Evil looming on the horizon

There's a collectivist evil looming on the horizon. It's the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child, or the World Socialism Act*, for short. Here are snippets from the link:

... the Convention is a universally agreed set of non-negotiable standards and obligations.

If it's "universally agreed", then everyone already agrees, and there would be no stalls in ratifications, and it would be stupid to refer to its level of "negotiability."

These basic standards—also called human rights—set minimum entitlements and freedoms that should be respected by governments.

Minimum entitlements?

They ... apply to every human being everywhere.

That's funny, because some people are cut-off from the outside world (indigenous tribes), but this thing still somehow applies to them, huh? Looks like we better go and round them up, because that is the only way to implement this thing.

With these rights comes the obligation on both governments and individuals ...

Why not just one or the other? It seems redundant to mention these 2 things together like that.

... we cannot ensure some rights without—or at the expense of—other rights.

You underestimate yourself. You actually can do this, if you try hard enough -- which I'm certain you will.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.

Oh. I didn't know that this "full range of human rights" had recently become philosophically justified. Perhaps you can fill me in on the details of how all of these "rights" integrate without contradiction. For instance, how an 'economic right' (a right to the property of others) isn't, for simplicity, a form of rights-violating slavery.

It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.

Why, let's just make children our kings! It'll be like the old episode of Star Trek called "Charlie." Either that, or it'd be like the one where that child gang captured captain James T. Kirk while yelling: "Bonk, bonk, on the head!" Kids rule!

What a crock. I understand that there are places where the individual rights of children are violated, and would agree to doing something about that on a more local level. But this world-socialism business -- like the entire enterprise of socialism -- is a terrible idea for man on earth. You would think that the millions murdered in the 20th Century would have proved that to all competent-minded individuals.

Ed

*My personal interpretation of this 'collective' effort

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 12/31, 1:39pm)

Post 1

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 10:54am

Ed,

The strong push for this agreement is get a foothold for taxation of the United States by the United Nations - a beginning of global governance. This is the kind of thing I believe Hillary has been jetting around the world doing for four years (that, and probably making deals that involve putting money in her campaign war chest).

The UN folk have another agreement which is about minimum standards for the disabled. They took the language right out of our existing statutes. So, you'd think we don't need to be part of that, since we already have it as law. But they want our ratification because it will transfer some small degree of sovereignty from us to them. The elites believe that professional managers in the UN would make better decisions than a democracy and that our world is to complex not to centralize its management. George Soros has been saying for years that the only stumbling block towards achieving global governance is America.

There is also the treaty of the sea which taxes our offshore oil drilling revenues while placing all international waters under control of the UN - dis-empowering our navy, the internet control treaty that lets them tax the internet as well as giving each country censorship controls, and there is a gun control treaty which starts with registration, there is one from the Islamic block that ensures each country pass laws making it illegal to say anything negative about Islam - giving the UN a degree of supremacy over US courts, the treaty that establishes all of outer space as under control of the UN, the treaty that mandates global warming taxes and establishes, in effect, a global EPA... there are a whole bunch of these - each of which is made as innocuous as possible. But they all serve the same ends: money for the corrupt UN folk, serving the Progressives wet-dreams of global governance, and transferring sovereignty to an unaccountable body.

We are signatory to the the Vienna treaty which states that any treaty or agreement we sign ("we" being the state department) is binding upon us from the time of signing until our senate explicitly rejects it - with or without a presidential signature (provided only that a majority of other nations are also signed on).

Post 2

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 1:39pm

By 'horizon', do you mean looking ahead at the future to something about to happen, or looking back at our past, to something long already in the works?

And while we are sinking in a sea of socialism, isn't the horizon a 360 degree event?

