Humanity’s Tendency to Hate the Truth

Posted on October 10, 2016 by john

 

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, people love the man who tells them two plus two equals three, women will throw themselves at him, and men will die for him, but the man who tells people two plus two equals four… that man will be criticized and hated, spat upon and vilified, especially after he is proven correct. History is full of examples of both. This quality of human nature is as pervasive as it is destructive, since every aspect of the human condition depends on correct information, incorrect information leading to mistakes, mistakes that cost pain, economic loss, loss of freedom and lost standing, this penchant to prefer lies should have been weeded out of our psyche millennia ago, yet it persists… to our great detriment. If we really want to advance it is incumbent on us to actively counter this tendency in ourselves.

In The Republic, Glaucon asked Socrates, is it better to be so just, one is perceived unjust, or perceived just when one is unjust? Glaucon went on, the man who is perceived as unjust, even if just, will be hated, while the man who is perceived as just, even if he is unjust, will be lauded. What Glaucon meant was that the perception of the masses is more important to the individual than reality. In this example, the just man, the truth teller, is hated, scorned and put upon, while the unjust man, the liar, is glorified, raised up and helped in all his unjust endeavors. This historical anecdote shows the tendency of people to love a liar and hate a truth teller is at least as old as Socrates.

After a long diet of such cultural, social and economic poison, you would think people would long for someone, anyone, who will tell them even a hint of the truth. Sadly that isn’t the case. Edmund Burke correctly predicted the outcome of the French revolution. He also provided the reasons why it would end in bloodshed. He was vilified, hated and condemned for telling the truth, and when he was proven right, he was hated even more for being right. Glenn Beck is another example of someone who told the truth and is hated for it. Now that Beck’s predictions have come true, proving his hypothesis, Beck is loathed almost universally. The more one tells an ugly truth the more that person is hated.

This is because people want a glittering lie to be true. In this we will ignore facts and instead turn to emotion. People so wanted the Arab spring to usher in a new era of peace, prosperity and freedom to the Middle East, when Beck told the truth, those people who had invested so much emotional capital, turned on him with vitriol not even given a monster. When Beck turned out to be right, the Arab Spring so loved by people the world over turned out to usher in a new era of bloodshed, genocide and tyranny, all that emotional capital was destroyed. Instead of blaming themselves for believing the lie, people turned their hatred to Beck, for being right.

This is because of cognitive dissonance. That is the psychological theory that we think and feel in ways consistent with our past thoughts and actions. If I ridicule someone who has a different belief than I, then that person is proven to be right, my past actions will force me, subconsciously, to dislike that person. My past belief forces me to feel this way, because otherwise I would have been wrong in my ridicule, and to ridicule someone undeservedly would make me a bad person, since in my mind I can never be a bad person, therefore that other person had to have deserved it… so I hate him. Our cognition of ourselves cannot be dissonant from our self perception.

Since we so want to believe in pixy dust, when someone tells us pixy dust is nothing but dust, we become angry. When they are proven right, we become enraged, because we have been proven to be stupid or bad. Since in my own mind I cannot be stupid or bad, that other person must be stupid or bad, justifying my original belief. Sadly, this tendency has not served us well in the past and certainly will not in the future. Since it is impossible to force change on others, we can only change ourselves, we must self examine, look at how we tend to believe glittering lies while condemning ugly truths, so that we and our children, will not have to suffer so that we can feel better about ourselves. If enough of us do, liars will be vilified and truth tellers will be glorified, reversing a negative trend that has visited so much evil on the human race.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Banks and Government Stealing Our Savings

Posted on October 6, 2016 by john

 

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, government and Too Big to Fail banks, (TBTF) are colluding to steal from retirees. Now that is quite an allegation isn’t it! Imagine how bad it would be if it is true? That would mean government officials are so corrupt they are so corrupt they steal from hard working people, who have gone without so they could have some savings for their retirement, not only that but that government officials are so bereft of any decency at all they would rob those who live on a fixed income, indeed stealing that very income itself! If a private citizen were even accused of such a thing, the cost in legal expenses alone would be astronomical, so much so it would probably devastate their savings as well as future earnings. What about the executives at the TBTF banks? Imagine how evil they are if this is true? They make millions of dollars a year as the agents of the stockholders, the principles, specifically to protect the agent’s interests. Such malfeasance by a plumber would land the criminal in jail for decades. So, let’s look at the evidence, open and available for all to see, and judge for ourselves if this allegation is true.

