Posted on 10/26/2011 10:08:23 AM PDT by Vintage Freeper
Sealed With A Kiss
"We have come to a time for choosing; we will preserve for our children this the last best hope for man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.....history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening." Ronald Reagan, 1964
Dark Ages or Renaissance? Can there be any clearer or easier choice? Determining how to avoid the one in order to embark on the other is bit more daunting. The concept of paradigm change gained its first firm foundation with Columbus. But the real villains of history have never stopped trying to put their own welfare ahead of everybody else's as per the famous quote commonly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."
Anyone who has read this far should have found the Reagan Wing Renaissance plan compelling, but just as no one can know the future, no one can know with certainty that this plan will work. While any individual might not precisely agree with every single aspect of the plan, every thinking individual should recognize how vital it is that this plan not only be implemented, but that if a renaissance is to truly become not just a reality, but also a lasting reality, most if not all of the plan must eventually succeed. Leaving any stone unturned could be likened to something akin to dereliction of duty.
Putting myself in Charles Koch's shoes, I would have to be asking myself how much of the Reagan Wing's campaigns am I going to be asked to fund and how can I legally give enough to each candidate to ensure their success? Before attempting to address the answers to these and other important questions, it is necessary to introduce some different topics to the discussion. There are at least four different additional factors that can catalyze or greatly increase the odds of success of bringing our renaissance to fruition. Mises and the other Austrians frequently touch on the topic of "more round about means of production." By way of illustration, presidential elections can be won with ten second soundbytes, "It's the economy, stupid," or "We stand for change." Changing the current fabric and structure of government in the United States and changing governments around the world to foster a renaissance is going to require considerably more than ten second soundbytes.
Using chronological order rather than hierarchy, we are going to begin with a discussion of how the Renaissance plan actually began. In contrast to what Mr. Koch is probably wondering at the moment, the odds are very high that I am going to be able to make a gift to Mr. Koch and that my gift will provide much, maybe most, of the means needed to finance our Reagan Wing candidates' campaigns. Please bear with me through some details about my life that seem completely irrelevant and worse, self-serving, but are important because they can be the means to your enlightenment, just as they were to my own.
I was born and for ten years lived within fifty miles of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The next twenty years were spent in Augusta, Ga, much of it within sight of the Augusta National Golf Course. Like a lot of kids in Augusta, my formative years were spent dreaming of a life as a PGA Tour star, but down deep in the depths of my soul, I knew that I simply did not have the talent, skills or devotion needed to be able to realize that dream. Acceptance into medical school with its virtual guarantee of financial success and community prestige ended my boyhood infatuation with golf. And the time constraints imposed by medical school took enough toll on my golfing skills that I completely gave up golf for the next twenty years.
Roughly a year before my 45th birthday, a stroke of financial good fortune made it possible for me to retire from the practice of medicine. Spending the money seemed a better alternative than risking losing it in a potential future medical liability suit. My father had retired to Hilton Head and on our first visit after my own retirement, my dad insisted that we play golf. Much to my surprise, my youthful skills were not completely gone, and I rediscovered how much fun golf can be. It wasn't exactly the same as riding a bike, but it was close enough. And the incredible success being enjoyed at the time by the senior tour quickly rekindled my boyhood dream. By the time I turned fifty, I could reliably shoot par on any golf course, but I simply was unable to consistently break par and never able to have the flashes of brilliance needed to shoot really low scores. What was true for the boy, still proved a challenge for the man.
On average, the IQ of a medical school graduate is above 135. Undaunted by my golf talent shortfall, I decided to see if I could use my native intellect and my medically acquired library research skills to close my scoring gap. The surprising result after five years was that I realized that all modern golf clubs have design features that interfere with the mechanisms of how the brain and body function together to make the golf swing. I realized that I had learned how to build a better golf club than had ever been possible to build before. Existing science indicated the odds were at least nine to one that my theory was correct. Better still, proving my theory could not be simpler; balls struck with my clubs would finish closer to the hole than balls struck by the same golfer using any other clubs. That was 1997; why is my discovery still unknown to anybody else?
After reviewing countless golf club patents and consulting with three different patent attorneys, I realized that the risks of trying to patent my designs before securing some other sustainable competitive advantage like brand name protection would be a mistake. Every major manufacturer eventually declined my overtures. After thirteen months of negotiation in November of 1998, Callaway Golf said it best, "Dr. Golfer, if your designs are not protectable by patents, we would be better off if you took it to someone else who would be obligated to pay your royalties while we would be free to use your designs without any obligation for compensation to you."
