Friday, 29 September, 2006

HEALTH CARE AND INSURANCE COSTS

We supposedly have the world's greatest health care industry. But it's become perhaps too good – or at least, too expensive. As Pridger's old Pappy was fond of saying, "Some things become so good that they're good for nothing." Perhaps that's putting it a little too strongly. But that there is a serious problem is almost universally recognized.

One of the major problems is the way the insurance industry works in this country. Costs for health care have risen to their present levels, in good part, because of the expansion of employer provided health care insurance. Between the health care industry and the insurance industry we have a huge moneyed combine that feed upon themselves and the paying public.

The "paying public" is divided into two kinds. Those with employer provided health insurance, and those who don't. And then there is that large and growing class of people who neither have health insurance nor the means to pay anything at all. This includes the growing numbers of people on Medicare, Medicaid – not to mention illegal aliens and others in the "poor" category, who always report the the emergency room for every minor health care concern.

Both the health care industry and insurance industries have become well oiled mega-industries. And this happened in large part during the time when we had a large and growing number of employers in unionized industries that provided employee health care insurance.

One of the major causes for increasing health care costs has been the huge liability problems caused by our over-litigious society. An ongoing feeding frenzy by "the lawyer industry" tend to increase the price of almost everything – most especially health care. Liability insurance costs for doctors, hospitals, and other related participants of the health care industry have pushed costs ever upward. Every extravagant liability suit settlement, especially of the "punitive" variety, is also a punitive assault on all health care consumers that punishes them by raising their health care costs.

Along with the rise and consolidation of these industries, which have been on a combined feeding frenzy for over half a century, causing a steadily increasing hyper-inflation of health care costs, we've had monetary inflation to further confuse the issue.

There is a literal feeding frenzy underway, involving the medical, insurance, and legal industries. Yet the profitability of each cannibalistic participant is meticulously preserved. Naturally, the public ultimately foots the total bill. As for, "Government to the rescue" – everything that the government touches becomes both extraordinarily costly and, in time, practically worthless.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of the health care costs borne by the public that actually go to health care – and how much go to the insurance companies, legal professionals.

Take the hypothetical $25.00 band-aid applied by a nurse in a typical hospital. We all know that a band-aid probably costs less than a penny. The other $24.99 go to the hospital, the insurance companies, and the lawyers. Just guessing, but the mix is probably about a third to the health care provider, a third to the insurance provider, and a third to the legal service provider – and neither the insurance industry nor the entire legal profession have ever cured a cough or splinted a broken finger.

The overall health care, insurance, and legal "combine" have become so massive that abuse and corruption are unavoidably infections. Get government intimately involved, and the fever levels increase to even more alarming heights.

Employers, facing ever-rising insurance costs, have increased co-pay amounts their employees have to pay. Hundred percent employer paid health coverage is a thing of the past, and the employee's share of premium costs, in addition to co-pays, have steadily increased. Many went from 80% coverage to 70% coverage. And costs have increased so much that the 20 or 30% co-pay itself is higher than the total cost might have been only a few years ago.

In other words, the typical co-pay for a doctor or dental visit is now equals or surpasses what the total charge would have been in the days when few had health care insurance.

While this was happening, globalization came along and good, unionized, jobs that provided health care coverage started disappearing, leaving an ever-increasing percentage of the work force without health care coverage, shifting costs from employers, employees, and insurance companies to the various government health-care plans paid for through taxation and national credit.

Both insurance companies and the government have a considerable amount of weight in this tangle. They can insist on "discounts" or only pay what they consider reasonable or "usual" health care costs. In the mix, we find the health-care industry trying to make insurance companies and the insured, subsidize the recipients of "free" or underpaid health care services. In turn, this causes health care insurance premiums and co-pays to rise.

The cry for "free" government provided health insurance has been the result of a system that has become totally overpriced.

Any mega-system, whether privately or government operated, leads to wide-spread over-use and abuse. This happens because the perception is that taking advantage of the service is either "free" or "already paid."

Pridger is fortunate enough to be among those who have a fairly good private health care plan, but medical bills reflect one of the problems with the system. Here's an example in a typical bill recently received:

Total Charges:         $258.00
Insurance Discount: $  77.95
Revised Charges:     $180.05

Because of the wealth and clout of the insurance company, the provider knocked a hefty $77.95 off of the bill. But if Pridger hadn't had insurance – if he was too poor to afford it – he'd have had to pay the full $258.00!

There's something obviously wrong here. And what is wrong is that the health care provider had padded the bill at least to the amount of $77.95 to begin with. The provider wouldn't have accepted the reduced amount of $180.05 if it did not cover a satisfactory profit margin.

Pridger is what can only be described in this day and age as "poor" – but, fortunately, not so poor that he hasn't managed to retire with a decent health care plan. However, if he were only a little poorer, he'd have had to pay the full bill – much more than the big rich insurance company would have had to pay. And, ironically, if he were a little poorer yet, he'd get totally free health care.

We have come into the unnatural circumstance that health care costs have become too high for ordinary working people to bear. "Man cannot live in any degree of security without health care insurance." And this has led to the demand for a national health care system.

But we are in a serious quandary here. A truly socialized health care system, wherein the government controls the whole health care mechanism, might conceivably provide the answer. But the vested interests in the present private health care, pharmaceutical, and insurance systems are so huge and overwhelmingly influential that such a system is literally impossible to legislate. 

The only serious remedies on the table seem to be forms of national health "insurance" whereby all the vested interests continue to get their "satisfactory" profits, and the public pays the total bill through taxation.

AUTOMOBILE LIABILITY INSURANCE

Another thing that ought to be unconstitutional is state mandated automobile liability insurance. This amounts to a forced individual subsidy to giant insurance companies. As in the health care system, this leads to both unfairness and abuse.

Auto accident liability, if it is to be state mandated, should be a state business, covered through the myriads of auto-related taxes, both federal and state. Drivers who have accidents as the result of demonstrable "negligence," should be fined, and these proceeds also used to fund the state liability insurance system.

Individuals would then insure, or not insure, their automobiles themselves to the degree they choose. In other words, the state should not be in the business of forcing the public to subsidize private insurance companies. 

Even under the present system, liability insurance should go with the individual driver rather than the individual automobile. A person can only drive one car at a time. When a car is left parked at home, there there is no potential liability.

The way it works now – if a person has a spare car, and maybe a truck, he has to have liability insurance on each individual vehicle, as if he could be driving all of them at the same time, and thus incurring possible accident liability with all of them at once. This is patently unfair, and a great, state mandated, windfall to insurance companies.

John Q. Pridger

Friday, 15 September, 2006

THE COLOR OF MONEY – THE CHANGING DOLLAR

Pridger doesn't carry much cash around in his pocket these days, so he was recently surprised by the appearance of the new ten dollar bill. The Federal Reserve Note (which had been masquerading as a "greenback" in appearance since its inception), is appropriately becoming a little more "pinkish."

ABOVE: 2004 FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE

TRADITIONAL COLORS OF THE "GREENBACK"

The new ten dollar Federal Reserve Note, in addition to taking on a distinctly pinkish-tan hue in the background, now sports large and small red images of the Torch of Liberty on its face, and a "We the People" image. Ironically, it continues to state, "In God We Trust" on the back. Additionally, a gilded "10" appears on the the front of the bill in the lower right hand corner.

The new money is attractive enough. Actually, its face colors resemble those of the original greenback (shown below), more closely than it resembles "modern" greenbacks and "traditional" Federal Reserve Notes. The new money is undoubtedly much more expensive to print and more difficult to counterfeit. Pridger only laments that they are Federal Reserve Notes rather than "United States Notes" like the original "greenback" (circa 1863 greenback, and the 1963 "Kennedy Greenback" pictured below).

The Torch of Liberty, "We the People", and "In God We Trust," seem somewhat out of place on Federal Reserve Notes – at least from Pridger's perspective. Such things send a mixed and somewhat deceptive message – sort of like putting the image of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on "Food Stamps."

The image of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on Food Stamps implied that receiving Food Stamps was a step toward independence, if not independence itself. Yet, obviously, Food Stamps are the very epitome of dependence on government for a very basic necessity – food.

Likewise, the designs on the Federal Reserve Note imply liberty and freedom. "We the People" would seem to say that these notes are the property of the people, rather than indebtedness notes that, by their mere existence, burden the people with ever-increasing debt.

The gilded "10" perhaps implies that the money should once again be associated with gold (at least in the American mind), if not quite as good as gold.

While Federal Reserve Notes do serve the people as their only circulating currency, they are, first and foremost, the instruments and tools of the privately owned banks, and the "money power," given an exclusive government contract (through legislation, in the guise of the Federal Reserve Act), to provide a "public service" for a price. The "system" profits at the expense of the general public, and the price is much higher than most people imagine. National slogans and images on Federal Reserve Notes merely serve to lull the public into believing its currency is its own.

Not only are Federal Reserve Notes not as good as gold, they will now buy about 1/38th as much gold as when the Federal Reserve first came on the scene – at a time when U.S. currency actually was as good a gold. This means that "progress" under our present monetary system has delivered up a 2.7 cent dollar (based on $16 gold in 1913 and $600 gold today).

This is not a very good track record, and it would seem that our government could do a lot better by providing a debt-free money system. It did this with the original greenback, but the banking establishment was not pleased with that system, and the greenback was never allowed to function and flourish as it should have. It was finally totally driven from national monetary policy – along with other types of national money, such as gold and silver certificates and "national bank" currency, not to mention gold and silver coinage.

There are some who are actually working to bring sanity, and the greenback, back to our monetary system: Visit the American Monetary Institute, at http://www.monetary.org.

"The problem goes much deeper than accounting and stock fraud, and even beyond the graduate schools of business that inculcate such criminal behavior. The deeper causes lie hidden in the structurally corrupt or of our banking system and our schools of economics. It arises from the falsehoods they have spread on the nature of money, allowing their patrons to control the money power, and in turn, to dominate our society." (from the dust jacket of The Lost Science of Money, by Steven A. Zarlenga, of the American Monetary Institute.