First a little history. During the 2007-2008 financial meltdown, the banks that were considered too big to fail were given billions of taxpayer dollars, to bail them out of the catastrophic decisions they made, leading up to the financial calamity. Those same banks had lobbied congress to eliminate the Glass Steagall act, that forbade banks from using customer deposits to bet on risky ventures, the very same risky ventures that caused the crisis, several years earlier. When the risky bets went bust, taxpayers, in other words, hard working people living paycheck to paycheck, had to pay higher taxes to save people making millions of dollars a year as the executives of those banks. Look at how those executives have paid us back…

Of course, government had a hand in the crisis as well, the democrat controlled congress forced banks to make loans to people who had no means of paying the loans back, because not doing so would be racist. The big banks had to protect themselves so they grouped good loans with bad ones, chopped them up into pieces parts and sold them as derivatives. (A part of a financial product sold as an investment). They were called mortgage backed securities, (MBOs), or put another way… collateralized loan obligations. Since a bunch of loans were bailed together, the bankers and government overseers thought the good loans would keep the securities from failing, and the banks could make a tidy profit as well. When the housing market collapsed, no one could tell which MBOs were sound and which were worthless, and so the value of those securities could not be measured, since so many banks had them listed as assets, and those assets could not be quantified, the banks went bankrupt.

Since the “great recession” the security and exchange commission has found numerous acts of wrongdoing by the TBTF banks. Each time, no one was criminally charged but the bank was charged billions of dollars in fines. Those banks would then engage in further fraudulent activities, get caught, and fined again. Deutsche bank is facing a $14.000.000.000.00 fine, thats fourteen billion dollars, as I write this, Wells Fargo is under investigation for opening fraudulent accounts and charging their customers hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent overdraft fees and other fees, once again, no one is facing jail, only a huge fine by regulators, the same regulators who allowed MBOs and forced the banks to give loans to people because of race, to prevent racism. Every year the TBTF banks pay the government billions of dollars in fines for fraud, price manipulation, etc… Moreover, The economy requires zero interest rates else it would collapse instantly, as evidenced by the Federal Reserve’s reticence to raise interest rates even a point, which is another form of theft from savers, who don’t get interest for their hard earned savings, while banks loan that money back to us at 3-10 percent.

The executives at those banks however never face criminal charges for even the most heinous crimes, MF Global stealing money directly from customers segregated accounts, for example. Since it is obvious that if a criminal is not charged and allowed to skate, he or she will do it again, that is simply human nature. If you are allowed to rob a bank with impunity no matter if you are caught, what is the incentive not to? It is obvious that if government wants the criminal actions to stop they would charge, try and jail the wrongdoers, since the government always, and I mean always, give the criminals a pass, it is only common sense the government wants the criminal actions to go on. If your child draws on the wall with crayons, and you don’t punish her telling her she is an artist, she will continue to draw on the wall, because you have encouraged her.

So who is actually punished when the TBTF banks get fined billions of dollars? The executives still get their fat bonuses, in fact the executive in charge of the division the was caught fraudulently opening accounts in customers names, then charging the customers hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent fees, just retired with a fat bonus of $125,000,000, yes, that is one hundred twenty five million dollars, so no sane person could argue the executives, the people doing the crimes, are punished, in fact they are rewarded handsomely for their criminal acts. To understand who gets punished, one has to look at the result of the fine. The investigation lowers the stock value of the company, as when Goldman Sacks was fined recently, and they lower the amount of money the bank can pay shareholders as dividends. The people who hold the stock are the ones punished, by a diminishment of their investment, and lowering of the return on that investment. Who holds stocks in TBTF banks? Retirees. Probably you too if you have a 401K or do business with one of those banks.

What we have then, is a government that encourages criminal acts, overtly and subvertly, then profits from those criminal acts, which is the definition of collusion. We also have the executives at the TBTF banks, who get rewarded by those criminal acts, in increased bonuses for the “enhanced profits,” and when the charges are filed their bonuses don’t go down. Those crimes steal, not only from shareholders, but from customers as well. Since not one red cent of the fines is ever returned to the victims of the crimes, the customers, nor the indirect victims of the crimes, the shareholders, it follows that the government is not fining the wrongdoers to protect or recompense the victims, but for profit. Therefore… it is a great con game being played on the American public, to defraud us of our hard earned money several ways, by directly stealing by fraud from our savings accounts, eliminating interest on our savings, lowering the value of our investments and taking directly from our dividends, transferring that money to uber rich new class executives and government. Ever wonder why the new class always wants government to have more power? Crony crime pays, very very well…

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Humanity’s Hubris

Posted on October 3, 2016 by john

 

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, we behold our science and technology, then stand in awe of our creations. In our awe we have become vain and egoistic, turning away from God and worshiping ourselves as gods in our own right. In that we have become as Adam and Eve. We have turned our backs on God thinking we are his equal. In our hubris we believe everything there is to know… is possible to be known, we foolishly think we can control the universe as our plaything, and we have polluted our very existence with such short sighted, egoistic and inane beliefs. In our idiocy we have destroyed the family, corrupted our governments and taxed our economies to death. The more we flail about in our self absorbed aggrandizement, the more our lot, the lot of mankind itself is diminished, reduced to the point of our self annihilation, fueled by our empty wisdom and inflated egos.