Post 3

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 1:56pm

Steve,

Thank you for all of that information. We live in interesting times. There is irrefutable data about collectivism and socialism, and yet we have a political power or force which is playing Russian roulette with a gamble -- socialize the earth before the world citizens become informed (due to it being the Information Age, and all) about the demonstrable inferiority of socialism. It's perhaps best characterized as a battle between Kurzweil and Stalin, between the impending enlightenment and an intentional darkness/confusion.

While reading my Mises' book, Planning for Freedom, I received bad news and good news. The bad news is that I realized that the statist-economist, Lord Keynes, did exactly what Machiavelli did when he wrote The Prince-- he wrote a treatise attempting to justify the already-taken actions of current power brokers. In both cases, it was a deal with the devil, propagating an extra amount of evil in the world. The good news is that, if we can write things that work to increase the tolerable evil in the world, then that means that we can also write things that work to decrease the tolerable evil in the world.

Hence my cautious optimism.

:-)

Ed

Post 4

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 2:08pm

Fred,

Before you lose all hope, keep in mind that there are 2 countries who have heretofore refused to ratify this thing: the USA and Somalia. And, without the USA and Somalia, these emperor-wannabe's are just spinning their wheels in vain. I mean, listen, can you imagine trying to forcefully redistribute wealth from the US across the Atlantic? Even if you successfully leave the US port with some of our goods and against our national defenses, you will never make it across 'the Pond' intact -- because the Somali pirates will get you. Working with the notorious Somalis, we can shut these collectivist egalitarians down!

It's like a one-two punch! Wham! Bam!

:-)

Alright, alright, perhaps that was too much lighted-hearted optimism for the situation. If it is any consolation, I will promise to be a little more pessimistic in the future.

Ed

Post 5

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 2:29pm

Ed:

Do not mistake my short term pessimism (my assessment of our current slope)for long term pessimism; ultimately, this crap wont float, because it doesn't float.

But, in my much more optimistic youth, I'd have never believed America would slide this far down the slope before turning away from the abyss. I was confident that as long as there was at least one free nation on earth, world socialism could never long stand up. The reason for that optimism was in the blatant evidence-- the size of the barbed wire fences necessary to keep folks from fleeing the insanity...as long as there was one free nation on earth.

What I have become acutely more aware of is that this is no longer an external struggle. In fact, since long before I was born, it had long ago largely become an internal struggle; a final struggle.

I was right, in that, as long as there was one free nation on earth, world socialism could never long stand up. What I was wrong about was the assumption that one free nation could not fall, the result of an internal attack.

Because indeed, when that one free nation falls, there is no place left for the victims to flee. No need for walls, no need for barbed wire. Cracks, crevices, isolated pockets of freedom waiting to be policed up by the mob.

And then, the lie will be made explicit, socialism will still fail horribly, but as has been shown repeatedly in human history, the tribe is more than willing to beat that dead horse no matter how many million corpses pile up under the Sun.

It will fail, because it doesn't work. Human beings are not willing slaves, and there is enough retained memory of life in an earlier, free-er America to ever long sell the lie that our current selective gray economies of waiting are 'the new normal.'

Easily predictable, and already well entrenched; a frantic re-writing of history.

As in, JFK's 60's America was not nearly as great as some would have you believe.

Oh yeah?

regards,
Fred

Post 6

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 3:03pm

Fred,

I'm glad you explained yourself better. It can be extra-depressing to see friends and even contextual heroes get depressed, you know. Don't let it go to your head, but your attitude is far-reaching, perhaps more far-reaching than you imagine. I would never ask for you to lighten things up in order to put some kind of Pollyannic lipstick on a pig, and so I'm not asking you to attempt that now. If my calculations are correct -- and my calculations are usually correct -- then there is somewhere around a 74% chance that you will blame my relative youth -- I'm only 44 years old -- for my heightened level of optimism regarding the near- and long-term future of the country.

