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The mob is the mother of tyrants. – Diogenes

The mob comes before the tyrant, chooses the tyrant, empowers him, and elevates him usually in a tide of euphoric fervor. Examples of this in recent history, of course, are Mussolini and Hitler. The mob is collectively responsible for the rise of the beast but when the beast turns on the world, and the mob, the mob scatters into individuals willing to take no responsibility for the provocations of the monster they instigated and incited.

The lesson never seems to be learned and is repeated throughout history. The population is confronted with challenging economic times or a perceived threat to the national security. Instead of dealing with the challenge through thoughtful and democratic methods accompanied by cooperation and sacrifice, the population becomes a mob looking for scapegoats to blame the problems on and is distracted by an ambitious
and charismatic sociopath who seems to offer easier solutions or a “quick fix”. The population becomes a mob
stoking the ambitions and boldness of the one bent on a grab for dictatorial power. The results are always disaster, accompanied by much greater pain on the population and on innocents on the periphery than if the challenges had been confronted and dealt with in a cooperative and a democratic spirit.

Socialism failed because it couldn’t tell the economic truth; capitalism may fail because it couldn’t
tell the ecological truth. – Lester Brown

Socialism is a model for balance, each contributes according to his abilities, and takes according to his needs, at least in theory, but who determines the level of contribution, or the level of ability to contribute, and the appropriate degree of the taking? Are the contribution and the taking related? If they are, then the contribution is driven by individual incentive to obtain a larger taking, and if not, the lack of incentive affects the overall level of the output of the colony or community.

If not enough output is achieved because of a lack of motivation or incentive, the system cannot sustain itself though a socialist economic model. In a capitalist system, the individual is incentivized based on a believe that the greater the effort expended, the greater share of production will flow to the most motivated to produce. Such a system is plagued by an ever growing demand for inputs with a diminishing return of output, aggravated further by unsustainable damage done to the ecosystem, since the ever increasing demand for inputs cannot readily be compromised by diverting inputs for the purpose of preserving or improving the natural environment.

Inevitably the most successful grow wealthier still by starving the less successful and leaving them stranded in a degraded environment. Captitalism predictably amounts to a small group of wealthiest using everyone else and everything else up to sustain unsustainable growth longer than practicable, and socialism fails due to
lack of incentive of the greatest potential contributors as they focus resentment on those they believe are taking more than they are contributing, and emulating the perceived practices of contributing less and taking more.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are
evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have
free scope. – Niccolo Machiavelli

The authority to control other men is intoxicating, even when it is first exercised by a good man who has no malevolent agenda and is committed to doing good for those under his authority. The founding fathers of the United States, framers of the Constitution, knew this well and were also motivated by having recently and successfully fought a violent revolution against a monarch and his military forces. They were not about to trust any man to have much authority over them.

One indication they knew the risks of vesting too little authority in a newly created office of head of state, but yet were very reluctant to grant the executive any easy means to embark on a power grab on a pretext, was by the thoughtful way they designed the sworn oath required upon taking his office. The founders required the head of state to swear an oath not to protect the country, first and foremost, but to protect the Constitution.

Since the provisions of the Constitution narrowly and specifically described the authority of the executive and of the other branches of government, the checks and balances designed into it shield the citizenry from the effects of the intoxicating influences of authority, if each holder of elected office swore to protect the Constitution as a condition of taking and holding office. If elected officials attempted to assume extra constitutional authority on the pretext of a security crisis, as during an enemy invasion or in any other period of perceived upheaval, they would be acting in violation of their oath of office, and the Constitution made provisions for a process for their removal from office, in such circumstances.

Unfortunately, the framers designed no provision in our Constitution in anticipation of officials in other government branches failing to provide the built in checks and balances against an overly ambitious or deceitful executive intent on unconstitutional acquisition of further authority, or of an electorate unwilling in sufficient numbers to demand or to vote in a way that would hold the president accountable for undermining
the authority in the Constitution that the framers specifically reserved for the protection of the people from
the corrupting influences of power and authority of holders of high elected office.

Liberalism, above all, means emancipation – emancipation from one’s fears, his inadequacies, from
prejudice, from discrimination, from poverty. – Hubert H. Humphrey
It is easier to cite examples of the benefits of liberalism to the vast majority of society versus consequences in a political culture that does not enthusiastically embrace liberalism, than it is to attempt to explain the principles in more general terms.
In the United States, special interests dominated and funded by a small class of concentrated wealth have influenced many to vote against their own best interests, largely through demonizing the words “liberal” and “liberalism” and by funding “think tanks” and well funded lobbying and media campaigns designed to convince voters to object to a policy of tax progressivity.
Voters in European countries have long embraced liberalism and voted accordingly. In The U.S., the protections of the voting rights act were achieved as part of a “liberal” agenda. Voters since the 1960′s did not fear as they had before, that their right to vote would be impeded through poll taxes or literacy tests, or
as a result of outright intimidation. Compared, however, to the emancipating improvements European voters
have granted for themselves to eliminate uncertainty and emancipate themselves from the fear of sudden loss of income or wealth due to illness or medical expense, American voters have distanced themselves from liberalism in the area of a social safety net. An every man for himself, winner take all, conservativism creates an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty among the middle class in their everyday lives.

http://my.firedoglake.com/democratsramshield/2010/12/02/death-of-american-dream-60-million-no-sick-leave-132-million-no-dental-59-million-without-medical/

Death of American Dream, 60 Million No Sick Leave, 132 Million No Dental, 59 Million Without Medical…
….Did you know that 132 million Americans have no dental insurance, whereas everyone in the European Union has access by law to some kind of dental plan.
The statistic that is being widely reported in the European press is that we have 59 million medically uninsured in America.

