Obama Blames Big Business and Lobbyists---what else is new?

In his State of The Union Speech, President Obama surprisingly called for a reduction of corporate tax rates. Such a reduction would be a much needed reform, and including it in the big speech is a clear indication that the president has turned to the center in anticipation of a difficult re-election race in 2012. However, whatever his purposes may be, the change in tax policy would help America, and we can only say, It is about time.



Conservatives have been pointing to the high corporate rate for decades as harmful to America's economy. But, all we have heard from the Left is their attack on "big business" for having cruelly exported jobs to third world countries and thereby creating massive unemployment in the American industrial heartland--Thus, the Left criticizes big business for moving operations overseas, without seeing that it is America's high tax laws that drive the companies out. As usual, the problem is the government, and the flight of industry is largely caused by bad tax policy, and yet they blame the companies for reacting in a totally logical and sensible way to those policies.



The same "blame big business" approach was re-affirmed yesterday by the President in his related remarks about having to close loopholes in order to pay for the corporate tax cuts. He explained the need to close those loopholes by stating: "Over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries."



Now, we all know that lobbyists do not pass laws or change IRS regulations--such actions can only be taken by Congress. All the loopholes, which are just one of the many horrors of our Tax Code, are the work solely of Congress. Lobbyists may seek benefits, and we know they have to maintain continual lobbying efforts just to minimize destructive new taxes and regulations that would impair their ability to do business, but they can only ask--the politicians do the rest. Both the flight of industry overseas and the loopholes are caused by the actions of our elected government officials. It thus becomes clear, but not surprising, that the president is blaming others for his own harmful policy.

Workingclass Conservative: The Common-Sense GENIUS of the American Constitution....

Workingclass Conservative: The Common-Sense GENIUS of the American Constitution....

Chomsky Turns To The Right !!!

Chomsky Joins Fox News and Sarah Palin to Fight Obama and the Evil Bankers

Last week, Noam Chomsky may have taken the first step in a long-overdue search for personal redemption. Speaking to what can only be imagined as a very liberal audience in Madison, Wisconsin, he signaled a clear philosophical move to the political right. The audience must have been stunned since they were mostly from the very Leftist University community.

I have always used Chomsky as a poster boy for the radical intellectual elite. When I assert that the Leftist intelligentsias take their cues from such radicals, I can always point to Chomsky’s latest antics as evidence that they are hell-bent on destroying American traditions, values, and civil culture. But that easy target may be history. Perhaps Chomsky is aping Podhoretz? I recall that when Norman Podhoretz was asked in an interview on C-SPAN why it took him over thirty years to lose faith in Soviet Communism, he replied that, being an intellectual, it took him 30 years to see what an average person would realize immediately. Based on Chomsky’s lifetime of rant it is understandable that his conversion would take even longer.

Now, I don’t believe Chomsky is ready to lead the neo-conservatives, but he did take a swipe at Obama and his close ties with the evil bankers and speculators who just recently toppled our economy. In his speech, Chomsky endorsed a recent poll showing that half the unaffiliated voters identify with the tea party movement. “Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error,” Chomsky said, because their attitudes “are understandable.”

He even gave Fox News and Sarah Palin a pat on the back: After pointing out how voters’ indignation and rage was fueled by “the colossal toll of the institutional crimes of state capitalism,” he justified the Tea Party’s demand for answers. And, he added: “They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin.” Could even Rush be in there for an indirect compliment?

Chomsky took Obama to task for toadying to the Wall Street speculators and hedge fund traders. He accused Obama, after his initial tough talk about evil bankers might have scared off political contributions, of having reversed course: Obama changed his tune and said that bankers are “fine guys. . . I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.“ Obama’s sudden love of the “free-market” must have been enough to frost Chomsky’s butt and cool his support of the Obama administration!
These were extraordinary comments coming from Chomsky. He actually linked Obama, a radical leftist, to “state capitalism” and the evil bankers and suggests they caused the financial crisis that has wiped out the savings of millions of Americans and is now bankrupting the country. All Chomsky had to do was add in the fact that it was the Feds as a group that colluded with a few bankers and speculators and created the bubble and the crash.