We look at the heavens and in our hubris we believe we can know all there is to know. The advancements of the hard sciences, physics, mathematics and chemistry have made us proud, and that pride tricks us into thinking we are gods. Unlike the hard sciences however, the soft sciences are often nothing but assumptions based on wishful thinking. We have egg heads who make huge gobs of money, pretending to understand complex systems that don’t lend themselves to total understanding. Systems like economics, psychology and governance are not quantifiable, as is the weight of a proton, they are not unchanging like the speed of light and they are inherently mercurial, due to millions of factors that cannot ever truly be known. In our self absorbent hubris we elevate such hucksters to the status of scientist, when in fact they are snake oil salesmen, not just taking our money and health but our very humanity.

Our egos have made us the slaves of our selfishness. When someone stands above the rest of humanity, as in the case of a king, billionaire or legislator, that person looks down on the rest of humanity. Like the child who burns ants with a magnifying glass feels no remorse, the elite believe themselves to be so high and mighty they can use the rest of humanity as mere lab rats, to be run through mazes, used for invasive tests and tossed away like a used diaper… after all, are they not a king, rich or wield temporal power? The rest of us look “up” at the elite and bow our heads to them, after all, he is a king, she is rich, they do wield such sway. It is just that inhuman regard for our fellow man, and indeed ourselves, that allows the elite to feed their egos at cost to humanity itself.

Progressivism, and it’s ultimate goal socialism, is the natural outgrowth of this. Progressives believe they can assemble the complex systems of humanity like a watch maker makes a watch. If only they can get the mechanism right, everyone would be happy in their diminished station, a cog in a mechanism. The world would run like a Rolex keeping time to the tune the elite play. The egoistic belief that they are smart enough to gauge the mass of public opinion as the mass of a neutron, they are able to divine the trajectory of future history as easy as measuring the speed of light, and the hubris to force their ideas on the rest of humanity, is the reason arbitrary rule is so attractive to the elite. In their arrogance, progressives honestly believe they are not God’s equal, but his better. They think they are able to make a world better than the one created by God, a world without poverty, violence and racism, then stand in awe of their fantasies. All that is required is that the rest of us give up our free will and bow to our overlords with the respect and reverence rightfully given to God.

The answer is to recognize we are not gods, we are flawed human beings, each of us a spark in our own right, but only a spark, a tiny portion of truth. To force one’s free will on the rest of humanity, while denying theirs, is to prove unworthy of power and respect. Such thinking has always and always will lead to catastrophe. Our leaders deserve no adulation, to do so is to adulate self-centeredness and arrogance. Science is a powerful tool to understand God’s creation, but a poor substitute for the wisdom to know that we cannot know everything, that there is more to our world than we can see, smell, taste, hear and touch, even with the vastly improved senses that our scientific instruments give us. We are not gods, no matter how powerful our machines make us or how accurately our science measures God’s universe… we are flawed human beings, to know that and yet to love humanity, despite all our flaws… is the first step to real enlightenment.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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The Voting Dead…

Posted on September 29, 2016 by john

 

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, the one thing that gives any governmental unit true authority… is the consent of the people, absent that consent, government has no real authority and the power it wields is mere usurpation. The way government gets the consent of the people is by the electoral process. If that electoral process is undermined, whether the people know it or not, consent is not given. Therefore, any government, or faction that seeks to undermine the democratic process, is unjustly assuming power. Moreover, anyone who seeks to govern without the consent of the governed, especially where that consent is artificially created, is engaging in the most heinous kind of crime. Crime that is far worse than stealing, abuse and even murder, because the very lives, liberty and property of everyone is at risk. In other words… The single crime from which tyranny flows in the modern world, is vote fraud.

Vote fraud usually comes from hubris and presumption. Those who engage in vote fraud have the hubris to fool themselves into believing their cause is the most just and presumption in they presume to know what is best for everyone else. They see their own arguments close at hand while they see the arguments of others at a distance, crediting themselves, as we all do, with the most enlightened wisdom, they willingly pervert the electoral process to benefit their preferred faction… themselves. Hubris and presumption are the natural result of misplaced pride.

Some people believe themselves to be smarter, wiser and more caring than everyone else, this is especially true of people with college degrees. They consider themselves smarter than everyone else because they went to college. If they find they are incapable of holding a job, it cannot be because of any deficiency in themselves, the system must be wrong, after all, they are smarter than the rest of us who do have jobs. So they gravitate to socialism, with themselves as the rightful leaders, in this violence is acceptable but if that isn’t viable, vote fraud becomes thinkable. Since they see themselves as more deserving and caring than everyone else, they appoint themselves as the master who forces all those other uncaring louts to provide for the less fortunate. If they personally benefit, what is the harm, aren’t they the most deserving anyway?

