COMMENCEMENT 2014

Many people ask me " Why are you so angry?"   I usually reply "Why aren't you?"  For starters I am not built to surrender.  I take my rights and responsibilities seriously.  I take my obligation seriously to try and leave my country and the world better than they were when I found it.   I cannot roll over and become a slave to those who once they have stripped me of my rights would then attempt to eradicate my humanity.  So I'm angry!

The country is in the throes of an American version of the cultural revolution.  Too many of our allegedly educated youth are all too ready, willing and eager to silence anyone who disagrees with them on whatever issue du jour  they have taken a pious and ignorant stand.

We were warned  that this day would come when the missionaries of Marx took over Academia and systematically proceeded to turn our children into witless disciples of numerous phony Messiahs.

Intolerance in the university is now the norm as witnessed by the procession of graduation speakers who have become objectionable for moronic reasons held by brainwashed bigots with caps and gowns.

If I were to be a commencement speaker (which is about as likely as playing shortstop for the Yankees after Jeter retires), I would say this to the graduates of 2014:

" The world is in terrible shape.  The country is virtually in free fall because the rule of law has been abandoned.  The Constitution ...the greatest secular document of freedom ever written is in tatters...and many of you, but not all of you are oblivious to all of the above because your education has not included an accurate history of this country, warts and all.  Instead if you got anything it was The History of the United States...warts...that's all.    

Nor were you instructed in how this country is supposed to work  so you could be the watchmen in the night when the nation veers off course.  Had you been so instructed, most of you would be on the barricades today.

INCOME INEQUALITY

Nobody capable of useful work need today lack food and shelter in the advanced countries, and for those incapable of themselves earning enough these necessities are generally provided outside the market. Poverty in the relative sense must of course continue to exist outside of any completely egalitarian society: so long as there exists inequality, somebody must be at the bottom of the scale. But the abolition of absolute poverty is not helped by the endeavor to achieve 'social justice'; in fact, in many of the countries in which absolute poverty is still an acute problem, the concern for 'social justice' has become one of the greatest obstacles in the elimination of poverty. In the West the rise of the great masses to tolerable comfort has been the effect of the general growth of wealth and has been merely slowed down by measures interfering with the market mechanism. It has been this market mechanism which has created the increase of aggregate income, which also has made it possible to provide outside the market for the support of those unable to earn enough. But the attempts to 'correct' the results of the market in the direction of 'social justice' have probably produced more injustice in the form of new privileges, obstacles to mobility and frustration of efforts than they have contributed to the alleviation of the lot of the poor.

From economist Friedrich Hayek's "Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice" (1976):  

 

It seems as if everyone today is  talking about income inequality.  Obama is using it as a bogus political crusade to divert our attention from Benghazi, the IRS and ObamaCare; Pope Francis is denouncing it as an ethical and moral challenge.  Bill DeBlasio ran with it as his signature issue to become Mayor of NYC.  

Thomas Piketty,a neo-Marxist French political scientist believes that income inequality is cause by capitalism.  He has written a book called  "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" which the left is having schoolgirl swoons over.  In it Piketty, says only taxation can correct this problem, so he  advocates a world wide tax of 80% for anyone making over $500,000 a year.  For those making less, levies of 40% and 60% are proposed.  This is all social justice masquerading as a path to income equality which history has shown will not work when the market mechanisms of capitalism have been thwarted by ideology. 

THE SMOKING GUNS

Benghazi has been and continues to be a scandal trifecta.  

 

There is the scandal of why the Consulate in Benghazi was not reinforced with adequate security despite a rapidly deteriorating security situation and despite repeated requests from military, diplomatic and security officials inside and outside the State Department.  Those questions have been largely answered due to the callous indifference and incompetence of the State Department and Hillary Clinton.
 

The second scandal is why there was no attempt to come to the aid of both diplomatic and CIA personnel once the attack began. 

 

The third scandal is what various elements of the US government did and said, subsequent to the attack, to explain to the American people what happened, why it happened and who was responsible. 

 

On April 30, the release to Judicial Watch, via a FOIA related Federal law suit,  of  e-mails from Ben Rhodes, White House Deputy National Security Adviser for Communications, provides proof that the story of a YouTube video as the cause of the Benghazi attack was bogus and was an attempt to give cover to the President seven weeks before the November 2012 election.

RACE, RAGE AND JUSTICE

"Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated."

-Alveda King, civil rights activist.

 

Donald Sterling has been a racist for a very long time.  His public comments were always there for us to see if we really wanted to look.  So why is it now that almost unanimous scorn is heaped upon him as if a great and terrible secret had been uncovered.  Despite his odious views he got awards and now forgiveness (that he has not asked for) from the LA branch of the NAACP.   What is that all about?  This man seems unrepentant, locked as he is in a legal battle with the latest young woman he cavorted with while still married to his wife of 50 years who is  the co-owner of the Clippers. 
 
Racism is the great American sickness.  Clearly it exists all over the world, but in America it takes on insidious dimensions that threaten the soul of the nation.  It is has always has been an existential danger to who we profess to be and what we profess to stand for.  People who see the world and their fellow men through a racial prism are quite simply, mentally and spiritually ill.