After all, it was Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve, and the House Banking Committee that all worked in tandem to have the government guarantee sub prime loans. That gave speculators and mortgage brokers a free pass to make obscene profits. Obama then came in and threw away a few trillion that will make things worse.

The main point of Chomsky’s talk was that this justified voter anger would lead to a fascist take-over of America. He likened our current situation to Germany’s when Hitler rose to power riding the crest of voter dissatisfaction. I disagree with that and believe that in America, current voter anger can be expressed at the ballot box and not by a fascist take-over as he predicts.

Unfortunately, the advocates of massive government spending are so vehement, and their dependent constituency has gotten so large, it will be difficult to remove them from power. If that turns out to be the case, Chomsky’s allusion to a fascist rise to power could become reality. Of course, there are fascists and there are fascists. A benevolent and enlightened fascist might restore sanity and order to the country. It happened under the recurring Medici Princes in the Rennaissance, and though not attractive, could save the country from something worse–the total collapse we are headed for if deficits are not eliminated.

To avoid such a dire alternative, it would be wise for America’s voters to rise up and demand a balanced budget. Major across-the- board cuts in spending would obviously cause some hardships and dislocations in the economy, but the pain would be less than what will happen if we continue escalating our national debt. Americans must accept the fact that there is no easy or painless solution. I would recommend that we all opt for some near term pain to avoid later total misery.

For Original article : Refer to http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/chomsky-warns-of-risk-of-fascism-in-america/

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Could Compromise and Non-partisanship Make a Better Congress?

Retiring Sen. Evan Bayh recently warned that Congress needs harmony and must drop its rampant partisanship. In a nationally broadcast interview, the Indiana Democrat said, "The extremes of both parties have to be willing to accept compromises" in order to accomplish things for the national good. He added that voters are in a mood to turn out many incumbents "until we change this town, until we reform Congress." Doesn't that sound grand? But haven't we heard such nonsense before, many, many times?

The American political scene has never been harmonious nor has political ambition ever taken a back-seat to civility. Such mere "words" have proven meaningless in the actual conduct of affairs of state. What is needed instead of harmony and fancy words is a rational and non-ideological approach to solving the problems facing the nation. And the biggest problem now and for the forseeable future is the economy. The recent record of government oversight and management of the economy has proven disastrous so a change is both obvious and essential. And the change needed is so drastic that "compromise" cannot be the answer.

Congress and the Presidents have been compromising over spending, taxes and the budget forever, and recently those three vital areas of government have spun out of control. The annual spending deficits and the national debt have escalated so grotesquely that the restoration of fiscal sanity should be the first order of business. Sadly, the goal of even the most prudent observers is to merely "reduce' the deficit within some 5-10 year future period, and THEN to reduce the debt. That is hogwash. It is merely defering the problem off conveniently into the future. That has been the modus operandi for too long. It does not work.

Partisans can argue over the merits of every conceivable government program and policy until the cows come home but the programs themselves are not our major concern. The major concern is that the programs, whatever they may be, must be paid for out of current receipts. A balanced budget provides a self-limiting control over the nation's finances. It doesn't matter whether we believe that all government spending is essential or totally wasted--just as long as it is covered by revenue and nothing is added to our national debt. It would be nice to think that our elected officials could streamline government, simplify and eliminate overlapping inefficient programs, and eliminate corruption, expensive junkets, pork, and bribery. But it is more important right now to just live within our income. We could actually survive with waste and pork if it was paid for without issuing phony paper money! Fighting over the way it is spent is just a diversion and hides the real problem of how do we pay for it.

A balanced budget that included actuarial computation of deferred mandate expenses would force a large reduction in spending and a big tax increase. The difference between what Congress is committing for and actual income is too huge not to require both. Such a policy would provide an important wake up call about how serious the problem is. And voters would be made vividly aware of both the curtailment of expenditures and the added burden of taxes. They would then be in a position to evaluate the issues at stake. But we would have stemmed the bleeding. Think of a gaping wound and the need above all else is for a tourniquet.