People have an amazing ability to justify their actions in their own minds. Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. If a person treats you badly, even if by accident, their opinion of you goes down… they like you less. That is because since they treated you badly, in their mind’s eye, either they are bad for treating a good person badly, else you are bad and deserve it. Since no one believes themselves bad the fall back is always that you are bad. This concept can be applied to vote fraud, in that someone who believes their cause just and themselves wise, engages in vote fraud, they must believe others who seek free and fair elections are bad people, otherwise the fraudster is bad, plus those others don’t see what they see or care like they care. Even the voters themselves are seen as less than human to people who manipulate the vote through fraud. Otherwise, those who pervert the electoral process would be bad, and cognitive dissonance forbids that.

This is why efforts to stem vote fraud are met with such vehemence, vitriol and violence. Anything that limits their ability to pervert democracy to their own ends cannot be allowed to stand. Anyone who wants free and fair elections must be personally destroyed else society might not go the way the self appointed masters think it should. Moreover, people who seek the honest consent of the governed must be ignorant, since fraudsters are so much smarter, wiser and more caring than the hoi polloi. You can reliably tell who is in favor of vote fraud by how they react to efforts to stem it. Their silence at obvious vote fraud screams they consider the people fools to be manipulated and trod underfoot. When a district votes 100% for one candidate, and turnout is 120% of the registered voters, or dead people have come back to life simply to cast a ballot, clearly either the laws of physics has been upended, or vote fraud on a large scale has taken place. Those who find identification to vote obnoxious are those who seek to pervert democracy to their own ends. Of all the crimes, vote fraud has the potential to result in human suffering far greater than even murder, and should be treated as such.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Our Unjust World

Posted on September 26, 2016 by john

 

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, a simple working definition of justice, is to treat everyone equally, but a more nuanced definition is, to equally treat people as they deserve to be treated. Just as you would not trust a thief to watch your home, or a child molester to watch your child, most anyone would trust a saint to watch either. It is not that they are treated differently, but they are treated as they deserve, should the saint become a thief or a child molester, our treatment of them would change to reflect what they deserve. Justice demands all people be treated as they merit, equally and without discrimination. In the end, the person who is a villain should be treated as a villain, and the saint should be treated as a saint. Sadly, in this world those who are powerful are always held to the lowest standard of conduct, no matter what their actions merit, while those of low station are always held to the highest standard of conduct, regardless of their virtuous actions, due to their ability to damage or help us. This is a violation of justice. The way justice determines merit, is by our actions, not our station, race or religion.

We live in a time where justice is unknown. The news is full of examples where villains are praised and heroes are attacked… injustice is called justice. When a thug with a long history of violence threatens a police officer with a gun, and is shot by that police officer, popular culture credits the thug with every virtue known to man, while the police officer is vilified, leading to other thugs rioting, destroying property, stealing and worst of all, attacking innocent people simply because of their race. Instead of justice, where those thugs would be rounded up, tried and if found guilty, serve long jail sentences, they are given a pass, ostensibly because of their race, but in reality because the violence forwards the agenda of the political faction in power.

Who can claim it just, that a politician is caught red handed destroying evidence that implicates her in allowing top secret material to fall into the hands of our enemies, walks free, even as lowly navy personnel are charged and jailed for far far less? Moreover, it would appear that US secrets are known by everyone, including our mortal enemies… but not the people. If people are treated as they merit, by their actions, not by their political affiliation or power, we would see many politicians going to jail and few junior officers languishing in Leavenworth. Justice does not brooch unequal treatment and is not based on political standing, it is based on merit, for good or bad.

How can anyone look at you with a straight face and say the non punishment meted out to the CEO of Wells Fargo is just? We all know that the culture of any group, organization or company comes from the top. People go where leaders lead. If the culture of Wells Fargo was such that lowly employees were opening millions of fraudulent accounts, to pad the profits of the company, that culture came from the top. Add to that, over five thousand employees were fired for it, yet not one has been prosecuted despite the serious nature of the crime, and a blind man can see the injustice. Those who are punished are the shareholders of Wells Fargo, who had no hand in the crime but are paying the price, in a diminishment of their stock values, stocks they paid for with hard earned money and rely on for their retirement. The other people punished are the customers who were harmed, while the government gets a windfall, and the employees who have done no wrong but who’s careers are jeopardized by the culture of Wells Fargo.

