Dupes of the Collective

Reading this article about Nobel-prize winning physicist Hermann Muller (1890-1967), it says

Nobel prize winner Hermann Muller knowingly lied when he claimed in 1946 that there is no safe level of radiation exposure... his decision not to mention key scientific evidence against his position has had a far-reaching impact on our approach to regulating radiation and chemical exposure. 

Muller himself served on the NAS’s Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation (BEAR) committee, through which the linear dose-response approach to risk assessment became firmly entrenched. The two successfully suppressed last-minute evidence from the fruit fly experiment conducted in Stern’s lab by postdoctoral researcher Ernst Caspari, and the rest is history, Calabrese says. It marked the “transformation of a threshold-guided risk assessment to one now centered on a linear dose-response."

...Muller was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery that X-rays induce genetic mutations. This helped him call attention to his long-time concern over the dangers of atomic testing.

It was a lie that led to many restraints on medical uses of radiation even today, but also bans on the testing and development of nuclear weapons by the U.S. government--so I immediately had to ask myself: was Muller a communist?

Was he doing it on behalf of a Soviet agenda, which frequently manipulated academic trends and science to the end of weakening the U.S.?

For instance, the dangers of nuclear weapons causing a planet-wide "winter" was initially a Soviet "psy-op" to manipulate the Left in this country, with the goal of influencing U.S. policy to halt weapons testing and production, as well as promoting disarmament treaties that would be beneficial to the Soviets (and now Russia).  But when the nuclear winter hypothesis fell apart, it morphed into anthropogenic global warming (AGW), as a means of crippling the economies of Western countries.  (In my opinion, the various attempts to limit CO2 emissions were ultimately Soviet/Russian orchestrated efforts.)

To show that this strategy wasn't limited to nukes, I think there could be credible evidence that Keynesianism was a theory with KGB origins, intended to cripple Western economies--Keynes was an avowed socialist, but he openly admired communism.  For instance, he is quoted here as saying

Until recently events in Russia were moving too fast and the gap between paper professions and actual achievements was too wide for a proper account to be possible. But the new system is now sufficiently crystallized to be reviewed. The result is impressive. The Russian innovators have passed, not only from the revolutionary stage, but also from the doctrinaire stage.
There is little or nothing left which bears any special relation to Marx and Marxism as distinguished from other systems of socialism. They are engaged in the vast administrative task of making a completely new set of social and economic institutions work smoothly and successfully over a territory so extensive that it covers one-sixth of the land surface of the world. Methods are still changing rapidly in response to experience. The largest scale empiricism and experimentalism which has ever been attempted by disinterested administrators is in operation. Meanwhile the Webbs have enabled us to see the direction in which things appear to be moving and how far they have got.1

...It leaves me with a strong desire and hope that we in this country [Britain] may discover how to combine an unlimited readiness to experiment with changes in political and economic methods and institutions, whilst preserving traditionalism and a sort of careful conservatism, thrifty of everything which has human experience behind it, in every branch of feeling and of action.

Keynes was very probably a Fabian--a secret society of communists pretending to be socialists, working to promote communism. (Under Marxist dialectic, socialism is merely a stepping-stone to communism.)  A well-known British political theorist and economist in the 1930's and 1940's, Harold Laski, was publicly a Socialist and much later revealed as a communist Fabian -- he was highly influential, and the architect of post-war Socialist India, as well as the model for Ayn Rand's fictional character Ellsworth Toohey.

So as I read the above story, which says that Hermann Muller's lie led to restrictions on U.S. nuclear weapons development, I had to ask if he was a communist.  Sure enough.  Typing "Hermann Muller communist" into Google brings up this biography, which says

Hermann Muller was born in Manhattan in 1890 and grew into a 5'2" science geek. His father... influenced Hermann with his socialist ideals and a love of science. ...Upon graduation from Morris High School in 1907 at age sixteen, Muller attended Columbia University and was attracted to the emerging field of genetics. 

...In the 1920s, Muller performed his Nobel prize-winning research showing that X-rays could induce mutations and he became instantly famous. Muller used his fame to caution against the indiscriminate use of X-rays in medicine, but despite his warnings, some physicians even prescribed X-rays to stimulate ovulation in sterile women. His warnings angered many doctors and were largely ignored. 

Muller's outspoken views on socialism also got him in trouble with the Texas administration. He helped publish a Communist newspaper at the school, and the FBI tracked his activities. Feeling that U.S. society was regressing during the Depression, Muller left for Europe in 1932.
A move to the Soviet Union in 1934 seemed to have cured Muller of his Communist sympathies, although he always remained a socialist.

Well, maybe.

By the time he left in 1937, several of his students and colleagues had "disappeared" or been shipped to Siberia.

How many people got out of Russia while it was under Stalin, simply by asking to be let out?

So I think we can safely say Muller was not only a communist, but he was working for the Soviet spy apparatus, in some capacity.  In fact, his zeal for the dangers of radiation seemed to grow after he came back to the West, and

World War II forced Muller to leave Scotland in 1940 and he eventually found a permanent position at Indiana University in 1945. A year later, Muller won the Nobel Prize for his work on mutation-inducing X-rays and he used the opportunity to continue pressing for more public knowledge about the hazards of X-ray radiation.

Given that, I would say with very high probability that his lie about the dangers of radiation -- in 1946, one year after the bombs were dropped on Japan -- was part of a KGB operation to scare people in this country away from using anything associated with the word "nuclear".

It offers some insight into how the Soviets operated then, and how Russia operates today, under Putin (who is ex-KGB/FSB). Or possibly how Obama (a closet communist, in my firm opinion) pursues destructive economic policies such as "stimulus", tax increases, crippling regulations, and healthcare laws (a trillion dollars annually when fully implemented) -- all with the object of stressing the U.S. economy to the breaking point.  Or his aggressive pursuit of the new START disarmament treaty, which reduces U.S. nuclear stockpiles by 2/3, while letting the Russians increase their stockpiles.

Muller was also an advocate of government-run eugenics to improve the Soviet breed and eliminate weakness in their people.  See his rather long-winded letter to Stalin, where he seeks to persuade Uncle Joe of the need for such an effort. I greatly condense it, but include portions mainly to show Muller's deep committment to communism and some indication of his naive adherence and philosophical approach, which attempts to unite Marxist theory with practice; ultimately it shows he was little more than a dupe for the Collective:

To Comrade Joseph Stalin,
Secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.,
The Kremlin, Moscow
Dear Comrade Stalin, 

As a scientist with confidence in the ultimate Bolshevik triumph
throughout all possible spheres of human endeavor, I come to
you with a matter of vital importance arising out of my own
science – biology, and, in particular, genetics. The matter is
clearly such that it should be referred to you yourself, primarily.
For, on the one hand, it involves such limitless potentialities of
progress. And on the other hand the passing of judgment
concerning it requires your farsighted view and your strength in
the realistic use of dialectic thought. 

The matter is none less than that of the conscious control of
human biological evolution – that is, the control by man of the
hereditary material lying at the basis of life in man himself. This
is a development which bourgeois society has been quite
unable to look squarely in the face. Its evasions and perversions
of this matter are to be seen in the futile mouthings about
“Eugenics” current in bourgeois “democracies,” and the vicious
doctrine of “Race Purity” employed by the Nazis as a weapon in
class war. These spurious proposals are offered as a substitute
for socialism, i.e., as a decoy to mislead and divide workers as
well as petit bourgeois. 

In opposition to these bourgeois misconstructions, geneticists
of the political left recognize that only a socialized economic
system can provide the material basis and the social and
ideological framework necessary for a really sound policy with
regard to human genetics, for a policy which will guide human
biological evolution along socially desirable lines. They
recognize further that sufficient biological knowledge and a
sufficiently refined physical technique already exist for the
production of very noteworthy results in this field even within
the span of our own lifetimes. And they are aware that both the
immediate and the ultimate possibilities of a biological kind
thus opened up under socialism so far outdistance the
biological aims hitherto envisaged by bourgeois theorists as to
make the latter appear quite ridiculous. True eugenics can only
be a product of socialism, and will, like advances in physical
technique, be one of the means used by the latter in the
betterment of life....