 MAIL BAG (1)

Illinois Senator Barack Obama has honored Pridger with a letter asking him to support the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) – "the only Party committee dedicated solely to electing a Democratic Senate."

Senator Obama says that if Pridger can get his contribution in soon enough, so it is among the first $200,000 received, Pridger's contribution will be tripled!

They'd like Pridger to send $50, $75, or more, and, if Pridger can get his money in fast enough, that would be worth $150, $225, or more, to the DSCC. The extra money will materialize because Senator Chuck Schumer, the Chair of the DSCC, has promised to personally "make the calls necessary to raise $400,000 for a 2006 Senate Challenge Project to match the first $200,000" raised.

Pridger wonders why the DSCC needs his fifty or seventy-five dollars when all Chuck Schumer has to do is make a few calls to procure about as many serious contributions as they would seem to need.

Obama makes a good case for the necessity of getting more Democrats elected to the Senate, and just about every point in his case is right on target. But Pridger learned to distrust Democrats long before he learned to distrust Republicans.

Pridger comes from a long line of loyal Democrats that stretches at least as far back as the Civil War. During the Civil War, they called them "Peace Democrats," or "copperheads," because they thought war with our own people was a bad idea.

Then, during most of the twentieth century, the Democrats became the war party – World War One (Wilson); World War Two (F. D. Roosevelt); Korea (Truman); Vietnam (Kennedy and Johnson). And there was a whole series of social upheavals that were conducted or initiated under the Democrats – the New Deal (Roosevelt); the New Frontier (Kennedy); the war against racial segregation (Johnson); the War on Poverty (Johnson).

When it finally came to Democrat Bill Clinton, the problem came down to defining what "is" is.

As far as Pridger could see, not one of those wars produced any positive results, or came close to accomplishing any stated goals. For example, World War One was "the war to end all wars." World War Two was sort of a replay, in hopes of getting it right the second time around. And, of course, in addition to fighting to end all wars and for freedom and democracy, we were fighting to save the British Empire from the Germans in both World Wars.

Of course, the British Empire crumbled not long after victory over Japan and Germany. As Pridger's old pappy used to say, "as the result of winning too many wars."

We defeated the Nazis and Fascists, of course, but in the process delivered up half of Europe to the Evilest Empire of all. And fallout from World War Two continued long afterwards, and we still suffer from it. China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia ended up Communist too. And the Cold War, along with a lot several little hot wars, continued until the late great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics crumbled in spite of all we'd done for it.

By the time Reagan was elected president, the nation (ours, as well as the USSR), was already in ruins, the extent of which nobody really realized. Yet, Reagan gave the nation new hope and self-confidence and (in what was aimed at outdoing the USSR), began the march back to making our military fashionable again. Then, in the fullness of time, the Republican party once again became the war party.

Pridger had already given up on the Democratic party a long time before, and broke family tradition by never registering as a member. As for the Republicans, he had always been leery of what the family called "black Republicans." That handle alone was scary enough, so (with no satisfactory alternative), Pridger largely ignored politics. If the choice was between copperheads and black Republicans, Pridger figured he might as well just watch.

Yet, when Pridger listened to the Great Communicator's campaign speeches, he was almost moved to vote – and vote Republican. Fortunately, he doesn't have that on his conscience, though he continued to admire Reagan – the man and his rhetoric. He admired him as president, too, to a great degree. In spite of all the things that began coming down on Reagan's watch, the man had character and stood for something. Nonetheless, it soon became apparent that there was a serious divergence between promises and rhetoric and what was actually transpiring as national policy during Reagan's two terms.

Of course, a close brush with with attempted assassination, as Reagan experienced, is likely to effect just about any president's agenda. In any case, during the Reagan years Pridger came to fully realize that modern presidents seldom set the agenda except, perhaps, in superficial and unimportant matters. Where "important" policy is concerned, they merely serve as publicly palatable stage dressing while the real agenda and policy-making activity goes on behind the scenes, sometime two or three curtains behind front stage.

If Reagan was the great hope of American conservatives (and Pridger by that time Pridger had come to regard himself as a "conservative" libertarian), his conservative agenda was probably check-mated when fellow "conservative," George H. W. Bush, was chosen to be his running mate. (Bush, as his opponent in the presidential primaries, had made fun of Reagan's proposal to cut taxes and balance the budget, calling it "Voodoo economics").

Reagan had been wooed and seduced by free market economists with conservative credentials, and thought the "new international economic order" sounded like a pretty good idea, but George Bush was corporate internationalism personified, and a capitalistic New World Order was his goal.

When Bush became president, and pulled off the first Gulf War, America was launched not only into a renewed warpath, but was already waist deep into the New World Order – the very thing Pridger had been reading about since he began taking an interest in politics a couple of decades before.

Things that made little sense before, or were supposedly the paranoid fantasies of "conspiracy theorists," started making a great deal of sense. And it became abundantly clear that both political parties were poison!

Both parties are still poison. They're both New World Order parties. So Pridger isn't any more likely to help elect a Democratic Senator than a Republican one. He'll just watch, while jotting down his fickle, irrelevant, opinions. (Some people call Pridger's opinions "diatribes" – sometimes of the "incoherent and rambling" variety – and, indeed, Pridger has proudly accepted an honorary degree as a "Doctor of Diatribalism." from the Institute for Politically Incorrect Studies.)

Clinton had some serious reservations about North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA, of course, was part of the New World Order agenda. And had Pridger voted for him (which he wouldn't have done in any case), it would have been in hopes of stopping or at least mitigating the disasta' of NAFTA. But, of course, Clinton ram-rodded NAFTA through immediately upon taking office.

Then Clinton worked feverishly to make the American military a gay-friendly organization. Pridger is against gays in the military – at least those who wear the badge and insist on flagrantly acting the part. But, on the other hand, if we're going to have a feminized military, he doesn't see much additional harm that would be caused by having openly gay men and women in uniform. Might as well go whole hog. The military is no longer a "man's outfit" no matter how you look at it. But that's a whole other subject.

George Bush II, prior to being elected, expressed the intention of beginning to disengage the nation from some of its foreign entanglements. Had Pridger voted for him, that would have been the main reason. Pridger figured he wasn't serious, though, so doesn't have that on his conscience either. George Bush's pedigree spoke louder than his rhetoric.

Of course, George W. was conveniently relieved of his promises anyway, by the attacks of 9/11. Immediately, without even having to pause to "think," he propelled the nation right straight into such a mess of additional foreign entanglements that the nation is now bound up like a flea in the middle of a ball of yarn.

Barack Obama speaks like a true One World Order man too. While blaming George Bush for the American job losses that started way back during the Reagan administration, he wonders "if our children will be able to compete in a global economy," and alludes to the need to "make America more competitive in a 21st century economy..." (Bush said it, but Obama says he isn't doing anything to accomplish it). These are New World Order "code phrases."

Anybody with any sense knows that American workers won't be able to successfully compete in a global economy until their wages and benefits are on a par with those of Mexican, Chinese, and Bangladeshi labor. But neither the Democrats nor Republicans are willing to admit that for fear of tipping off the public as to what is really going on.

The Democrats supported Bush's war on terror, war in Afghanistan, and war in Iraq, though they are now back-peddling pretty hard on the war in Iraq. They only turned sour on the Iraq war when things turned out badly. Only then did they discover that it was a ghastly mistake and get a focus on all the "false pretences" required to launch it. Yet those false pretenses were plenty obvious right from the beginning. Even Pridger could see that (but, of course, Pridger wasn't privy to all the high grade secret "intelligence").

Pridger doubts the Democrats would be able to extract us from our current problems any faster than the Republicans will. George Bush will soon be presidential history anyway. And it makes little difference which party gains power. Neither has been able or willing to do anything but continue one or another brand of national suicide.

It took Republican Richard Nixon to get us out of our "democratic war" in Vietnam. And he had to do it with a great lack of grace and honor. We'd already "stayed the course" far too long. In fact, we'd stayed so long that anything like "peace with honor" was impossible. But he didn't get impeached for that. He got impeached for covering up other blunders of a somewhat petty but embarrassing nature.

Senator Obama himself is worthy of comment. His name alone is noteworthy. Obviously he isn't from old Anglo-American stock. He isn't even close to being an "ordinary" African-American. In fact, he's only one generation removed from the Luo tribe of Kenya. 

His father, after whom he was named, grew up in Kenya herding goats. This somehow qualified the elder Obama (or he otherwise became qualified), for a scholarship to study in Hawaii. There, he met and married an obviously liberated white gal from Kansas – Senator Obama's mother. Senator Obama's parents divorced when his father returned to Kenya where he became a government functionary. His mother remarried an oil man and the family went to Indonesia where the future senator spent much of his youth.

Anyway, that background became part of Obama's unique multicultural appeal and formula for success. He was privileged enough, and smart enough, to attain a first rate education and became a lawyer, which is the launch pad for most politicians.

He surprised many by winning his Illinois senatorial seat. And even the least likely of us to vote for an African American are very pleased to have him as a representative when the most likely alternatives are considered. But it's somewhat of an embarrassment nonetheless. Not because Obama isn't qualified, or isn't first rate material, but because the majority is unable to field and elect qualified candidates that are more representative of the still white majority.

Obama is perhaps an example of the best of two worlds and two races. He has become sort of an overnight celebrity (maybe even superstar), on the political stage, and a darling of the media. And anyone the media adopts (if he doesn't shoot himself in the foot any more than Bill Clinton did), is apt to go places.

One might say Obama is the political counterpart of golf's Tiger Woods, and he has the pleasing looks and personality that it takes to gain both the favor of a significant number of voters as well as the media. The media, of course, is by far the most important. It literally makes and breaks politicians at will.

Not only that. His education and professional record not only attests to a high degree of intelligence, but he also talks as if he is possessed of an uncommon degree of common sense. At least that's Pridger's scant impression thus far.

Already Obama is being called a "mega-celebrity" and compared to JFK. As Mike Flannery, a Chicago newsman, has said, "...in this new America, multicultural fluency and ethnic fluidity suddenly have become colossal virtues," and Obama is "perfectly bi-cultural." Naturally, though his political career has just begun, he's already being looked upon as a potential first Black president of the nation. Wonder how the official Black victim-hood leadership will react to that?

