Medary.com

SECTION ONE: The Word:
I went a little crazy with the YouTube videos of liberty-oriented songs. So, sue me. Or, rock on! Whatever. Scroll down, click the "read more" or do whatever you think you need to do. It's a free country. Sorta.

In other news . . .
From the The Early Adopters: Reading the tea leaves--an excerpt (full document at the link as a .pdf.)

Attempts to define the Tea Party movement--its motivations, values, beliefs, and goals--continue to miss the mark and yet to date there have been no in-depth conversations with the people who actually make up the movement themselves. Market research through data collection has focused on the opinions others hold of the movement; this report examines the motivations of the individuals themselves.

- Due to continued participation and activity, the Tea Parties are emerging as a movement that is both long-term and critical for political strategists and participants to understand.

- The people involved with these movements are not political junkies or crusty right-wing extremists; 46.9% were uninvolved or rarely involved with politics prior to 2009.

- They aren't in it to express anger alone. An overwhelming majority characterized the goal of their initial involvement as "to stand up for my beliefs."

- They are self aware. They aren't falling for a Third Party trap, including social issues on their docket, nor are they content to be labeled as protesting for the sake of protesting. 70.3% are hopeful that they are having a positive impact on their country.

- About one third remains unabashedly loyal to Sarah Palin's presidential candidacy, yet the field splits from there. DeMint, Romney, and Huckabee each garnered at least 10% of their support.

- They have a sophisticated, well-informed understanding of the U.S. Constitution and American history in general.

The conclusion of this report is that the Tea Party activists are not the "other," and they cannot be defined through a single statement, document, or definition. They are the early adopters of a new empowerment. As early adopters, they are paving the road they believe our country must proceed down in order to regain control over its government, and they are modeling the type of paradigm shift--the reawakening of the "people" component of a democracy--that they believe is necessary to our survival as a representative democracy.

The recommendation from this report is the time has come to better understand and attend to the Tea Parties. They are powerful, both in their political sway and in their passion.

This is what the Tea Partiers are upset about:

We're So Screwed! From Veronique de Rugy at The American via Reason. "This is what 'unsustainable' looks like." Obamacare will just make it worse.

Too late to apologize? Maybe . . .

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

We must here return for a moment to the position which precedes the suppression of democratic institutions and the creation of a totalitarian regime. In this stage it is the general demand for quick and determined government action that is the dominating element in the situation, dissatisfaction with the slow and cumbersome course of democratic procedure which makes action for action's sake the goal. It is then the man or the party who seems strong and resolute enough "to get things done" who exercises the greatest appeal.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

SECTION ONE: The Word:
Video: The Four-Minute Guide to the Seven-Hour Summit:



Your right to health care is exactly the same as your right to a car, or an ice cream cone, or a shirt, or a laptop computer. You certainly have a right to obtain those things--well, for now, anyway you have a right to obtain all of those things. But nobody else has any obligation to give you any of them, and you have no right to demand at the point of a government gun that somebody else hand any of those things over to you because of your "need." There may be people who feel that it is a moral thing to give to those less fortunate, but there is no obligation to do so--indeed, the virtue inherent in the act of giving is precisely that it is NOT an obligation. There is NO virtue in being generous with somebody else's money, time, skills, or life. Indeed, being generous with somebody else's money, time, skills, or life is a pretty good working definition of evil.

In a free market, you can have pretty much anything that you can afford. There is nothing magical about health care. There is nothing special about health care, other than its unique emotional hold on each and every one of us. It is just another economic good, which some people produce and other people consume--like a haircut, an airline ticket, or a meal. It's not fair that some people can afford $200 haircuts and some people have to do it themselves in front of a mirror. It's not fair that some people can fly first class, others have to fly on Southwest, and others can't afford to fly at all. It's not fair that some people can afford filet mignon and some people can't even afford McDonald's. Fairness is not a part of the discussion. Here's why:

THE DEMAND FOR HEALTH CARE IS INFINITE Everybody will always want more health care, especially if they don't have to pay for it, or even really know how much it even costs. But that's the health care system we have built in the United States today. Nobody knows how much their health care costs. Nobody really cares, because we have separated the consumer from the cost of the good being consumed. We have removed the cost control mechanism imposed by a free and open market--which is the only fair, humane cost control mechanism we know of. The ONLY alternative to cost control via the free market is some form of Sarah Palin's "death panels," however cleverly and intricately they might be structured. If the free market is not allowed to impose discipline on the individual health care customer, then the only alternative is to have some arbitrary authority do it. Freedom, or control. One or the other. Choose wisely.

