Posts Tagged ‘capitalism’

The New Communists at FoxNews

Sunday, December 6th, 2015

cargile_fnc_smSaturday afternoon, I took a little bit of time to watch some news. I flipped over to FoxNews, and there I witnessed Mickey Cargile explaining to openly supportive host Eric Shawn and his audience that drug prices are a moral issue, and a quality of life issue, more than economic issue. I couldn’t agree more.  His conclusion, however, was based on the moral system of collectivism. I realize that the anchors and stories on FoxNews on weekends tend to be the “B-Team” or even the “C-Team,” but this is despicable. Watch for yourself:

Apparently, Cargile believes this is a moral issue, but unfortunately, his moral standard is collectivism. He ignores entirely the morality of a civilized country inasmuch as he openly attacks private property rights, private wealth, and the freedom to choose. Reading between the lines, he’s advocating some sort of government-enforced price control at the very least, and perhaps even complete expropriation at the worst. This implies violence. In order to enforce such a thing, what one is saying is that one is ready to kill people in order to take their things if they do not otherwise consent.

The host, for his part, is no better. He smears the owners of the rights to the Hepatitis C treatment under discussion as people who are merely out to profit, first, as if profit is somehow an evil, and second in that they might use that profit to “buy a new Ferrari.” This shameful broadcast merely confirms my contention that FoxNews is all about co-opting conservatism. There’s nothing remotely conservative in this, Cargile’s protests about his continuing devotion to the free market notwithstanding.

For those who don’t understand the principles involved, let us be clear: If you invent a thing, and I purchase the rights to that thing from you, my moral claim to the thing in question is every bit as legitimate as yours when you had invented the thing. More, since it’s now my thing, I have the absolute right to buy it and sell it as I see fit, and the only moral method by which to obtain it is to pay the price at which we arrive by mutual consent. Any government interference in that exchange, either to my benefit or to a purchaser’s, is tyranny.

What Cargile advocates in this clip is tyranny. What the hapless Mr. Shawn approvingly supports is no different from what Hugo Chavez had imposed in that poor, enslaved, collapsing communist state that is Venezuela: Communism. The closer we get to complete collapse, and the more people begin to shrug their shoulders over the concepts and moral standing of individual rights, the more rapidly our collapse will accelerate.

One might argue, as the communists at FoxNews seem to insist, that there is some maximum amount that ought to be charged for some life-saving, or quality-of-life-preserving drug or treatment. My question for you is: Had I Hepatitis C, how much of my earnings would I forego for how long a period to finance a cure? Is there any amount of money I would not pay? One might argue, as the dolts on FoxNews have done here, that such a burden is unaffordable, and use this as a justification to steal. Theft via government action is still theft, even though done under color of law. The fact that the government was placed in office by vote does not reduce the significance of the crime, but merely multiplies the number of criminals and broadens the expanse of the guilt(though its concentration is not diluted.)

With this sort of thing becoming the norm on FoxNews, as further evidence of the spread of collectivist ethics throughout the culture, we cannot and will not last.

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Posted in Capitalism, Conservatism, Economics, Featured, Hall of Shame, Media, News, Politics, Video | Comments Closed

Open Letter to Richard Fitzpatrick, CEO of Magpul Industries

Sunday, February 17th, 2013

Dear Mr. Fitzpatrick:

I have read the announcement made by Magpul Industries on February 15th via Facebook, and I wish to discuss it with you further.  I realize that you do not wish to leave the state of Colorado, and that if the state enacts laws making your products illegal for purchase by customers in your state, as a matter of moral and philosophical consistency, your hand will have been forced, and that you will uproot your company and move it to another state more amenable to your enterprise.  This is a commendable stance, and you are to be credited for taking it, as far too many people in business see only dollar signs but not the underlying principles that support their existence. I hope you are not forced to move Magpul, but if you find that you must, I’d like to offer you a new home where your company and its purpose are welcome.

Recently, my Governor went on a tour of California trying to drum up businesses to move to the Lone Star State, and while it seems he failed to find any takers, let me suggest to you that it is because he was looking in the wrong place.  The problem with his approach was that he looked in a particular geographic location, but I think if Governor Perry had wanted more success, he would have looked to business owners who had arrived in a philosophical place, much like the one in which it seems you have arrived. Amoral and immoral lawmakers of the sort who would impose such legislation on the people of Colorado(or any state) help to create an environment in which men and women of good will are unable to continue in good conscience in their present circumstance.  If such a condition arises anywhere, it constitutes the precise destination to which our Governor(or any Governor) should turn to look for businesses to bring to their states.