At present, the arcane chicanery of the Federal Reserve and its compulsive printing of money and issuing debt hides the perilous situation we face. What we have been doing is allowing foreign nations to own more and more of our national debt which will eventually give them an inordinate control over us. And hardly noticed, the escalating interest on that debt further burdens the annual budget, and grows larger every year.

Sen. Evan Bayh says partisanship and gridlock made it time for him to quit. It would have been better for him to enter legislation to keep all spending within the amount of revenue taken in. Then Congress would be free to fight over whether those expenditures would go to farmers, single moms, the aged, the injured, the homeless, the military, or the schools. Where it went would be secondary compared to the fact that we would be living within our means and the costs would be visible to everyone. To gain this essential situation every voter should look chiefly for a politician's pledge to balance the budget "now, not in the future sometime." The candidate's stated position on gay rights, foreign aid, welfare, and the war on terror, will not be terribly important if America goes bankrupt and is owned by foreign nations that have learned to save rather than just spend.

Swastika Carvings--Much Ado About Nothing?

My local newspaper has the Obama swastika story as a major front page news item, and the same story has dominated the news on most papers and TV shows for several days now. The lurid headlines refer to "An Act of Hatred," and everyone is falling all over themselves to express outrage at what they identify as "racism." Even the Secret Service and FBI are inspecting the carvings!

Are the politically correct commentators over-reacting to what could well be a schoolboy prank? No one knows why someone carved the word Obama and the ancient symbol into the grass on the 18th hole of the Lakeville golf course, but everyone is horrified. In this new age where words and symbols have taken on more significance than acts or deeds, one might well ask, 1)- is the angst over this presumed desecration justified, and, 2)- whether there is not more important news for the front pages of the papers? Is this very hyped and over-exposed incident another sympton of how the American media is so rapidly and steadily losing influence, readers and advertisers?

There is, after all, little useful discussion over the detail, history or meaning of the swastika. It may be useful to recognize that for thousands of years, the swastika has meant happy life and good luck. Today's schools and media appear ignorant about history and this is a good example, for they seem to only look at the Nazis who briefly (for about 15 years) used it to connote their idea of conquest and hate. But for buddhists and Hindus, as well as American Indians, the swastika has been a benign and religious symbol. There is in fact two completely opposite meanings for the symbol.

Furthermore, no one seems concerned about the direction of the swastika and whether the one carved in the grass was a clockwise swastika or the counter-clockwise sauvastika. Some people have tried to differentiate the two meanings of the swastika by varying its direction - trying to make the clockwise, Nazi version of the swastika mean hate and death while the counter-clockwise version would hold the ancient meaning of the symbol, life and good-luck. It is the counterclockwise presentation that was carved on the grass in Lakeville, so it is conceivable that the carver was attempting to associate good things with President Obama and should not be condemned but praised by the thought police trying to make news out of this event.

It is also conceivable that we as a people should pay more attention to actual deeds and results than the more insignificant world of utterances, promises, and statements of good intentions.

The Follies of Woodrow Wilson--

An Intellectual in Search of An Abstraction

This site celebrates the wisdom of common people, and as we know, the positive forces that make a society prosperous always come from the bottom--its people, for they are the “Ultimate Natural Resource” of any nation. Conversely, we know that the most harmful decisions come from the top--from those people in governing elites who try and direct national energy in some “ideal” direction. That isn’t to say that common people don’t make mistakes--it’s just that any one individual’s mistake does not significantly impact society as a whole, whereas decisions at the top, mandated by governmental law and regulation, have wide and often unintended repercussions.

Barabara Tuchman’s excellent book “The March of Folly” provides an interesting recap of some of the worst cases of governmental folly during the past 3,000 years of societal history. Her survey identifies those times when decisions were made by leaders that did not advance the interests of their nation. She concentrates on cases where there was compelling evidence that the decision would be detrimental but the leaders still proceeded on a predictably doomed course of action.

