle slings or kits for ham radio operators — that’s a benefit.

The point is that the home, to be anything but a liability, must be turned into a center of production rather than merely a center of consumption.

Think about it.

Employment is not Empowerment, Ownership is

In a recent discussion with a friend of mine, she alluded to women entering the workforce as a path to personal empowerment.

This is where I feel compelled to point out something fairly obvious.

Income flows into one hand, then exits the other to pay for necessities and maybe a few luxuries. Income is absolutely meaningless except to the extent that it supplies the very bottom tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: food, water and shelter. Beyond that, only income that is retained in the form of wealth is actual empowerment.

If you have income, you eat for today. If you have wealth, you can eat for life. And if you can eat for life, then you have the time and ability to exercise control over your immediate environment — and possibly even over the environment of others. If you have income, you donate $10 to the candidate of your choice. If you have wealth, you donate $10,000 via various mechanisms. If you have income, you are just a statistic. If you have wealth — you are represented in Congress.

Employment means going and coming according to someone else’s dictates, doing whatever they say once you are there, and sometimes even living by their rules once you are at home. That, friends, is not “empowerment.”

Wealth, on the other hand, means ownership. When you are the owner, then you can come and go on your own schedule, and do as you please while there. And you get to be the one dictating the schedule of others.

Thus, our objective is not employment — but ownership. Ownership can be facilitated by employment either through ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans), or through retaining income earned through employment rather than spending it.

In other words — for employment to be a source of empowerment, the employee must first learn how NOT to spend. Anyone who doesn’t learn that lesson first ends up on a glorified plantation.

Abolish the Federal Reserve!

Abolishing the Federal Reserve would be good for 98% of the people in this country.

I’ve written and recorded a lot of material explaining how the Fed is perhaps one of the most insidious threats to freedom and genetic continuity faced by our people.

Now comes a truly great idea — protests around the country staged at every one of the 38 Federal Reserve banks. Check it out here. November 22, 2008: BE THERE.