Todd’s Life

Social Justice or Social Injustice?
I sat next to a gentleman today who started talking to me about the incredible basketball game played between Duke and Butler for the national championship. After talking about the game, we started talking politics and the size of the federal government. I stated that I thought the economic problems we are facing today were caused by the size of the federal government and the central planning involved with all their intervention. He begged to differ. He stated that he thought it was necessary to have all this government to address social justice. Social justice is the idea that groups of people have been wronged in the past and the government must be used to address these social injustices. This idea often resonates with many people until the assumptions and logic behind it are investigated a little closer.

The assumptions that are erroneous are these. Groups never wrong other groups. It is always individuals that wrong individuals. Groups don’t kill other people. It is always individuals that kill other individuals. Second, whole groups of people are never wronged. It is always parts of groups that are wronged. All blacks were not slaves in the United States. It was only blacks in the South and then not all blacks were slaves in the South. There were many free blacks in New Orleans. Third, groups that governments come up with, such as white, Asian and Pacific Islander, Hispanic, African American, are just arbitrary groups who sole purpose is to exist so that politicians can incite anger and hate within a certain group of people in order to control them. Think about it, what is a white person? Is it someone with white skin? Is it someone who has a white mother and father? What is a black person? Is it someone who is a deep color of black, someone who is brown, or do there mother or father have to come from Africa? And why is a black person considered an African-American and a white person is not considered a European-American? When governments define groups, they do so in order to curry political favor, not to right wrongs. Fourth, those who injured individuals in the past are long gone and dead. Justice requires that those who wrong an individual pay the price of that injury. It makes no moral sense that a descendant of a slave owner pay for an injury that his ancestor committed by forcefully taking money away from him or her and giving it to a descendant of a black man or woman who came from free blacks in the North? It makes no sense. In fact, that is more wrong than the injustice that they are trying to right.

Sadly, though, most Americans don’t take the time to think about who is doing the talking when groups and anger are brought up and they fail to think exactly what do they mean by whatever group they are talking about. The truth is that individuals injure individuals. There is no concept that is morally or ethically true when it comes to group justice or this social justice. Justice can only be applied on an individual basis. The wrongs of the past have been committed in the past. To right those wrongs would require a time machine. Justice requires that we all individually pay for the sins that we commit. To ask someone who never had slaves to pay someone who never was a slave is ridiculous. It is a concept that exists so that politicians can take money from a group of haves and give it to a group of have-nots for the purpose of buying their vote. If I can keep you angry, then I can control you. The end of America as we know it, a land of freedom and opportunity ends when the group of people who believes in this silly concept of social justice outnumbers those who do not.

Hi all!  We got our first mortgage are about ready to buy the new apartment.  It will be different to own something, at least part of it.  I guess we won’t technically own it for another 20 years.  It is nice too to live in place that is affordable and you can buy something for so little.  We’ll be doing all the buying of appliances and things like that over the first few weeks.  And finally, I found 4 excellent articles on the health care debate.  I would encourage you all to read them and pass them on.  Finally one question that we all need to answer.  Who is better at managing your money?  Yourself or a politician, most of whom are dishonest, thieving bastards.  Ha.Ha. 

• http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/08/18/whose_medical_decisions
• http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/08/19/whose_medical_decisions_part_ii
• http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/08/20/whose_medical_decisions_part_iii
• http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/08/21/whose_medical_decisions_part_iv
• http://www2.wholefoodsmarket.com/blogs/jmackey/2009/08/14/health-care-reform-full-article/

I found a great article from Thomas DiLorenzo today.  Check it out here.

Hi folks.  Thomas Sowell just hit another home run.  If you are interested in a little truth read it here.  If you are not, enjoy keeping your head in the sand as the world burns around you.  Why can’t more people think more clearly like Thomas Sowell.