Central control of economies does not work. Ever. Central control is ALWAYS less efficient than a free market and central control is ALWAYS more cruel and arbitrary. The extent to which central control appears to work, is the extent to which the free market can absorb the distortions and inequities that central control introduces into the economy. But there comes a time when the free market can absorb no more interference. There comes a time when the goose that lays the golden eggs becomes too weak to lay any more. Does anybody really want to let things go the way they're going? No more goose, no more golden eggs. Do we really want to risk killing the goose?

See, here's the deal, people. The problem with health care is not a supply problem. It's a demand problem. The demand has been artificially inflated due to the stupidity of government intervention, and the further stupid demogoging of the issue by vicious, cynical power-grubbing people bleating "people having a right to health care" which is utter, complete, unadulterated, evil, cruel, heartless, manipulative bullshit.

The time for choosing is now. The Democrats have chosen control over freedom. The Tea Partiers have chosen freedom over control, and are dragging the Republicans (and some Democrats) kicking and screaming to the pro-liberty position.

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

Just as a democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure. It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful in a society tending towards totalitarianism. Who does not see this has not yet grasped the full width of the gulf which separates totalitarianism from a liberal regime, the utter difference between the whole moral atmosphere under collectivism and the essentially individualist Western civilization.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

Some security is essential if freedom is to be preserved, because most men are willing to bear the risk which freedom inevitably involves only so long as that risk is not too great. But while this is a truth of which we must never lose sight, nothing is more fatal than the present fashion among intellectual leaders of extolling security at the expense of freedom. It is essential that we should re-learn frankly to face the fact that freedom can be had only at a price and that as individuals we must be prepared to make severe material sacrifices to preserve our liberty. If we want to retain this, we must regain the conviction on which the rule of liberty in the Anglo-Saxon countries has been based and which Benjamin Franklin expressed in a phrase, applicable to us in our lives as individuals no less than as nations: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

SECTION ONE: The Word:
March. The first hints of spring begin to seep into the frozen parts of the inhabited world. The world isn't quite as cold as it has been. A season of hope. College basketball reaches its crescendo. Spring Training is in full swing. Sure, there are slush ponds and sloppy mud puddles and piles of dirty snow, melting at the sides of the roads and parking lots and sidewalks and driveways. But it's March. Time to look forward to spring, and on to summer.

My favorite season has always been fall. But March isn't bad. Sure, it comes in like a lamb and out like a lion--or vice versa, but the point is that there's a lamb at one end or the other, unlike January, which is just harsh and never really very much fun, and not just because of the post-holiday depression.

So here's to March, and the hope of better days ahead.

SECTION ONE: The Word:
Hey! It's Sunday. So what if it's 2 in the afternoon for the "Morning" Whip?

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable. Older people may regard this as an exaggeration of the present state of affairs, but the daily experience of the university teacher leaves little doubt that, as a result of anticapitalist propaganda, values have already altered far in advance of the change in institutions which has so far taken place.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

The general endeavor to achieve security by restrictive measures, tolerated or supported by the state, has in the course of time produced a progressive transformation of society . . . which, as in so many other ways, Germany has led and the other countries have followed. This development has been hastened by another effect of socialist teaching, the deliberate disparagement of all activities involving economic risk and the moral opprobrium cast on the gains which make risks worth taking but which only few can win.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

SECTION ONE: The Word:
The "talking point" talking point: The few "highlights" of the ridiculous Kabuki-theater Obamacare "summit" that I saw featured Obama, again and again, accusing Republicans of trotting out "talking points." It was obvious to me that the "talking point" talking point was in fact a key Obama/Democrat talking point: "See, we're serious about this and the Republicans are just playing politics."

Unfortunately, Obama so massively overplayed the "talking point" talking point that it became the unintended self-parody that it actually was.

How well did Obama and the Democrats do with this laughable "summit?" It was on page A-6 of Friday's USA Today. Major FAIL.

And now, because you know you'll want to click on these, I observe that last Thursday was obviously Snot Day for the Rightosphere:
Max Blumenthal, You’re Being Booger-Boarded -- The difference between Breitbart and Blumenthal is that Breitbart knows that this is juvenile. That just makes it funnier.
Totally Unnecessary “Nugget” From The Blair House Kabuki Political Theatre -- OK, this is funnier. There's no snot like Presidential snot. At least he didn't eat it. (Ewwwww.) Public Speaking 101: Never, Ever Touch Your Nose.

Obama Death Stare, via Vodkapundit.