Reflections...

MMXI was another sad year of worldwide depression. The politicians have constantly lied their way into our wallets over and over and over again. By now I can confidently say there is no way back from this. We aren't standing on top of a cliff, we have already fallen off - now it's just the case of who has the best parachute. This is why this depression has hit people who are dependent on others hardest. Personally, as a student, I am still dependent on my parents. So I am an extra weight for their parachutes to carry. Most of my peers and people in my age groups are in the same exact situation. Food and commodity prices have gone up drastically in the past year, and parasticial entities like the Polish government have already promised their slaves more taxes and higher prices for 2012.
As is tradition for The Young Monarchist, tomorrow I will come out with a discussion of the expected situation in 2012, which I actually expect to change quite a bit. For now, as a rather downcast conclusion to 2011, all we can do is turn once more to the wisdom of those before us.

J.R.R. Tolkien's Gandalf gives us hope. People sometimes despair, but that is only because we have that safe Hobbit instinct inside of us.
'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'
We must do what we can and try to continue on hoping for some light in the tunnel, however dim or brief it might be at first.

Reaching for the Ring in Our Lives

J.R.R. Tolkien, the greatest anarchist author of the 20th Century, understood the nature of Evil in the realm of human conduct very well. I am, in fact, working on a series of essays describing Tolkien's take on Good and Evil. I have started more work in this area because clearly some of his conclusions are very obvious, and yet people do not understand them even after reading The Lord of the Rings (let alone any of his other great works). Professor Tolkien's masterpiece is not some analogy to the real world (World Wars, the Cold War, or whatever) as many Tolkien-fans would like to believe. The Lord of the Rings delves much deeper into the human psyche than just merely describing external events. Let's ask one simple question: Why does Frodo aim to destroy the Ring, if it is obvious that in the hands of Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond, Saruman, or even Denethor the Ring could be used to utterly defeat The Dark Lord Sauron? The answer is obvious: Because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Furthermore, multiple heroes (most notably Galadriel) tell Frodo that anyone willing to use the Ring is implicitly already corrupted by its power, and any use of the Ring will make an individual more corrupted. In the end, anyone who uses the Ring, whether for good or for ill, will become "The Dark Lord". And the One Ring is a symbol of violence and aggression as a means to achieving one's ends. Once any man accepts the maxim that 'the ends justify the means', he has already crossed that line, and can be said to be a slave of the Ring.
And so it is here on Earth. Any time we choose to use violence to fulfil our wants or needs, we have taken up the Ring. And every single time such an act occurs, we become more and more accustomed to it, until it becomes a necessity to use violence in order to achieve our ends. Institutions like the State are only illustrations of how much we are addicted to aggressive power as individuals in our society. People aren't able to use their own good will and ingenuity to get what they want. Slowly but surely, most 'citizens' become grovelling slaves at the feet of Evil. Why did the Orcs follow Sauron? It was for two reasons: they feared him, and they enjoyed what he could do for them (that is, pillage and steal the wealth of others). How is that any different from your average taxpayer or welfare recipient?!

The greatest role model in The Lord of the Rings is the quiet Ranger of Gondor, Faramir. It is through his lips that Tolkien says about the Ring, the symbol of power and violence: "I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory."
I wonder if any modern fan of the State, warfare, or taxation ever read this book...