...The science of genetics has made it clear that there is one
means and only one whereby a worthwhile beginning may be
made in the direction of providing more favorable genes. This
is not by directly changing the genes, but by bringing about a
relatively high rate of multiplication of the most valuable genes
that can be found anywhere. For it is not possible artificially to
change the genes themselves in any particular, specified
directions. The idea that this can be done is an idle fantasy,
probably not realizable for thousands of years at least. 

...The process by which such biological progression may be
accomplished artificially, with the minimum disturbance of
personal lives, is by allowing all people who wish to take part in
the production of children that have the best genetic
equipment obtainable, to obtain appropriate reproductive
material, for use by artificial insemination. No doubt this
method would first of all be sought after by women who for
some reason have been forced by circumstances to remain
unmarried. Statistics show that there are regions having a
considerable excess of female population, women who never
have had a chance to marry and probably will never have this
chance. 

In this connection it should be observed that there is no
natural law which rules that a person instinctively wants and
loves exactly the product of his own sperm and egg. He
naturally loves, and feels as his, that child with whom he has
been associated and who is dependent upon and loves him, and
whom in its helplessness, he has taken care of and brought up....
...True we have today, rooted in traditions from the bourgeois
society in our past, the idea that our child must be derived from
our own reproductive cells.

...These feelings would rest upon a higher and increasingly
strong basis of morality: that morality in which the individual
finds his greatest satisfaction in the consciousness of being
instrumental in making an especially valuable contribution to
society...

...After 20 years, there should already be very
noteworthy results accruing to the benefit of the nation.
And if at time capitalism still exists beyond our borders,
this vital wealth in our youthful cadres, already
strong through social and environmental means, but
then supplemented even by the means of genetics, could not
fail to be of very considerable advantage for our side.
...All the above represents quite the antithesis of the “Race
Purification” and so-called “Eugenics” of the Nazis and their
kin, who set up artificial hierarchies of races and of classes,
branding as inferior those whom capitalism wishes to oppress,
and brandishing against them the knife of sterilization, or
restriction. The social way, on the other hand, is positive, and
works for a surplus reproduction that combines the highest
endowments of every race, as found in a classless society...
Many a mother of tomorrow, freed of the fetters of religious
superstitions, will be proud to mingle her germ plasm with that
of a Lenin or a Darwin, and to contribute to society a child
partaking of his biological attributes. 

...to act upon this recognition is but to
be realists and to unite our theory with our practice. It is
especially important that our practice to right in this field, for
what material is as important to us as our human material? And
it will be acknowledged that in deciding the production of
children, the chief interests are the interests of the children
themselves, and of the children’s children. Theirs is the need,
to which we should give in proportion to our own ability. 

...The above, in brief, is what appears to me to be the dialectic
view of the relations between biological and social evolution,
and a real Bolshevik attack upon the matter will be based on
the full recognition of these relations. In view of the
immediately impending rise of discussion on matters relating to
genetics it is important that the position of Soviet genetics on
this subject should soon be clear. It should have its own
standpoint, the positive, Bolshevik standpoint, to set against the
so-called “Race Purification” and perverted “Eugenics”
doctrines of the Nazis and their allies on the one hand and
against the “laissez faire” and “go slow” doctrines of the
despairing liberals on the other hand. Most liberals take an
attitude of practical hopelessness and impotence with regard to
human biological evolution, declaring that little or nothing can
be done. This is in line with their political individualism and
hopelessness. And even some communists, lacking a sufficient
biological background, or influenced by liberal thought, have
drifted to the pessimistic liberal position. 

...There are of course many important points of principle and
practice involved in these proposals for which the present letter
did not have space. Some of these are taken up in the book
above mentioned, of which I am sending you a copy separately.
I should be glad to go into any further details on these subjects,
if that would be desired. 

With deep respect,
In a brotherly spirit,
H. J. Muller
Senior geneticist of the Institute of Genetics of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Moscow,
Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States,
Member of the Foreign Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.,
May 5, 1936

Reportedly, Stalin ignored Muller. As the introduction to the previous letter says,

Muller’s letter is an enormously important historical text, and had it been received positively by one man it would undoubtedly have become one of the single most important documents of world history.

Maybe Stalin did ignore Muller--or maybe someone remembered his letter. In 1959, experiments were conducted in Siberia to breed tamer foxes -- and more vicious ones.  (I recommend the full BBC documentary of which the following is merely a clip from The Secret Life Of The Dog.)

Atlas Shrugged Day

      "Who is John Galt?"
  The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum's face. The bum had said it simply, without expression. But from the sunset far at the end of the street, yellow glints caught his eyes, and the eyes looked straight at Eddie Willers, mocking and still--as if the question had been addressed to the causeless uneasiness within him.
  "Why did you say that?" asked Eddie Willers, his voice tense.
  The bum leaned against the side of the doorway; a wedge of broken glass behind him reflected the metal yellow of the sky.
  "Why does it bother you?" he asked.
   ...[Eddie] walked on, reminding himself that he was late in returning to the office. He did not like the task which he had to perform on his return, but it had to be done. So he did not attempt to delay it, but made himself walk faster.
  He turned a corner. In the narrow space between the dark silhouettes of two buildings, as in the crack of a door, he saw the page of a gigantic calendar suspended in the sky.
  It was the calendar that the mayor of New York had erected last year on the top of a building, so that citizens might tell the day of the month as they told the hours of the day, by glancing up at a public tower. A white rectangle hung over the city, imparting the date to the men in the streets below. In the rusty light of this evening's sunset, the rectangle said: September 2.

This date, and meaning, runs throughout the story of Atlas Shrugged. It's also today, as I write this.

  ...The calendar in the sky beyond the window of her office said: September 2. Dagny leaned wearily across her desk. The first light to snap on at the approach of dusk was always the ray that hit the calendar; when the white-glowing page appeared above the roofs, it blurred the city, hastening the darkness.
  She had looked at that distant page every evening of the months behind her. Your days are numbered, it had seemed to say--as if it were marking a progression toward something it knew, but she didn't. Once, it had clocked her race to build the John Galt Line; now it was clocking her race against an unknown destroyer.
  ...She raised her head, as she finished reading his pages. The calendar in the distance said: September 2. The lights of the city had grown beneath it, spreading and glittering. She thought of Rearden. 

In a few days, Obama (I can't call him "President" — it's too much of a desecration of that title) will be speaking to the nation.

  ...The last event of the day had been a large dinner reception at the home of Senor Rodrigo Gonzales, a diplomatic representative of Chile. No one had heard of Senor Gonzales a year ago, but he had [been described]... as a progressive businessman. He had lost his property--it was said--when Chile, becoming a People's State, had nationalized all properties, except those belonging to citizens of backward, non-People's countries, such as Argentina; but he had adopted an enlightened attitude and had joined the new regime, placing himself in the service of his country. His home in New York occupied an entire floor of an exclusive residential hotel.  He had a fat, blank face and the eyes of a killer.
  ...[He had mentioned] that by agreement with the future People's State of Argentina, the properties of d'Anconia Copper would be nationalized by the People's State of Chile, in less than a month, on September 2.

I'm not saying that's what Obama's speech will be about — except in spirit.

  [Dagny] shuddered and walked faster--but ahead of her, in the foggy distance, she saw the calendar above the roofs of the city--it was long past midnight and the calendar said: August 6, but it seemed to her suddenly that she saw September 2 written above the city in letters of blood--and she thought: If she worked, if she struggled, if she rose, she would take a harder beating with each step of her climb, until, at the end, whatever she reached, be it a copper company or an unmortgaged cottage, she would see it seized by Jim on some September 2 and she would see it vanish to pay for the parties where Jim made his deals with his friends.

But the party can only go on so long before it's over.