Sometime in 1999, my wife and I were on I37 outside San Antonio headed to Ft. Worth to visit our daughter and grand daughters. As was our custom, at eleven AM we switched the car radio to listen to Rush. He began talking about his newly discovered love affair with golf. EIG (Excellence in Golf) was born in my mind before he took his first commercial break at 11:17. Over the next three years, I got very close to achieving my goal with Rush on two separate occasions. Both ended very badly with my burning of my bridges to Rush. I managed to severely alienate first his brother David, followed the second time by his business manager, Kit Carson. Realizing that it would be necessary to overcome their animosities if I ever got close again, I recognized that only the very most powerful of arguments could give me any hope at all. It was when I began to think about what I would do with $150 million dollars of profit every year if I were Rush Limbaugh that the Reagan Wing of the Republican Party was born.
One definition of ingenuity is making the impossible, possible. Plato (427-347 BC) wasn't aware that man had been living in caves for a hundred thousand years before stating that necessity is the mother of invention. Two thousand years later, but only two centuries after Gutenberg invented the printing press, Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was among the first to note that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. In truth, Plato was only half right and it should now be evident that widely shared knowledge when coupled with necessity is the fertile female who can become the mother of invention and it is individual ingenuity that is the father.
The curious mind is quickly bored when idle. As the entire world's body of knowledge is being put online via the internet and the library of Amazon.com is delivered to your doorstep at a keystroke, more people are being introduced to Austrian economics. For the first time in human history, the right politics and the right economics can easily be conveyed to large numbers of people provided the right means can be used or the right medium can be provided. If there is a single characteristic that is considered uniquely American, it's American ingenuity, making the impossible, possible. As wrongly alleged by many, it wasn't the "melting pot" nor was it our isolation or rich endowment of natural resources that made America great. It was our freedom, the ultimate gift from a small group of men who understood. First the Declaration of Independence and then the Constitution of the United States. It is individual freedom that makes it possible and inspires every man to be all that they can be. Freedom born in the Declaration and the Constitution is the father of American ingenuity. And it is Austrian economics and Reagan Wing politics that are going to become the mother of America's Renaissance.
Thomas Edison, the father of GE, and George Bernard Shaw, a socialist, paraphrased virtually identical quotes:
"Five percent of people think. Ten percent of people think they think, and the other eighty-five percent of people would rather die than think". Thomas Edison
"Two percent of people think. Three percent of people think they think, and the other ninety-five percent of people would rather die than think." George Bernard Shaw
These two economic opposites reflect why ten second soundbytes can decide presidential elections. As is almost always the case, Ludwig von Mises provides considerably more insight with his thoughts addressing this subject:"Only very few men have the gift of thinking new and original ideas and of changing the traditional body of creeds and doctrines. Common man does not speculate about the great problems. With regard to them he relies upon other people's authority, he behaves as "every decent fellow must behave," he is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses to adopt traditional patterns or patterns adopted by other people because he is convinced that this procedure is best fitted to achieve his own welfare. And he is ready to change his ideology and consequently his mode of action whenever he becomes convinced that this would better serve his own interests." Herein lies the fertile female awaiting the spark of life.
Most conservatives are all keenly aware of George Soros. Several months ago, a friend who has been helping with this project suggested that we need our own George Soros and a cousin suggested that I watch the William Hurt movie, END GAME. Regardless of whether one prefers to believe in the invisible hand or the divine hand, these two pared recommendations form a marriage that surely must have been made in heaven. The isolated round table negotiation format outlined in END GAME with participants Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Charles Munger Jr, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and maybe a few appropriate others invited by Charles Koch provides the setting where Austrian economics and the politics of freedom can be introduced to people who still have traditional ties to capitalism, but some have inclinations toward socialism. Hayek and Mises appear to have independently concluded that the mixed economy inevitably ends in socialism. When the existing structure always ends in catastrophe, it is time to examine some alternatives. This alone should be enough to ensure a major breakthrough. Catastrophe or renaissance? As easy as this choice would seem to be, people have repeatedly and almost uniformly not made the correct choice. Understanding why people cannot ever seem to get off the path leading to booms and busts instead of finding the path that could lead to a stabile renaissance environment will be the topic of our round table END GAME discussions. By now, it should no longer come as a surprise to you Mr. Koch, that we think we have already found the roadmap that leads to this destination.
The Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the world are the modern equivalents to Paul Revere and Thomas Paine. Their tasks are going to be to alert and inform the households of our country. The question to answer is inform them of what? Remember our Edison, Shaw and Mises quotes? Those who would have us choose the primrose path understand that getting along is an easier task than getting it right. Our system of justice calls for seeking the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That admirable characteristic spills over into our scientific pursuits, but beyond science those who would have us be politically correct have gained the high ground.
Here is the political truth in a nutshell:
The pivotal election in American politics occurred in 1912. Three major changes to the Constitution resulted. The Federal Reserve was created and the 16th and 17th Amendments were passed. Ever since then, the US has become increasingly socialistic.
Political effectiveness requires the eventual defeat of politically correct. Virtually everything that Democrats believe is demonstrably and easily proven, wrong. The tiny minority parties at the extreme right focus on getting the one issue of primary importance to their party adopted into law in opposition to the position taken by Democrats. As the politics to the right of center moves toward the center, the people on the right are willing to compromise with Democrats on an ever increasing scale. Like our justice system, for the longest time and maybe like many other people on the right, I believed righting our ship of state required trying to get everything right. It was only when I recognized just how crude of a tool government actually is, that I realized that all that is needed to begin moving toward the renaissance is simply not getting everything wrong.
Almost every failed civilization in history was the direct result of Gresham's Law of Money. Thanks to the internet, I discovered a translation of The Frogs, written almost 2,500 years ago by Aristophanes. Here are a few of the vital lines:
Often has it crossed my fancy, that the city loves to deal
With the very best and noblest members of her commonweal, just as with our ancient coinage, and the newly-minted gold.
Yea for these, our sterling pieces, all of pure Athenian mould,
All of perfect die and metal, all the fairest of the fair,
All of workmanship unequalled, proved and valued everywhere
Both amongst our own Hellenes and Barbarians far away,
These we use not: but the worthles pinchbeck coins of yesterday,
Vilest die and basest metal, now we always use instead.
Even so, our sterling townsmen, nobly born and nobly bred,
Men of worth and rank and mettle, men of honourable fame,
Trained in every liberal science, choral dance and manly game,
These we treat with scorn and insult, but the strangers newliest come,
Worthless sons of worthless fathers, pinchbeck townsmen, yellowy scum,
Whom in earlier days the city hardly would have stooped to use
Even for her scapegoat victims, these for every task we choose.
The twin fatal flaws of civilization were introduced into the United States in that fateful 1912 election, Gresham's Law of Money and Gresham's Law of Politicians. It will always be downhill from here until these two fatal errors are corrected.
Making major changes to the law is peacefully and most easily achieved by changing the people who make the law. History tells us that Congressional incumbents win re-election more than ninety percent of the time. The Reagan Wing of the Republican Party is clearly the most effective strategy yet developed to completely change the composition of Congress. Once the Reagan Wing succeeds in changing the composition of Congress, what is to prevent would be professional politicians from regaining control of Congress? Our present scientific knowledge tells us that it is not possible to improve on gold as money. History tells us that money is too important to entrust to government. The oldest gold coins known to exist show evidence of debasement. Fractional reserve banking is equivalent to the alchemist's success, providing a fraudulent invention for credit (a money substitute) which could not be achieved for gold. Professional politicians and fractional reserve bankers are natural allies. It takes both to completely corrupt the monetary/credit system. Credibility and integrity are the character traits that form the foundation of banks and other financial institutions. The same mind that devised a theory of how to build a better golf club and developed a plan capable of completely changing the Congress of the United States has also devised a private digital gold currency (PDGC) that cannot be corrupted by any government because of Pareto's Law.
Paradigm change can be as simple as seeing something in a new light. But it can also result from learning enough history and enough facts that enable someone to see things from a completely different perspective. The kiss principle, "keep it simple stupid" applies. Dark Ages or Renaissance? Can the path forward be any clearer?
There is a purported corollary, Keep It Short and Sweet.
Three quotes from de Tocqueville complete the KISS:
for later
PDGC - I’d never heard of it before (at a quick glance, very interesting). I will devote some time to learn more. Thanks for the ping/post.
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