Star Trek and the Real Future

I recently decided to watch the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture again. As a big fan of sci-fi and the future, I have always enjoyed Star Trek. What really amazes me about this show and many other modern sci-fi TV, is that in its portrayal of the future it totally ignores any potential change in the human mind and therefore in human conduct. What is even more amazing is that this was not actually true of the original Star Trek series. It aired in the 1960, a time of deep social strife when segregation of government-enforced racism were still the norm. And what we saw among the multi-racial crew of the original Starship Enterprise was the total absence of any racial discrimination. The message was clear: In the future such irrational discrmination will not exist. But with later series this character of Star Trek largely disappeared. We saw regular modern people using amazing futuristic technology, but they were still just our normal average Joes. They thought and behaved like we would think of behave in the modern world. In the movie Doctor McCoy makes references to spanking children - something I think will be universally recognized as a type of child abuse within the next few decades. Furthermore, it is easily inferred from the conclusion of the movie that human emotions are something that surpasses and improves on logic. There seems to be a fully accepted premise that the universe can be grasped better using some other sixth sense which has nothing to do with reason and empiricism. In face, Earth is saved by the very existence of human emotions, when the gigantic alien computer which was going to destroy Earth fuses with a human and evolves to become some higher being.
And this is, of course, another symptom of the age-old "fear of machines", which science fiction has been using as an apocalyptic vision scarcely less often than the "fear of alien invasion". Both of these scenarios are highly unrealistic and logically problematic. But let's look at the very nature of man versus machine. People seem to think that machines are some cold and evil things (because they have no emotions and no 'moral standards') which rely purely on mathematics and logic - i.e. a supercomputer is the perfect Benthamite utilitarian. This is not the case, however. Machines are actually made in our image. Human beings use logic and empiricism to get by in their everyday life. All other superstitions are 'emotions' are either reactions to logic and empiricism, or they are ways to explain something that logic cannot yet explain. Machines are kind of like children - they don't create strange explanations to problems they can't solve, they simply ignore those problems as unsolvable. Our computers are not some seperate sort of creation, their programming is based on observations about the real world and it reflects our own brain activity.

All discussions of futuristic scenarions in modern discourse and popular culture are woefully ignorant of the concept of Social Darwinism - the fact that our ideas and knowledge (and therefore conduct) continually evolve towards their best adaptation to our universe. The most powerful aspect of human evolution is the continual shift in our morality and code of conduct. As Herbert Spencer put it: "Evil perpetually tends to disappear." And why is that? Simply because, as common sense dictates and as Spencer rightly observed, "all evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions."

Jacques René Chirac - Today's International Political Scapegoat

Yesterday former President of France, Jacques Chirac, was convicted of using public money in order to hire his own cronies and aid in his electiona and re-election efforts. And as this news item came in, I immediately wanted to play the Devil's advocate. I want to defend Monsieur Chirac against these charges, but not by saying that he is not guilty of them - far from it, in fact! I agree that he did use public funds to gain votes and approval. I agree that he gave useless and needless jobs on the public payroll to his friends. But using such arguments to condemn a man in a statist society is pretty much a diluted straw-man. Every single person who has ever held political office is guilty of these charges. Saying that Mr. Chirac is guily of them is like saying that the presence of oxygen is what caused the Great Fire of London in 1666! I can also level additional charges at Jacques Chirac. He has never held a real job (he spent all of his adult life in politics or in the "civil service"). He was a leech on the public purse all his life! So how is this making him look better, you might ask? Well, let's just say these kinds of things can be said about most politicians.
George W. Bush hired Condoleezza Rice to be his Secretary of State, and before her, he favored Colin Powell. President Barack Obama hired Hillary Clinton. So we can see that, just like Chirac, American politicians also give their own "political partners" (this is a euphemism for "cronies") jobs all of the time. And these jobs are also perfectly useless to the ordinary tax-payer. When have I ever thanked Hillary Clinton for anything in my life? She is nothing but another useless leech. And all this is done with public money. One could argue that Mr. Chirac has been very modest in his evil-doing. His budget has always been much smaller than that of the US, and he has led France through a moderately good period of history, unlike Mssrs. Bush and Obama, who collapsed the world economy along with other of their "cronies" such as Geithner, Greenspan, Bernanke... the list is endless. And this applies to every state I know of in the history of the world!
Furthermore, Jacques Chirac cannot be charged with international terrorism, which we can easily charge Mssrs. Bush, Obama, or Sarkozy with. All of the men mentioned endorsed barbaric invasions of places like Iraq or Libya (Mr. Chirac did no such thing). Therefore I infer that Mr. Chirac, though just as guilty of being a leech on his own people as the aforementioned men, is at least not a genocidal maniac.

I must admit, Jacques Chirac was a bad man, but so is anyone who ever enters into or dabbles in democratic politics. In democratic politics the only way to gain and keep power is to exploit a number of the people and use those funds to pay off your own constituency. There is no other way. As the great sage Laozi said "a leader is best when people barely know he exists". So think about it, what leader do you know of less - Bush, Obama, Blair, Sarkozy, or maybe Chirac?