Pridger, being an old fashioned white American, laments that the best and brightest, most likely to both "talk sense" and ascend to high political office these days, are increasingly non-white.

One reason is that non-whites can speak their mind (even when they talk common sense or touch on unpopular issues), without being immediately destroyed by the media in the event of any hint of political incorrectness. A totally honest white man who admits either the slightest pride in his race, or "western culture," has literally become unelectable.

White candidates for political office have to groom themselves very carefully, and be carefully screened, to insure they conform to the mold of the "new American multicultural reality." This knocks a lot of the best and brightest, and a much higher percentage of the unabashedly honest, out of the race before they begin. And, if they slip while they're in the race (no matter how much the media may have previously hyped them), the media will dutifully knock them until they either "crawl, repent, and conform," or are knocked totally down and out.

This explains why American voters increasingly stay away from the polls in droves. They and their culture have been marginalized and made even less than politically irrelevant – they have to keep their mouths shut on cultural issues. This is the legacy of political correctness. Why participate in a game with such a stacked deck?

Pridger would venture to say that a sizable majority of what is still the racial and cultural majority in this country secretly harbor very politically incorrect views on race, multiculturalism, and what they feel this country should look like. But most won't admit it. To do so is to be branded in one way or another. The very idea of any honest man coming forward seeking to represent such a majority has become painfully laughable.

Race can no longer count if you happen to be white. Nor can culture. Non-whites can wear both their race and native culture as multiple badges of honor all over their person. They can remain totally loyal to their nation of birth even as they take the Oath of allegiance to become American citizens – provided, of course, their home is not officially designated a rogue nation or supporter of terrorism. Dual citizenship has come in vogue, and the hyphenated American is officially allowed to have hyphenated loyalties.

Pridger is even somewhat amazed that we have so many people willing to take a stand against illegal Mexican immigration. Even so, the stand must be carefully couched in non-racial terms.

While fighting against illegal Mexican immigrants, they must say, "We actually 'want' all the Mexicans Mexico wishes to give us. It's just that we want them to fill out the paperwork, stand in line, and come across the border legally. Naturally, we encourage and need immigrants from everywhere – after all, this is a nation of immigrants. It's just that we must be a little more careful these days due to the terrorist threat." But those who do stand up, no matter how carefully, are accused of racism and xenophobia anyway.

For these same reasons, Pridger will not be at all surprised if Barack Obama someday becomes president. He's the perfect candidate for the New America. 

MAIL BAG (2)

The Sierra Club is trying to tap Pridger's talents (or pocketbook) again. The big concern featured in the latest mailing is the Giant Sequoias of the Giant Sequoia National Monument. The Sequoias are some of the oldest living things with some being as much as 3,500 years old, and the administration considers them a good source of toothpicks and revenue for its corporate friends. What's a big tree but a stack of money in the rough?

Pridger is firmly in the Sierra Club's court on this matter. He'd rather see the Statue of Liberty chopped down and turned into knitting needles and road paving material than see a single old Sequoia cut down to enhance somebody's corporate stock portfolio.

The above chart, showing "Notable Achievements" during the life of a 3,500 year old Sequoia is quite interesting. Especially noteworthy is the omission of the "Birth of Christ," a preeminent benchmark in the measurement of long epochs of time. A few years back that would have been a required item on such a chart. Obviously, the Sierra Club, or whoever commissioned the chart, didn't want to offend any atheists, agnostics, or secular humanists. No point in alienating members and potential donors, of course.

Yet Pridger would have thought the birth of Christ (or simply Jesus), would have been included just for old time sake. That birth would seem at least as noteworthy and significant as the achievement of entombing King Tut – and, of course, it might helps the historically challenged gain a handle on what separates BC from AD.

In the end, it's surprising that "BC" is used at all, since everybody knows that "C" once stood for "Christ." The politically correct have already corrected that. It stands for "Common" – and BC stands for "Before the Common era."

Oh, Political Correctness!
To mention Christ is reckless.
Religion is for fools,
Like giving thanks in schools.

The Sequoia would be soiled,
It's grandeur quite despoiled,
To give a prophet, of all things,
A place between its rings!

It grew in dumb splendor,
Without wire or suspender.
And the Sequoia did just fine
Without Intelligent Design.

'Til we arrived to gauge
The wonder at its age –
It grew without assistance,
With undaunted persistence.

Awed at its size –
Considering it a prize!
As natural as thunder,
We look at it with wonder.

Do not despoil these trees!
Monuments, if you please.
Tall as the Lady Liberty –
Monument and tree.

Not the handiwork of God,
They just grew out of sod,
And perhaps a little seed.
Christ and God indeed!

Oh Political Correctness!
To mention God is reckless!
Preserve the natural face,
Of this secular place!

Thursday, 14 September, 2006

THE STATE OF BLACK AMERICA - THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY

America has the institution of African slavery to thank for its African-American population. And since we've learned (through Social Studies in public schools, and Black Studies at the university level), that the the white man could never have built the nation without black slaves; that African culture was once far ahead of European culture (but was set back as a legacy of colonialism); that African culture has greatly enriched American culture; that "Black is beautiful" and Blacks are "Soul People" (whereas we whites are "Ice People").

It follows that the legacy of African slavery has proven a fortuitously positive one for all of us. Without it the nation would stand greatly impoverished.

As for the descendents of African slaves themselves, they have the institution of African slavery to thank for the mere fact that they are here rather than starving, being slaughtered, or dying of AIDs or a hundred other dreadful diseases, in Africa. (Things remain tough in Africa, mostly because of the legacy of European colonialism.)

Because of this, few Afro-Americans (as they at one time preferred to be called), are clamoring to get back to the formerly idyllic lands of their roots. It would seem to thus follow that the legacy of slavery has proven fortuitously uplifting to them too. At least here their children don't have to starve, and they have Affirmative Action here.

Of course, slavery was no picnic. Far be it from Pridger to imply that it was anything but a deplorable and inhumane remnant of ancient barbarism that survived for an embarrassingly long time right here in the land of the free and home of the brave. But in the end, slavery in America was merely a harsh initiation that led to better lives, even if it took a while for actual equality under the law to evolve. It would seem that both the descendents of slaves and slave-owners alike ought to celebrate the legacy of slavery.

Yet, almost inexplicably we don't celebrate it. In fact, we still have an ongoing problem with it, along with some serious lingering hang-ups. Blacks are still very unhappy and dissatisfied, and whites have learned to acknowledge that slavery was a crime against humanity for which they will continue to bear a heavy burden of guilt for, forever. 

Some Blacks still look forward to belated reparations for slavery – to punish the white race for its history. Whites are unhappy too – not only because of the guilt, but because they feel they've been paying reparations for almost sixty years already. There seems to be no remedy for, nor escape from, the guilt, and the price appears subject to eternal inflation.

Some whites have given up child-bearing itself as a means of atonement – in the apparent hope that Blacks and other formerly oppressed peoples will eventually inherit the nation.

There are other reasons why the white birthrate is so low and declining. Some people are too busy, or say they simply can't afford children. Some say they are worried about overpopulation. Others flat out say they wouldn't want to be guilty of bringing children into such as world as this – the one we had, the one we have, and the bleak prospects for the one that is coming. The most deluded and guilt-ridden, however, simply don't want the additional guilt that would result from bringing more guilty people into the world. We have more than enough guilty people already.

The guilt isn't just over slavery, of course. After the Emancipation Proclamation there was another century of racial discrimination to feel guilty about. Many of that era are still alive today. Pridger remembers the days when Jim Crow was still in control in the old Confederacy states, and it was still legal to be a little discriminating, or picky, about who you sold or rented real estate to in the North.

White Americans are expected to feel pretty guilty about those things too – even though the living "older generation" is the one that tried to set things right. And hardly anybody alive today had a hand in passing Jim Crow legislation.

Still, racism is alive and well in the bellies of people of every race. If honesty were to ever come back into vogue, we'd undoubtedly find that whites still feel just about as they did two hundred years ago. But today, honest people are hard to find – at least when it come the issue of race.

Dishonesty has not helped very much. So, perhaps there is something to be said for honesty after all. In fact, Pridger would venture that there is absolutely nothing wrong with honesty in good people. Dishonest people, who are otherwise virtuous (good at heart), merely sell themselves short. Too many such people can sell the entire nation down the drain. Bad people fall short not matter what, and cause problems whether they speak with forked tongue or not.  

Only the blind, uninformed, and deluded can believe that American society has improved since the Civil Rights era. Some things have improved, of course. True equality under the law was only just, and long overdue. With equality under the law, the nation took a great moral stride forward.

But the Civil Rights struggle didn't stop there. Equality under the law wasn't nearly enough. That was just the beginning, and the Civil Rights movement proceeded toward overkill – and the Black race toward moral ruin. A rather large minority of fortunate Blacks have benefited and upgraded, but black society as a whole, and the Black family, have literally crumbled.

As for white society (or American society as a whole), it has suffered tremendously too, and become a victim of an on-going liberal agenda to engineer a "more than just society" – one that would compensate for centuries of slavery and another century of racial discrimination, if not five or six centuries of discovery and colonial conquest before that. (Come to think of it, as far as Pridger knows, nobody has paid any reparations for the Crusades as yet.)

Of course, there was a lot more than the Black Civil Rights struggle going on during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. There was the white counter-cultural movement, and, between that and Civil Rights, there was a large and growing cadre of powerfully influential leftist academics intent on remaking society into the Utopia of their dreams. This cadre of liberal social engineers were overwhelmingly white, but the Black Civil Rights leadership fell under both its wing and its destructive spell.

Since the Civil Rights era, there has been an on-going "Cultural War," and it has literally managed to remake the nation. It has remade the nation in spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of the people, both black and white, would have been outraged had it only known what was really going on.

