Relying on the last remnants of reason, so many sense the need for immediate action to repair our economy. They fail to realize that action void of principled purpose is chaos, regardless of the intensity or desire by which such action is fueled.

“Something is better than nothing, and bigger was better than smaller in terms of the stimulus needed,” said Chris Varvares, president of prominent forecaster Macroeconomic Advisers in St. Louis. “The economy needs a fiscal jolt.”

Something. They don’t know what, just something has to be done. So called “economic experts” are all adamantly voicing their opinions to perpetuate the power-grabbing monstrosity about to clobber the United States. There is one opinion in this piece piece that has merit at least at face value:

“[this] is 25 years of government expansion jammed into one bill and sold as stimulus,” said Brian Riedl, the director of budget analysis for the Heritage Foundation,

Indeed. Like a school of entranced, confused piranhas enjoying the largest power-pork frenzy in American history, even in the face of economic collapse it’s politics as usual for our leaders. While millions of productive individuals face daunting uncertainty watching their retirement circle the drain, or wading through a year’s worth of online out-of-state shopping receipts in order to accurately report use tax, our dear representatives in Washington are bickering over how many billions of dollars they can squeeze in for eco-friendly golf carts, Socialized medicine plumbing and any other pet they can lead to the trough.

If the motives of Congress, and the nature of American Government aren’t brilliantly clear to you at this point, please check your pulse. As Myrhaf @ The New Clarion put it, “This bill is the most dishonest government act of my lifetime, if not all of American history. “ - I couldn’t agree more.

Many are quick to spin this conversation into partisan terms, but very little would be different if the other team were calling the shots. Keynesian policies are poisonous regardless of who’s administering the dosage. Lack of explicit principles is why we are in this situation and exactly what will render attempts to remedy as futile.

The truth lies in the fact that our leaders don’t know what to do, so they resort to their penchant for spending other people’s money. The seemingly unanimous sense of urgent necessity for this bill coupled with fear in the private sector brews a green light for ruthless indulgence. This is as close to free-reign looting as they’ve ever been allowed. Like teenagers in a shopping mall with unlimited credit - anything goes.

Economics is a science of elegant simplicity, one that markets of the utmost complexity follow with strict compliance. Supply and demand for capital, labor and goods are the supreme rulers. Their only stipulation is the freedom of choice on behalf of suppliers and demanders. So long as this requirement is met, the market will function in perfect accord with reality and justice. Individuals are free to produce in order to survive and improve their quality of life, specialization will allow men to focus their energies where they are most productive, and the resulting innovation will add value to the lives of all participants. So long as men are free to think, act and keep the results there will be economic growth. Freedom and productivity lead to supply and demand - simple and elegant justice.

Only when the gremlin of Government intervention is introduced does the market become saddled with a layer of foggy complexity. Freedom is limited, production is reduced. Regulatory coercion serves to distort supply and demand in immeasurable ways by granting immunity from any number of economic laws to any number of market entities. For the Yin of every nudge there’s a Yang of market repercussions. In a free market, individuals will direct their time and energy towards whatever endeavor will provide the most return. A good decision on where to spend time or money rewards the individual with wealth, a bad decision destroys wealth. So long as the decision is left to the individual, the market will regulate itself. Conversely, when the productive efforts of individuals are restricted or amplified by forces outside the market of choice, supply of and demand for capital, labor, or goods is affected. These affects represent the tangible departure from justice because the gauges that indicate a good or bad business decision are no longer calibrated with reality. Faulty gauges represent a corrupted economy because men no longer can exert energy or direct capital as effectively. To destroy a man’s wealth, or even worse, hamper his means to produce wealth, is to restrict his ability to survive. Men will always seek to avoid a force acting to their detriment, so their behavior is distorted. They are acting against their own judgment by force. Add into the mix a set of arbitrary rules further restricting an individual’s ability to make good decisions precisely because of his tendency to do so and only chaos, uncertainty or crime are his possible avenues. The reason that regulation is impractical is that it is immoral. Destruction of wealth is the only possible result of trampling a man’s right to life, liberty and property by regulating trade amongst voluntary individuals.

These unnatural complexities are the same reason it’s virtually impossible to concoct a remedy, especially one that requires and prescribes more of the same infectious agent. Like an act of viral combat, our leaders aim to introduce Smallpox to alleviate Ebola. Even if the symptoms of Ebola are mitigated short term, does it matter now that the patient has Smallpox?

A mixed-economy is how we refer to the perfect market infected with the virus of regulation. Like any virus, regulation conveys damaging structural effects on its host. This is the exact nature of what the American economy has suffered from throughout the last 119 years. Not only have we ignored the cause, we’ve continued to amplify it at every opportunity.