People have an innate justice meter, we know when an injustice is done, and we react accordingly. If our ability to act is hemmed in by government power, if in fact, that injustice is promoted by government…then we loose faith in the system, our stake in society is eroded and we will act unjustly ourselves, anytime we believe we can get away with it. Naked injustice then is the means for a society to fall into chaos, violence and poverty. The facts are clear and they stare us in the face. Everywhere we look there is violence, on our streets, in our schools and at our places of business. Poverty is on the rise like never before since the industrial revolution, while the elite profit from their crimes. The world our forefathers have built and we have been blessed with, is crumbling around our heads and ears, all because, as we know in our hearts… people are not treated as they deserve.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Evil is Evil, No Matter Who or How Many Do It…

Posted on September 22, 2016 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, if an action is wrong for an individual, it is wrong for a group. Blame cannot be diluted, as salt is diluted in water, blame fits all equally. Evil is evil no matter who does it or how many are involved. A robbery is made no less of a sin, if ten people are involved than if a lone gunman in an alley robs you, it is still a sin and the blame is not diluted by there being ten involved, each is as to blame as a single thug. This is an important concept for people to understand since the dilution of blame is a paramount theory of government. Often this dilution of blame is such that it allows ever greater evils to be done in the name of goodness, which is of course absurdity.

If a person wants his neighbor’s land, so he storms that neighbors house killing the father and enslaving his family, obviously an evil has been done. What of a whole neighborhood lusts after the land of someone and they storm her house taking her land and killing her? Is it any less evil? What if a million people desire someone’s property, kill them and take it, is it any less evil, are the individuals any less culpable? No, they are all equally culpable and don’t share the blame, diluting it, they are all as culpable as if one person does it. No matter if the thing stolen is real property or chattel, an evil has been committed, and everyone involved shares in the blame equally, in the same measure as a lone wolf.

What if a person is detestable in his philosophy, espousing a point of view another cannot stand, so that other cuts out the first person’s tongue, has an evil been done? What if a hundred people don’t like what the first person says, would it be okay then to stop his speaking by force? What if a billion people call for it… is it any less evil? No matter the number of people involved the crime is the same, the blame is the same, and everyone involved has committed an evil. What about if someone is doing something detestable but is harming no one else? Can a lone woman take offense and lock that man in her basement for a few years? Would that be okay? What if a dozen people get together and in their indignation capture him and lock him in a dungeon for a decade, for his own good, would it be a good thing then? What if a million are offended?

A crime is a crime no matter who does it. What if a king decides he only likes women with blue eyes, would it be acceptable for him to order all women with brown or green eyes executed? Does the king’s pleasure overwhelm the right to life of those women? What about if he preferred brown eyes… would it be okay then? Would it be a good thing if a king ordered a squad of armed men to go door to door taking every carrot the people had grown? Perhaps our theoretical king could violate his own edicts, would it be acceptable for him, but not anyone else? What if that king were loved by the people, would that make it okay? No it wouldn’t. A person’s title, occupation or status does not give her the right to visit evil on another, no matter the difference in the adoration of the masses.

In the example of the king ordering a squad to visit evil on someone else, is the king less culpable because he didn’t actually commit the crime himself, what about the squad of men, are they less to blame for their actions because they were simply following orders? Do you think God will hold a death camp guard blameless because he was following orders? Will God hold the person ordering the sin blameless because she didn’t actually commit the sin herself? Maybe a king could change what is good and what is evil by edict? Could a king, beloved by the people, change morality, let’s say changing murder from a sin to a virtue? Is that in the power of any man, king or not?

That which is evil, is evil, no matter who does it, why it is done or how many people do it. Sadly this concept is lost on the lion’s share of humanity. People see a single evil and call it evil, but when they see a million evils, they call it a good. This doesn’t follow. The ancient Chinese utilitarian philosopher, Mo Ti said, “Take the case of a man who when shown a few black dots calls them black, but when shown a large number of black objects calls them white. He would have to admit his eyesight was in disorder and that he did not know the difference between black and white.” This sums up what I am saying, everyone knows a single evil like theft, is evil, but many see theft by the multitude as a good, especially if it benefit them. They would have to admit their moral compass is off by many degrees… Just because an evil is done by someone who claims to represent the many, doesn’t make it a good, it simply involves the many in the sin.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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The War of Ideas

Posted on September 19, 2016 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, we live in a world of competing ideas, America is an idea, justice is an idea, socialism is an idea, Islamism is an idea, gender fluidity is an idea, limited government is an idea, etc… these ideas compete for the minds of people. As in any competition it is not the best who wins but the most zealous. If the adherents of an idea are willing to do whatever it takes to forward their idea, then that idea will become widespread, if the adherents of an idea are wishy washy, that idea will loose ground. The battleground for these competing ideas is the media, schools, universities, cafes, bars and any other forum in which people communicate. The goal line is the zeitgeist. The ideas that permeate the zeitgeist best become widespread and either visit evil or good on humanity. It is important to note, the goodness or badness of an idea has little or no merit in the strength or weakness of that idea, the strength of an idea comes from the intensity of belief of that idea, in the minds of those who take it to be truth. If we seek goodness, then we must grab those ideas that are good and let go of those that are bad, in this we have history and common sense as guides, yet the power of many bad ideas is such that they cannot be easily let go of. As self interested rational maximizers however, it is our ability to reason that has allowed any good ideas at all to survive, against the magnetic pull of evil.