Once the hard-shell white resistance to racial integration and the Black vote was crushed in the South (with the use of federal troops), white America became exquisitely vulnerable to skillful psychological manipulation. Application of "critical theory" and various forms of what might be termed "cultural terrorism" (the doctrine of political correctness, etc.), quickly destroyed white ability to express pride in either their race, history, and culture, while elevating expression of Black pride in race and culture to a great social virtue.

Naturally, with a large newly enfranchised Black block vote, politicians "saw the light" very quickly, and buckled to racial blackmail and political correctness at every turn. Reversed discrimination became enshrined in federal law, despite the white majority, with the Supreme Court often enough effectively assuming the lead in forcing national social reform as Congress effectively cowed. And new "attractive" agendas were coming on line to help cover the ongoing fall-out from Civil Rights.

The "attractive" agenda of those "well-intended" social engineers, steeped in leftist doctrine, was a wonderful, socially just New World Order. It provided wonderful cover for the "other" One World planners who have delivered up globalism and the New World Order as we know it today. 

As Pridger has mentioned before, the New World Order is a double pronged affair – conceived and initiated by the left and delivered up in all its splendor by the capitalist right. It took the social engineers of the liberal left on one hand, and the moneyed power of international capital interests, on the right, to deliver the goods. And the corporate interests are the ones profiting, while the social engineers still just collect their relatively modest monthly salaries.

This was a very strange melding of goals and outcome by two diametrically opposed forces. And, working together (yet totally separately with their own distinct and coveted agendas), they managed to take almost everybody by surprise.

Our leaders talk a lot about democracy, but when did the people ever get to vote on selling out to a New World Order?

The social engineers worked at one end of the socio-economic spectrum – destroying the nation's fundamental moral fabric – and capitalist interests worked at the other end, destroying the national's economic borders and resistance to trade protectionism.

The one worked at replacing the "American Creed" of freedom, liberty, justice, and the work ethic, with a notion that "freedom equals both license and entitlements" (which are due without hard work). The other provided an abundance of cake and circus distractions, and an alluring array of benefits that appeal to the strictly materialistic, consumer, side of society.

But after all of this "muticultural" transformation and the transformation of the national into a global economy, Black Americans have still come out the biggest losers – socially, culturally, and economically. This, in spite of the fact that the Civil Rights movement played such a large role in redefining the national culture.

Most of the Black leadership is still on the wrong destructive track – long after it has become apparent that it had been both used and deceived. But there are Blacks out there who are very much aware of what has happened to the nation and "their society" – the Black family, and the nation as a whole.

Pridger won't get deeply into the subject here, but would like to recommend what he considers a source for some very worthwhile reading. As with whites, there is a small minority of Blacks who are not only intelligent, but honest and perceptive. Unlike whites, however, they cannot be check-mated and demonized by charges of "racism" when they speak out.

Issue and Views magazine (http://www.issues-views.com/, edited by Elizabeth Wright, is the place to go to read what thoughtful blacks who are not on the "racial victim bandwagon" have to say. The issues and views are those of Black writers who go against the grain of the "modern Black stereotype." Pridger recommends the magazine very highly to everybody interested in social justice and American culture.

RACIAL STEREOTYPING

Speaking of racial stereotyping... What is the "Black stereotype" today – after half a century of so-called "Civil Rights," racial justice, Affirmative Action, and equality under the law? That is, what would it be if it were not so politically incorrect to depict racial stereotypes (unless they are of the "dumb blond" variety)? What does the average white American picture in his mind when he thinks of Black Americans in general? Honestly?

"Honestly" is the key word. Can whites be honest today when it comes to racial issues? Or will they couch all their racial opinions in carefully chosen politically correct terms for fear of being called a racist?

When thinking of Blacks, do the faces and accomplishments of such men as George Washington Carver, Clarence Page, Clarence Thomas, and Colin Powell come to mind? Do the faces of great Black singers, musicians, and entertainers, or even Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, come to mind? Unlikely.

Do the "old traditional" stereotypes come to mind? The scene of happy singing workers picking cotton, a matronly smiling Aunt Jemima, a happy black boy biting into a wonderfully juicy watermelon? Does anybody think of a Black boy named Sambo, eating stacks of hot buttered pancakes? And what about Amos and Andy? No, in deed! Those stereotypes are out, and depicting them today would almost be considered a prosecutable hate crime. 

Depicting those quaint and friendly stereotypes is forbidden by the dictates of political correctness. The younger generations probably don't even remember them, and the rest of us only remember them secretly as a friendly connection to a by-gone era – an era when (in spite of injustices of racial discrimination), we actually had fond and friendly images as racial stereotypes. But they are now considered "negative" stereotypes.

Those of us who remember them, consciously try not to think of those old stereotypes. We certainly don't want the younger generation exposed to them. We even have to be very careful about using the word "boy" or "you people." But what does come to mind when whites think of Blacks? And, as for the infamous "n" word, well that's a word that only Blacks have license to use.

Everybody has numeral mental images when it comes to visualizing people of other races. So we continue to have mental stereotypes. What do most people visualize when they think of African-Americans?

Well, Pridger can't speak for all whites, of course, but when he thinks of African-Americans, he thinks of rioting, burning, and mayhem; ruined cities; dangerous inner city neighborhoods; desolate former upscale neighborhoods; gang violence and drug dealers; rapists and murderers; convicts and ex-convicts; threatening dark figures in dark places; single welfare moms; in your face, arrogant (or even threatening), professional sports figures; foul mouthed rappers and entertainers; foul mouthed whites (trying to be "cool" and "liberated" like Blacks) – and the list goes on. And another thing that comes to Pridger's mind when he thinks of Blacks – the one and only time he, himself, was ever mugged.

Not that Pridger likes to think of Blacks this negative way. It's a pity that those images always come to mind. But those are the new mental stereotypes that have replaced the old graphic stereotypes, and they aren't stereotypes invented by white cartoonists. Unfortunately, they're stereotypes Blacks are responsible for themselves.

We have plenty of great examples of Blacks at their best, and these should be the ones who come to mind first. Most Blacks are wonderful people, of course, but the the negative modern stereotype comes to the fore in Pridger's mind in spite of that fact. It does, because in spite of all the good, what comes through as "Black Culture" in America has been overwhelmed with negative images and attributes. We have a real problem in this country, and it's a serious problem. It isn't getting any better, and it has infected the entire society.

That's why Pridger is pleased to find such publications as Issues-Views. It helps get things back into a proper perspective.

MEXICAN STEREOTYPE

Even in this time of anger and frustration about illegal Mexican immigration, the Mexicans fair much better than Blacks do when it comes to the mental images. Perhaps visions of inner city gangs come up these days, but Mexicans have not yet gone on the rampage and destroyed their own communities and businesses yet. And they aren't the ones that went the extra mile to debase and vulgarize music entertainment. The Mexican family might be suffering some of the same problems that Black and poor whites have experienced, but, as a whole, Mexicans cling to traditional values with which most Anglo-Americans can relate and appreciate.

John Q. Pridger

Monday, 11 September, 2006

FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF A MULT-FACETED TRAGEDY 

Five years ago the world witnessed the greatest single act of non-state terrorism in the history of mankind, and the world was able to watch in shocked horror on live TV as thousands died. Talk about shock and awe! We were transfixed with it – and we were outraged and angered.

A rag-tag band of Islamic extremists, supposedly wielding nothing more than simple box cutters, had commandeered a few commercial jetliners and turned them into deadly guided missiles, attacking and greatly embarrassing the world's only remaining superpower.

To this day, most Americans are unaware of why anybody would do such a thing to such a generous and freedom loving people as us. We were told they hate us because of what we have – our freedom, liberty, and the American way of life. Most Americans believe that. And, of course, if somebody hates us for those reasons, there's little use in trying to figure out anything else about them – they're simply off their rocker. The only answer is to try to kill them too.

Naturally, the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11 had stirred up a hornets' nest. That was their intention.  As suicidal as the mission was for the 9/11 high-jackers, their mission succeeded far beyond their wildest dreams. Even though al Qaeda is paying a much higher price than it thought possible at the time, their "victory" may turn out to be greater than the price they are paying.

They knew they'd be stirring up a hornets nest, of course – that was their intention. But they could not have imagined they could provoke Uncle Sam into committing a significant portion of his armed forces to a global war on terror, and cause what became known within the U.S. administration itself as a "paradigm shift" in the way the nation does business.

This major change within the U.S. government and its defense establishment has such far reaching implications for the American people and the world that the terrorist who pulled off 9/11 had, with almost a single act effectively "remade the world."

After 9/11 everybody was saying that the world had changed, and how right they were! And this was the greatest triumph of all for the terrorists. They not only took down the towers and crashed the Pentagon, they caused us to have to rearrange our own chess board, reorganize our law-enforcement and intelligence gathering services, and accelerate our decent from the moral high ground toward a truly Orwellian future, complete with Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.

Taking no time at all for careful reflection or debate  Bush administration plunged the United States into a massive military campaign aimed at the terrorists. Almost immediately we apparently had the names and histories of the high-jackers, what they had been up to, who did the planning, and who gave the orders. In short, we already knew way too much for the attack to have been a total surprise.

There was no turning back, within days of the attack we were fully committed to a new kind of global warfare against a phantom known as terrorist intent.

The terrorists may have stirred up a hornets' nest, but they are hornets themselves – free-ranging, sneaky, hornets – and they know they are impossible to irradiate. And they possess a dedication to their cause born of religious fervor – a degree of dedication that cannot be known among peoples largely devoted to worldly comforts and materialist and frivolous pursuits.

But, as victim of the 9/11 tragedy, America was paying a penalty for many past sins, including those that had long before branded us "The Great Satan" in far off Iran and other Middle Eastern nations. Even more fundamentally, we were paying a penalty for ignoring the sound advice of our nation's founders to avoid foreign entanglements; a penalty for maintaining a "large standing army" in times of peace (exactly because of those ongoing foreign entanglements) – an armed force capable of attacking anywhere in the world at almost a moment's notice at the behest of a single man.