  ...On the morning of September 2, a copper wire broke in California, between two telephone poles by the track of the Pacific branch line of Taggart Transcontinental...
  "Copper wire?" said James Taggart, with an odd glance that went from her face to the city beyond the window. "In a very short while, we won't have any trouble about copper."
  "Why?" she asked, but he did not answer. There was nothing special to see beyond the window, only the clear sky of a sunny day, the quiet light of early afternoon on the roofs of the city and, above them, the page of the calendar, saying: September 2.

And from there the effects ripple outward.

  "Ladies and gentlemen!" the voice of the radio speaker leaped forth abruptly; it had a tone of panic. "News of a shocking development has just reached us from Santiago, Chile!
  "...The seizure of the multi-billion dollar d'Anconia Copper was to come as a munificent surprise to the country. [But] on the stroke of ten, in the exact moment when the chairman's gavel struck the rostrum, opening the session--almost as if the gavel's blow had set it off--the sound of a tremendous explosion rocked the hall... The chairman averted panic and called the session to order. The act of nationalization was read to the assembly, to the sound of fire alarm sirens and distant cries.  But more terrible a shock came later, when the legislators called a hasty recess to announce to the nation the good news that the people now owned d'Anconia Copper. While they were voting, word had come from the closest and farthest points of the globe that there was no d'Anconia Copper left on earth. Ladies and gentlemen, not anywhere.
  "In that same instant, on the stroke of ten, by an infernal marvel of synchronization, every property of d'Anconia Copper on the face of the globe, from Chile to Siam to Spain to Pottsville, Montana, had been blown up and swept away.  In place of the golden dawn of a new age, the People's States of Chile and Argentina are left with a pile of rubble and hordes of unemployed on their hands!"

Call it the work of anti-social misanthropes, or just the natural consequence and end-game of looters everywhere.

  [Dagny] saw the glare of the explosion in every face she met through the rest of the day-and in every face she passed in the darkness of the streets, that evening. If Francisco had wanted a worthy funeral pyre for d'Anconia Copper, she thought, he had succeeded.  ...She saw it in the face of Hank Rearden, when she met him for dinner that evening. ...She knew whom he meant, when he said suddenly, his voice soft and low with the weight of admiration, "He did keep his oath, didn't he?"
      "His oath?" she asked, startled, thinking of the inscription on the temple of Atlantis.
      "He said to me, 'I swear--by the woman I love--that I am your friend,' He was."
      "He is."
      He looked away, out at the city. They sat at the side of the room, with a sheet of glass as an invisible protection against the sweep of space and streets sixty floors below. The city seemed abnormally distant: it lay flattened down to the pool of its lowest stories. A few blocks away, its tower merging into darkness, the calendar hung at the level of their faces, not as a small, disturbing rectangle, but as an enormous screen, eerily close and large, flooded by the dead, white glow of light projected through an empty film, empty but for the letters: September 2.

The meaning is a tocsin -- an alarm bell warning of great danger.

  "How could he? How could he?" a woman was demanding with petulant terror. "He had no right to do it!"
  "It was an accident," said a young man with a staccato voice and an odor of public payroll. "It was a chain of coincidences, as any statistical curve of probabilities can easily prove. It is unpatriotic to spread rumors exaggerating the power of the people's enemies."
  "Right and wrong is all very well for academic conversations," said a woman with a schoolroom voice and a barroom mouth, "but how can anybody take his own ideas seriously enough to destroy a fortune when people need it?"
  The muffled scream of a woman across the room and some half grasped signal on the edge of Dagny's vision, came simultaneously and made her whirl to look at the city.

  The calendar was run by a mechanism locked in a room behind the screen, unrolling the same film year after year, projecting the dates in steady rotation, in changeless rhythm, never moving but on the stroke of midnight. The speed of Dagny's turn gave her time to see a phenomenon as unexpected as if a planet had reversed its orbit in the sky: she saw the words "September 2" moving upward and vanishing past the edge of the screen.
  Then, written across the enormous page, stopping time, as a last message to the world and to the world's motor which was New York, she saw the lines of a sharp, intransigent handwriting:        

Brother, you asked for it!  Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia 

In one sense, the entire story of Atlas Shrugged is one of contrasts between two numbers:  the number "2" -- and the zero.  The first is a response to the latter.  As John Galt told the world,

   "This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero. ...You who are worshippers of the zero--you have never discovered that achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

  "...you can no longer say to me, the builder: 'Produce, and feed us in exchange for our not destroying your production.' I am answering in the name of all your victims: Perish with and in your own void. ...Perish, because we have learned that a zero cannot hold a mortgage over life. 

  "...You dart in panic through the trap of your days, looking for the exit you have closed, running from a pursuer you dare not name to a terror you dare not acknowledge... The purpose of your struggle is not to know, not to grasp or name or hear the thing I shall now state to your hearing: that yours is the Morality of Death. ...you pursue a course of action that does not taint your life by any joy, that brings you no value in matter, no value in spirit, no gain, no profit, no reward--if you achieve this state of total zero, you have achieved the ideal of moral perfection. 

  "A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness-nonexistence-as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defect: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw-the zero. 

  "...It is only the metaphysics of a leech that would cling to the idea of a universe where a zero is a standard of identification. 

  "...All actions are caused by entities. ...An action not caused by an entity would be caused by a zero, which would mean a zero controlling a thing, a nonentity controlling an entity, the non-existent ruling the existent--which is the universe of your teachers' desire, the cause of their doctrines of causeless action, the reason of their revolt against reason, the goal of their morality, their politics, their economics, the ideal they strive for: the reign of the zero. 

  "...When a savage who has not learned to speak declares that existence must be proved, ...he is asking you to step into a void outside of existence and consciousness to give him proof of both--he is asking you to become a zero gaining knowledge about a zero...  

  "You who've never grasped the nature of evil, you who describe them as 'misguided idealists'--may the God you invented forgive you!- they are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they're after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man. 

  "...It is a conspiracy of all those who seek, not to live, but to get away with living, those who seek to cut just one small corner of reality and are drawn, by feeling, to all the others who are busy cutting other corners--a conspiracy that unites by links of evasion all those who pursue a zero as a value: 

  "This idol of your cult of zero-worship, this symbol of impotence-- the congenital dependent— is your image of man and your standard of value, in whose likeness you strive to refashion your soul.  

  "...to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim --is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values. ...Be it only a penny you will not miss or a kindly smile he has not earned, a tribute to a zero is treason to life and to all those who struggle to maintain it. It is of such pennies and smiles that the desolation of your world was made."

The full meaning of the number zero is concretized in the following discussion between Galt and Mr. Thompson, the leader of the country who wants Galt to save everyone from themselves-- but Thompson finds there is no common ground he can offer in trade:

        "Well, what on earth do you want?"
"What on earth do I need you for?"
"Huh?"
"What have you got to offer me that I couldn't get without you?"
There was a different look in Mr. Thompson's eyes when he drew back, as if cornered, yet looked straight at Galt for the first time and said slowly, "Without me, you couldn't get out of this room, right now."
Galt smiled. "True."

"You wouldn't be able to produce anything. You could be left here to starve."
"True."
"Well, don't you see?" The loudness of homey joviality came back into Mr. Thompson's voice, as if the hint given and received were now to be safely evaded by means of humor. "What I've got to offer you is your life."
"It's not yours to offer, Mr. Thompson," said Galt softly.

Something about his voice made Mr. Thompson jerk to glance at him, then jerk faster to look away: Galt's smile seemed almost gentle.
"Now," said Galt, "do you see what I meant when I said that a zero can't hold a mortgage over life? It's I who'd have to grant you that kind of mortgage--and I don't. The removal of a threat is not a payment, the negation of a negative is not a reward, the withdrawal of your armed hoodlums is not an incentive, the offer not to murder me is not a value."

"Who... who's said anything about murdering you?"
"Who's said anything about anything else?
      ...There was a long pause.
"Well?" said Galt. "What are your orders?"
"I want you to save the economy of the country!"
"I don't know how to save it."
"I want you to find a way!"
"I don't know how to find it."
"I want you to think!"
"How will your gun make me do that, Mr. Thompson?"

