Going Galt ?

Just received emails calling for a “Going Galt Day” and I really like the idea. I thought “ yeah, I will close my retail store for the day and make sure all my customers are aware why we are closed for the day. As a real capitalist I have been reading Ayn Rand for over thirty years and read Atlas Shrugged for the first time in 1978. After that I started my first business. I sold the business several years later and moved on. In 1996 I started my second business and thirteen years later I am a leader in my industry. During a recession as my competitors drop off I am still here and looking to be the last man standing when this recession is over. If the recent tax legislation passed by the Oregon House I will close my business here in Oregon and move it to a state that actually wants my business. I have spent my life as John Galt and am prepared to Go Galt at anytime. What are you thinking? Reading further the protest is to have average working people call in to work “I’m going Galt” and take the day off. What is the end game here? What are you really trying to accomplish? Sure I know what you want to accomplish, but you are spending a dollars worth of capital to get a dimes worth of results. Could you not have people boycott liberal businesses, or wear a button at work promoting capitalism? I am afraid in this climate of high unemployment all you are going to do is tick off the employers of some very well meaning employees. By the way there are over thirteen percent of Oregonians looking to replace them in a heartbeat. The Tea Parties have established serious political capital and I hate to see this capital blown in a meaningless attempt. For those of us that are really prepared to be John Galt, it means locking the door walking away for good, not call in to irritate my employer. Keep the attention of the Tea Party Protests on taxing and spending and pointing out the stupidity of politicians. Stay away from capitalism if you do not understand it.

 

William Duncan
Capitalist

Adam Smith the founder of Capitalism

First we must address the fact that what you have experienced in your lives is not real Capitalism. As a matter of fact it we have not experienced capitalism since your great-grandfathers time. When the papers and politicians proclaim that Capitalism just does not work, they simply do not know what they are talking about. Real Capitalism has not been experienced since the early nineteen-hundreds here in the United States. Presidents Hoover and Wilson started and perpetuated the Great Depression with the New Deal and the new movement of transferring wealth from rich to poor. We did not have an income tax in this country until 1862 when President Lincoln needed to pay for the war.  By the way that is what taxes are for to pay for what government does.

Many of our Founding Fathers patterned our economic system after the Scotsman Adam Smith. For those of you that don’t know Adam Smith, Smith was an 18th Century educator and wrote two very important works in history. The first was The Theory of Morale Sentiments, and the second The Wealth of Nations. If you read those two works and the works of Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, then you are well equipped to understand the theory of economics. There are simpler books and more readily available. If you are interested in Wealth of Nations , then I strongly suggest a book by P.J. O’Rourke On The Wealth of Nations . The first of Adam Smith’s  books , Moral  and Sentiments, helps you understand that Capitalism, just like the Constitution of the United States, must be used by moral and honest people. Immoral and dishonest people can make any system or government structure corrupt.
I bring this up because of the current use of the term Socialism. As if it just reared it’s ugly head since Barack Obama was made President. Anytime you transfer ( insert the word steal) wealth from one group of people to another, such as rich to poor, that is Socialism. Socialism just simply does not work. Look at countries like Russia, France, and others. As well as versions or advancements in Socialism such as Marxism, and Communism. Many say that people simply are not charitable. This is completely untrue, but that is a good excuse to have the government take your money and then it to someone else. By the way the IRS uses force to take your money, try not paying your taxes for a couple of years, the definition of theft is taking money by force. Our Founding Fathers were close enough in history to of remembered what happened to us in Scotland and Ireland. Shut off the big screen and read some history, before they ban the books. It’s happened before.

The Prime Minister

As a Scotsman , I am no friend of the British, AKA the English. As the American Indians do not feel that they are Americans, since they were taken by force as we Scots were, I do not feel I am British. But that was then, and we should just forget the thousands of our fellow countrymen slain by a oppressive government simply wanting to acquire more land and power.

As Presidential nominee Barack Obama toured Europe he was lauded as the Saviour of the world. The British press acted like truck drivers at a strip club. However truck drivers have more integrity. Recently several things have happened that do not make the main stream news. The reason is that it makes President Barack Obama look bad, and we just can’t have that.

The British government are just as sycophants as the press, and the worm has turned on Barack Obama. A bust of Winston Churchill that sat in the White House for over ten years was removed and was scheduled to be returned to the British. At the same time Barack Obama snubbed British Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he visited the White House recently.