Her examples provide proof, if any is needed, that sagacity, character, and an ability to admit error and change course are much better assets in a leader than high intellect. That is why common people make better leaders than intellectuals. For example, she cites the “best and brightest” men serving with President Kennedy in the early 1960’s : Although they were mostly demonstrably brilliant “Harvard” men, they displayed extraordinarily little evidence of sound decision-making during the three years they kept escalating the conflict in Vietnam.

Regarding the onset of WWI, Tuchman points to the folly of German leaders when they deliberately provoked America into entering the conflict. By 1916, both sides were nearly exhausted, and had sacrificed millions of lives at Verdun and the Somme. The allies saw no hope of winning unless America added its muscle with troops on the continent. German leaders, also faced with a probable stalemate, would not accept an end to hostilities unless they got the best of the settlement. Without American intervention, an eventual deadlock was fairly predictable.

Some German leaders saw their only hope lay in aggressive naval operations-- first to remove the blockade keeping food from reaching Germany, and secondly to help shut down supplies reaching England. But that meant using their submarines to sink American supply ships with the downside risk of bringing America into the war. In spite of many high level German ministers’ warnings, the decision was made to send out the U-Boats, and, as a result, America sent millions of troops to fight in Europe and Germany suffered an agonizing total defeat.

Tuchman indicates that the folly of the Germans was in not accepting the alternative-- “A better outcome could have been won” by accepting President Wilson’s offer to negotiate a peace, “knowing it would be a dead end, thus preventing or certainly postponing the addition of American strength to the enemy. Without America, the Allies could not have held out for victory and, as victory was probably beyond Germany’s power too, both sides would have slogged to an exhausted but more or less equal peace.”

Thus, the German leaders unwisely chose the gamble, and lost--but although Tuchman, does not mention it, didn’t President Wilson display equal folly by taking up the challenge and sending millions of American men to die in France? If the alternative was to let both sides fight it out to an exhausted equal peace, should not any wise American leader have avoided entry? Many “isolationists” effectively argued that case. That we had little to gain and much to lose.
We could have continued a naval “war” and used the convoy system to continue helping Britain. The loss of shipping, no matter how severe, would have been a lot less than what we suffered by sending ground forces. Instead, we had to pursue Wilson’s abstract goal to “win the war to end all wars.”

Of course, Wilson's “vision” of world governance failed to end wars, and, it sent millions of young Americans to their death--just to swing the tide among nations that had been battling each other for a thousand years. So, could WWI also be called Wilson’s folly? And wasn’t it a bigger folly than the Germans? One can understand the authoritarian Prussian generals’ Machiavellian motivation, but Wilson led a democracy that had always honored the Monroe Doctrine of not interfering outside the Western Hemisphere. And we had little to gain!

Equally intriguing, is Tuchman’s suggestion that if the Europeans had been allowed to fight it out, the long-term consequences would have changed history for the better--”no victory, no reparations, no war guilt, no Hitler, possibly no second World War.”
After all, it was the total defeat of Germany that bred the seeds of WWII. The French diplomats at Versailles, having been rescued by America, demanded the most severe reparations and punitive actions against Germany, and these harsh measures sowed the seeds of vengeance that helped Hitler‘s rise to power. Thus Wilson’s entry into the war served no purpose except to create a fire within Europe sure to boil over in a greater conflagration than ever.

It is an interesting sidelight that the French diplomats took advantage of President Wilson’s obsession with the League of Nations to gain their ultimate revenge on Germany. Before the French would support Wilson’s League, he had to allow France to impose the severest penalties on Germany. Wilson knew that burying Germany under impossible reparations would breed future conflict, but he allowed the French to do that in order to gain their approval of his utopian dream-- the League of Nations.

As a former Ivy League professor, Woodrow Wilson was a predictable intellectual in the pursuit of an abstraction--the League of Nations was “designed” to ensure world peace and didn‘t. Indeed he “bought” its approval from French diplomats only by sowing the seeds for the next war! Wilson’s Follies compounded into three: 1.) leading America into its first foreign war, 2.) giving up on sensible peace terms to gain the League, and, 3.) allowing the French to dictate terms that were unbearable to Germans and led to WWII.

Then, to pay for it all, he gave us the IRS and the income tax.