On that basis, let me make you an offer your conscience may find difficult to refuse. If the  laws of Colorado are changed so as to make it unsuitable for Magpul Industries, I would very much like to see your company relocate to our state.  More, I would suggest to you that within the vast expanses of Texas, there are particular places that would suit your company more than others, and that would offer the moral climate in which your operation would likely feel at home.  Specifically, I would offer you Central Texas, and most specifically, Bell County.  Bell County is home to Fort Hood, the U.S. Army post that is the home of III Corps, and it offers a variety of advantages to your operation should you be compelled to choose out of sad necessity to relocate your company.

Our largest two cities are Killeen and Temple, respectively, and our County seat is Belton.  Temple and Belton are located directly on the I-35 corridor, while Killeen and Harker Heights, further west in the county, have access to I-35 via US-190, an improved four-lane, divided highway.  Temple is home to a number of companies large and small, and it also feature Scott&White Hospital, as well as a Veterans’ Administration hospital both of which serve this region.  Our climate is necessarily warm, but there are few work stoppages due to winter weather, and we are generally far enough inland from the coast that direct impact from hurricanes is minimized.

More importantly to your operation, we have many qualified prospective employees, many of them veterans skilled in the use of products you manufacture. Because we are home to Fort Hood, we have many veterans who decide to settle here(as I did more than two decades ago,) because Texas is a place of liberty and opportunity.  More, Central Texas is a place that has a deep and abiding understanding of the moral purpose of self-defense, and its residents are quite aware of all the reasons your products are vitally important to a free people.  So many of our residents having served in the Army, or having had loved ones who served, there is a reverence in our community for the Constitution, and for all it implies about limited government.

Taxation is relatively low here, and you would find a locale happy to embrace your business.  Texas has fared better than many states under our current economic conditions, but as you are doubtless aware, no place has been entirely immune to the economic predations of big government except perhaps Washington DC.  Due to this grim reality, there exists here no small number of potential employees who have skills of the sort for which you would be looking should relocation become necessary. We have shipping facilities and probably the sort of facilities you would need in order to set up operations here, and I offer you also this: Texas must be among the larger of your company’s customer states, so that a large share of the products you manufacture would actually be purchased and used by the people in whose state your company would then reside.

Having now shamelessly offered you my home state, and indeed my adopted home county as a new locale for your operations, let me explain to you that it is precisely because I am proud of our little slice of a big state that makes me certain about its inherent suitability to your enterprise.  While you go about the business of giving your customers an “unfair advantage,” I would assert that Central Texas would provide your company a similar competitive advantage in a market segment full of innovators with whom you compete for business.  It is difficult to overestimate the importance of location,  but it is similarly difficult to overstate the importance of a welcoming community that will embrace a company’s philosophy and purpose. I realize that that such a decision would not be taken lightly, so please permit me also to state for the record that I understand a good deal about the torturous struggle you are enduring that would lead you to consider relocating your company.

I realize that you will have been beset by thousands or millions of such offers in the wake of your company’s announcement.  I also realize that relocating is in fact the last thing on Earth you would choose, but for the circumstances that may arise now, well beyond your control.  It is easy for those of us who would be the beneficiary of your prospective relocation to offer our respective areas, but I realize that it is much more a matter of heart-rending consideration for you, who must calculate the costs not only of moving a business entity, but of the dislocation and hardship that would attend those who work for you now, who might well not be able to relocate with you.  I understand what it is to have one’s company undermined by stupid laws, and to have one’s dreams shattered by bureaucrats. I realize that much more is at stake here than simply picking up and moving a company.  You would be moving the site of your great aspirations at the point of lawmakers’ pens.

The truth is that I hope sincerely that your fight in Colorado for rational law is victorious, and that you are able to overwhelm the proponents of bad law so that Colorado can remain the home of Magpul Industries. I also understand why you are making your stand, and why the demands of  logical consistency will demand that you leave Colorado, should the legislature and Governor of your state act with such tempestuous reflexes against objects that are no more the source of violence than a pillow used to suffocate a sleeping victim.  Objects don’t commit murder.  Lawfully manufactured and distributed products do not commit murder.  Only people commit crimes. Those politicians who use objects or products as surrogates for their alleged anger against criminals instead create a whole new class of victims, comprised of legally disarmed people who have not the ability to oppose in force the attackers who do not abide by the very laws that restrain their victims.  I believe we should consider such politicians criminals by proxy.