Today will be a day of travel.  I’m not really looking forward to it, but at least it will be as short as it possibly could be.  It’s only 16 hours of total travel.  I fly to Atlanta, wait for 2 hours there, then go directly to Santiago.  It will be nice to leave the cold and will be nice to step off the plane to warmth in Santiago.  As usual, I’ve enjoyed spending time with my family.  It was short, but it was sweet.  My body never fully adjusted to Portland time.  I wish that I had done some more things outdoors, but I wasn’t feeling well so I thought it wasn’t smart to push it. 

Once again, another stellar Thomas Sowell article here.  It is a must read and of course if you like it, you must pass it on to family and friends.  The only way to stop these freedom haters out there is through education.  The truth shall set you free.  And here’s a great George Will column.

Well, today was a quiet Sunday cool day.  I think that most people in Santiago just stay home on Sunday because there is very little traffic out there.  It is almost like a ghost town.  I spent today at church and then at home relaxing, reading, studying, etc.  I’m glad that there is one day of the week where I can just relax and veg.  Tomorrow is a national holiday in Chile, but I’ve got a 3 hour conference call with a client of ours.  That’s fine with me.  I don’t mind working.  I need to learn so much about this client and what they want to do because it looks like I’ll be taking over the account in the next 3 weeks.  Yikes…. The honeymoon and vacation are definitely over.  Where did that 3 months go?  It sure didn’t seem like a long time.

Just another day in Santiago.  Hot and sweaty.  One day closer to working again after 3 months of vacation.  I’m excited to give it a try and see what happens.  Things have worked out too perfectly.  It’s weird how things just fell into place.  I never intended for it to happen and to be honest I really don’t know what to make about it.  The apartment that I found was just perfect.  The lady that rented it to me works for LAN airlines and speaks English, so hopefully I can find some cheap deals to fly.

I had an interesting conversation with a guy today about Israel and Palestine.  He naturally took the side of Palestine like any good listener of CNN would.  I told them that it was pretty easy for me to know what side I was on.  I just look for the side that respects liberty and freedom more and take that side.  And it is fairly obvious that Israel is a much freer nation.  I then told him that I would never choose the Palestinians because they teach their kids from a young age to hate Jews, to think suicide bombers are great, etc.  It is pretty obvious which side is wrong on this one and which side is evil.  That isn’t to say that Palestinians as a people are evil, because they aren’t.  It is to say that the leaders of that nation, including the religious leaders, are evil.  If you teach your kids to hate, you are evil, pure and simple.  He had never heard about the Palestinian version of sesame street where they teach their kids to hate, to kill Jews, and to worship the deeds of suicide bombers.  Now, why the United Nations and the rest of the world takes the side of Middle Eastern, freedom-hating nations is beyond me.  Wait… It must be the oil.  And they mock America for trying to change governments in Iraq and Afghanistan to ones more suitable to our liking and more free.  They have the audacity to try and lecture us about going into Iraq for oil.  By the way, I still don’t understand why or how Iraq was about oil, because if it is was about oil, wouldn’t we have taken the oil and not allowed oil prices to go to $150 a barrel.  It is funny to listen to liberals, Europe, and much of the free world and the rest of the world castigate us for going to war for oil (I don’t believe that), when they base their policy decisions on not interupting the freedom-hating Arabs or they base their policies around oil.  What a bunch of hypocrites.  I just wish more people would use two very important words when listening to these hypocrites speak on CNN or other liberal media stations.  SHUT UP!!!!!!!  Instead, you get the majority of the world taking sides with freedom hating Arabs and not freedom loving Jews.  It’s incredible.  You could write books on the propoganda genius of these people in convincing the free world to hate freedom and to feel sorry for haters and to love big government.  I think I would like to study how that has all come about and write books on it. 

Here’s a great article on global warming.  It looks like the Earth is cooling down again.  That makes me wonder why Barack Obama and all the other crisis creators are still worried about something that isn’t a problem.  Well, they are left-wing elitists who believe in what they believe and if there is one group of people you can never talk out of a burning building, that would be left wing ideologues.  They put their complete faith in their ideas and laugh and mock people who put their faith in God and traditional ideas that have stood the test of time.  Instead they believe their silly philosophies, care about whales more than about humans, etc.   Anyway, here’s the article.  I don’t recall seeing it in the media.  I guess it doesn’t fit their view of the world or their desire to trick the people into going for more government.  Read here.