        Mr. Thompson jerked suddenly into bustling, unnecessary motions, as if he were in a hurry, "I've got to run along," he said. "I... I have so many appointments. ...[He] paused at the door, turned to look at Galt for a moment and shook his head. "I can't figure you out," he said. "I just can't figure you out."
Galt smiled, shrugged and answered, "Who is John Galt?"

Dodging the Apocalypse

A friend forwarded this LA Times story about presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, alleging that Bachmann is opposed to the Renaissance and an advocate of the Dark Ages. Well, the Times' story doesn't really support that contention, but that's because their story is such apoor summary (an attempt at a hatchet job, actually) of a much longer story in The New Yorker, which rambles a lot over irrelevancies in Bachmann's past, but it does provide more useful background information for assessing Bachmann, most of it in the latter half of the long article.


To sum up: Bachmann is a certifiable evangelical nut-case (no surprise), an advocate of creationism, former abortion clinic protester, potential theocrat, and former IRS litigator -- but a slacker who stayed home most of the 4 years she worked there because she was on maternity leave. She worked on only six cases and tried exactly one case in court:

...in 1992 Bachmann sought six thousand dollars in taxes from a Chippewa Indian who failed to report three years of income from Youth Project, Inc., a community-organizing nonprofit dedicated to "social justice and peace."

If only she had done the same to a community organizer just getting started in Chicago at that time.

If you read the New Yorker story, you'll see there is evidence for the contention that Bachmann's evangelism extends not only to disdain for the Renaissance, but also leans toward a form of religious theocracy.  The evidence revolves around her admitted respect for an evangelist/filmmaker named Francis Schaeffer, who has been called a key figure in the rise of the Religious Right in politics. According to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza,

This spring, during one of her trips to Iowa, Bachmann asked the audience if anyone had heard of or seen How Should We Then Live? Many people applauded. She continued:

That also was another profound influence on Marcus’s life and my life, because we understood that the God of the Bible isn’t just about Bible stories and about Bible knowledge, or about just church on Sunday. He is the Lord of all of life. Every bit of life, including sociology, theology, biology, politics. You name the area and walk of life. He is the Lord of life. And so, as we went back to our studies, we looked at studying in a completely different light. Not for the purpose of a career but for a purpose of wondering, How does this fit into creation? How does this fit into the code and all of life that is about to come in front of us? And so we had new eyes that were opened up as we understood life now from a Biblical world view.

Schaeffer “was a tremendous philosopher,” Bachmann told me. “He wrote marvellous books and was very inspirational.” She said that Schaeffer “took Christianity beyond the Bible,” and that he showed “how the application of living according to Christian principles has helped the culture for the better.” She added, “He really tried to call Christians to do more than just go to church...

So what was Schaeffer's film? It consists of

...ten episodes tracing the influence of Christianity on Western art and culture, from ancient Rome to Roe v. Wade. In the films, Schaeffer... condemns the influence of the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Darwin, secular humanism, and postmodernism. 

Well, I can't criticize any criticism of post-modernism, but it doesn't get more obscurantist than that. (Note: a proper definition of "obscurantist" is "opposition to human enlightenment and knowledge", but many on-line definitions are badly corrupted.)

The first five installments of the series are something of an art-history and philosophy course. The iconic image from the early episodes is Schaeffer standing on a raised platform next to Michelangelo’s “David” and explaining why, for all its beauty, Renaissance art represented a dangerous turn away from a God-centered world and toward a blasphemous, human-centered world. 

Well, yes, that was the point, after all.  This is actually old stuff for the creationist/evangelist crowd...   500 or 1000 years old.

...the film shifts in the second half. In the sixth episode, a mysterious man in a fake mustache drives around in a white van and furtively pours chemicals into a city’s water supply, while Schaeffer speculates about the possibility that the U.S. government is controlling its citizens by means of psychotropic drugs. The final two episodes of the series deal with abortion and the perils of genetic engineering.

So you can see, it starts getting a little weird.  Conspirializingly weird.  Schaeffer died in 1984, but his son said,

“Those first episodes are what Francis Schaeffer is doing while he was sitting in Switzerland having nice discussions with people who came through to find Jesus and talk about culture and art,” he said. But then the Roe decision came, and “it wasn’t a theory anymore. Now ‘they’ are killing babies... 

And weirder yet:

"We had been warning that humanism followed to its logical conclusion without Biblical absolutes is going to go into terrible places, and, look, it’s happening right before our very eyes. Once that happens, everything becomes a kind of holy war.."

And even weirder:

Francis Schaeffer ...was a major contributor to the school of thought now known as Dominionism, which relies on Genesis 1:26 [sic]...

According to the Wiki,

And God blessed [Adam and Eve] and God said unto them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." —Genesis 1:28 (KJV)

Christians typically interpret this verse as meaning that God gave humankind responsibility over the Earth, although theologians do not all agree on the nature and extent of that "dominion".

And the same Wiki defines "Dominionism":

...(also called subjectionism) is the tendency among some conservative politically-active Christians, especially in the United States, to seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action. 

Lizza quotes a woman named Sara Diamond,

...who has written several books about evangelical movements in America, has succinctly defined the philosophy that resulted from Schaeffer’s interpretation: "Christians, and Christians alone, are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns."

Lizza continues,

In 1981, three years before he died, Schaeffer published “A Christian Manifesto,” a guide for Christian activism, in which he argues for the violent overthrow of the government if Roe v. Wade isn’t reversed.

Then we get to Nancy Pearcy, another author that Bachmann likes so much:

...in 2005, the Minneapolis Star Tribune asked Bachmann what books she had read recently, she mentioned ...Pearcey’s [book, “Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity”] which Bachmann told me was a "wonderful" book.

Today, one of the leading proponents of Schaeffer’s version of Dominionism is Nancy Pearcey, a former student of his and a prominent creationist. Her 2004 book... teaches readers how to implement Schaeffer’s idea that a Biblical world view should suffuse every aspect of one’s life. 

In the Wiki link for Pearcy, she disputes being a Dominionist:

Ryan Lizza described Pearcey as a leading proponent of Dominionism and a prominent creationist; Pearcey disputes the label "Dominionist", noting that she had never heard the term before reading Lizza's New Yorker article...

I note that this comment had to appear today -- the New Yorker story is dated tomorrow (August 15). So, clearly Pearcy is keeping tabs on things.  Maybe a little more research into Schaeffer's alleged association with Dominionism is needed.  I note that a search of "Francis Schaeffer Dominionism" turns up many links that dispute the Dominionist label, and blame Sara Diamond for inventing it.  For instance this one picked at random:

Others might bring up Schaeffer’s book, A Christian Manifesto (Crossway, 1981). For the Dominionist watcher Sarah Diamond, this book, and this book alone, seems to be the reason she labels Schaeffer a Dominionist. But did she read the book with an open mind, or did she just read it as source material for a term that she invented (Dominionism). From reading her writings it seems as though she needed to divide all the people involved with the Christian Right, a political movement, into different categories. I would probably have done the same thing if I had been in her shoes. We need to categorize different political groups so that we have an educated and well informed electorate. But with Schaeffer, it can be proven that she has put him in the wrong category. There has been too much read into what people think Schaeffer was writing about in A Christian Manifesto. For what this book is mostly about is how to construct a Christian legal foundation for fighting abortion. If you want to call Schaeffer a "godfather," don’t call him the "godfather of Dominionism." Call him "the godfather of the anti-abortion movement/Pro Life Movement." If you read A Christian Manifesto from that point of view, things will start to fit together in your understanding of Schaeffer’s Christian Worldview.

True or not, there is certainly a great deal to dislike about Schaeffer, Pearcy and their admirer, Michele Bachmann.  But is there anything to offset these negatives if our choice in the 2012 election becomes Bachmann vs. Obama?

Bachmann believes in charity, being a foster mother:

...the Bachmanns took in twenty-three girls; I spoke with one of them (she did not want her name used), who stayed with the Bachmanns for three and a half years and now lives in Colorado. She said, "I owe the Bachmanns everything. They offered me the structure I needed and taught me how to figure out goals. They really encouraged me to figure out who I was rather than who I was becoming. I turned my life around one hundred and eighty degrees."