This blog in the Telegraph of London says it all:

Http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/james_delingpole/blog/2009/03/05/was_lady_macbeth_behind_barack_obamas_snub_of_gordon_brown

It points out that the real culprit may actually be the First Lady Michelle Obama. His assertion, and I do say assertion, that the First Lady simply holds all white people responsible for the oppression and slavery of blacks. The author of the blog, James Delingpole justifiably points out that it was Englishman William Wilburforce that was chiefly responsible for the elimination of slavery in the modern world.

For those of you feeling the “white guilt” that your white European ancestors were somehow the only bad people on the planet, I suggest you actually read some real history to find out just the opposite was true.

However Michelle Obama has shown on many occasions that she holds a very deep seated hatred for all whites.

Delingpole also writes:

 

Consider her (till-recently suppressed) Princeton thesis

, “Princeton Educated Blacks And The Black Community.”In it she writes: “I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.”

Here we see that she has mastered the authentic voice of grievance culture. She also – the thesis was written in 1985 – pre-empts the Macpherson report’s

ludicrous, catch-all definition of racism: “A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.” No matter how hard young Michelle’s white undergraduate contemporaries try to be nice, it’s not their behavior that counts, but how Michelle feels.

That’s what much of our Political Correctness is based on, the premise that it is how someone perceives or feels about someone else’s actions.

And since we can clearly not control how someone else feels, then we are at the mercy of how somebody else feels about something. Ultimate control of the debate the is the goal.
Michelle may just hold Winston Churchill in very low esteem that she may very well have been the reason for the removal of the bust.

In the end spineless Prime Minister Gordon Brown is left begging President Obama for help with the British Banks. My hope is that the Scottish National Party, SNP, sees all this and comes to it’s senses and embrace the monetary and political philosophy of Scotsman Adam Smith. It will be the only hope for Scotland as an independent nation.

Financial Servitude

 If you are of Scottish or Irish heritage, your ancestors experienced something called indentured servitude. It was the politically correct word for slavery, as slavery was against the law in Great Britain. The concepts are the same. You loose your freedoms for a period of time or for life.

The country of Australia was populated in large part by indentured servants and criminals from Ireland and Scotland. The English used the new world of America as the dumping ground for these indentured servants until it became obvious in the early 1700’s that they were feeding a population that may some day rise up against them.

As immigrants my forefathers have had simple aspirations, Freedom to make of your life what you were willing or capable of. They left a world that was ruled by nobles, or elites as we would call them today. You lived on a piece of land that you were obligated to pay a percentage or a fixed tax to stay on. You never really owned the land, you were merely occupying it as the whim of the noble.

They came to a new land, and with help of our Founding Fathers, a land of free men was born. One of my Fathers aspirations in life was to own his own home. I mean have it paid off so you do not owe anything to anybody. Because of the greatness of the United States he realized his dream of home ownership, he was able to pay off the mortgage.

Many years later, he and I were talking about my first home purchase. He said that even though he had paid off the mortgage he still did not own his home. The taxes still needed to be paid, or as we all know the government will confiscate the house for not paying the taxes. He will need to pay these taxes until the day he dies, or sells the house. Either way he cannot live there without paying the nobles, in this case the government.

Are we really better off? Have we betrayed our forefathers? Was the sacrifice they all made, the hardship of leaving the land and people they had known all their lives, all for nothing?

 

“The amount of money involved [in the stimulus bill is staggering. With 90 million tax filers who actually pay taxes, the $787 billion means the average taxpayer will pay over $8,700. By itself, adding $8,700 to the average tax bill should get everyone's attention. But that is on top of everything else that we are spending this year. ...[T]his year’s deficit is already at about $1.7 trillion — almost $19,000 per taxpayer.” –economist John Lott

 

That is today and you now owe the government $19,000 dollars. If you don’t live long enough , or if you do not have children, no worries, someone else’s children will have to be the indentured servants.

Black Friday

 

Being of Scottish heritage I like to point out those things that we Scots can be proud to have brought to the current culture in the US.

This is a reprint from this blog November of 2005. For those of you that wanted to know the true origins of what the press calls Black Friday.