As Thomas Jefferson feared a large standing army is apt to transform itself from a defensive weapon, dedicated to defending the nation, into an assault weapon capable and willing to extend the lines of "national defensive" far into overseas alien environs. And that is exactly what has happened. We've repudiated all of our historical national teachings about the wrongfulness of offensive preemptive warfare and aggression and have become an aggressor in the name of preemptive defensive warfare.

We had condemned Hitler for the same sort of thing. His aim had been to defend the Fatherland by regaining what had already been taken from it in World War One, and to defend against the threat of the Russian Soviet Union to the East.

Our propaganda told us that Hitler intended to take over the world and establish a German Global Empire. Now the world is echoing with rumors of America attempting to establish a Global Empire.

Hitler had told the world exactly what he intended to do and why. Our president did the same thing when it came to going after Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and in the case of our "defensive" invasion of Afghanistan. But when it came to Iraq, there was hardly an iota of truth in the justifications for going after Saddam Hussein and preemptively invading Iraq.

Iraq had already been chastised and de-fanged. Previous to that it had warred, with our support, against our enemies in Iran. It had never threatened the United States nor supported our terrorist enemies. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda was a declared enemy of Saddam Hussein, and had apparently even offered the Saudis its assistance against Iraq when we said it was threatening the Saudi kingdom with invasion. And before our own invasion and occupation, terrorism had never been a problem in Iraq. 

Yet our declared "enemy" was, and continues to be, nothing but a relatively small scattered bunch of nation-less Islamic extremists, and they (together with our gathering quagmires in both Iraq and Afghanistan), are tying down the world's mightiest "defense" establishment.

Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea can develop their own weapons of mass destruction without too much fear of attack and invasion. We may threaten to nuke them, of course, but if we actually ever do that, we will have written ourselves out of the community of civilized nations – something even President Bush is likely to think twice before doing.

We can bomb suspected nuclear facilities with conventional weapons, of course, but everybody knows that won't do the trick – it would merely force a much larger war in much wider areas.

Whatever we do, our options always entail the death, displacement, and misery of more and more innocent people. We've already made the 9/11 death toll pale in comparison to the toll we have taken in Afghanistan and Iraq – and none of the 9/11 attackers were even Afghans or Iraqis! We have grossly surpassed Saddam Hussein's record as the butcher of Baghdad when it comes to the death and destruction we've caused.

In addition to our own collateral damage, as the result of our always abundant "good intentions," we've caused a civil war in Iraq that is taking an ever-increasing toll on innocent Iraqis. And as this civil war continues to take its toll, our "democratization" process is increasingly falling into farcical and tragic ruins.

These are all unintended consequences of errant policy. Another unintended consequence of literally every modern war, whether or not we are cause or participant, is that large numbers of refugees eventually find their way to our shores. 

Besides failing to remain true to the visions and wise advice of our founders, and totally abandoning the concept of America as an independent nation (while insisting on "going it alone" when it comes to foreign military adventures), we are paying penalties for five decades of errant Middle East Policy.

That policy had finally caught up with us with a vengeance on 9/11/2001, and bit us right where it hurt, killing about 3,000 innocent people – five decades of supporting Israel right or wrong; five decades of ignoring the plight of the Palestinians and the legitimate grievances of surrounding Arab states; five decades of becoming more and more dependent on Arab Oil; five decades of interferring in the affairs of Arab nations; and five decades of actively courting trouble in a region historically and naturally hostile to Infidels.

The Arab Muslims have never forgiven the west for the Crusades. And they have not been able to forgive the western colonial powers for planting a "Jewish Homeland" in their midst (one of the consequences of "doing good" in World War One).

The Arabs might have become reconciled to a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, had the rights of the Palestinian Arabs in the least been respected and protected. Arabs and Moslem did not have a historical hatred or ax to grind with the Jews as they did with Christians. All Arab nations had peaceably hosted sizable Jewish minority communities since biblical times.

But the west had turned a blind eye to Palestinian and Arab grievances throughout the half century of increasing Jewish settlement in Palestine. And when Israel was born, the very product of a combination of subterfuge and terrorist action, the United State continued to turn a blind eye to the much increased, and rapidly growing, plight of the Palestinian peoples.

This was the seed (planted during World War One), that germinated and grew into the ongoing Middle East problem. It continued through several Arab-Israeli wars, and finally led to the 9/11 attack on the United States.

The final tipping point that sparked 9/11 was Osama bin Laden's outrage at the introduction of a significant U.S. military presence on the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf States. This, supposedly, to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia and the world's oil supplies. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait (with which Iraq had both legitimate grievances and some arguable historical claims), probably thinking he had a green like from Washington.

It is likely that Washington did intentionally lead Hussein to believe he could get away with invading Kuwait, because Iraq had already been targeted by the U.S. The reason Iraq was in Washington's cross-hairs had little enough to do with oil, and a whole lot to do with the fact that a greater Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed a very real security threat to Israel.

The tragic events of 9/11 finally got the undivided attention of the American public, but Washington (knowing full well the historic genesis), responded as if it had been blindsided because a few Islamic extremists hate our guts – and they hate our guts solely because we love freedom and democracy. That's what the administration told the people.  

As if the 9/11 attack was a bolt out of the blue, the Bush administration reacted as if we had no idea that it was coming – as if something of that nature had not been long expected and considered long overdue. Indeed, only a decade before, an abortive attempt to topple one of the World Trade Towers had already played itself out. 9/11 was simply a spectacularly successful (made for TV), second attempt.

In response to a small rag-tag crew of supposedly box cutter wielding Islamic extremists, the administration declared war – not just in the figurative sense that would imply using covert resources and cooperative international police action, but by committing the nation's entire military establishment to the irradiation of what actually amounted to a few individuals.

The resulting "paradigm shift" in the way our nation does business in an increasingly hostile world is certain to bear bitter fruit, with a long-lasting after taste.

"But they attacked us!" the war apologists indignantly claim, "We're merely defending ourselves!" Well, maybe so, but we are also self-destructing in the process. And there seems to be much more to this than readily meets the public eye.

As Pridger pointed out at the time, in the 9/11 attack, "they" (the powers behind our national leadership and foreign policy establishment), finally had the perfect justification to deliver the nation into the desired state of "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace."

War has a way of accomplishing goals, whether they are the stated goals or something altogether different. And, of course, no matter what the real purpose of a war is (stated or otherwise), they inevitably result in an array of unintended  negative consequences (both short and long term), and, in the fullness of time, those consequences usually outweigh any possible good many fold.

Speaking of unintended consequences, we're still suffering from the unintended consequences of the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. All except Vietnam (and to a lesser extent, Korea), were billed as noble efforts in which we were gloriously victorious.

The biggest two wars of all time were wars to end all wars. Arguably, not one of those war did anything good for the United States or the American people, but they cost us (and many others), plenty. We gained nary an acre of ground that we didn't fix up at great cost and eventually return to the rightful owners.

The only good for us that came out of the Second World War was that it pulled the nation our of a long economic depression. By far, our noblest efforts with regard to World War Two were in rebuilding both friendly and enemy nations after the war.

We defeated Hitler and Nazi Germany (which had never credibly threatened the United States), of course, but we thereby empowered the Soviet Union, paving its way to superpower status, and got almost half a century of more war, both cold and hot, for our trouble. Whether Hitler and Nazi Germany were worse than Stalin and the Soviet Union is highly debatable. The Jewish Holocaust (which has become the single most damning event of the war with regard to Hitler), was, at least to a much larger extent than has been acknowledged, the result of the unlimited nature and sheer barbarity of the war in its final stages – after Germany was already in ruins.

If Hitler did actually plan and authorize the "Final Solution" (and Pridger has never seen credible proof that he did), it was probably born of the shear desperation of a madman, and a desperate and dying nation given no quarter, but held to continue suicidal battle into total defeat and national ruin – an unnecessarily cruel and brutal end game willfully pursued by the "Big Three" allied powers, knowing the cost in innocent lives that it would cost.

Even if no German could be considered innocent, certainly there were quite a few innocent people in the concentration camps. Of course, long before the end of the war Hitler was being accused of pursuing the "Final Solution." Interestingly, and rather ironically, influential Jews were clamoring for the allies to "save the concentration camp inmates" by bombing the concentration camps! At least the allies didn't contribute to the Holocaust by doing that, but they have been faulted by many Jews for not doing so.  

The ruin of Germany was such that hundreds of thousands of Germans (civilian men, women, and children), continued to die in the very final days of the war, and continued to die (of starvation, displacements, exposure, and Soviet depredations), long after the nation was defeated and occupied.

It's a wonder that there were any survivors at all in the concentration camps (Jewish or others), but there were plenty of gaunt, starving, survivors. And the sickening piles of bodies discovered, photographed, and used as the most damning evidence of the Final Solution were all "newly dead" (undoubtedly of starvation and disease), at the time the allied troops found them and were so repelled at the "atrocities." The concentration camp guards and staff had fled for their lives (themselves undoubtedly gaunt and hungry), as the allies approached. If we are to believe the propaganda, their final act before running for their lives must have been to gas a lot of inmates.

This is not "Holocaust denial" (it's merely a statement that qualifies as heresy among the Holocaust clergy). The Holocaust most definitely occurred, but the details are a little foggy, and it took place within a much larger Holocaust that sometimes seems to be given short shift.

But Pridger is digressing, the point being to illustrate the unintended consequences of even "good" wars. Yet the unintended consequences are usually forgotten as subsequent events and historical records come under the control of the victors. 

Surprisingly, the War on Terror itself, initially actually got some sympathy, even from a few Arabs and Moslems. But for a democratic superpower to start an open-ended global Crusade against a relatively small number of stateless terrorists has to be the very epitome of folly.

In truth, Bush and his supporters in crime miscalculated calamitously. Pridger at least gives them that much "credit." They probably actually believed the democratization of Iraq would be a cakewalk. And literally everybody is waking up to the fact that starting a war on willfully false pretenses is not only wrong but criminal. Wars kill people. Lots of people.

The embarrassment of finding out that we attacked the wrong country has not set well either. It is Iran and North Korea (not Iraq), who pose the WMD threat. "Oh well, Saddam was a bad boy anyway, and needed to be taken out," they say. But in Pridger's unvarnished view, that is simply not sufficient justification for Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. The justifications must be found elsewhere, in an agenda that is intentionally kept secret – for national security reasons.