That's a lot of girls.  But the weird part (yet again) is that almost all these girls had eating disorders.  Eating disorders?  Go figure.  I wouldn't condemn anyone for charitable acts, and foster-parenting could be a legitimate value to someone for various reasons.

Maybe Michele had an eating disorder and simply wants to help these girls, but suspect the greater motivation is that she takes her evangelizing seriously enough to indoctrinate 23 girls into Christianity.  It doesn't sound like they had to endure too many exorcisms, but personally, I'd take bulemia over Christianity any day, month or year.

What else can we say about Michele?  According to The New Yorker, she and her husband helped start a school with some others. Ostensibly non-denominational, but both Bachmann's left the administration of the place after objections that their religious agenda was violating the school charter. 
I'm running short on good things to find, but here's something, depending on your interpretation of it:  Bachmann's a typical Religious Right in being mixed up about the relation between religion and freedom:

“If there was one word on a motivation or world view, that one word would be ‘liberty,’ ” Bachmann told me in early August, when I asked about her world view. “That’s what inspires me and motivates me more than anything—just the concept of freedom, liberty, what it means. Whether it’s economic liberty, religious liberty, liberty in our finances, liberty in being able to choose the profession we have. That’s what inspired my relatives to come here back in the eighteen-fifties. It was the concept of liberty. That’s what motivates me today as well."

Maybe it's pandering to get the Tea Party vote, maybe not. She appears deeply opposed to slavery,

...the latest Bachmann controversy: an interview with George Stephanopoulos, in which she defended an earlier statement that the Founders worked tirelessly to end slavery. ...In “Christianity and the Constitution,” the book she worked on with Eidsmoe, her law-school mentor, he argues that John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams “expressed their abhorrence for the institution” and explains that “many Christians opposed slavery even though they owned slaves.” They didn’t free their slaves, he writes, because of their benevolence. “It might be very difficult for a freed slave to make a living in that economy; under such circumstances setting slaves free was both inhumane and irresponsible.”

Though The New Yorker tries to suggest that Bachmann is actually rationalizing for slavery, I don't buy it.

She seems opposed to Socialism:

In one pamphlet, she wrote that federal education law “embraces a socialist, globalist worldview; loyalty to all government and not America.” In another, she warned of a “new restructuring of American society,” beginning with “workforce boards” that would tell every student the specific career options he or she could pursue, turning children into “human resources for a centrally planned economy.”

But Bachmann in 1976 supported the election of evangelical Democrat/Socialist Jimmy Carter. Go figure.

Etc. I think I've got the picture. It ain't pretty, but is she Count Dracula?  Despite the potential "Dominionism" aspect (I'm just not knowledgable enough about contemporary Christianity to pass judgment on it), I suspect she's more like an evangelical Elmer Fudd. Lot's of passion for killing bunny rabbits, but largely clueless about which end of the gun to use.
We turn to the underlying point to all this. 

I know we can't survive another term of Obama.

It's certainly best to do everything possible to keep her from being nominated and get a secular candidate (though a Mitt Romney strikes me in some ways as a worse candidate), but what if we don't?  You're in the voting booth, the two choices are before you:  Obama or Bachmann? 

You think:  Obama is destroying the economy, eviscerating the military, denuding our freedom, leading us into global war--and he'll complete the job in a second term.  What will Bachmann do?

I'm going out on a limb here and say I'm pretty sure we could survive a President Bachmann -- because anything overtly religious that she tried to impose would be stopped (including any attempt to repeal abortion). The danger of a Christian theocracy is decades from now, not the next election. And in that time, if Objectivism takes hold, the Religious Right will find a much more capable opposition.

Many people I know are arguing that we must vote for Obama instead of any Christian because the Christians will impose a theocracy--but it does no service to the country to exaggerate their danger in the next election. If Obama wins, it is not an exaggeration to say: you can kiss this country goodbye.

I've said it till I'm blue in the face, but since I was the only one to correctly predict how destructive Obama would be, I'll say again just how destructive his second term could be: it may well lead to the complete end of all businesses in America, mass starvation, rampant riots (the riots in Britain are barely a taste), world war and death on a scale you can hardly imagine.

That's the short answer, but it's a reasonably high probability scenario. Maybe not 50%, but high enough.  Do you want to roll those dice?

You say: Robb's going off on his rant again. Someone get him a Xanax.

For those of you who think that, ask yourself: what would you have thought would happen to the world in 1938? I'd bet you would have considered World War 2 and the death of 100 million people in the next 7 years... inconceivable.

To borrow a line from Inigo Montoya, that word may not mean what you think it does.

Re-read Atlas Shrugged. Was Ayn Rand any less pessimistic than I am?

So gauge your decision in that light:  Obama is certain destruction, but Bachmann is potential destruction-- someone who sounds like she might like to impose a theocracy, and doubtless a lot of Christian supporters would be pushing her toward that end.  But can she get away with it? 

In a recent podcast, even Leonard Peikoff has admitted he underestimated Obama's danger to the survival of the country, and advocated voting for Republican's across the board in the mid-term election we just had. His point was essentially the one I've been making for a longer time: it does no good to claim a moral righteousness for opposing religion if you're dead.

You can listen to his comments here if you need proof ("Is religion more dangerous in America than socialism or collectivism", July 20, 2009).

Contrast to his comments on May 17, 2010, only 10 months later ("Given the Obama Administration and your stand on Republicans, will you support a vote for a Republican in November?").

So before anyone gets too wrapped up in demonizing every candidate who ever went to church, spoke in tongues and shouted "hallelujah!", consider the alternative: one candidate is a man who is working by conscious, deliberate intent to destroy the United States as rapidly as he can--Obama.

Then concretize the worst consequences of the worst Christian candidate out there right now -- Michele Bachmann (no, it's not Palin).

One candidate will destroy by malice aforethought, using nuclear weapons (possibly literally). One will stumble forward in a religious ecstasy, erecting random crucifixes, ranting about God, creating a few random programs to advocate for religion, but in the end doing very little that will materially affect your life.

The other will destroy your life.

ON the upside (if there is one), should the prospect of a President Bachmann materialize, I think she will at least buy us a few years time to spread the right ideas, especially among the Tea Party.

I can't say the same about Obama.  Where Bachmann will try to impose some early steps toward theocracy, Obama is already imposing many steps toward a communist totalitarianism.

For another upside, in a certain very important sense, where Obama's election provided the chance to permanently discredit the Marxist Left (when the NY Times turns on you, as they have, you're done) and galvanize the secular Right, there is likewise an argument to be made (I offer it guardedly) that a President Bachmann will discredit the Religious Right and galvanize the secular Left--and that would leave the field open in 2016 (maybe) for someone more rational.  

I'm not saying it is certain Bachmann will be nominated. I very much hope she won't be, and she should be opposed at all costs.  But if she is nominated, how would you decide to vote? That's the issue. Some people I know are campaigning on a platform of "everyone has to vote for Obama instead of any religious candidate from the Right!"

But that's almost a vote of suicide.

In my view, a second Obama term is so dangerous to the existential survival of the country that there's very few candidates I won't vote for. Huckabee would be one, but he's dropped out (for now--I'm betting he fishes for a vice-presidential slot). Maybe I'm underestimating the danger of Bachmann--possibly;  I might change my mind in the coming months.  But if it gets so bad that I have no choice in the coming election for anyone who offers me any advantage over suicide under Obama--it will be time to get out of Dodge.

From Russia, With Thumbscrews

We here at Robbservations have been remiss in diverting our readership with penetrating, and yet scintillating analysis of world events, so we return with a few peeks into the darkened corners of the intelligence world, as recounted in this story ("Russia uses dirty tricks despite U.S. ‘reset’") that appeared today:

In the past four years, Russia’s intelligence services have stepped up a campaign of intimidation and dirty tricks against U.S. officials and diplomats in Russia and the countries that used to form the Soviet Union. U.S. diplomats and officials have found their homes broken into and vandalized, or altered in ways as trivial as bathroom use; faced anonymous or veiled threats; and in some cases found themselves set up in compromising photos or videos that are later leaked to the local press and presented as a sex scandal...