Bad ideas, or ideas that result in human suffering, have an innate pull. They always promise power wealth and prestige for those who hold fast to them. Think about the pull of socialism for a moment. It promises wealth to everyone, it claims to be a form of fairness and it pretends to be about love, (applying to emotion) but most of all, socialism gives unlimited power to those who will run the socialist state, (applying to self interest). To anyone who favors socialism, it is that unlimited power that is the magnet that provides the attraction. Every socialist wants to be the one who runs the socialist state. That is why whenever the dismal history of socialism and Marxism is brought up, the socialist will claim true socialism has never been tried, else that the “wrong” people were in charge then, the obvious connotation is that if they were in charge things would have gone much differently. Bad ideas have an innate pull to people who lust after power.

When someone is so certain of the idea they espouse they are willing to do violence to force others to believe and to stop others from abandoning that idea. The NAZI party was all too willing to visit evil on anyone who didn’t hold their ideas. They waged war against every other political faction in Germany at the time until all the rest were subjugated. Then the NAZIS went on to wage a bloody war of conquest across Europe and north Africa to further their idea of national socialism. The NAZIS are not alone in their willingness to do violence to forward their idea. The willingness to do violence in the name of an idea is a strong indication that idea is bad. If an idea requires the evil of violence to spread, that idea is evil. Evil ideas must be withstood at all costs else evil will become widespread.

Good ideas however don’t promise power, wealth or prestige for a faction, person or group, they offers good to everyone, and in that way good ideas have less power over the minds of those who take them to be truth. Limited government offers no incentive to someone who seek power over others, and so those who believe in limited government don’t have personal gain in believing in limited government, so limited government is an idea that while good, has little pull on the minds of people. The idea of America, the land of opportunity and of the free, has a strong pull to those who live in poverty or oppression, but once a person gets to America, other ideas become more attractive. Preferential treatment by political force is much easier than hard work, and so it often replaces the idea of “America,” once an immigrant comes here. The result is that people move to a place for freedom and opportunity then try mightily to turn it into a place of no opportunity and oppression.

It is in talking that we promote or denigrate ideas. Any form of communication is how ideas are spread and how they are destroyed. Hitler wrote Mien Kampf, Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, the Founding Fathers wrote the Federalist papers and the anti Federalist papers, nightly news programs promote progressivism, and it is in our cafes, bars, and internet forums, that ideas are passed from person to person. The battleground for the spread of ideas is anyplace people congregate and talk.

When we watch people debating an idea we usually gravitate to the idea whose adherents are the most zealous. Often a zealous arguer is more convincing than one who uses logic and reason, because she uses emotion, and emotion is a stronger motivator of men than reason, especially those who claim to be “reasonable.” Logic, reason, emotion and self interest, are some of the weapons people use to promote their ideas. Emotion is like a nuclear weapon since it has such power, self interest is like strategic bombing and logic is like a sword, cutting absurdity from truth. Only where the battleground is intolerant of emotion can the nuclear weapon be banned. This is why bad ideas that are based on self interest and emotion are so powerful and have such sway over the minds of people.

We live in a world of ideas, whether evil or good, those ideas determine the quality of life of all humanity. It has been said, the human mind is like a rider on an elephant, the rider is reason and it is the elephant that does the work. Clearly, the rider has only limited control of the elephant, and must ride where the elephant goes, that is why emotion is such a good motivator. We are all self interested, seeking our own good over the good of others, applying to our immediate self interest then is another powerful way to promote an idea, bad ideas are good at this tactic while good ideas are bad at it. It is this siren call of evil ideas, that is why human history has so few examples of good ideas becoming widespread, and why evil ideas have been the norm. Good ideas apply to logic and reason while bad ideas apply to emotion and self interest. Good ideas recoil from violence while evil ideas embrace it. In the end however, the good ideas… limited government, America, and justice for all, actually are in our long term self interest, if not in our immediate self interest. Let us pray then, that humanity will use logic and reason to decide what ideas we will follow, abandoning emotion and lust, thus improving the lot of mankind.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Our Sick Economy

Posted on September 15, 2016 by john

 

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, when someone is coming down with an illness, initially the signs are slight and not too bad, later when the symptoms become worse they can be alleviated by aspirin and other medications, the worse the symptoms the stronger the medications needed to mitigate them, but when the illness hits with full force it can no longer be mitigated by medication and the body dies. Today the world economy is sick, the initial signs were ignored, so it has got to the point the strongest medication available is being used. Up to now, the symptoms have been mitigated by Keynesian principles, stupendous amounts of money printing, government debt spending, monetizing government debt, negative interest rates and central banks are even buying corporate bonds and stocks! From our own experience we can tell how bad a disease is, by the drugs used to treat it and when the morphine drip of monetizing the debt is used, pretty much all hope is lost. The chemotherapy of QE, Twist, negative interest rates etc… have lost their effectiveness and the illness has spread.