 

Two men face each other in the early morning long before the sun breaks over the rolling hills of the Highlands. They are about to become combatants in an ancient annual ceremony that has over time been repeated in almost every country of the world. There are many such rituals and events in Scottish history. Ceremonial dinners given in the name Robert Burns , Scotland’s Poet Laureate, are one such tradition that emanated from Scottish Culture.

The ceremony I refer to is known as Black Friday. The origins of which go back to the time of Christ. The people of the Highlands knew little else than to barley survive, yet once a year these men that for eleven months of the year were civil neighbors in every way, gave in to that which has plagued man for these many generations. It goes beyond greed , it goes beyond survival. Man has been locked in combat on Black Friday for such a long time, that the very reasons for this age old tradition has long been forgotten. Yet every year on the very same date, men engage in battle to deny the other that which they so instinctively need.

It happens on the Fourth Friday of the eleventh month of very year. In early times they met at Stonehenge with cabers at the ready. Poised like the knights of the future with lance in hand and knowing that only one can come away with the prize.

The prize, the new Xbox video game for kids, and it is the last one on the shelf at the Stonehenge of today Wal-Mart. . The event today takes place on the Friday following Thanksgiving here in the US.

Like many traditions the meanings get muddied with time. Today there are many unaware of the history of Black Friday that think it is the date at which today’s merchants start to make a profit.

Now you know the real meaning and history of Black Friday.

Socialist America

I must of missed it!!!!!

When did our government go from taking taxes to provide basic services and a national defense, to a vehicle to provide financial equality.

Our Founding Fathers were most careful to insist that all they were there to do was to provide a Federal Army, and provide a very few services that would commonly unite all the states.

Thomas Jefferson was even against a federal postal system because it would financially burden the average person. Today the US Postal System is running a Billion Dollars in the red.

Another good example of a government run enterprise, when you run anything with bureaucrats it is bound to get screwed up. When did government run anything better than the private sector?

Our Founding Fathers even argued about a federal army. Some fearing that it could be used to suppress the people.

Anytime the government takes money from one group of people that have earned it, and gives it to another group that did not, it’s called Socialism. At this point Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave.

A pivotal point in this election has recently become apparent. During a neighborhood door to door campaigning Barack Obama ran into a guy we now know as “Joe the Plumber” . Joe asked a simple question that we all need to ask. Barack Obama’s plan for taxes and the economy penalizes those that want to achieve success in this country. Obama said that he did not want to penalize Joe, he just wants to take Joe’s money and give it to those that Obama deems more needy. Obama plans taking this money by taxes. Do you know what happens to people that do not pay taxes. Therefor Oboma plans on taking Joe’s money by force and having the government spend it the way they think is best.

That’s the same government that just bailed out the fat cats on Wall Street that many hate so much.

It was the Democrats in Congress that pushed the plan. Yes President George Bush liked and pushed the plan as well. But the President has no ability to spend money. It is the Congress that must make that final decision.

Presidential Choices

As mentioned many a time on this blog I try to relate topics to Scottishness somehow, since I am a Adam Smith Capitalist most anything economic relates. For those of you that just don’t like Republicans, I don’t blame you. If you are only exposed to the standard news media they are constantly demonizing those nasty Republicans. For those of us that are a true conservative ” President George Bush” was not our first choice. As a matter of fact the second term of this president was a complete disaster for everybody, left and right. President Bush is doing what he thinks is best, and is not the evil man he is often made out to be. However he is wrong, very wrong on most things. The reason for this is lack of clear philosophy. President Bush is not a conservative in any way I can think of. Most of us that were Republicans that are philosophically conservative are now independents or Libertarians. I see a similar breakup in the Democratic ranks, with progressives, liberals, and now hard Socialists. But given the two choices we face in the presidential race most on the right are voting for Senator John McCain because we can not allow Barack Obama into the White House. For those of you on the left I clearly see why you think you can not vote for McCain. However McCain for those of you that think you are just regular Democrats, So is John McCain. For all the comparisons of Barack Obama and JFK, being young and good looking is the only thing they have in common. John McCain and JFK are much closer to political allies. Most of us on the conservative side know and realize Senator John McCain’s shortcomings. But I am sure that if we really had an independent and unbiased press in this country Barack Obama could not have even passed the first round. I may not agree with liberal views , but the facts are that Hilary Clinton would have been a superior choice in her ability to govern and as you will find out , after it is too late, much more like a mainstream Democrat that Barack Obama.