The way I see it, there are at least 100 million people in this country who would not ever live under complete socialism, and another 100 million who -- with sufficient enlightenment -- who would also not ever live under complete socialism. This argument seems weak because no line is drawn in the sand: What constitutes "complete" socialism? A tax rate of 100%? But even though no explicit line is drawn that is true for all of these 200 million people, there are 200 million lines that are all in some general vicinity of each other. 200 million "break-points." Any would-be dictator will have to take this into account:

You might be able to get up to 100 million Americans on-board with the anti-life program of socialism, but there are twice as many Americans out there who you will not be able to bring on-board.

That means you'll only get full socialism here by overtly departing from the Constitution in a way that is visible to, and understood by, the general public. This is the Information Age. It is harder than ever to 'subserviate' a populace. I wouldn't want to be the Emperor Wannabe trying to pull something like that off!

Talk about a recipe for making yourself unpopular!

Ed

p.s., Keep in mind that various information reported -- status of various officials, number of people unemployed, number of people who are supposedly in the tank for socialism, etc. -- are likely being deliberately "adjusted" right now, and that the truth will eventually trickle out and then trickle down, with potentially-surprising results for many people. This means that there is more cause for optimism than a straightforward interpretation of media reporting would lead one into believing.

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 12/31, 4:05pm)

Post 7

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 6:45am

Just remind yourself that this guy earned a Nobel before he did anything, that a month after he took office a major publication (who I will not name because it implicates them in a conspiracy) ran a cover story saying "We are all socialists now", and that another major publication (again, I can't name them because it implicates them in something that, in retrospect, is really and truly dastardly) -- names him "Man of the Year" at the precise two times that he "needed" them to do that.

When you discover what I mean above by "needed" you will understand my optimism.

Ed

Post 8

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 7:55am

Ed:

44? Ok, I have to admit it; I'm probably just a crank.

No, seriously, no matter how far apart or close we are in age, when I was younger, I was more optimistic about our national trajectory, no doubt about it.

But then, I think that is not so much a function of my age as it is a function of the times, which with some irony, advance in lockstep. But one is causal, one is not.

You've read Peikoff's "The Ominous Parallels?" Written over thirty years ago, and it ends on a very optimistic note, I think: "Probably not in this America..."

For the reasons he is optimistic 30 years ago that "Probably not in this America..." is exactly why I'm less optimistic today.

We were out to dinner last night with some friends, and talked some politics. Fiscal Cliff, school shootings, local police corruption related to drug war. I was a little dismayed, especially at one guy I've known for 20 yrs. Not so much at the opinions, but in the attitude; as long as he had his job and home and could coach little league, he essentially has no interest at all in the direction the country is going.

This is a decent man. He -should- be able to live in a free nation and not be concerned with politics in the least. He just wants to enjoy his freedom, and live his life, and not have to be concerned about the machinations of activist state plumbers far over the horizon.

We all want that.

But this is exactly why the nation is ripe. Not nearly enough of the nation is paying attention to anything except the most glaring of the headlines. And by the time they do, those with an agenda anathema to freedom will have long been sunk in fangs deep. Just like in Germany.

There is a generally unfocused 'agitation' in the nation. Not all of my acquaintances are so complacent, even if they are currently doing well. Some of them are downright angry -- folks I would never have predicted would be angry. But by far, I think, most I would characterize as complacent.

But look at the reporting of the current boom times in DC. For sure, we are less likely to find a strong movement to change current trends there, where the plumbers of state are pulling those strings..ropes...chains to constructivistly build our future.

And so, a perfect storm. Complacency in too much of the nation, and a local free-for-all running downhill in the centers of tribal power. On average we're average human nature will guarantee the outcome.

A complacent nation is powerless to thwart the most radical agendas of its aggressively activist fringe.

And has been.

So cheer up an old crank, and bring me the news of that complacency fast waning.

regards,
Fred

Post 9

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 8:16am

Ed:

Given the current sorry state of the GOP, and no coherent third party, if Michelle Obama runs in 2016, this nation will have 8 years of Ivy league radical Barack and could easily have an additional 8 years of Princeton radical feminist Michelle Obama.