Using the right drugs to treat any disease is critical. Penicillin is wholly ineffective against malaria and quinine has no effect on strep throat. The Keynesian prescription is always spending, add to that the monetarist prescription of money printing, and you have the “universal” cure for every economic ailment. Of course not all ailments are the same. Just as strep throat is different than malaria the reasons economies falter are different. Moreover, if a single drug is used too much it looses it’s effectiveness and becomes inert, like the Keynesian prescription. Keynesian economics is the fall back position of every government since John Maynard Keynes described it. Like penicillin however, it has been used too much and for illnesses that it is unfit to cure, and so the overuse of Keynesian economics deficit spending has made our economies immune to the effects.

Some drugs only mask the symptoms of disease. Pain killers are an example of this type of drug. They mask the pain but have no effect on what is causing it. In fact, new studies have come out that show opiates actually enhance a person’s feeling of pain, if they are used too much. Monetary stimulus is this type of medication for an economy. It masks the underlying problems. Money printing makes the stock market and bond market appear to sail. That rise in stock valuation however only hides the problems. People understand the disconnect, like when an injured person looks down at his broken arm, but feels no pain because he has been given morphine. He sees the arm is broken, he knows it should hurt but the lack of pain confuses him. If another person isn’t there to render first aid, the victim will likely damage himself far more, from using it due to his lack of pain. Masking a problem only makes it worse especially if what caused the problem in the first place is not addressed.

To argue someone is doing well, even as they are on Keynesian life support and the morphine drip of money printing is being used, is to argue up is down. The media that calls itself unbiased knows if the true state of our economy were widely known, the faction they prefer would loose in a landslide, since they cannot allow that, they are pulling out all the stops to argue up is down. The media cherry pick data, and polish it before they deliver it to us, protecting their favored faction. The more they get caught manipulating data the more they do it. Like a witch doctor, his dancing and waiving a chicken leg over someone with cancer might be entertaining and have a placebo effect, in the end it will have no effect on the outcome, only possibly the duration.

Regulation is like poison, in small enough amounts it has no great harm and can even be beneficial in some cases, too much and it becomes toxic and perhaps even deadly. Our governments have been introducing regulatory poison into our economy since time immemorial. Since the effect of poison is to create illness where there otherwise would be none, the elite need to mask the symptoms of the illness they have created by regulation, crony capitalism, and corruption, even as they inject ever larger doses and more deadly poisons into our economy. The way to save a person who has been poisoned is first to stop poisoning her and then get the poison out her system, by chelation or by introducing an antivenin.

What we have is a sick economy… it has been sick for many decades and the illness has been metastasized by Obama’s policies. We have witch doctors, the media that calls itself unbiased dancing and waiving a dismembered chicken leg giving false hope, there are “doctors” who have only read one book and their only tool is a butter knife, performing open heart surgery, as we are being plied with heroine to mitigate the pain, and the patient dies a slow and lingering death. Our economy has been poisoned by government actions and so cannot recover until the right medications are used in the right amounts. Just as heroine will not heal a broken leg and can lead to the worsening of it by continuing to use it, masking our economic problems with money printing only makes them worse, because there is no incentive to stop poisoning our economy. We have progressed beyond the initial stages where lethargy, slight pain and muscle aches… through the open sores, crushing pain and high fever to being hospitalized in intensive care. Isn’t it time to stop poisoning our economy and use different medications?

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Political Evolution

Posted on September 12, 2016 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, we are experiencing the evolution of our republics, in their democratic elements as well as the aristocratic and monarchic. No evolution comes without demand, as movement requires as a precedent, force. This evolution is driven by the elite who have for a very long time now, only served their own narrow self interests rather than the interests of society, civilization and humanity. Good government serves the interests of all equally; bad government serves those who govern. Bad government generates the demand for change required for a government to evolve or collapse. When those who serve government serve themselves first and best they create incentive for change. In the complex systems, that exists in every manifestation of humanity, what change could emerge is unknowable. One thing that is certain, that change will be painful, especially for those unprepared.

In the US the two party system has become two teams in the same league. They both stand for exactly the same thing, totalitarian government, for the benefit of the people to be sure, the only contention is who can run that totalitarian government best? Now with the presidential race between a self serving, sociopathic, incorrigible liar, who is unable to follow any rules, law or regulations whatsoever and a self serving, egoistic, self described crony, who has only become religious last week, is learning about our Constitution as we speak and knows only one thing… his presidency will be huge. Obama has implemented the Cloward and Pivon plan to collapse the US and, it would appear, his Presidency has been to that end all along.