The obvious something that is better than nothing is to stop introducing new viral agents. Let the infection run its painful course and act to administer a vaccine. The vaccine should be dismantling entities or legislation that interfere with the market. Any form of regulation should be removed, and we should return to an objectively backed currency. If a trillion dollar shopping spree is the decision, the only moral usage for that money is to send it back to the individuals that earned it.

History brilliantly illustrates the correlation of prosperity to freedom. The economic growth of America highlights the immeasurable benefits of a market void of the regulatory virus. Our current economic realities reveal the immeasurable degradation to human existence where the virus runs exacerbated by repeat exposure. To survive, man must think and act according to his rational judgment. If you want man to produce and innovate, get out of his way.

This is the only something that we should consider.

Apparently there’s no turning back from America’s suicidal shift into Socialized Medicine. The foundation is laid and the plumbing is on order. The “stimulus” bill has proven to be the ultimate power grabbing utensil.

Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Tragic indeed - that the left and the right are virtually indistinguishable variants of the same poisonous philosophy. Both consider Government as the supreme agent of egalitarian engineering. Both favor the collective over the individual. Both consider self-sacrifice as their moral standard. Both see man as his brother’s keeper. Both are willing to force their moral tenets on citizens. Both are willing to mandate human misery and trample mounds of human corpses if necessary in order achieve their vision.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

They are, in fact, dangerous to our health, but they should be opposed as measures outside the role of a proper government precisely because they require the violation of individual rights on a tremendous scale.

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

What would be beneficial is for individual interaction with the health care market to remain private and determined solely on the voluntary judgment of the involved parties. My medical history is the business of myself and those which I choose to interact with.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

And another bloated, inappropriate and menacing arm of the Government is born. By what right does the Government deem the appropriateness or cost-effectiveness of my private health concerns? America justly discarded such guiding notions in 1865, but collectivist-statism has smuggled them back in. The only moral and practical guide for private decisions is the rational judgment of the individuals involved.

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Could the threat to our standard of living by Socialization be any more clearly identified than in this sentence?

Diminishing innovation is an inevitable result of socialized medicine that proponents typically dismiss, but here stagnation is explicitly favored over progress in order not to “drive up costs” - a result which history and economics prove as inherent to government intervention in any economic segment. Only in a socialized scheme would experimental treatments drive up cost for anyone other than the patient seeking them. In response, the statist solution to the problem enabled by their unjust system is to prohibit costly medical innovations, which also coincides with their egalitarian notions that no individual should “have access” (earn the right to consume) to better care than others - quite the irrational death-cocktail they’re serving.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

We’ve digressed to a nation which, due to the devastation of altruism, spends more looted wealth on regulating when, where, how and with whom individuals endeavor to raise the quality of their lives - a system of voluntary trade to mutual benefit - than towards the military infrastructure dedicated to the rightful defense of our sovereignty.

Unless we discard self-sacrifice as a virtue, discover the supremacy of the individual, and assume reason as our guide, America has seen her brightest days.

[UPDATED]
Stay on top of the fight against Socialized medicine @ FIRM.

I’m three years into this blogging endeavor and I really value the experience. I’ve refined my thoughts, improved my written and verbal communication, and spread my ideas and thoughts to friends and family.

I’m not even close to where I want to be as a writer. I still make horrendous grammatical errors and I don’t proof as much or as diligently as needed.

My goals for the next year are:

Thanks to all my visitors, readers and linkers.

Perhaps the most offensive charge one can hurl at the planet’s leading mega-altruist is the accusation of selfishness.

Don’t worry, false alarm. Rest assured, Obama certainly wouldn’t take any measure that could even slightly resemble alignment with America’s best interest. In case any of us can’t quite measure up in the self-sacrifice department, BO’s got our back. He’ll be there for us when need a helping suicidal hand.

“I agree that we can’t send a protectionist message,” he said in an interview with Fox TV. “I want to see what kind of language we can work on this issue. I think it would be a mistake, though, at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for us to start sending a message that somehow we’re just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade.”

In other words, “Please EU! Don’t be mad at us… we’re not selfish, we promise to give it all away - or destroy it first!” And by concerned he means willing to toss as many Americans into the sacrificial furnace of altruism as needed to make the point.