Some would say that Russia is our "friend".

Despite a stated policy from President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev of warm U.S.-Russian ties, the campaign of intelligence intimidation -- or what the CIA calls “direct action” -- has persisted throughout what both sides have called a “reset” in the relations.

Well, Obama does have warm relations with Russia. He's working for Putin as a deep cover mole. Explains a lot of his actions toward the country he pretends to lead, doesn't it? Especially his desire to ruin the U.S. economy with unfettered TARP spending ($1.5T), Obamacare ($1T/year), QE1, QE2, (QE3, QE4... $T and $T more), trillions  to European banks (concealed but recently revealed), and his insistence on tax increases in a time of catastrophic national unemployment ($5T over the next 10 years with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, but Obama wanted much more).

To be sure, his 50% cuts in defense spending offset that spending a terabuck or so (ie, $1T, for those of you uninitiated in the new world of high stakes finance), but he's increased spending so much, what's a trillion here or there in savings going to hurt?

Well, that's what the recent debt deal in Congress purports to save, that's what. But if you're trying to help out Russia, it's well worth the price, not that the Russians didn't make out like bandits with a START treaty that requires us to decrease our missile forces by 2/3, and allows them to increase their missile forces 30%. Yes, that's right.  We're pursuing nuclear parity with a dictatorship run by a killer with delusions of world domination.  It will be such a boon to world peace. Three cheers to Obama and Hillary's State Department!

Back to our story.

The most brazen example of this kind of intimidation was the Sept. 22 bombing attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia. [The CIA and] A National Intelligence Council assessment sent to Congress last week confirmed that the bombing was ordered by Maj. Yevgeny Borisov of Russian military intelligence, said four U.S. officials who have read the report.

But over at Foggy Bottom, they decided "warm relations" were more important than the truth:

The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research assessed that Mr. Borisov was acting as a rogue agent, these officials said.

Among the sex scandals,

According to a Jan. 30, 2009, cable from U.S. Ambassador John Beyrle disclosed by WikiLeaks, USAID employees received an email with a doctored photo of the NDI official reclining with an underage girl. The email [was] from someone purporting to be a Russian citizen [and] accused the official of raping her 9-year-old daughter.

Most reporters today need a moral compass, but this guy needs a grammar checker.

Since 2007, according to two U.S. intelligence officials, American posts in Belarus, Russia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan have complained about instances in which junior Foreign Service officers have come home to find jewelry rearranged, cigarette butts stubbed out on the kitchen table, defecations in the bathroom, and break-ins with nothing of value stolen.

“It’s meant to limit a diplomat’s ability to meet with individuals by aggressively demonstrating that they are being watched."

Sort of like Facebook, actually.

In August 2009, two Russian newspapers printed stories based on spliced video footage of Mr. Hatcher [a U.S. diplomat] at a hotel room, claiming he was employing the services of a prostitute... “They intercepted some phone calls he made and spliced them in a way that made them look strange. Then they took footage of him in a hotel room or something. They made it all look like they had footage of him in sex acts with prostitutes in a hotel,” one of those officials said.

And so it goes. Right out of a James Bond movie. But then, Ian Fleming used to be a spy... he knew. As he wrote in 1956, in his introduction to From Russia, With Love,

Not that it matters, but a great deal of the background to this story is accurate. SMERSH, a contraction of Smiert Spionam--Death to Spies--exists and remains today the most secret department of the Soviet government.

At the beginning of 1956, when this book was written, the strength of SMERSH at home and abroad was about 40,000 and General Grubozaboyschikov was its chief. My description of his appearance is correct. Today, the headquarters of SMERSH are where, in Chapter 4, I have placed them, at No. 13 Sretenka Ulitsa, Moscow. The Conference Room is faithfully described and the intelligence chiefs who meet round the table are real officials who are frequently summoned to that room for purposes similar to those I have recounted.

That is, murder.

Two U.S. officials familiar with the incident, who asked not to be named, said the U.S. intelligence community saw this as the work of the FSB.

No surprises there. But that's just for domestic operations -- the FSB is the equivalent of our own FBI. With the fall of the Soviet Union (sort of), the Russian SVR replaced the KGB in handling foreign operations for things like moles, such as Obama. (Intriguing side note: Given George Soros' role in getting Obama elected, he's likely worked closely with the SVR/KGB for decades.)

Moscow’s intelligence services long have played dirty tricks on U.S. diplomats. In the “Spy vs. Spy” world of the Cold War, operations known as “honey traps” -- a young, attractive woman woos a U.S. Foreign Service officer into state of semi-undress where he can be photographed and blackmailed later -- were commonplace.

That was exactly the plot of "From Russia, With Love", by the way. SMERSH launched an operation to embarrass the Western intelligence services by trapping Bond with a beautiful Russian spy, and then intended to kill him and the spy and publish the lurid details in the press. Fortunately, Bond prevailed.

If only we had our own Bond to prevail in Washington.  But all we have are counterfeit T-bills flushed from the Fed.

The KGB-trained services also on occasion would deliberately break into the hotel room or residence of visiting dignitaries. In some cases, these incidents escalated and U.S. diplomats found their pets killed.

As you can see, they can be pretty ugly.  This is the Russia we are dealing with today -- one run by

Mr. Putin, a former FSB director, is widely regarded as the real man in charge of Russia’s elite establishment of current FSB and former KGB officers.  In 2006, sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya produced a study that found 78 percent of Russia’s current elite had ties to the KGB or FSB.

As I said, the demise of the Soviet Union was only "sort of". But let that not diminish your Hope for Change:

Mr. Obama was far more optimistic last week in an interview with Russia’s official ITAR-Tass news agency.

“Well, first of all, I think it’s important for us to look back over the last two years and see the enormous progress we’ve made.

Yes, indeed he has.  Made "progress", the root of "progressive", the euphemism and code word for "communist".

"I started talking about reset when I was still a candidate for president, and immediately reached out to President Medvedev as soon as I was elected. And we have been, I think, extraordinarily successful partners in moving towards reset,” he said.

But what is he "resetting"?   In this world, phrasing is everything.

An administration official who defended Mr. Obama’s 'reset' policy stressed that the political leadership of Russia was sincere in wanting to improve ties with the United States.

Yep.  I'm sure they'd like real close ties, though I'm not sure Obama will get that job as Commissar of the North American Satellite of the Russian Federation.  Professionals tend not to trust starry-eyed idealists, and I think Obama would be among the first admissions to Putin's gulag on the archipelag of the North American continent.  If he survived that long.

Totalitarianism, Redux

Some topics are so important they have to be revisited.

Very few people realize how close we are to complete totalitarianism. Some people think they know, but it’s not until you read the Executive Orders (EOs) issued by a long succession of Presidents that you will grasp just how much power they claim without Congressional approval or Constitutional authority.

Let me say that again:  these EOs claim the president can invoke them at his whim, for any emergency he cares to define.

I discussed this in some detail in an older post (The Unbridled Authority of Presidential "Executive Orders") but that's just too verbose for most people, so I want to briefly summarize them here again so you get the full impact.

Most of the EOs I summarize here have been superceded by later EO’s, but none of the claims to authority have been rescinded, only expanded. It would be interesting to read what EOs Obama is issuing. (Many EOs are classified, FYI.)

Most EOs started under John Kennedy. None have ever been challenged in court. Federal actions for the current economic crisis were probably justified under these EOs. Early EO’s were justified for nuclear attack. Later EO’s broadened the definition of an “emergency” almost without bound, though Reagan was the first President to provide some definition of an emergency, but today it could include a flu epidemic. All the EOs have blanket expropriation clauses similar to:

(f) Claimancy. Prepare plans to claim materials, manpower, equipment, supplies, and services needed to carry out assigned responsibilities and other essential functions of the agency from the appropriate agencies and work with such agencies in developing programs to insure availability of such resources in an emergency.

