Monthly Archives: April 2014

The Pope preaches nonsense

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The pope tweeted this gem:

Inequality is the root of social evil.

I guess he hired Barack Obama’s speech writer.  The great thing about Twitter, is that there is no room to elaborate on what you’re trying to say.  Since any believer would have to admit that God didn’t create a bunch of clones who are all equal in ability, I’ll infer that “his Holiness” (as Catholics and politicians refer to him) means economic inequality.  I guess Jorge thinks governments (or maybe the Church?) should decide how much wealth everyone gets and divide everything equally.  Hasn’t that been tried before?

Apparently he had an earlier take on so called “Capitalism” that went like this:

“there was the promise that once the glass had become full it would overflow and the poor would benefit. But what happens is that when it’s full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing ever comes out for the poor.”

Now people throw around the word “Capitalism” to mean different things.  Perhaps Jorge meant the economic fascism we enjoy here in 21st century United States of America.  I have plenty of issues with it myself, although I’m not overly concerned with inequality per se.

But let’s set that aside for a minute and just think about what he’s saying.  Does he really believe the poor have not benefited from Capitalism?  Does he think the poor were better off before all of the technological advances created by Western Civilization over the past 500 years?  Were people better off when half of them died as children and the other half were lucky to make it to 50?  Are the poor people in countries that have had bigger government and less economic freedom enjoying a better quality of life than poor Americans?  Poor Brits?  Poor Germans?

Catholicism tends to do much better these days in dirt poor, third world, backwater countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.  It’s dying in Europe, the world’s richest continent.  Perhaps the pope just wants everybody to be equally miserable so they’ll turn back to the Church.  Or maybe I’m too cynical and he’s just plain dumb when it comes to basic economics.  After all he is claiming that the “glass magically grows.”

Full disclosure, I am not now, nor have I ever been a Catholic.  Still, I can’t find the part of the Bible where Jesus named a Pope and told everyone to listen to everything he says as if it was God himself talking.  Maybe it’s in there somewhere.  I haven’t read it cover to cover.

Nevada Bundy Ranch vs. Occupy Wall Street

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The State managed to arrest close to 8000 Occupy Wall Street protesters when they finally decided to crack down on them for sleeping in “public” parks.  Needless to say these mostly well meaning people realized none of their goals.  The Banksters are still firmly in charge of their beloved government despite their misguided efforts.  I doubt anyone involved in the OWS movement would suggest otherwise.

Clive Bundy had about 1000 supporters protesting the State’s seizure of his cattle.  The State backed down in his case.  They gave him back his cattle and left him alone (for now anyway).

What’s one important difference between OWS and the Clive Bundy supporters?  Bundy’s supporters were armed.

I admit that’s not the only reason Bundy appears to have been successful in his standoff with the Feds while OWS accomplished almost nothing.  If 1000 armed men had stormed into downtown Manhattan and demanded that Goldman Sachs give back all the money they’ve stolen from the American people, I’m sure a good number of them would have been gunned down on the spot.  So it’s not as if the OWS people could have just all carried guns and had things work out for them.  The fact that the Bundy clan was trying to protect their own property rather than just squat in “public” parks in densely populated cities is a key factor here.

Still, imagine if a few thousand hippies camped out in the desert to hand out copies of the Communist Manifesto and rail against Capitalism.  And imagine this land had been a known hippy campground for generations. And imagine it was land the US government decided to claim as their own and wanted to collect fees for its use, or protect some turtles that lived there, or build a Chinese wind farm.  Do you think they would think twice about just rounding up those hippies and hauling them off to jail if they were interfering with whatever the Obama administration had determined was the land’s best use?

Obviously a shootout between the Feds and the armed Bundy supporters would have been a slaughter.  The regime in Washington has way more fire power.  But what many critics of the US government on the Left fail to understand, is that the public relations debacle that would occur if the Bureau of Land Management murdered a bunch of gun toting right wingers trying to protect their property would be so great, that the mere presence of an armed citizenry can be a bulwark against tyranny.  Obama doesn’t want another Waco in the internet age.

It’s ironic that most in the OWS movement probably would advocate the complete abolition of private gun ownership when it should be obvious that a completely disarmed citizenry would render any significant protest movement impotent.  They need to understand that the State only understands the threat of force.  It’s what their entire existence is based on.