“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.” — Aristotle

One of the best examples of a tyrant’s feigned devotion to religion can be observed in the early speeches of Adolf Hitler.:

When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited. -Adolph Hitler April 12, 1922

For any despot, the technique of persuading the masses that he is a Godly man who shares their faith and is thus, one of them, is indispensible to consolidating power and keeping control.

It is human nature for ordinary people to want to believe there is a higher meaning and purpose to their lives than that which they experience in their day to day existence. Tyrants throughout history took advantage of this human tendency and turned it back against the subjects they ruled in several ways. It is a great advantage to a dictator for those he oppresses to believe that an invisible and all knowing, supernatural being in the sky has the ability to monitor everything they think, feel, say, or do and to hold them accountable for anything observed that displeases him.

Going through the motions of professing to share such religious beliefs with the populace gains the dictator a supernatural partner in monitoring and holding the people accountable, a passive, yet effective advantage in tempering their reaction to his ongoing exploitation of them.

We see this technique extended today in our own politics. One party projects an exclusivity on belief in popular religious principles and dogma and gains the result of a loyal following of voters who are promised the party will work for enactment of laws that will criminalize behavior counter to the moral beliefs of the religious followers of the party. Even when the party controlled all three branches of the federal government for four years recently, the laws promised the religious supporters were never passed, for to do so would remove the basis of these supporters to continue their political support. Buoyed by excuses and renewed promises to enact the religious agenda into law, the religious supporters of the party can continue to be counted on to vote strictly along party lines.

The river flows in its course at X number of feet per second and the entirety of the cells of a man’s body are replaced in seven years time (Although, when it comes to brain cells, I have learned a contradictory premise…we grow no new ones, upon maturity).

So the river and the man, from one perspective, intersect in a unique space and time and only the idea or the memory of that experience can exist after that. The physical components of river and the man existed only for the moment they came into contact with each other. The spot near the riverbank where they intersected is constantly flowing, constantly changing as the river flows and the man ages and his cells renew.

This raises the questions of what is a river and what is a man. Is the river the channel carved by the water that flows through it, or is it the channel and the sum of the volume of all of the water that has ever coursed through it?

Is the man the sum of his experiences and emotions, inhabiting a physical process of dying cells constantly being replaced to give the appearance of an enduring physical being? Does what man experiences and what he possesses amount to his perception of them, rather than a more realistic rationale? In the old idiom of “George Washington’s Axe”, handed down through the generations, with the son replacing the worn out shaft, and the grandson replacing the axe head. Can an axe made up entirely of replaced parts then still be considered as George Washington’s?

I suspect that the lesson is that the only enduring things are ideas and memories passed through the generations, flavored by the spirit involved in determining which ones are worthy of the telling,

Are Obama and Congress Set To Screw American Counties, Homeowners and Give Wall Street Mortgage Banksters a Retroactive Immunity Bailout?
By: bmaz Friday November 12, 2010 7:40 pm

There are rapidly emerging signs the Obama Administration and Congress may be actively, quickly and covertly working furiously on a plan to retroactively legitimize and ratify the shoddy, fraudulent and non-conforming conduct by MERS on literally millions of mortgages.

From CNBC:

When Congress comes back into session next week, it may consider measures intended to bolster the legal status of a controversial bank owned electronic mortgage registration system that contains three out of every five mortgages in the country.

The system is known as MERS, the acronym for a private company called Mortgage Electronic Registry Systems. Set up by banks in the 1997, MERS is a system for tracking ownership of home loans as they move from mortgage originator through the financial pipeline to the trusts set up when mortgage securities are sold.

Just to make clear the implications of this craven action, the White House and Congress are conspiring to give a get out of jail free bailout card to the biggest banks and finance companies in the country to cover up and mask their illegal behavior and behavior that did not conform with state, county and local laws throughout the United States. On at least sixty (60%) percent of the existing mortgages in America.

There are dozens of implications to individuals and both private and public entities. At a root minimum, it will likely decimate, if not bankrupt, most counties in every state of the union….

This is in response to another injustice, but it is a description of our future response, if the population wakes up in time and organizes to stop the unaccountability and the ceaseless concentration of wealth with the full support of the most cooperative elected representatives the wealthiest can buy.:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/11/10/fiscal-commission-recommendations-va-co-pays-top-tax-rate-23/

RoyalOak November 10th, 2010 at 1:56 pm 47 Amazing that everyone in Washington DC is so very out of touch that they do not realize that most of America is walking on a razor’s edge right now. Coming out with these suggestions from the LetThemEatCakeChairmen on the same day Obama walks back pulling troops from Afghanistan in July just ain’t too smart. It could begin the tipping over the edge. If the government wants the public to riot, they should just keep this up.

patrickhenrypress November 10th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
In response to RoyalOak @ 47
Oh, but they do. That’s precisely what they want everyone to do. Riot.

That triggers emergency powers in the Patriot Act. That allows the President to commandeer every business in the nation. Every single one of them will then get their marching orders from Washington. The entire nation will be under a form of martial law never even envisioned by despots around the world. It essentially dissolves Congress and the courts. Recall the scene in Star Wars when they gave their power away to the chancellor? They’ll all cheer.

And then they get to lock “We the people” up as domestic terrorists whose actions denied some of them profits. There will be much celebration in Washington (and in Brussels)…

Adam503 November 10th, 2010 at 2:13 pm 54 Nobody riots.

Stay home strikes is a far better idea in with a militarized police force.

Nobody gets hurt, but nothing gets made.

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Prince William finally committed to Kate. Who cares? More circus to distract the commoners while their pockets are picked….