Go here to see the original EOs in the online federal archives.

EO 10990 allows the government to seize all highways, seaports.
EO 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
EO 10997 allows the government to seize all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.
EO 10998 allows the government to seize all food resources and farms.
EO 11000 allows the government to force all civilians into work brigades.
EO 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.
EO 11002 establishes a national registration of all persons.
EO 11003 allows the government to seize all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

EO 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

EO 11005 allows the government to seize railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

EO 11051 gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.

EO 11310 granted authority to the Department of Justice to enforce “industrial support”.

EO 11490 consolidates 21 Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.

EO 11921 established control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review actions under this EO for six months. This EO is a massive expansion of previous EOs, under a Republican Administration.

EO 12148 created FEMA. An “emergency czar” was appointed. Very long, and amends many prior EOs.

EO 12656 allows the government to increase domestic intelligence and surveillance. It grants the government the right to isolate large groups of civilians. The National Guard could be federalized to seal all borders and take control of U.S. air space and all ports of entry. An EXTREMELY long EO.

The Fusion of Left and Right

Maybe I should have titled this "cat on a hot tin roof", but that one was taken.

The subconscious sometimes works in strange and mysterious ways, and while watching this very funny clip from the old Northern Exposure series, a flash of light from above hit me in the head with a little artistic perspective of metaphor and crass symbolism. The lesson today from the Twilight Zone is: the meaning of the budget deal that really is nothing of the sort, raising the debt ceiling a couple trillion dollars (the biggest in history), letting Bush tax cuts expire (we'll pay $5T more over the next ten years), and which abdicates Congressional authority for future tax increases to a committee.

But even if you're sick to death of what goes on in the cesspool of D.C., you gotta laugh sometime.  Watch this clip, but let me set it up first.

Maggie O'Connell (Janine Turner) is an independent businesswoman, an Alaskan bushpilot operating from the town of Cicely, Alaska, somewhere near the Arctic Circle.  She's also what is known as a "black widow" -- a girl for whom every boyfriend she's ever had has died in a bizarre accident.

Her latest boyfriend is Rick, a smiling, good-looking guy now going through a mid-life crisis because Maggie won't give him his pilot's license (she's his instructor) because she's learned he's color-blind. So Rick is angry with her and now run off into the Alaskan woods to drink and sulk and think in front of a campfire as owls hoot around him. Staring into the embers he hears a whistling sound from high above and looks up...

Think of Rick as John Boehner and the traditional Republican Party, his color-blindness an inability to think in principles, his campfire as the debt ceiling negotiations, and those owls as all the pundits and pressure groups exhorting him to make a compromise.

Think of Maggie as the Tea Party, or the better part of the American public at least, angry with Rick for refusing to do what's right.

Think of a de-orbitting satellite as Obama and the Democrats making a deal with Rick.

Now on to our story: we pick up as Joel Fleischman, the resident doctor of Cicely,  is brought to the scene of Rick's untimely demise:

Joel: How did it happen?

Ed:  Satellite fell on him.

Joel: A satellite?  It hit Rick? That satellite hit Rick?

Maurice: Well not the whole satellite.  Some of it disintegrated coming in.  But a good part of it, yeah.

Joel: Oh, man.

Ed: Yeah, there's a problem.

Joel: A problem?  You mean more than him being dead?

Maurice: Come on, you'd better take a look.

Joel: Oh, god!

Maurice:  I've been in combat. I've seen men die a hundred different ways. I've never, ever seen anything like this.

Joel: Look at him!

Ed: Yeah.

Joel: It's like Rick and the satellite... it's like they--

Maurice:  Merged.  Fused.  Combined into one.

(Ed turns away)

Joel (staring in horror):  How does something like this happen?

Maurice: It's your basic physics. Let me describe re-entry for you. When this thing hit the Earth's atmosphere it was going 15,000 miles an hour.  The friction was terrific.  This baby came in hot!

Ed: Boy, Rick sure was lucky!

Joel: Lucky? He's dead!

Ed: Yeah, but how many people get to get hit by a satellite! I bet he makes the Guinness Book of World Records!

Maurice:  So Joel.  How do you plan on getting them apart?

Joel: Why ask me?  You think they teach this in medical school?  You don't need a doctor, you need a blacksmith! A metallurgist!

Ed: Yeah, it's kinda hard to tell where Rick stops and the satellite begins!

Maurice:  I guess we'd better face the fact, these two are inseparable.

As the town doctor, Joel gets stuck with the job of telling Maggie her boyfriend is dead. The parallel here is how the American public is now learning the real details of the debt deal,  which are much worse than anything we were told.  Joel finds Maggie in the local pub:

Joel (uncomfortable): Hi Maggie, how are things?

Maggie:  Rick didn't come home last night, okay?  If he wants to behave like a child, then let him!  I mean, if I have to be the bad guy, okay!  But I am not going to have another death on my hands! I mean, alright, I admit, I do -- I'm sensitive. I've lost four boyfriends.  Four!  Do you know how that feels?  And of course I ask myself, is that me?  Is that something I do?  What is it Fleischman?  You want to tell me something, I can tell by your face.

Joel (more uneasy): Yes. Yes... I do. I want to tell you something. (speechless) ...A joke!

Maggie: A joke?

Joel: Yeah!  You see, this guy goes on a trip and he leaves his cat with his friend.  He calls his friend to ask how his cat is. His friend says, "The cat is dead."  The guy says, "Geez!  Can't you think of a way to break it to me a little more gently?  You know, lead into it, your cat crawled up on the roof, there was a loose tile and it took a little fall... like that?"  Next month, the guy goes on another trip, calls his friend, and asks how his mom is. The guy says, "well, she crawled up on the roof and there was a loose tile."

Maggie (laughs) Not bad!

Joel (leans forward earnestly):  Rick crawled up on the roof.

Co-mingling with Disaster

In a discussion elsewhere concerning what to do about the debt "problem" of the United States, and Social Security and other entitlement programs more specifically, someone replied with a whiney response straight out of Atlas Shrugged:

"The Congress stole our Social Security funds -- they like co-mingled, and removed and placed in that alleged lock box that never existed I.O.U.'S -- so, why should Social Security be targeted when it is the victim of all the greed! ..." 

There is no "our Social Security funds".  The entire system was a scam from the beginning, and the people who voted for it believed they could rob Peter to pay Paul and get something for nothing.  Should they not bear the consequences?

If you want to fully understand this, read the section of Atlas that  deals with the demise of the 20th Century Motor Company:

   "...None of us knew just how the plan would work, but every one of us thought that the next fellow knew it. And if anybody had doubts, he felt guilty and kept his mouth shut--because they made it sound like anyone who'd oppose the plan was a child killer at heart and less than a human being.
   "Evil-plain, naked, smirking evil, isn't it? Well, that's what we saw and helped to make--and I think we're damned, every one of us, and maybe we'll never be forgiven...
   "Try pouring water into a tank where there's a pipe at the bottom draining it out faster than you pour it, and each bucket you bring breaks that pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six--for your neighbor's supper--for his wife's operation--for his child's measles--for his mother's wheel chair--for his uncle's shirt--for his nephew's schooling--for the baby next door--for the baby to be born--for anyone anywhere around you--it's theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures--and yours to work, from sunup to sundown, month after month, year after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope, without end.... From each according to his ability, to each according to his need...
   "Love of our brothers? That's when we learned to hate our brothers for the first time in our lives.
   "At first, I kept wondering how it could be possible that the educated, the cultured, the famous men of the world could make a mistake of this size and preach, as righteousness, this sort of abomination--when five minutes of thought should have told them what would happen if somebody tried to practice what they preached. Now I know that they didn't do it by any kind of mistake. Mistakes of this size are never made innocently.
   "If men fall for some vicious piece of insanity, when they have no way to make it work and no possible reason to explain their choice--it's because they have a reason that they do not wish to tell...
   "Well, we got what we asked for. By the time we saw what it was that we'd asked for, it was too late. We were trapped, with no place to go.
   "By that time, a village half-wit could see what generations of professors had pretended not to notice. ...If this is what it did in a single small town where we all knew one another, do you care to think what it would do on a world scale?"

