a violent response?

While violence is never funny, I have to say that I am bemused by the media’s overhyped coverage of the ‘violent’ response to the passage in the House of H.R. 3490, the Patient  Protection and Affordable Care Act.

As a quick example, the Huffington Post apparently believes it is okay to portray Sunday's protesters as racist.  As we well know, the best way to diminish a group is to tar it with the actions of an individual.  However, while Representative Cleaver said someone spit on him (as far as I know, nobody actually filmed this and Rep. Cleaver himself was unable to identify the offender to the police) and both Representative Lewis and Senator Frank were offended by slurs shouted at them not a single act of physical violence occurred and there were no arrests.

Now, if it had been the left protesting capitalism…

Pittsburgh, September 24th, 2009 .. “A police report said at least 19 shops and banks, including many fast food restaurants, bagel shops and diners near the university, had their glass windows or doors smashed in.

Sixty-six people were arrested following the clashes on Thursday -- 24 during the disturbances in the afternoon and 42 overnight, police said.”

In fact, that was the results of the first day of protest and involved approximately 1000 protesters.  Contrast that with the “Tea Party” protesters outside the Capitol Building.  What was that saying?  Sticks and stones…

As I understand it, there was even less violence on Sunday than there was after the 2004 ALCS Red Sox win.  Go figure.

Altruism, the most noble of intentions

Have you ever watched someone who is reading a really good book? I mean really observed them. Perhaps you were in a library when you heard someone exclaim and looked up (obviously your book wasn’t as good as it could have been) to see a reader, oblivious to anyone else in the room, with an intense expression on their face. Maybe you sat down in an airport gate area and noticed a reader who didn’t look up when the flight was called for the second or third time. Whatever the case may have been, I know the next thing you did was try to see the title of their book. With any luck, you found a good book to read.

I know I’ve been that reader, lost in the story, literally woven into the fabric the author has crafted. Really good books are like that, sucking you in until it is almost irritating to return to the real world around you. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series comes to mind, as do Anne McCaffery’s The Dragonriders of Pern series and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan stories. I can remember befriending the local bookstore proprietor so that I could be on the list of people for whom he reserved one of his limited copies of upcoming releases. The good old days of the corner bookstore. But I digress…

Over the past several years I have found myself reading less entertaining books such as Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny, Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money and Peter Schiff’s Crash Proof. However, I remain the reader who runs down to Barnes and Noble and picks up a book that has been turned into a movie so I can read it as the author intended before seeing a script writer’s perversion of the story. That is sort of how I discovered Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series.

In looking for something to watch on TV, I stumbled upon ABC’s Legend of the Seeker. I missed season one, but went back and caught up online after the first couple installments of season two. Then I saw an interview with the author, Terry Goodkind, and made it a point to pick up the first book in the series (Wizard’s First Rule). I was hooked. The next trip to the bookstore involved picking up book two and ordering books three through six. I just finished book six, Faith of the Fallen, and it is so relevant to today’s politics that I found myself reading paragraph sized excerpts of it to my wife and having to explain the back-story in the the process. She smiled indulgently through the whole exercise, bless her heart.

I understand that Goodkind describes himself as an objectivist and I will not pretend to know diddly about objectivism (perhaps that shall be my next path of inquiry). What struck me about the storyline in Faith of the Fallen was the socially destructive force of altruism. Goodkind seems to have taken the proverb ‘Hell is full of good intentions or desires’ and, quite literally, played it out in his story.

Now I find myself looking at the Obama administration's use of altruism to destroy the very fabric of the United States of America and constructing parallels to Goodkind's storyline in Faith of the Fallen. What scares me is that The Order was successful for hundreds of years and I see no reason why today's 'altruists' should fail in their efforts.

the 2010 Census

It is that time once again, but unlike Christmas and your birthday, the Census only comes around every 10 years.  Our Constitution requires “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”  As you can see, Article I, Section 2 is quite specific:  “the actual enumeration”.  That is a count.

With that knowledge, I have done my duty and answered question 1.  I even answered question 2 so as to be specific.  I then attached a copy of Article 1, Section 2 and the following statement:

“By providing the above enumeration I have fulfilled my duty as a citizen of the United States of America under Article I, Section 2 of our Constitution.

The other information requested is superfluous to the task.”

I urge you all to do your duty as a citizen and reply to questions 1 and 2 of the Census.  I also urge you to give the government no other information as it is unnecessary and beyond the mandate of our Constitution.