John Q. Pridger

Sunday, 10 September, 2006

MORAL SLIPPAGE

Word has come down from President Bush that a dozen al Qaeda big-wigs have been promoted from Hell to Purgatory. He stated with a great deal of patriotic pride that they had been in secret CIA hell holes where they were induced (though various cruel and unusual means), to spill their guts, providing valuable information to our "intelligence" agents.

No longer considered "useful" to the CIA, they have been turned over to the Defense Department and sent to the terrorist resort at Guantanamo Bay naval base. Presumably they will now be rewarded for their assistance.

The Christian administration, of course, hopes to eventually reward them with execution. But, since there is a considerable amount of controversy over the status of Guantanamo prisoners, their fate will likely be postponed indefinitely. But "enemy combatant" status, or simple residence at the Guantanamo facility alone, is more "fate" than any human really deserves, no matter how detestable they may be.

This perversion of justice – capture and indefinite imprisonment without benefit of the laws of any civilized nation – will haunt us for the rest of our national history. And it sets a precedent that will spill over into other areas besides terrorism whenever it suits the purposes of an administration that holds the people (any people), in contempt. No longer can America be considered the champion of justice under the law and a serious advocate of and for human rights.

No matter how bad these guys are thought be, they are still "humans." At worst, they are mass murderers or common criminals. But chances are, most are merely dedicated to a cause, and were fighting for what they believe to be just. And, undoubtedly, there are some who have been wrongfully accused and are innocent.

Our treatment of enemy captives invites the same or worse for our own people who are unlucky enough to be captured by them. Could American captives in the hands of Islamic extremists expect any better treatment than Americans bestow upon their own captives? Are terrorist fanatics kinder and gentler than Christians?

Hardly. Some Iraqi factions conducted a rash of captive beheadings some time back to prove it. Apparently it proved to be a PR disaster even among their co-religionists, so they haven't been doing much be-heading of captives lately?

Speaking of Christians, if this were a Christian nation, and if George Bush were a Christian as he claims, we would not be having this discussion. 9-11 would probably never have happened and we would not be in a state of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.

The Moslem extremists have been handed the greatest propaganda tool imaginable, and it has served to vilify their enemy in the eyes of much of the civilized world. The so-called Christian Infidel of America has tipped his hand and shown what lies behind his Christian facade.

Our injustice to enemy combatants not only bodes ill for our enemies, it bodes ill for the American people on the home front. The justice given out to anybody by our government is the justice that government reserves for all people it may have a problem with at some future time. And that could someday be you and me. 

The way we are treating our enemy combatant captives is the result of "power" over people that no government should ever be allowed to gain. Such power has historically been the preserve of tyrants and authoritarian regimes. That our government has assumed such powers makes a total mockery of "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Our national moral compass has slipped so badly, and become so disoriented, that "justice" and "human rights" under the laws of the United States of America can no longer be deemed to be guaranteed.

Today George Bush feels justified in relieving al Qaeda, enemy combatants, and suspected Islamic terrorists of not only their "civil" and "human rights," but their human status. They have the rights of savage dogs. We're still humane enough to provide the prisoners with food and shelter, but that's about all that's required.

Fortunately, there is enough residual humanity in our defensive machinery, and enough concern and outrage over all of this, that we do at least house and feed our terror related captives. But there should have been enough horror and outrage to nip this deadly moral infection in the bud, long before it could metastasize into an established national defense mechanism that even a Christian President can brag about on national TV.

Today this treatment is reserved for an exclusive few known as Islamic terrorists or "enemy combatants." Tomorrow, or ten years from now, no telling who it might be reserved for. Remember, every man, woman, and child (whether Moslem, Southern Baptist, secular humanist, or American patriot), is a potential terrorist. (Our forefathers who fought the Revolution were rabid terrorists to the British.) And the idea of "thought crimes" as actionable cause for prosecution is gaining steam. Will "thought terrorism" someday become an automatic ticket to the Gulag?

John Q. Pridger

Friday, 8 September, 2006

THE LIBERAL-CONSERVATIVE QUESTION

Defining just what "liberal" and "conservative" mean has become increasingly difficult, and the problem leads to much confusion. It seems nobody calling themselves liberal or conservative have any definitive answers. An individual may call himself a liberal or conservative, and my even know what they personally stand for, but the terms themselves seem to have lost their meanings, if they ever really had them.

The August 28 issue of The American Conservative magazine devoted almost the entire issue to the questions, "What is Left? What is Right? Does it Matter?"

Two main questions were asked and 30 prominent political writers from across the political spectrum had responded. Those question were: (1) Are the designations "liberal" and "conservative" still useful? Why or why not? and (2) Does a binary Left/Right political spectrum describe the full range of ideological options. Is it still applicable?

It was an interesting and informative exercise, but hardly cleared anything up on the questions at hand. "Apples and oranges" and "blind men describing the elephant" analogies come to mind, and we were left with 30 differing perspectives on just "what the questions meant to them" and a mind-numbing array of multi-faceted answers.

The truth of the matter is, the words liberal and conservative are both such broad terms, with such long and varied political histories, that concise political definitions are impossible without multiple elaborations and qualifications. In other words, standing alone the terms are all but meaningless.

In his 1997 book, Texas Iconoclast, former Texas congressman and political editorialist, the late Maury Maverick, Jr. grappled with the same questions. Among other things, he mentioned that "William Jennings Bryan once said something to the effect that a liberal is like an old mule pulling ahead, and a conservative is like a plow holding back, and between the two of them they break the soil."

In Maverick's salute to the former speaker of the house, Sam Raburn, he says, "he never called himself a 'liberal,' a word that has taken on a wimpy meaning... 'Call me a progressive conservative or a conservative progressive, but put the word "progressive" in there.'"

Raburn (a Democrat who spent 48 years as Speaker of the House) was probably referring to the "bleeding heart" that had been attached to the liberal label beginning in the Kennedy administration and Johnson's Great Society days.

"Liberals who are crooks offend me more than conservatives who are crooks," Maverick wrote, "and this is so although liberals steal less than conservatives...
   "Republicans, especially self-oriented yuppie Republicans, instinctively love money more than injustice to the poor, and, having that reputation, are less resented for it than self-righteous liberal Democrats..."

Generally speaking, liberals are considered to be more or less "refined and caring," where conservatives (of whatever brand), tend to be a little coarser and less caring. This is because of a fundamental divide in the the perceived role of government. Big paternalistic (perhaps more maternalistic), government is perceived as a liberal goal and "limited government" is considered a conservative ideal.

Democrats are generally liberal and Republicans are generally conservative. A "conservative" Democrat is generally less conservative than a "liberal" Republican, and vice versa. There is more confusion than this, and the net result of liberal Democrat and conservative Republican government has been Big Brother passing out benefits with one hand while wielding a bigger and bigger stick with the other. 

One writer mentioned that the terms Populist and Elitist would be much better terms to use to divide the modern political spectrum into two more or less distinct camps. This implies that we are in a state of class warfare, and we are, though many have not yet realized it.

It was when Pridger began reading the Progressive Populist newspaper some years ago that he fully realized that left and right were actually getting onto the same track on many important issues while remaining world's apart on others.

Pridger once described himself as a "liberal conservative" and defined a liberal conservative is basically a "libertarian with common sense."

But then, some people have lost the meaning of "common sense." One of Pridger's self-proclaimed liberal friends has actually claimed not to know what common sense is. Needless to say (at least in Pridger's opinion), this is evidence that his friend lacks his rightful quota of it. That friend, who happens to be quite intelligent, feels that "common sense" is a code word for something only conservatives have, and that right-wingers use as a weapon of mass destruction – Thomas Paine having been one of the original radicals.

The fact is, the "common" part of common sense has become a misnomer. What was once considered common sense in a whole array of things – particularly political and economic thought and policy – has become quite uncommon.

In any case, as Socrates and Ezra Pound admonished, it behooves us to "define our terms" within the context of our own usage. As Pound pointed out, with "betrayal of the word, all is lost."

For example, if Pridger were to describe himself as "a gay fellow" in this day and age, it would convey a totally different idea than it would have sixty years ago. If he says he is "straight" it now implies something besides simply being honest, though the definition "not homosexual" crept into the dictionary some years ago.

Similarly, very few avid environmentalists, whose main purpose in life is "conservation" personified, would describe themselves as conservatives.

A conservative might be described as an old farmer who stays home, keeps the house in repair and hearth warm, and gets the crop in. He sticks around to do the harvesting, and keeps the family well fed and secure. A liberal might be the old farmer's son, who goes off and spins his wheels in frivolity for a while, then becomes a college professor, social worker, or rocket scientist.

The "classic liberal" of a century or more ago would more likely be a conservative today than a liberal. Ironically, Thomas Jefferson is still revered by both liberals and conservatives. But those who attack him as a slave-owning, slave-girl molesting, hypocrite are almost all of a liberal persuasion.

One thing Pridger has noticed about most of those who call themselves liberals. Few, if any, of them are "nationalists" or "constitutionalists." They tend to consider nationalism and true patriotism as sins against humanity, akin to racism and fascism. But, socialism, and even communism (at least in its theory), are comfort zones for many of the liberal label.

RATIONAL NATIONALISM IN A RATIONAL WORLD

In a rational world there would be nothing negative in nationalism. Is patriotism for a nation all that different from being loyal to the "home team"? Those who hate nationalism equate it with bigotry and aggression just as those who hate Christianity equate it with bigotry and aggression. Hitler and Nazi Germany stand as the prime dual example of nationalism and Christianity.

Many of us who claim to be patriotic Americans, however, would very much prefer to have a peaceful, independent, and prosperous nation – at peace with ourselves as well as with the rest of the world. What's more, we believe that such a state of affairs is possible, if less than likely to actually happen. In fact, both our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are a blueprint for such a nation. Too bad those documents and the ideas they convey are framed under glass, but no longer evident in the conduct of national affairs.