Europe with their parliamentary system has dozens of political parties but has effectively outlawed any party that stands for liberty. Both on the right and left they both agree, government should be tyrannical and law arbitrarily applied, they disagree if society should be destroyed immediately, so the world government can be ushered in or if European socialism should be confined to Europeans. Read the platforms of any party and they read like a socialist list of votes to buy. Pandering to this or that faction, unless they seek liberty, then they are a pariah.

We have woken up to the game even as the last quarter is upon us. Perhaps not too late, the democratization of information made possible by the internet, has reduced the gate keepers to babbling fools, still mesmerized by their past success. We now see them for who they are, and every day as more people wake up to it, the demand for actual representation rather than misrepresentation grows across Europe and the US. The demand for change is forcing evolution on all of us, even the elite. They may believe themselves in the catbird’s seat, European civilization is facing existential threat from unlimited Muslim immigration, which would collapse the system allowing the Fabians to rebuild it in the image they see as better. The US two party system is showing is slip for the people to see and the Cloward and Pivon strategy is in full execution. Change is coming, whether that change is good or bad remains to be seen, but change becomes inevitable once the people believe their own eyes, that the emperor is naked. Better prepare for rough times…

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Input Plus Reaction Equal Outcome

Posted on September 8, 2016 by john

Dear Friends,

It seems to me… outcome is always the result of an input plus a reaction. This can be applied to many situations, violence for example, more particularly, when violence is warned of by the elite. The elite, by definition, are those willing to visit violence on another, to force their will on that other. Today the elite couch their threats by the sophist claim the people will become violent. Notice that lately, and in increasing amounts, the elite are warning of violence coming from the people, citizens, when the policies of the elite have become so onerous, they can no longer be stood by just right minded human hearted beings. It is the will of the people, to stop the globalization of government, that is diametrically opposed to the will of the elite, and that insult must be met with violence. As is always the case, violence is perpetrated by those who seek more government power and avoided by those who seek less. That is the rub, the elite input absurdity upon absurdity on the people, then waiting for the backlash so they can slam down and impose their will… to insure “security.”

The elite today have realized the people are catching on. The internet has democratized the flow of information, so that everyone has at their fingers information about everything that is going on, both filtered and unfiltered. Added to that the ability to disseminate that information via social media has castrated the gate keepers. The actions of the elite are available for everyone to see, and knowledge is power in that it tempers the indignation, leading to better judgment. The media that calls itself unbiased used to have as it’s chief worry that people would see them as biased, today that fear has been realized and only those willingly deluded believe a word of them. So the elite have lost their ability to control public opinion by the control of the media

Have you ever noticed, virtually all the political violence perpetrated on humanity since Adam ate the apple, has been by those seeking more government power? No time in history has this been more true than today. Islamists use violence to impose Sharia on non Muslims, Marxists use violence to impose socialism on those who don’t want it and governments use violence to impose laws that benefit a politically favored faction, at the cost to the rest of society. The first people charged by the progressive controlled media, is a right winger, like the Boston Marathon Bombing. That was initially blamed on an anti tax movement because it fell on tax day, but in fact it was an Islamist who sought to impose Sharia on non Muslims.

Now that the elite have created a mess in the Middle East and North Africa with their Arab Spring, the flood of immigrants who loathe Christians and Christianity are inundating Europe. The natural uptick in crime and rape is as predictable as it was planned. The reaction of people who have been forced to tolerate such violence, abuse and outright loathing in their own homes, is just as predictable. Even when the media that calls itself unbiased sell a narrative counter to reality, reality gets out, via the internet. The radical influx of people antithetical to the culture of Europe is abetted by their prodigious birth rates. Even the slowest European must be able to see the future for their children, and so they either react or go quietly into the night.

The idiotic unheard of money printing, and monetizing anything they can see central banks, have created a situation that can only end in an epic economic bubble burst during a recession. Adding trillions to their balance sheets for what has amounted to zero actual economic growth, punishing savers with zero percent interest on their savings thus disincentivizing saving, has put central banks the world over in a dilemma. When the bubble they knowingly inflated, to protect their progressive president from the results of his flagship policy, the affordable care act, pops, they will not be able to lower interest rate much below zero without causing a run on banks so they will be stuck, their own policies feeding back into a recessionary cycle, driving it ever lower. There is not a person among us who doesn’t feel this, even if they are not able to put it into words.

We have an input, the social and economic upheaval we are at the cusp of experiencing due to the corruption of the elite, and we have our reaction… that will decide the outcome. Should we react, as the elite want, with violence? No, that would be playing into the hands of the elite. They desire a violent reaction from us more than a husband his new wife. We know we are being pushed and many feel it is near time to push back, but I tell you, push with letters to your “representatives” and newspapers, stop voting for the establishment candidate, look at the truth rather than the propaganda, even create a political party that stands for less government. Our reaction to the provocations of the elite have to be counter to what they seek else we are pawns in the game of our own demise.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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