The solution is simply: close down Social Security and Medicare, not reform it.  Don't try to finesse the problem. Simply shut it down cold turkey and write it off as a loss.  Cut everyone's taxes and say -- you're on your own.  If you're old, use your own savings, get your kids to help you, or find charity.

That's it.  Problem solved.

Either that, or we all face the full consequences.

Let me paint the scope of how those consequences would play out, since no one seems to really want to look that deep:

If the U.S. Government fails to deal with entitlements, we will see a complete economic collapse of this country  of a kind never seen before.  Hyperinflation of a thousand percent -- per day.  Complete destruction of all savings, all wealth.  All businesses will cease to exist.  The government will try to seize control of the businesses and order everyone to work under penalty of imprisonment, but they aren't capable of operating a lemonade stand much less a large company.  All production of food, fuel and every other commodity will cease.

Just cease.

No one will be able to get anywhere, do anything, or find anything to eat. Rioting, looting and general anarchy will result, with mass starvation and killing that pits everyone against anyone who has anything at all of material value.  There will emerge demands for order by any means, and the rise of a fully totalitarian government as they attempt to get control of the situation.  But it will be difficult to get the Army or police to control it if we can't pay or feed them.

The anarchy will spread rapidly around the world after the first collapse and swallow everyone else. World war will be almost a dead certainty in the near term (let's say 5 years at most) as the stabilizing effect of U.S. military power disappears and countries like China and Russia and Iran and others all jockey for power.  Hundreds of millions may be dead when it's over.  Internally, there will be likely attempts to balkanize the United States into separate countries--with factions seizing control of the West, the Midwest, the South, and other regions, but once started, it will quickly become more fragmented than this and there will be thousands of sects popping up all over, thousands of no man's lands where no outsider dares to go.

All these new states will span the gamut of fascist, communist and religious dictatorships and frequent battles will take place between them. The one production capacity that will be maintained is the one to make guns, bullets and bombs.  Subsequent wars and chaos over the next century on this continent and everywhere else will likely lead to centuries of a planet that is totally despotic with progressively declining standard of living. This could lead to a new Dark Ages lasting a thousand years.

All this is possible and much of it is a certainty unless people face facts today.  As long as politicians and everyone else continue to believe money grows on trees and they are entitled to loot their neighbors and to rationalize Grandpa and Grandma's need for Social Security and other benefits (even though Grandpa and Grandma bear much of the guilt for the problem because they voted themselves bread and circuses decades ago) we are headed for annihilation as a country, a world, a civilization.

I say it's much easier to tell Grandpa and Grandma: sorry! You lost your investment, game over!  Now you have to bear responsibility for it.  Just shut down Social Security, cut everyone's taxes, and let individuals figure out what to do to ensure their own survival, or that of their parents.

As the economy rebounds explosively from removing the shackles of the entitlement programs, I suspect it won't be too hard for people to figure out how to survive. In fact, I bet it works itself out in about a year.  But the key is to simply declare Social Security a loss, right now, and remember John Galt's words:

"Get the hell out of my way."



Postscript:   In response to a good op-ed ("What’s Missing From The Budget Debate") over at the Forbes.com blog for Objectivism, writers Brook and Watkins make the point that everyone's talking about Ayn Rand without employing her arguments for the morality of capitalism, and I couldn't resist adding a comment related to my preceding post:

Ayn Rand's arguments for the moral case against entitlements are essential. What we face today is primarily a conflict of moralities:  the morality of altruism, which holds not merely that we are our brother's keeper, but that we are his serf -- versus the morality of rational people who have a right to live and pursue their own happiness unencumbered by unchosen duties imposed on us by others.  As she said in Atlas Shrugged,

"Do you know how it worked, that plan, and what it did to people? Try pouring water into a tank where there's a pipe at the bottom draining it out faster than you pour it, and each bucket you bring breaks that pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six--for your neighbor's supper--for his wife's operation--for his child's measles--for his mother's wheel chair --for his uncle's shirt--for his nephew's schooling--for the baby next door--for the baby to be born--for anyone anywhere around you-- it's theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures--and yours to work, from sunup to sundown, month after month, year after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope, without end.... From each according to his ability, to each according to his need...."

But Ayn Rand also argued that when your principles are correct, the moral and the practical are in harmony. I think another argument can be made and must be made if the American people are to wake up to reality--present them the cold, stark logic of what will happen if the entitlements aren't ended and the status quo continues.  

Who is talking these days of the fact that we will experience a collapse right out of Atlas Shrugged--or Stalinist Russia?  A collapse of such magnitude that it will very quickly lead to the destruction of every business in America.  

But as fast as the economy is going to collapse, it likely won't collapse fast enough to offset the printing of monopoly money by the treasury, as government tries to answer the screams of those who feel entitled, along with those of every federal, state and local payroll.  

Whateever nom de plume it's floated under, QE3, 4, 5, ad infinitum are a certainty as government tries to stay ahead of the game. In a race to the bottom, confidence in the dollar will fall faster than economic output will wither, giving rise to a hyper-inflation that will dwarf anything the Argentinians could imagine--it could reach hundreds or thousands of percent per day, as it did in Weimar Germany in the 1920's. 

As money becomes worthless and people realize there's no work and no food to be had anywhere, complete anarchy will seize the country, with nationwide rioting and looting, mass killings and widespread starvation. Gold will be of limited value--when there's nothing to buy at any price, there's no need for money--but the government will seize all privately owned gold anyway, along with every other surviving asset.   

Without food or money to pay the Army and police, there will be a temporary collapse of the government, which will re-emerge under martial law as people scream for order.  Little known Executive Orders on the books for decades will be invoked by the President to seize every major industry and conscript the entire populace into work gangs. Congress will become irrelevant, and the government will quickly spiral into complete totalitarianism.  

Many people will rebel and vastly more killings will take place in the civil wars that will break out, leaving millions dead.  Millions.   

Without adequate surviving transportation, the country will likely balkanize into competing regions, states, tribes, gangs that will span the gamut of fascism, stalinism, religious theocracies and medieval feifdoms.   

And so will go the world:  without the stabilizing influence of the U.S., a world war will likely occur in the midst of this, with countries everywhere seeing the opportunity to seize their neighbor's assets or settle old grudges.  The U.S. will get involved, and send conscripts overseas to die, while conscripts die domestically, too--from fighting, starvation, ill health. 

These are not just possible scenarios, they are certain ones--if politicians in Washington continue to talk of "political reality" and attempt to "fine-tune" the problem to satisfy the special interest groups they've created who we can be sure will continue to demand entitlements from their brothers.  

But political reality has never trumped reality.  As Ayn Rand said, "You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality." 

The stark, practical reality people need to be made aware of is that we are facing the utter destruction of our way of life, our country, our world, our civilization--in our lifetimes.
There will be no entitlements after that happens.  There will be no "getting yours" before the music stops. The music will just stop, leaving everyone standing--young and old, entitled and serfs alike. 

The alternative?  End the entitlements, now.  Shut down Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--cold turkey.  Declare it a total loss.  End all taxes for the entitlements. 

The result?  People would scramble for a few weeks, retirees would have to dip into their savings, depend on their children, approach charitable organizations for help--or get a job. 

But it wouldn't last long. 

The cancellation of all that debt -- tens of trillions of dollars, with interest -- with the sudden influx of so much money back into private hands -- hundreds of billions of dollars -- would give people so much confidence that the economy would explode in mere weeks with business growth and job creation.  

And if you want to give it a real boost--cut $500B of regulatory agencies and suspend income taxes for a year.  

That's the practical side of the argument. Because most people want to "do the right thing", the moral argument is always more fundamental--we have a right to our lives and to live them without shackles--but the practical argument might at least scare the hell out of enough people to make them demand our government do the right thing. 

To quote the industrialist Francisco d'Anconia from Atlas Shrugged:

"Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."