I had an interesting conversation in class that I forgot to write about.  It happened in my Friday morning class with one of my professors that is a socialist apologist.  He wanted to discuss the idea that women are not paid the same as men.  It is a typical liberal lie.  What they tend to do is take all the women and average their salaries together and all the men together and average their salaries together and then compare them.  But doing this renders results that do not matter.  You are just comparing apples and oranges.  While it is true that women on average make about 30 cents less than men do, this means nothing.  When you compare men and women with equal education, number of years on the job, etc., then the salaries are generally equal or very close to being equal.  At times, women make more than men.  The key with any truthful comparison is that you have to be honest and compare like things.  Comparing unlike things renders results that mean nothing.  It is dishonest, but that is generally what liberals are when they use statistics that are untruthful to somehow fit the vision of their world.  There is so much of this falsehood out there and my professor is a typical liberal thinker who has never been challenged in his ideas, so I gladly challenged him with a little truth.  The truth is that in a free market society, it would be insane to not pay a woman with the same experience and education the same amount as a man.  If you did this, then the woman would go somewhere else and work and make her new employer money, but this doesn’t fit the vision of the left which is to make people victims of some larger conspiracy and solve this conspiracy with more government.  That is how they operate.  The create false conspiracies and crisis, get people all worked up in anger and emotion, offer a government solution, and, thus, take away much of your freedom.  Isn’t it brilliant?  I just wish folks would realize what is going on.  They are just getting played.

So on to what I did today.  I did a lot.  I went around town today to take pictures for Leigh’s Flat Stanley project.  Here’s those pics.  I must have walked miles, after running a lot this morning.  I’m tired.  I’ve got some great pictures and I will upload them soon.  Then I went to the temple to do some temple work.  It was fun.  The people in the temple were nice, encouraging me to speak Spanish, etc.  I ended up spending several hours in the temple because there were not enough people that showed up for the session that I wanted to attend, so they had us do other temple work instead until the next session.  I did the session in Spanish as well at least until the very end.  Next time, I’ll do it all in Spanish.

Then I went to my favorite sports bar to get some good American food and watch some football.  Florida was killing South Carolina.  I met this new American there.  I guess he’s been studying 6 months at the University of Chile.  He’s an econ major and he doesn’t drink the koolaid that is going around.  He believes in Ron Paul and what he says.  It’s nice to hear a young person not drink the big government koolaid.  He realizes that the problem is the system right now and the system is rigged to benefit the federal government.  I’ve always found it funny that the government goes after any other businesses or organizations it thinks have too much power, such as Microsoft, calling them monopolies; yet they seem to ignore the fact that the Federal Reserve is the sole monopoly in the United States.  It controls 100% the supply of money.  Now that can’t be good, can it?  It only allows the federal government to abuse their powers.  Needless to say, I’m tired from going all over the city to get pictures for Leigh.  I ate way to much food at the sports bar.  I think it’s time to go to bed.

I made it to Friday.  Now I can have 2 free days from Spanish classes.  I’m so excited.  My body is tired from running and my mind is tired from Spanish.  We have this new girl in Spanish class that is young and youth sometimes just doesn’t shut up.  Don’t you just love the foibles of youth.  They think they know everything.  They don’t shut up.  They sound like a parrot from CNN.  I just want to tell her to shut up in class, but I don’t.  I wish she would just leave, but it isn’t going to happen.  So I just grin and bear her irritating personality.  I also found out today that I need to pick up my contract with Oracle Monday and take it to the lawyer’s office on Monday.  Then I should have work visa by the end of the week.  I think I’ll try to move into my new apartment this next weekend.  I’m waiting for them to hook up TV, Internet, and phone.  The last thing I want to do is move into a place and have no connection to the outside world.  I like being alone at times, but not that alone:)