On January 21, 2017, they'd switch sides of the bed so she'd be closer to the phone. She's the answer to the 22nd Amendment.

The gushing media coverage would continue, unabated. The Hunger Games would be 8 years closer. Will our fawning Caeser Flickermans get in the way of such a coronation?

What is going to stop that in this America? Oprah's studio audience, frantic over the free sneakers?

This America doesn't believe that should be stopped. This America is praying to God that it happens.

regards,
Fred

Post 10

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 9:08am

Fred,

For those who may not be up to date on the 'sorry state of the GOP', here's official confirmation from the editors of the Washington Post ... couched in a disingenuous pose of even-handed analysis ...

... We understand that the two parties have starkly different understandings of the role government should play in U.S. society. They’ve been fighting to defend those visions, and they will continue to do so. That’s as it should be.

Meanwhile, interest groups on both sides create a toxic environment for politicians who understand that compromise also will be needed. Whether it’s the no-tax puritans on the right or the hands-off-entitlements zealots on the left, the groups thrive in an atmosphere of maximum confrontation. Over time they help elect politicians who share their purity of vision — who believe that compromise is a betrayal of the voters who sent them to Washington.

But for reasons substantive and political, compromise will be essential. As the population ages and health-care costs soar, two things need to happen if the nation is not to sink into debilitating debt: revenues have to rise, and spending — especially on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and military health care — has to be brought under control. And with the nation evenly divided between red and blue, a division expressed in the shared power in Congress, no solution that pleases the puritans has a chance of becoming law.

Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, wily Republican survivors, understand this reality perfectly well, even if not everyone in their caucuses does. They know that Congress will never fashion the small government of Republican dreams, one that lives on 18 percent of GDP, because in the end that is not the government Americans want. But they refuse to acknowledge forthrightly the responsibility to pay for the larger government of reality. ...

Get that? Wily Republican survivors.

The WaPo editors clearly intend this as high praise. And, sadly, that is precisely how Boehner & McConnell will receive it.

I share your waning optimism.

Ken

Post 11

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 9:45am

Liberal journalists love to make statements like this:

They [GOP establishment types] know that Congress will never fashion the small government of Republican dreams, one that lives on 18 percent of GDP, because in the end that is not the government Americans want.

It predigests ideas and then tries to put them into the readers minds. Here, when you untangle it, they are trying to convince the moderate Republicans in congress that they don't have to worry because a smaller government would not pass (and it gets branded as just a dream). The statement that it will not pass is kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy where they push the forecast of an outcome into the minds of those in the GOP establishment and it takes root and that allows it to happen.

And they lubricate the idea they want to insert by saying that the people don't really want a smaller government anyway - they take as the supporting argument, something that isn't really true and twist it into a suitable lie (a lie, because polls indicate that a majority still wants a smaller government). That is the intellectual lubrication. Ken pointed out the emotional lubrication - where they get to secretly revel in the description of themselves as "wily."

And then there is that sneaky part where they smuggle in the redefinition of "small" as 18% or less of the GDP!

This liberal Newspeak uses the style of forecasting the future as the Trojan Horse for the their beliefs - after all, they can't come right out and make demands, like, "You must not let those bad right wingers reduce government size to 18%. After all, Progress is continued motion on the path towards 100%!"

Maybe that is what they teach in Journalism School today. It works for any progressive viewpoint. I.e., "Some of the wiser heads in the GOP are seeing the current trend towards sensible gun control and are looking for ways to stop the party extremists from squandering what little political capital they have on something that has become unavoidable. Polls continue to show people in support of new legislation that will keep our children safe in schools. Looking ahead they can see that another school shooting before the 2014 elections would doom the party that stopped gun control."

Post 12

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 2:39pm

Fred,

So cheer up an old crank, and bring me the news of that complacency fast waning.