Those of us who claim to be "Christian" (if not born again Christians), would also prefer to have a peaceful world in which the brotherhood of mankind (without regard to religious faiths), could live in respectful peace with one another – where our brotherly love would not only extend to the neighbor next door, but to all peoples everywhere.

Too bad so many professing Christian peoples have listened to demagogues in the priesthood, and forgotten to focus on the Christian message.

SPEAKING OF RELIGION

Pridger's latest History Book Club selection catalog includes a selection by Karen Armstrong entitled The Great Transformation, The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. "The author urges a return to Axial-Age (900 to 200 BCE) values, when the world's great religions offered the message that behavior is more important than belief."

This is an interesting idea – "Behavior is more important than belief." It's a pity Ms. Armstrong felt it necessary to go back "before" the Christian era to find evidence of that doctrine. Pridger may be wrong, of course, but he contends that was the fundamental message Jesus's attempted to convey.

If it were not for the priesthood and clergy, Christianity might have conformed to that mold. Unfortunately, our present definition of religion deals much more with "belief" and "faith" than "behavior." The behavior expected of believers and the faithful takes a back seat to belief. In fact, sometimes the most violent and destructive behavior has been pursued in the name of the "Prince of Peace."

Obviously, the author is not a Christian. That is, she might be anything but what we call a Christian these days. Her message might be right on the mark, but (though Pridger has not read her book), he suspects she is "yet another" anti-Christian seeking to discourage the faithful and discredit "Christianity." Anti-Christians come in all colors, shades, and "faiths," including "reformed" or "post-religious" Christians who have lost their faith and become secular humanists. 

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

In addition to working to trying to eliminate all religious expression from the heart of government, Americans United for Separation of Church and State are also attacking the right of freedom of speech at the pulpit. Among other things, pastors preaching anti-war or anti-Bush sermons are being targeted. Clergymen who venture to speak out against such politically charged subjects as the president's war policies are being called on the carpet by the IRS. Churches have lost their tax-exempt status for such heresy.

Churches have laid themselves open to this sort of thing. They have wed themselves to the state by becoming corporate entities with special federal status.

The fact is, any church that has gone through the trouble of registering as 501, (3), (c) tax-exempt, not for profit, organization under our internal revenue laws, has already effectively signed a pact with the devil. It has willfully forfeited its intellectual and spiritual independence as well as its freedom of speech.

This, of course, includes just about every church and religious organization in the nation. They are wed to the state in a nation that is increasingly touchy about the separation of church and state.

Tax exempt status is supposedly a major "benefit" of being a religious organization. The major denominations asked for such status, and tax-exempt status was a "gift" the state bestowed upon churches and other charitable organizations. But when the state bestows anything on anything or anybody, there are strings attached.

A "real" church (at least in Pridger's humble opinion), has about as much use for tax-exempt status as a hog has for a side-saddle. Only individuals and corporate organizations have an interest in taxes and tax-exempt status. Churches should exist totally separately and far aloof from such things as the Internal Revenue Service.

Aside from religious organizations, there are tens of thousands of tax exempt organizations that have grown up because of this amazing "special status," many (if not most), of them are "businesses" (and big businesses), that ought not to have any special tax-exempt privileges.

Pridger isn't a particular friend of big corporate capital in general, or even taxation for that matter. But he's even less of a friend to the concept of exempt status for any business entity. Why would any money-making business rate tax-exempt status? And why would any church or true charity need tax-exempt status?

Meet a new church that isn't tax-exempt...

THE CHURCH OF UNIVERSAL LIVING TRUTH
BREAKS THE MOLD

There are probably a few churches left that forgo and ignore the "by your leave" of state regulation. Chances are, people like the Amish (who meet in private homes), don't bother with corporate organization, taxed or otherwise. But Pridger knows of only one. That's the "Church of Universal Living Truth" (C.U.L.T., fondly referred to by members as simply as "CULT") – one of the few churches in the nation that totally breaks the mold. It isn't organized as a corporation, and has absolutely no "official status" in law at all. It exists not under the laws of any nation or civil authority, but solely under the God-given right to worship (or not worship), as one (or any group calling itself a church), sees fit.

It is not a tax-exempt organization, or even an "organization" at all – it is truly separate from the state, without a single string to be pulled by a regulatory authority or civic group. You might even say it's totally invisible in law. It's just a "church" comprised solely of "believers" – Pesky true Believers.

CULT believers focus much more on behavior and thought than dogma. In fact, though the church founder (like Pridger), considers himself a "Christian," the church adheres to no dogma at all, religious or otherwise. It promotes and preaches one thing only – Truth (which, of course, is a broad enough field of discussion).

The irony and uniqueness of CULT is that it doesn't matter in the least whether it conforms to any conventional definition of what a church is supposed to be (whether set down by a religious convention or some government authority). It looks not to the IRS or any other authority of any nature to define itself or its purposes for being are.

Of course, CULT cannot boast of a large following. In fact, it has hardly any following at all at the moment, because it has never really been presented to the public – the founder himself being somewhat of a recluse. Pridger's Blog is probably the only place it has ever been mentioned in a public forum. This is something Pridger is attempting to get the founder to remedy, however, and he hopes there will soon be at least an Internet portal to the CULT "religion."

Don't expect to find a so-called religious cult of the Heaven's Gate variety in CULT, though. And no chickens are sacrificed at CULT meetings or rituals. No holy water is dispensed, and nobody gets dunked. And CULT isn't armed to the teeth with assault weapons or throwing stars, bracing for Armageddon. So if you are looking for something exotic or bizarre, CULT is not for you.

CULT is a pristine example of the separation of church and state, even though a CULT sermon or paper may well get deeply into discussion of political affairs. But there is absolutely nobody who has valid legal grounds to object. Not the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, not the ACLU, nor the ADL, or the IRS. CULT is much freer than the press itself, and by far much freer than any tax-exempt official church.

If CULT members (all of whom are "ministers"), engage in fund raising in the name of the church, through some business activity, they get the money personally and pay taxes just like Pizza delivery people and Iron Workers – rendering "unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."

The church itself is incapable of engaging in business activity. It's a church, not a business nor corporation. It has no treasury, no bank account, no books to keep, and no treasure to defend – beyond perhaps the wisdom it seeks, through its ministers, to impart.

CULT is so independent, and refreshingly different, that the founder chose the name and acronym in defiance of all convention, religious or otherwise. And we fondly call it "Cult" even though it isn't a joke – its serious in a way that doesn't venture to take itself too seriously – something no other church would venture to admit. There isn't a weirdo in the entire present congregation, with the possible Pridger himself.

And, in case you were wondering, CULT is not an anti-Christian church. It was conceived by a somewhat "secularly oriented Christian." And if this sounds like a contradiction, perhaps it is. But we take the teachings of Jesus to be the only relevant "Christian" message, rather than the "Bible" as a whole as The whole and Only "Word of God." But Jesus is not our only prophet, just the one we, of American Christian heritage, place ahead of the rest.  

CHRISTIANITY AND THE BIBLE

The Bible is a wonderful book, chock full of riveting stories and valuable lessons for mankind. But the "Christian message" (i.e., the actual teachings of Jesus), comprises only a miniscule portion of the overall text. The notion that the entire Bible is the unquestionable, unadulterated, "Word of God" is the rocky shore upon which Christianity itself has repeatedly foundered with the assistance of the priesthood that developed to command the ship of Christianity. It continues to founder.

To the rational person, the Bible is "The Word of God" only in the sense that God must have inspired at least some of the people who wrote it. But those who actually wrote the scriptures, and those who finally assembled the final Christian canon, were themselves fallible human beings. They did the best they could.

The Old Testament largely makes up the holy books of the Hebrew faith. And though we often hear our "Judeo-Christian" culture and heritage referred to, the purpose of this is generally to cement an unnatural bond between Judaism and Christianity – or (in today's most prevalent context), between Americans and Jews.

"Judeo-Christian," however, combines two mutually exclusive terms in the contexts of religion and cultural. This is not to say that the two are not irretrievably related in terms of historical religious development. The Christian faith and the Christian religion could not have developed without that Hebrew background. Jesus, after all, was of Hebrew of Judaic lineage and faith, and the Old Testament is the accepted history (largely mythological history), of the Hebrew peoples and their religion. 

But Jesus largely rejected the religion and laws of Moses in favor of a new way of thinking about man's relationship with his fellow beings and with God. In the Hebrew religion God was "the God of the Hebrew people," and conversely, the Hebrews were God's Chosen People.

The Hebrew God (not withstanding the fact that He had created the Heavens and Earth and all its creatures), spoke only to the Hebrew prophets. Jesus acknowledged God not only as "his Father in Heaven" – but equally the God of all mankind. Mankind constituted the "children" of the Christian God and the brotherhood of mankind. Of course, it was still the One and Only God, but Jesus taught that the Hebrews had got it wrong in claiming an exclusive relationship with God to the exclusion of all other peoples.

The Old Testament is only relevant to the Christian religion in that the Hebrew scriptures provided Christianity with both a historical or mythological background and the all important prophecy of the coming of the Messiah. 

The early Christians were Hebrews who accepted Jesus as the true Hebrew Messiah. The Hebrews who rejected Jesus as the Messiah remained true to the old Hebrew religious order and are today called Jews, being of the Judaic faith – the religion of the ancient Hebrews.

Human nature being what it is, a combination of self-serving political and religious leaders, and a largely faithful and dedicated (though humanly fallible), priesthood and clergy took events from Biblical times to where they stand today. And, unfortunately, the message of Jesus remains diluted in the context of the entire Christian canon which is largely represented in the Bible. That and the trappings of the Church and multiple church denominations, and their vested interests.

The Bible is taken as the Word of God, and the words of Jesus, though often quoted, are like a scattering of pearls on a vast sandy beach – almost insignificant and seldom heeded in all purity.

So, eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, Old Testament, "Christians" seem to outnumber the true followers of the message of Christ. And too many Christians continue to believe that Armageddon should be the goal of all Christian peoples by whatever means necessary. "The end," they say, "justifies the means."