As for any deep political thoughts.  I had one today.  I was thinking about central banking today.  Imagine that.  I’m in Santiago Chile walking home from school and that thought I have is central banking.  Am I strange or what?  Anyway, what is central banking?  Well, in the United States, it just means that the Federal Reserve is the monopoly source of money.  The interesting thing with central banking is that it allows the federal government to print money out of nowhere and spend it when it  has deficits.  Who does this benefit?  It benefits the people who receive this money and it benefits the federal government.  It is dishonest because it devalues everyone else’s money and it allows the government to get rich (own more and more of the economy) without doing anything to earn the money.  What are the problems with this?  Well, it is nothing more than central planning.  Central planning wouldn’t be bad, if the government were able to make the right picks and choices in the economy.  If they knew how many cars we all needed, how much food we needed, how many TVs we needed, etc. then central planning would be fine.  But it is impossible to know these things.  Instead the government always seems to stimulate the economy in one way.  It gives people money to build homes, roads, bridges, etc.  Well, what happens if a growing percentage of people are building homes, bridges, public works, etc.  That means less people are growing food, building TVs, appliances, power plants, etc.  That means that there are fewer things that you and I need.  And that, my friends, is what has caused this economic crisis.  The government has been stimulating growth for years in the part of the economy that we didn’t need stimulation in and now we all paying the price.  Sure, some people got rich off it, but those of us who didn’t are left poorer for it.  The government is really good at putting money in people’s hands, but they are very bad at building actual wealth (the goods and services that we want and need).  The problem with this whole system of central banking is that it primarily benefits one entity and one entity only.  That would be the federal government.  It is a system that is designed to increase the power and role of the federal government year by year.  If you read the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, he lists 10 steps to socialism.  The United States has already accomplished or is on the way to accomplishing several of them.  Remember, the government doesn’t have to outright own something to control it.  Just go check out the tens of thousands of pages of the Federal Register, the document that lists all the government regulations that exist.  It can control the means of production through taxation and regulation.   Two of the most prominent to me are progressive taxation and central banking.  I’ve listed the 10 steps below.  After reading them, ask yourself, how free is America really?  We are all being held captive by the stupidity of the federal government and their management of the dollar.  They can’t be trusted.  Yet, we have just elected a President who believes whole-heartedly in the goodness of government, when all of history (our history), tells us that the last thing we should ever trust is government. 

Ten Points from Communist Manifesto

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

So how free do you feel now?  And with that, enjoy your Friday evening and your weekend knowing that the federal government is doing its best to do what is best for it, not what is best for you.  Oh, yeah, and go read the following article from my other site.  I hate to be so realistic on this sight.  As the scriptures say, “If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear.”  Get ready for the ride of our lives.  It’s sad, but the article explains it so well.  People elect people that make them feel good, not that tell them the truth.  That’s exactly what happened with President Obama.  But eventually, no amount of lying can cover up the suffering.  Oh, I love the laws of economics.  They are so beautiful.

Today was cool.  For whatever reason, the temperatures returned back to a reasonable spring temperature.  I had to run around this morning and get stuff together for my work visa application here in Chile.  It all went smoothly.  I managed to get all the paperwork to the lawyer’s office here by this afternoon and still attend all of my spanish classes.  The lawyer’s office was in a high rise that overlooked the city and I found some new places that I want to explore this weekend, mainly Santa Lucia Hill, and some museums.  I’ll make sure to take some pictures.  I am pretty sure that I will be starting work on December 1st, barring any huge government worker strike.  After reading the paper today, who knows what will happen.  The unions want a 14.5% pay raise and the government offered them 5%.  Don’t you juts love government workers and unions.  They always want more money, but when times are tough and the private sector must tighten their belts, the government workers never tighten their belts.  I guess it’s the same crap everywhere, now isn’t it.  Well, I’m tired and am going to sleep.