Abortion-- Is it about "rights" or genetic controls ?

It appears that in the mind of at least one leading female liberal, abortion is not about women’s rights, but about eliminating the types of people that “we do not want to have too many of.” On July 12, 2009 a Newsmax posting describes an interview between NY Times writer Emily Bazelon, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. On the matter of abortion, Ginsburg said she had always assumed the Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion was intended to aid population control among lower-income Americans. Thus, from her point of view, the liberal mindset was focused more on eugenics and genetic engineering by government fiat than on any concern about freedom or the “right” to choose.

Ginsburg pointed out that many states had already legalized abortion prior to Roe v Wade so it was no longer a problem for women, at least those of some financial means, to obtain a legal abortion if they chose to have one. So, she admits, the pro-choice mantra was used for a more insidious purpose: to increase abortions “among those who we don’t want too many of.” And the activists goal was to 1.) have the taxpayers pay for everyone’s abortions, and, 2.) extend the practice to all states whether the state’s voters wanted such “freedom” of choice or not.

In the same interview, Ginsburg expressed her disappointment with the subsequent Supreme Court ruling in Harris v. McRae, the 1980 case that upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions for poor women. "Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of, so that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion." Clearly the goal was not just to allow abortions, but to bless them in every state and pay for them out of the government checkbooks--all to halt reproduction rates among the most undesirable populations.

Ginsburg admitted to the NY Times reporter her own state of confusion over the issue after the Harris v McRae case was decided. That case came out the wrong way for Ginsburg. The Supreme Court appear to be saying there could be choice, but no funding: “Then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong." Of course her perception wasn’t wrong--the activists wanted Government encouragement and payment for all abortions, but the Court just stopped short of giving them everything at once. After all, the majority of Americans were and remain against the wide-spread practice of abortion.

Ginsburg’s admission that she had been “altogether wrong” in her thinking is worth noting. Of course the mental processes of members of the liberal fringe have often appeared confused or contradictory. But, it may be she had reached a point where the logic of retirement was overwhelming, because there is really no confusion over the goals of the pro-life activists she supported.

Those fanatical activists will not settle for the simple right of a woman to have an abortion. Instead, the pro-life activists have continued to demand 1.) late-term abortions, teen age girls’ rights without parental notification, partial birth abortions, government funded abortions, teen counseling about their right to abort, and suppression of alternative solutions such as adoption, abstinence, and the personal responsibility of caring for the life created. If their concern was primarily over the right to choose, they would not demand such a broad advocacy of every abortion scenario. Their agenda is so sweeping that it can only indicate the desire to kill as many people as possible--especially those from the poor and other types that they “do not want to have too many of.” It is this type of racial Nazism, or fascism, that links the Far Left to all authoritarian systems of government.

Whether a system is labeled communism, socialism or fascism doesn’t matter to this new elite--as long as they can rule and dictate policy from the top without any input from the common people. Indeed, Ginsburg admits their goal is to create less “common” people.

ARE MUSLIM CLERICS THE PUPPETEERS OF TERRORISM ?

Robert Burns (AP) had an interesting article shown on AOL News June, 14, 2009 which points out a little known "dirty little secret" about the real leaders of Islamic politics in the Middle East. Western media have paid little attention to the degree to which Islamic terrorism and anti-Israel policies are not simply cultural and political issues, but are the declared policy of many Muslim Clerics. Quite incorrectly, our media have regularly endorsed the Cleric's claim that they deplore violence and have nothing to do with the fanaticism of the terrorist organizations. And yet we know many of the Islamic schools throughout the Middle East, and especially in Saudi Arabia, teach their children to hate the West as "The Great Satan."

And, in dealing with Iranian news, American media have concentrated coverage on the supposed leader of Iran, but Burn's paints a very different picture: "Ahmadinejad is Iran's political face to the world, but the clerics and their military wing, known as the Revolutionary Guard, are the real masters of the country's destiny. They dictate every important policy and decide who is allowed to run for elected office."