As stated by John Galt:

“You have reached the blind alley of the treason you committed when you agreed that you had no right to exist. Once, you believed it was ‘only a compromise’: you conceded it was evil to live for yourself, but moral to live for the sake of your children. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your children, but moral to live for your community. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your community, but moral to live for your country. Now, you are letting this greatest of countries be devoured by any scum from any corner of the earth, while you concede that it is selfish to live for your country and that your moral duty is to live for the globe. A man who has no right to life, has no right to values and will not keep them.” - Atlas Shrugged

I honestly don’t know what would qualify as the most detestable facet of this scenario: the fact that our leaders would subjugate our economic policy to the opinion of the EU or the World Trade Organization; that our economic ignorance is such that trade restrictions would be considered a viable means to boost the economy; that we’ve abandoned virtually all respect for individual rights to the extent that such restrictions are legal; that we feel the need to apologize for (what was incorrectly deemed as) acting in our own self-interest; or the colossal culmination of all of the above - that the only barrier protecting us from more rights-clobbering regulation (exactly what led us into this shit-storm) is that such measures might offend the EU as an act of selfishness.

How such a horrendous muck of neurotic contradictions can appeal to consensus in a modern enlightened society is a stunning tribute to our philosophical decline.

America’s recent Olympic mega-hero Michael Phelps is in the spotlight for apparently committing an atrocious act, one that Richland County, SC Sheriff Leon Lott finds offensive enough to consider legal repercussions.

“This one might be a lot easier since we have photographs [sic] and a partial confession. It’s a relatively easy case once we can determine where the crime occurred.” - The Sheriff

Did Phelps forcefully violate any other individual’s right to life? No.

Did he forcefully violate anyone’s right to liberty? No.

Did he forcefully encroach upon anyone’s right to property? No.

According to photo evidence, Mr. Phelps is guilty of consuming a particular substance that society doesn’t approve of.

Sure, his physical body is his property. Indeed, we are a supposed nation of freedom. Yes, his life is his responsibility.

However, America has now deteriorated into a luke-warm slosh of laws and regulations based on subjective whim. Considering how routinely our culture passively dismisses revolutionary ideas as platitudinous clichés, should there be any surprise in our betrayal of principles? John Adams’ optimistic vision has nearly met its full inversion by our continual descent towards a government of men and not of laws.

For reasons that no human can rationally articulate, our cannibalistic society has determined that regardless of where, how or when, Michael Phelps doesn’t have the right to his own body, and can only consume items which meet the state’s approval.

The arguments typically fall into two categories. The increased risk category, and the immorality of behavior category. Both are flimsy attempts to rationalize the initiation of force by Government.

The claim by the increased risk camp contends that under the influence of certain substances, an individual’s capacity to reason is inhibited, which increases their potential likelihood to encroach upon the rights of others. The statist answer is that we must mitigate this increased risk by regulating or restricting the behavior. This constitutes a wholesale violation of rights. Based on this logic, why not mandate regular sleep patterns, diet and exercise regimens and make the emotions of anger, jealousy and resentment illegal? Wouldn’t all decrease the potential likelihood that a man would violate the rights of others? If this should be our guiding premise, why not lock men in cages or crank up the slave labor camps? Wouldn’t such measures even further reduce the potential for man to offend? Yes, but doing so would constitute an initiation of force against man by government, which is contrary to both the founding principles of America and to reason and justice. Additionally, there are already numerous laws in place to punish every conceivable way an individual can violate the rights of others. Burglary, trespassing, assault, armed robbery, speeding, reckless driving, extortion, kidnapping, arson, manslaughter and murder are already codified into law. Any action an individual could do under the influence, he could do otherwise. Consistent enforcement of these laws is far better suited for a country bent on the cause of freedom, as opposed to continual erosion of man’s freedom to act in an attempt to make it impossible for him to breach the legal code.

The second, even flimsier, justification for drug laws is the claim that such behavior is immoral. When faced with this justification one must ask according to what standard of values? If the justification is based on religious tenets, which is commonly the case, we should remind ourselves that America was founded as a safe haven from religious mandate, where one was free to pursue any spiritual cause, or none at all. To introduce religious premises into a secular legal system is contrary to the essence of America. If an individual deems consumption of particular substances as immoral, they are free to abstain from such actions. They are not free to enforce that abstinence on others. Coincidentally, the notion to establish religious ethics by legal mandate is the also the root of controversial blue laws, which are clear violations of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding - as no valid secular justification has even been conveyed.

It stands to reason that man has the right to take any action he chooses so long as it doesn’t objectively encroach upon any other individual’s right to life, liberty or property - by force. No force, no offense. Until American culture reverts to one that considers individual rights as the cornerstone to freedom and prosperity, we’re in a steady decline towards statism - which history illustrates as a bloody and miserable path.

While I have consumed substances which subjective law would deem illegal, as a general rule, I refrain from doing so because they inhibit my ability to reason and perceive reality. To condone any initiation of force against those individuals who do choose such consumption is unjust, immoral and precisely contrary to the proper role of Government.

I adamantly wish Michael Phelps would use this episode to publicly and proudly proclaim his right to use his body as he chooses - including consumption of any substance in any amount at any time.