A Lesson in Basic Maths

The media has been in an uproar about David Cameron's move not to contribute any more British money to Euro bailouts and his dissatisfaction with new EU financial regulations. Mr. Cameron's stance is, of course, courageous and should be praised as much as a politician can be praised. Sadly, however, his veto will mean nothing in the long run. The Eurocrats have already declared that the new regulation will go into effect whether Britain wants it or not. The dictatorship from Brussels is out of hiding - they have gone public with their new Sovietesque ambitions. The British people do have a right to be offended by such actions on the part of the EU Commission. And the mainstream media has been harping on about this for the last couple days. But there is one item on this agenda which nobody has mentioned. Namely - the question of basic mathematics.
When the Eurozone is being bailed out, who is paying for it? The EU member states are paying. But where in the world are they getting this money from?! I was introduced to the concept of negative numbers back in first grade, and ever since then math has come in handy in my life on numerous occasions. So let's examine the financial situation of the EU member states. We can easily find on Wikipedia that every single European Union country in grossly indebted. This means that the overall balance sheet ends with a big "-" negative sign down on the bottom. And yet we are told these states will now pay into some Eurozone bailout fund! How in the world does that work?! A first grader can tell you that it is impossible to magically turn a negative sign into a positive sign! If that was allowed, the rules of mathematics would be null and void, and I should go find all my previous teachers and demand my record be changed so that I got a 100% correct score on every single math test I ever took in my life. Are our politicians really that badly educated? I guess public schools are to blame...

Not for the first time will I quote the following lines from Jefferson, for he said, and rightly so, that "the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence."

Good Job Dave!

I would like to take a second to congratulate Mr. David Cameron for not bowing down to our EU overlords. Mr. Sarkozy seemed a bit angry at the British PM, and whatever makes our modern day "Robespierre-wanna-be" angry makes me distinctly happy. The EU has gone far enough in increasing its blatantly dictatorial powers over the financial and fiscal policies of the member states as well as their respective banking sectors. So, one again, thumbs up Prime Minister!

I also want to explain why I haven't been posting or commenting as regualarly as I'd like. I am very busy at the moment with all kinda of university issues, and I have also been working on a much bigger and more ambitious project which I hope to announce soon.

Real props to Amnesty International this time! Arrest Bush!

At one time I was quite an active member of Amnesty International. I visited their London headquarters on numerous occasions to attend talks and work within the organization. For numerous reasons (which I will not go into), however, I am no longer an Amnesty contributor. Amnesty International is the most famous organization that champions "political and social human rights", whatever those are. I have great respect for them wherever they publicize incidents to do with abridging freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and I am fully behind any of their initiatives which condemn political leaders for war crimes, torture, and holding political prisoners. This is why I was very happy a few days ago when international headlines reported that Amnesty prompted certain African states to take action and arrest former US President George W. Bush while he is on a visit to those countries. George Bush is indeed a world famous war criminal (responsible for millions of innocent civilian deaths in the Middle-East, especially Afghanistan and Iraq) and arms trafficker (he authorizes the sale of arms to other states, such as Israel - which is responsible for countless atrocious attacks against civilians). Mr. Bush is also quite famous for allowing the use of torture against not only POW's, but also civilians who had been kidnapped in US-occupied territories in the Middle-East. These prisoners are kept in concentration camps such as the infamous Guantanamo Bay. All these actions suggest Bush hearkens back to an ancient tradition well practiced in the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, while using methods developed by virtuosos of evil such as Ivan the Terrible (who, by the way, shared Bush's vehement religious fanaticism and anointed himself 'God's chosen').
Mr. Bush certainly deserves to be tried for all his crimes against humanity, which are far more numerous and grandiose than anything Saddam Hussein, Osama bin-Laden, or the aforementioned Russian Tsar could have dreamed of. There is, of course, no chance of this ever happening. State officials the world over have full immunity from any action they take when in office. US Presidents are particularly invulnerable because they are protected by the largest and most aggressive military force this planet has ever seen.
In case this assessment of George Bush might seem a bit harsh to some people, especially Americans, I really would like to refer you to an expertly presented video by Stefan Molyneux – here – in which he presents the real toll of President Bush’s actions on the Iraqi people.

And I will finish with a telling quote from a man who although usually confused on his philosophy, can be a powerful orator and often have the right idea (and whose ideas I have praised on this blog before). Noam Chomsky said that "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
If this is true of anyone, it is true of George W. Bush.