Burns goes on to quote Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has been a close observer of the Iranian scene for decades. "Obama's advisers know the limits of change in Tehran as long as the country is ruled by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his supporting cast of theocrats. They realize that it is the supreme leader and those around him who shape any movement in terms of U.S.-Iranian relations," Cordesman said. "This was going to be true regardless of who was elected as Iranian president. I don't think anyone expected that in an election where four candidates were allowed to run — who all had to conform to the control of the supreme leader — the outcome was going to produce dramatic changes in Iran's nuclear posture or its relations with other states in the region."

The American war on Terrorism has been hampered by the apologists for Islam who insist that religion has nothing to do with terror. They regularly excuse the Moslem leaders for any part in the terror, even though many such clerics, even those in mosques within the United States, play a part in the recruitment, training and financing of terrorists. We must understand that we are dealing with theocracies, where religious leaders actually control policy, and political fanatacism is an expression of religious zeal. Otherwise we give a blank check to those groups that simply stay in the background and direct others to execute their policy.

Western nations found a way almost a thousand years ago to separate political and secular affairs from religious and spiritual matters. The strength of Western Civilization was enhanced ever since by applying Logic and practical Reason to matters of State, while preserving the personal benefits of Faith for their citizenry. And, the very diversity of Western religions, all available by free choice to religious people in the West, added further strength and spiritual sustenance to our culture. But only the uninformed will believe that the Muslim Faith is in any way comparable to Christianity-- Muslim policy, being an integral expression of their religion, will not be restrained by Reason and Logic, but will seek to prosletyze, convert, and conquer all unbelievers to further their Faith.

The failures of Clerical control in the Middle East has been demonstrated by the almost 1,000 year slide in their nations' economic and political standing. Their people have remained uneducated, unskilled, and taught only to obey their religious leaders. Ever since Al-Ghazali won the favor of clerics over his fellow Islamic scholar Averrhoes, in the twelfth century, Islamic nations have been in a tailspin. The clerical establishment liked Ghazali because he argued that all causal events simply represent the doings of God, and rejected Greek thought, opposed the Mutazilites' call for reform within Islam, and led the return to Fundamentalism in Islamic Society.

Averrhoes, a leading Islamic scholar in Moorish Spain, advocated the scientific method and separation of Reason and Faith, but he found no following in eastern Islamic cultures. Instead, his teachings were valued by Western Europeans who called for a separation of church and state and initiated modern scientific inquiry --the Domincan and Franciscan monks that manned most of the first European universities around 1200 AD. The result was progress for the Christian West, failure for the Islamic Middle East--and this pattern has persisted for 800 years! As scientific experiments go, 800 years of consistent results represents compelling evidence.

It is this ancient process of control over the masses by the clerical elites in the Middle East that lies at the heart of today's problems. Kudos to Robert Burns of the AP for making one small reference in the major media to this fundamental issue. It is ironic that many of the Far Left in America, who generally champion, or at least excuse the Islamic religion's role in terror, would be horried if our Religious Right could dictate American policy.

The Radzewicz Riddle--The Rise and Fall of Nations

The 17th century English pamphleteer Cato ranked among the great enemies of Kings and champions of the common people. Like Algernon Sidney, John Trenchard, Thomas Paine, Sam Adams, and John Dickinson, he advocated an end to the Divine Right of Kings, and a beginning for the Rights of Men. They were the talk radio of their respective eras and helped fashion the 17th century Glorious Revolution in England and the even more glorious Revolution in America in the following century.

It is impressive to consider the lengthy time periods that were required to throw off the shackles of aristocratic authority from the shoulders of the common people. The Magna Carta had been signed by King John in 1215, six to seven hundred years before these more final revolutions occurred in England and the American colonies. The ordinary citizens had been striving for that long to make headway. And even the Glorious Revolution of the 1680's didn't grant enough rights to dissuade millions of Englishmen from leaving their homes and going to the New World.

It is even more humbling to recognize that that slow centuries long process of gaining freedom for a majority of English speaking citizens was the best there ever had been--anywhere on earth. England's democritization was painfully slow, but at least it happened--and led to America's full blown freedoms. Aside from a few other European nations, there was no movement to free individuals anywhere else on the Globe!