Hmpf! That's a tall order. I'll start with Mises' grand plan to make that complacency wane. It's on page 137 of PfF. It's from our world as it was in 1951 and is not entirely appropriate (as you shall soon see), but it will serve as my springboard for a much deeper and relevant discussion of the matter:

At least fifty per cent of the voters are women, most of them housewives or prospective housewives. To the common sense of these women a program of low prices will make a strong appeal. They will certainly cast their ballot for candidates who proclaim: Do away preemptorily with all policies and measures destined to enhance prices above the height of the unhampered market! Do away with all this dismal stuff of price supports, parity prices, tariffs and quotas, intergovernmental commodity control agreements and so on! Abstain from increasing the quantity of money in circulation and from credit expansion, from all illusory attempts to lower the rate of interest and from deficit spending! What we want is low prices.

In the end these judicious householders will even succeed in convincing their husbands.

In the Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and Frederick Engels asserted: "The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which capitalism batters down all Chinese walls." We may hope that these cheap prices will also batter down the highest of all Chinese walls, viz., those erected by the folly of bad economic policies.

To express such hopes is not merely wishful thinking.

Okay, so that's a starting point and -- admittedly -- it is not a good one. What can we do to improve it? Let's analyze it first. First of all, do prices matter? I'd say yes to that. If you ask someone from the Weimar Republic in the middle 1920s about what they thought of the prices, they would more than likely tell you that things were getting pretty tight for someone on a meager salary. I think a loaf of bread was priced at more than a million Deutsche marks (and possibly more than a billion!).

When you are shelling out that kind of money for something so simple and staple as a God-forsaken loaf of bread, I guarantee you, you will lose all complacency.

Okay, but will it have to get that bad here in the US -- before we turn this ship-of-state around? I don't think so. In fact, I think we'd become willing to throw out socialists just as soon as a loaf of bread started costing even a penny more than a mere $1000. Heck, we might even become ready and willing to impeach if it even gets any higher than $100! The question to ask is: How bad will things have gotten here, when socialist policies have increased the price of bread to beyond $100 a loaf (and the public calls for impeachment)?

Another cost to citizens is the price of energy. I think it was under GW Bush when the multi-year trend toward lower energy prices was reversed to a multi-year trend in the other direction (which may have been unprecendented in this country). When the energy price gets too high, I guarantee you, people will lose complacency.

:-)

Ed

Post 13

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 2:51pm

Steve,

And then there is that sneaky part where they smuggle in the redefinition of "small" as 18% or less of the GDP!

Indeed. In 1902, federal revenue was less than 3% of GDP and, here they are, claiming that even more than 6 times as much federal government as then ... would still not be "enough". What terrible reasoning on their part! This reminds me of the global warming alarmists, cherrypicking dates to support nothing other than their pre-validated subjective feelings about the subject matter.

Ed

Post 14

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 4:59pm

Okay, Fred, I think I've got just the thing to cheer you up. Here's how we beat statism once and for all. Okay, I've got to be honest, the first part sucks. Anyway, here goes ...

2013-2016
Do absolutely nothing, and watch the country as it is falling apart.

2016
Okay, now is our chance. Here's what we do. Run a "free markets" candidate for 'state plumber' under the following campaign slogan:

Bring back the 20-minute Big Mac!!!

Now, here's why this strategy is going to work for us. If you double-check how many minutes a McDonald's employee has to work in order to purchase a Big Mac, then you have utilized the variables -- real wages and purchasing power -- which statism invariably worsens whenever and whereever it is attempted. By the time that Obama and Co. are done with their misdeeds, or at least by 2016 (our opportunity to supplant them) it will cost a McDonald's employee over 45-minutes of work (and possibly over an hour's worth of work!) in order to purchase a Big Mac. By showing the American public this simple-to-understand rubric, we will be convincing them about how things are being made worse by Obama & Co.!