I wish you well, both in your business, and in your life’s pursuits, and also to all of your employees who have with you provided so many Americans such excellent products.  You should be proud of the company you have built, and all the things you have made that continue to revolutionize your market niche.  I know that wherever you and your company land, you will continue to be leaders in innovation and reliability, and I want to thank you in advance for all you will yet do, not only for your customers, but on behalf of a people who understand the necessity of the right to keep and bear arms, and why taking a stand in favor of that right is essential not only to the future of your company, but indeed, the entire country.

Best Wishes,

Mark America

Proud Texan and Owner of several Magpul Products

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Posted in Activism, Capitalism, Featured, Free Enterprise, Gun Rights, Idiotic Politicians, News, Politics | 2 Comments »

Occupiers: No “True Democracy” While Capitalism Continues – They’re Right!

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Anti-Capitalist Stephen Lerner

Andrew Breitbart managed to get his hands on some video of an Occupy strategy session, and in this video, SEIU skunk Stephen Lerner says that there can be no co-existence of Capitalism and “True Democracy.” Here’s the problem, and it’s one patriotic Americans need to grasp: Occupy is right. Now, before you go off the deep end to suggest that I’m losing my mind, because in this case, I agree with Occupy Wall Street, I would like you to watch the video. It’s important to understand what they’re saying so I can explain to you why they are right.

Here’s the video:

The problem we have is that most Americans have been mis-educated to believe that the United States is a democracy. It’s not. It never has been, and it was never supposed to be a democracy. Democracy is merely organized mob-rule under color of law. The United States was constituted as a representative republic, as demonstrated by the words of our own founding document, the US Constitution, in Article IV, Section 1:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government“(emphasis added)

This is a part of our constitution that is often ignored, and one that is often side-stepped by leftists because they cannot tolerate the notion that we have a republican form of government by design, and by the intentions of our framers. They understood that democracy was a horrid wrecking machine that destroys individual liberty, and is ever the precursor to tyranny. What a democracy ultimately permits, but what a representative republic is structured to forbid is the voting away of rights of some minority, including the smallest minority that is an individual. The whole purpose of the strong requirements on amending the constitution, or replacing it via a constitutional convention is specifically to make the destruction of individual rights exceedingly difficult.

What we have seen over the last century is a concerted effort to turn the US into a democracy of sorts. Capitalism cannot operate where there are not strong protections of individual rights, including the right to property, or one’s sovereignty in the marketplace. What Stephen Lerner and the rest of the Occupy Wall Street crowd understand is that there can be no “true democracy” while capitalism still lives. In short, it’s a recognition of the fact that the mob-rule that is implicit in democracy is prohibited in order to make capitalism possible.

What makes capitalism work is that you have the right to your property, exclusively, with no valid claim upon it by society at large. That’s why the income tax was pawned off on the American people with the 16th Amendment almost a century ago: The idea was to wreck your legitimate hold over your own property. In order to redistribute your wealth, they first needed the legal authority to take it, and that was the entire purpose of the 16th Amendment. Once they had a method by which to steal your wealth, they needed the ability to make it easier to redistribute it, and so the 17th Amendment was passed, providing for direct election of Senators, turning them into a more democratic institution. From that moment on, the character of American government began changing from a representative republic into a democracy as a precursor to a police-state.

What Lerner and the other Occupiers in this clip have understood is that in order to have the police and welfare state they want, they must first destroy your liberties, and that one of the reasons you will fight them is because you know that without them, capitalism, the means of your existence, cannot last. Last fall, I received a number of comments here from Occupy-sympathetic posters who assured me that OWS is not anti-capitalist. Guess again. This video proves it, and it does so very easily.

These are people who have a clear understanding of what they are after, and frankly, I think too many Americans have been intentionally mis-educated as to the proper form and function of our government precisely in order to permit these people to make such statements.  You see, they’re right, and while it may seem shocking to some who think there’s no difference, this is why Americans must begin to arm themselves with the truth.  These people are out to make us into a democracy, but that is not the form in which we were constituted.  Our nation is a constitutional, federal, representative republic.  Capitalism is only possible here because we adopted that form. This  has led to our great wealth and prosperity, but if we wish to grow it or even keep it, we will need to retain our constitutional form of government.  Occupy Wall Street understands the distinction, but if you wish to keep your country, you had better learn it, and fight for it too.

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Posted in Anti-Capitalists, Capitalism, Civil Unrest, Education, Media, News, Occupiers, Politics, Video | 7 Comments »