Now there had been antecedents in a few isolated outposts where there was no aristocracy or autocrats to tyrannize the people. Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, Venice, Holland, Iceland, and the Hanseatic cities had flourished while they remained free and open societies, but that's only about a fraction of 1% of the world's population! However, if you look at each of those rare free societies, even though they all Rose for a while to great affluence, sooner or later they all matured, withered, and Declined to obscurity.

The Riddle of History is Why, when these nations were small and isolated, with limited resources, poor school systems, struggling to grow food and manufacture tools and equipment, they somehow did all that, gained prosperity, and yet later, with better schools, a growing elite intellectual class, and expanded governmental systems in place, they commenced a Decline? Did adversity make the people work harder at first? What happened to end the upward progress of these successful enclaves?

And why was the existence of free societies restricted to this tiny handful of the world's people? What was unique to those few "laboratories of history" that showed the way to personal liberty and affluence. The Radzewicz Rule suggests that it was economic freedom and an empowering Faith that allowed the common genius of a citizenry to flourish. But those conditions were extremely rare throughout history for all people. If you had been born somewhere at random on earth during the period from 3,000 BC to 1,775 AD, your odds or chance of gaining personal freedom would be akin to winning the Massachusetts mega jackpot! That is why the pamphleteers for liberty were so praiseworthy--where they were allowed to speak and write they demanded freedom.

Those scribblers, sneered at by the great Philosophers, wrote simply. They laid out the case for liberty in brief essays that were widely read by common people.. There was no need for academics to explain what they wrote. They knew of the actual cases in history where people had gained freedom and they called for more of the same.

Cato wrote, "The People, when they are not misled or corrupted, generally make a sound Judgment of Things. They have natural Qualifications equal to those of their Superiors; and there is oftener found a great Genius carrying a Pitchfork, than carrying a White Staff."

In those two sentences, Cato attests to the fact that common people are often wiser than their intellectual and over-educated betters. However, Cato went on to make a key point about the Rise and Fall of Nations; he echoed the Radzewicz Rule axiom that successful societies were created by common folk only when they were free and unburdened by intellectuals.

Cato wrote: "Besides, there are not such mighty Talents requisite for Government, as some, who pretend to them without possessing them, would make us believe; Honest affections, and common Qualifications are sufficient; and the Administration has always been best executed, and the Publick Liberty best preserved, near the Origin and Rise of States, when plain Honesty and common Sense alone governed the public Affairs and the Morals of Men."

There, in Cato's fine words, is the answer to the Riddle-- Young, vibrant societies are not burdened by non-productive elites that advise and consult but do no real work. They are unregulated, unrestricted, and the citizenry are forced to innovate and free to produce. Only after those ordinary people have created abundance can their society have the where-withall to support parasitic classes--mostly academics, utopianists, government employees, foundation employees and special interest groups.

All those new elites that emerge in successful nations are parasites--they were not present in the building--but now they have to carve out a comfortable niche for themselves. Since they are by definition non-productive, their only role can be found in directing the efforts of the remaining productive citizenry. Since they bring an inexperienced vision to the task, tainted with utopian abstractions, the resulting direction will always be counter-productive. This process continues and escalates over time. One mistaken policy requires another worse policy to correct the results of the last failure --and Decline sets in.

The amswer to the Riddle is counter-intuitive. But only if you have an undue respect for the intellectual elites that presume to control the nation from lofty non-productive perches on high. Remember that it was the Honest Affections of the common people at the beginning that made for Efficiency and the maintenance of Publick Liberty. And, sadly, it is the complex ideologies of the new elites that undermine the sturdy foundation built by those honest and simple people.

Do colleges help or hurt America ? ---- The Radzewicz Curve

There is a growing recognition that America's colleges are more and more influenced by the politically correct agendas of the new liberal Left--The vast majority of professors promote a world view that:

1- Supports large governmental bureaucracies that seek to solve everyone's needs.
2- Sees most citizens as victims instead of independent self-reliant individuals.
3- Looks more to foreign nations and laws than to our own traditional principles.
4- Favors socialistic policies and condemns the capitalist system and free markets.
5- Attacks corporations that actually deliver the goods better than any government.