John Q. Pridger

Friday, 1 September, 2006

SNAKE HEADS AND THE DREAM OF THE GOLDEN MOUNTAINS

Mexican illegals may be our biggest immigrant problem, but the Chinese are pretty resourceful when it comes to getting illegal immigrants to the United States too – with a wide Pacific Ocean handicap to deal with. Shipping containers are one of the means. Many would be immigrants have been discovered in containers, both dead and alive. But no telling how many containers get through with cargo fully in tact. Chances are, those discovered are only the tip of the iceberg.

Shipping containers can be fitted out with all the comforts of home – controlled living environments, plenty of room for food supplies, etc.

A Chinese friend, commenting on Pridger's recent "Trojan Horse" post, reminded him that the Chinese equivalents to the Mexican "coyotes" are called "Snake Heads." The friend also mentioned that the Chinese refer to North America as the "Golden Mountains." Snake Heads are merely entrepreneurs fulfilling a natural desire many Chinese have to get to the Golden Mountains. We're lucky that China doesn't have a long land border with the United States, or we'd  already have been totally swamped.

Like Mexican immigrants, whether legal or illegal, Chinese immigrants are no longer concentrating in their own large cultural enclaves such as traditional "Chinatowns" in major metropolitan areas. In the case of the Chinese and other Orientals, that mold was largely broken by the massive influx of Vietnamese refugees starting in 1975. Since then the floodgates appear to have been opened to the entire Asian Continent from Pakistan and the Indian sub-continent to Korea and Japan.

An active attempt was made to disburse the Vietnamese throughout the nation to encourage quick assimilation. American families, churches, and other organizations served as sponsors in every region of the nation. It didn't work as intended, naturally. Most Vietnamese, once they had become more or less independent, gravitated to urban areas where jobs could be found, and where Vietnamese communities and businesses had begun to materialize.

But many did not follow that pattern, and small Oriental populations established themselves throughout the nation in almost every town of any size at all. In many small towns a single family would open the very first real "Chinese" or Oriental restaurant in town. Then came the "nails" entrepreneurs and others.

In addition to the tens of thousands of mom & pop Oriental businesses that materialized throughout the nation, there are now big nationwide Chinese restaurant chains such as the China Buffet. As is the case with similar Mexican businesses and restaurant chains (like Tequila's), these provide excellent cover and employment for new immigrants – particularly of the illegal variety – throughout the entire nation.

Pridger knows of one Vietnamese owned restaurant in a fairly good sized mid-west town where, having too few family members or local Orientals to do all the work, Mexicans (most probably of the illegal variety) will be found in the kitchen. And only a few years before that town had never seen either an Oriental or a Mexican. Most employees work on a cash contract basis, so there need be no employee paper trail. Two or three family members and one local waitress are the only official workers and employees, and three or four others are unofficial.

The indomitable entrepreneurial spirit of the Oriental races, and the Chinese and Vietnamese in particular, literally run rings around "ordinary" Americans.

The same goes for Hispanics and other races to slightly lesser degrees. Large Mexican communities are generally poor, but nonetheless an abundance of Mexican owned and operated businesses are always in evidence, breathing commercial life with a cultural flavor into the community.

"American communities" are comparatively drab and "sterile" by comparison, with only corporate franchises and chains to serve the the "fast and cool" crowd. The corporate businesses serving the wider community of Americans may be comparatively upscale, but they reflect a corporate culture sorely lacking in anything like "local" color, culture, or any hint of individuality.

Regular Americans had long been spoiled by the abundance of "good jobs" their industrialized economy had produced. When the good jobs started disappearing, thanks to globalization, the "traditional American races" tended to become economically impotent. If they couldn't find jobs with good pay and health insurance they were lost, and and many were willing to become wards of the Welfare state. The lucky ones were able to retire with a decent pension and Social Security before the bottom fell out or they were ripped off by company executives.

Los Angeles, as well as many other large cities, would be dead megalopolises without their Oriental and Mexican populations. In this sense, our immigrants are breathing new life into the American commercial and cultural landscape, so perhaps we do need them at least to keep us from dying of boredom. But the nation of our founders is gone. The America that had developed from 1776 through World War II is history – along with both the spirit and government institutions that made a great nation possible. 

What we have now is a nation that not only imports almost everything Americans need and use, but a nation that has come to depend on foreign immigrants to keep it from becoming a totally brain-dead, barren, and stagnant wasteland.

If government was to be cut back down to proper size (as may of us romantics advocate), and the nation would immediately collapse. Only the ethnic communities would survive the transition whole.

What built the nation in the first place was the American farmer that populated the countryside and worked the ground, a vigorous merchant class that populated Main Streets, and a native entrepreneurial class that produced spectacular innovations and industries. And all shared a strong work ethic which was spawned and sustained by both necessity and the desire to succeed and deliver the goods for the good life.

Today that is largely gone. The work ethic and entrepreneurial drive seem to be largely the prerogatives of our immigrants and immigrant communities. The Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Cuban, Indian, Pakistani, Arab, and Eastern European populations (most of whom arrived with very little), all seem to be doing comparatively well. In fact, all immigrants seem to be doing better than poor "Anglo" or "African" Americans. Even immigrants from the most backward nations of Africa seem to have more spark and a higher success rate than homegrown Americans, white or black.

None of our national problems are the result of immigration or immigrants. But too many immigrants – especially illegal an unassimilated immigrants – are a problem. And continued immigration and the perception of a "need" for more immigrants (in a nation that is already overpopulated and troubled by industrial downsizing), is the result of a nation rotting at its political and cultural core. It's doomed, with or without new blood. The government itself (always with the best of intentions, of course), has betrayed its own people and made the nation ripe for foreign invasion.

Ireland, as mentioned in a previous post, is in a different position – actively inviting immigrants to take blue collar jobs the Irish can no longer fill with their own stock. It seems the Irish labor force has been training itself for more high tech positions and there's too few left to do the lesser chores and hard work. So Ireland is in the process of being transformed into a multi-cultural nation by its own volition.

We have the best and worst of all worlds here in the United States. Though we have plenty of unemployed blue collar workers and rocket scientists, we are either importing the products that blue collar workers once produced, or importing foreign labor to take their place, or even in place of highly educated professionals who expect high wages and a full line of "American style" fringe benefits. 

We are also told we need a lot of immigrants to do the menial labor jobs that Americans no longer want. If this need is real, it's only because the American underclass has been given sufficient incentives, in the form of various "entitlements," to avoid work entirely. Those who don't get sufficient entitlements to satisfy their needs either work the drug trade or are housed at public expense in the burgeoning prison system. For them the Golden Mountains are either highly rewarding or downright confining.

The United States may be the Golden Mountains, but illegal immigrants wouldn't be arriving in astounding numbers if it were not for some serious systemic maladjustments in the American economy combined with gross negligence in the area of immigration and border control.

For one thing, Americans in general have just about been cured of the "work ethic" – something we once congratulated ourselves on (along with being the most literate nation in the world). That work ethic was the product of family owned farms and productive American industries. When the government turned its back on family farms, and then went the extra mile to encourage de-industrialization, the hard working classes that built and maintained the nation were betrayed.

The disparity between the Mexican and U.S. economy doesn't really explain the present huge flow of illegals from Mexico. That disparity has always existed. What is new is NAFTA and the tens of thousands of Mexicans it has helped displace from their land and livelihoods – farmers and local economies in the Mexican heartlands being destroyed "American style." They desperately need a place to go to make a living. And they are perfectly willing to work without a raft of "American style" employment benefits.

Corporate farms in a nation with a cheap food policy, or that produce for export into an impoverished world at global prices, require cheap labor – much as antebellum southern plantation owners once required cheap labor. And a service economy that is long on services and short on productive wealth creation, also needs a lot of cheap labor too – a lot more than our aspiring high school and college graduates are willing to provide. 

The same goes for surviving productive industries in a nation that has dropped its trade protection and national borders. They require cheap labor to compete with those "others elsewhere" in the global economy. So others elsewhere are eager to immigrate and fill the void left by Americans who have learned to abandon the work ethic.

We suffer a triple whammy. We require imports because we no longer produce. And we require immigrant labor to fill the jobs we no longer want. And we require unlimited credit to pay for the imports and hired help.

In America today, work isn't considered cool. Youth no longer wants, or particularly feels the need, to actually "earn" a living through hard work. Nobody likes "hard work" or wants "just" a comfortable living. The smart thing is to go into some sort of "service" business, preferably financial services – or simply get rich in the stock market. Or maybe the Internet will do. If not those things, perhaps the lottery or gambling casino will do. And, of course, there is crime and the easy money to be made in the drug trade. Let immigrants take the tough jobs with low pay.

There was a time when a lot of tough jobs, as well as relatively easy production jobs, demanded high pay, but those high paying jobs are now so few that they are the exclusive domain of a few remaining union members or government paid civil servants. And, as industries continue to go south and east, unions themselves are increasingly left with hopes of organizing service industries, civil servants, and low paid immigrants in order to survive.

Without productive industry (of the corporate capitalist variety), labor would never have been organized in the first place, and labor unions would never have existed. Labor organized in order to gain a fair share of the wealth it produced. Service industries do not produce wealth. Nor do civil servants. And immigrant labor is hostage to industries wed to low wealth production through low pricing structures.

Though almost all of our youth now graduate from high school, they graduate with much higher expectations than their level of education merits. Many of today's high school graduates are about as well educated in the three R's as the third grade dropouts of 75 years ago. Almost none are anywhere near as well educated as junior high graduates of two or three generations ago. Most are not ready for college or university without a couple of additional years of preparation or remedial education.

Consequently, higher education is turning out fewer and fewer truly educated graduates, equipped to positively influence society and make a difference. We seem to be producing an abundance of lawyers, credit managers, and brokers of one kind or another, but very few scientists or engineers. We now have to import an inordinate number of several types of "knowledge workers" from abroad – so it isn't only the tough, dirty, and sweaty jobs that are being filled by immigrants, and the wages and benefits for the new "good" jobs are being honed down to satisfy the new comers but discourage the natives. Even the medical profession depends on imports to provide a sufficient number of doctors and medical practitioners.

John Q. Pridger