Alternatively, we could start a 10-million-man-march and call it the Occupy Washington Movement, chanting the slogan:

Bring back the nickel (5-cent) kilo-Watt-hour! Bring back the nickel kilo-Watt-hour! Bring back the nickel kilo-Watt-hour!

Okay, I admit it, that slogan doesn't exactly roll off of the tongue very well. But you have got to admit to yourself that it -- energy -- is the kind of a thing that is so pervasive in our lives that nearly every American voter would immediately know it is both important and also that it is going to hell in a hand-basket. By the time that Obama and Co. are done with their misdeeds, or at least by 2016 (our opportunity to supplant them), electricity will cost over 15 cents per kWh (and possibly over 20 cents per kWh!).

This stark contrast, the contrast of a statist vs. a free-marketeer, will be -- by 2016 -- enough to set things aright. The 2012 election was already supposedly about a stark contrast. Even Obama admitted that. That is good. That is very good. Contrast is good. You may prefer to use the term "gradient" -- but you know what I mean. We need discernment, and nothing provides discernment like a stark contrast. Two visions. We need to know the difference in the results of two different visions.

Ed

Further:

1) International wages and purchasing power -- in terms everyone can understand
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/04/28/number-of-the-week-using-big-macs-to-compare-wages/

2) Differences in energy prices -- in cents per kilo-Watt-hour (kWh)
http://assembly.state.ny.us/member_files/044/20070913/

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/01, 5:00pm)

Post 15

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - 10:08pm

And here's a blog showing that real wages (read: purchasing power per hour worked) in private industry are still only at 1967 levels.

http://illusionofprosperity.blogspot.com/2007/12/historical-real-hourly-wages.html

My guess is that statism -- something which has been increasing since at least 1967 -- is preventing us from exceeding a purchasing power (per hour worked) greater than we had back in 1967. A good economic benchmark in order to evaluate the "hands-offness" of a given administration would be if we got back up to the level of purchasing power available to us way back in 1973. Any administration that could get out of the way long enough for that to happen could be considered a good administration. Any administration that could not bring itself around to doing that could be considered a bad administration.

A good administration of US government would show the kind of restraint required for us to be able to work as few hours as we did in 1973, and still be able to buy at least as much of the same stuff as we could back then.

Ed

Post 16

Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - 8:08am

Ed:

That McDonald's graph just made me sad, because I have another one like it in my office:

How many hours I need to work before my wife will let me buy a Big Mac and eat it without scowling at me.

(note: this is pure hyperbole, marriage gallows humor. Plus, I am more of an Angry Whopper kind of guy, and the answer is about a 1000.)

regards,
Fred

Post 17

Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - 9:08am

Fred,

I can appreciate your specific dismay. It reminds me that I had an Australian gal as a life partner once (please disregard the contradiction). They have Veg-O-Mite burgers way down there, and they put cranberry on burgers, too. Heck, I wouldn't care if I had to work 196 minutes at Mickey-Dee's -- as is the case with the "marginal productivity of labor" in India -- in order to be able to purchase one of those burgers!

Here's a rough rubric, possibly valid as a voting guide for all time and in all places:

1) Good Administration of government ==> under 20 minutes of work required to earn enough to purchase a Big Mac

2) Poor Administration of government ==> 25 or more minutes of work required to earn enough to purchase a Big Mac

3) Really Bad Administration of government ==> 50 or more minutes of work required to earn enough to purchase a Big Mac

4) Really, Really Bad Administration of government ==> 100 or more minutes of work required to earn enough to purchase a Big Mac

5) Really, Really, Really Bad Administration of government ==> 200 or more minutes of work required to earn enough to purchase a Big Mac

Note: Effects of policies usually take 1-9 years before peaking. Therefore, the specific examination of policy changes that occured 1-9 years before economic measurements are taken is wise.

Ed

Post 18

Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - 9:49am