In order to sustain this attack on the very nature of America these ideologues have to resort to abstractions and utopian dreaming. They do not examine the actual record of human advances under free economies -- instead they create grand philosophical theories on how it could be made better. In short, they abandon common sense and a factual analysis of historical progress and resort to theoretical projections, promises, and statements of intent.

Because these jealots place themselves in a position of wanting to make things better they appear to the young or uninformed as "reformers," "progressives" who seek change, and advocates of improvement. This appeals to youth and to those who hope to be on the reciving end of such policies. Unfortunately, since they rely, not on past proven practices, but on arm-chair concepts, the promised "solutions" almost always fail.

There is a type of individual who ignores the nitty-gritty mechanics of how things get accomplished and refuses to come to grips with such hard realities. Instead their minds skip such details and leap to grand conceptualizations of how things should be. They fail to accept the fact that improvements come from fine tinkerring in the shop, office, or the field, by workers who understand how things get done, and work with what they have and try and improve its performance. And those improvements are created in the private labs, factories and offices of entrepreneurial business men and scientists. Governmental planners have rarely if ever created new and better ways of making or delivering a product. But those with that idealistic or utopian mind set never give up dreaming about how it oughtta be--if only their ideas were implemented! And these are the people who teach our youth!

Now, in the hard sciences, American colleges do a good job. Those subjects rely on the scientific method--observation, tests, measurements, and repeatable results. Not so in the soft-sciences, where most American college students enjoy a fun-filled academic life devoid of real scientific or logical inquiry. The weaknesses in those soft-sciences are not the students' fault--the professors have abdicated real teaching for indoctrination. The facts of history, cases in economic policy, and analysis of comparative political systems is OUT. Criticisms of the United States is IN. There is no balance or proportion to what is taught. The two prisoners that were water boarded at Guantanamo are compared to the millions slaughtered by Nazis in WWII. Some professors have on that basis equated Bush with Hitler! The internment of Japanese Americans in 1942 is compared to Russian Gulags. Critical thinking and comparison of possibles is neglected. Instead, unsubstantiated policies that are claimed to be helpful are promoted. Programs are measured by the stated intent of those promoting them, not by the likelihood of their achieving the stated goals.

Students leave college with the idea that the biggest problems facing America are pollution, giant corporations, gender rights, animal rights, gay rights, oil spills, and the lack of a world government. The result is that today's students are actually being hurt by their education, their thinking processes dulled, and their attitudes corrupted. The controversial new theory embodied in the Radzewicz Curves indicates this direct relationship between years of schooling and a decline in common sense and wisdom, also known as "EQ".

In a graph, if you make the horizontal line represent the number of years of schooling in soft-sciences, and the verticle axis represents wisdom and common sense, you will almost always find a steeply sloping line--common sense declines or is extinguished gradually by the teachers' teaching. For simplicity, the statisticians have divided students into two broad categories, although refinements might provide further insights.

For normal, or average, students, the decline in wisdom continues with each additional year of schooling in the soft-sciences but at a declining rate, because such individuals have a significant degree of resistance to abstract concepts that defy reality. Consequently their descending line levels off and continues at a steady if low level of common sense. The final level at graduation is almost always below the good-sense they arrived with.

However, for students with a predilection for abstract thinking, the decline is linear, more precipitous, and there is very little levelling off. Students with the highest SAT test scores that get accepted into the prestigious Ivy League colleges tend to most frequently follow this linear pattern, while students at the less prestigious schools are more apt to have concave lines as they progress through years of advanced schooling. This is explained by the fact that the former are good at and love abstract conceptualizations. And, the latter, God Bless Them, get confused by theoretical ideas and seek a more practical and demonstrable common sense understanding.

Thus, there is a concave line for normal students, and a straight line for the more intellectual types. Although the concave line never reaches zero on the vertical scale, there have been cases where some of those in the other group have penetrated the zero point. In either case, children concentrating in the soft-sciences are left scarred from ever being able to think logically on governmental issues--which is exactly the object of their teachers!