A few times in the recent past, I, as a “Wise Latino”, have had to explain to my readership what is, and is not racism. (remember Correia’s one simple rule, and you’ll be fine!)

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/correias-simple-rules-for-understanding-racism/

After watching the news for the last few days though, I’ve come to the realization that I need to spread my wisdom further, as there seems to be some other misunderstanding about the definition of another word and how it is applied, and that word, my friends, is TERRORISM!

It seems that in the immediate aftermath of the US adopting the most screwed-up, phone book sized, piece of socialist crap that has ever been foisted upon the American public , for some odd reason many Americans are upset. Surely, this anger can’t be because we have fundamental philosophical differences with the idea of the government actually owning our lives, or the fact that most of us didn’t want this, or that we can do math and realize that it was designed to fail, or that it was only passed through bribery or extortion by a bunch of corrupt demagogues in the greatest orgy of stupidity in our history. Surely this isn’t a righteous anger. Nope. That can’t be it at all.

No. We’re just angry because Fox news has whipped us into a frenzy and all of us out here in flyover country are too dumb to grasp the wisdom of turning our healthcare over to the IRS.

In fact, it was recently pointed out by majority whip, James Clyburn, that such fiery rhetoric is actually terrorism. See, if you disagree with democrats, you are inciting people to anger, and that is terrorism. So, let me help you guys out here:

Disagreeing with democrats and being righteously pissed = TERRORISM

Disagreeing with republicans and being righteously pissed = NOT TERRORISM (in fact, this is your highest patriotic duty)

Terrorism is often easily confused. This is understandable. Especially if you are a racist hatemonger, like most of the red-staters clinging to their guns and religion that frequent my blog… For example, many of you may have incorrectly assumed that the dickhead major who shot up Fort Hood was a terrorist. That would be wrong. Janet Napolitano said so.

For example: Shooting a bunch of US soldiers in an act of premeditated murder designed to strike fear in the name of Allah in holy jihad and approved by Al Queda = NOT TERRORISM

Leaving the following actual message on Bart Stupak’s answering machine on the other hand; “Congressman Stupak, you baby-killing mother f—er. … I hope you bleed out your a–, get cancer and die, you mother f—er,” = OBVIOUS TERRORISM

(even though I think I got that same message in the comments of my HK Because You Suck, and We Hate You post)

This is a close correlation to my earlier explanation of what constitutes racism. When a conservative does anything, it is bad. When a liberal does anything, it is good. See, last week, before Stupak totally sold out like a flailing pansy, he was getting similar hate mail from people on the LEFT, who were angry that he was holding up Health Control by insisting that maybe we shouldn’t use the tax money of people who are opposed to abortion to fund the amendment providing all-you-can-eat fetus sandwiches to Rahm Emmanuel.

So when Stupak was getting angry calls from pro-abortion, pro-healthcare types = NOT TERRORISM

Spitting on Emmanuel Cleaver, D – Missouri = TERRORISM!!!

Shooting a bullet into Eric Cantor’s office R – Virginia = NOT TERRORISM!!!

Ironically the people who actually monitor this stuff for a living are saying that the threats aren’t really that much bigger than normal. But that isn’t going to change the narrative. Basically the dems have done something horrid, and they know it, and their leader is out there swaggering around like a rapper in a bad video going on about how awesome he is, daring us to try and repeal it, and generally being a dick and rubbing it in. The dems know that they’re going to get pummeled in November, and they really need to take the media spotlight off their awful law ASAP and back where it needs to be, i.e. pointing out how horrible, racist, and dangerous people like veterans and tea-partiers are.

The real lesson here is that people are righteously angry, and whenever you get enough folks angry, somebody is going to get a brick chucked through their window. I’m actually rather impressed by the amount of restraint being shown by my side. There’s usually more violence after a big football game. They are right to be concerned though. We’re tired of being pushed, and poked, and taxed, and bossed, and harassed, and audited, and controlled, and monitored, and pushed, and pushed, and pushed. It is kind of a given that eventually somebody is going to snap and push back. Apparently this is absolutely shocking…

But don’t worry, when it inevitably happens, that one crazy guy will be construed to represent the tens of millions of us who also don’t like being pushed, and that will give them an even better excuse to pass more laws so that they can push us even harder.

Gee whiz… What could possibly go wrong?

It is a little known fact that in addition to rocking people’s faces off as a music legend and being a general all-around ass-kicker, Ted Nugent has also collected a few PUFF bounties in his day and is an honorary member of Monster Hunter International.

After my last post, Nick responded with some new points, and once again, my readership has shown that they are damn smart people.  Britt posted the following.  I had to give this its own post, because he absolutely nailed the issue.  Nick in italics. Britt is regular.

Well, I don’t think there’s been a case like this ever brought to the Supreme Court; if they wind up agreeing with you and the AG’s then so be it. But historically, the Supreme Court has allowed a fairly broad interpretation of the commerce clause. Has it been overreaching at times? Probably, but that’s a decision for much smarter people than me to make; that’s why we have the Supreme Court.
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Wickard v. Filburn, where the USSC ruled that a farmer growing wheat for his own use was affecting interstate commerce because if he had not been growing wheat for his own use he’d be purchasing it. Court ruled that the FedGov could tell him what to do with his property because of this third degree affect on interstate commerce.

Now, here’s the thing: everything has an effect on everything else. If I sit through a green light and delay the passage of a truck, I am affecting interstate commerce. Does that mean sitting through green lights is something the federal government has the power to regulate?

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I’m not trying to be a smartass here; if there is some precedent restricting the meaning of “general welfare,” I’m unaware of it, but I’d be happy to concede the point if you can bring it to my attention. Otherwise it seems as though healthcare would most certainly fall under the definition of “general welfare.”

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Someone never read the Federalist Papers…..

http://federali.st/41#p21

Read that. Madison very clearly explains how this whole “enumerated powers” thing works.

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Who’s engaging in a Straw Man now? But to answer the question, the reason the commerce clause applies here is because the bill regulates insurance, which is, in fact, interstate commerce.

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Health insurance is not interstate commerce, because no insurance company is allowed to sell insurance across state lines. You’re just plain wrong here.
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The Democrats decided to push for their highest-profile, most difficult piece of legislation while they had the largest advantage. It’s pragmatic political maneuvering, not some insidious first step to total Marxism.

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Wait, so pursuing a course of action that would doom them to losing their majority is “pragmatic political maneuvering”?

No. You see Nick, the Democratic politicians are much more liberal then the country as a whole, and tend to be more liberal then most of their constituents. The Democrats owe their success to being seen as the cool party and the nice party. What’s cool about government controlling your life? What’s nice about being forced to buy something?

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Some people really seem to think that this bill means that America is now no better than the Soviet Union. They can believe whatever they want, but I think it’s unfortunate that for some individuals hysteria has taken the place of reasoned disagreement.
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That’s not a Straw Man, but it’s close. The way argument and reasoned disagreement works is that you disagree with the person you are speaking to, and you rebut their arguments. You don’t get to pick random blog comments or FB posts and use them as examples of Larry’s point of view or my own.

I know the default point of view for people our age is a collectivist one, wherein that one racist at a Tea Party is grounds for dismissing the whole 50,000 strong crowd. That doesn’t fly here. See how I’m quoting you? I’ve had lefty commenters tell me they couldn’t wait to throw people like me in camps, I’ve had them tell me I should be killed for owning guns. That doesn’t reflect on you, it reflects on them. You are an individual.
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But this idea that we have to stop ObamaCare or were gonna turn into a wholly socialist country is different.

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No. You have a problem here, an inability to realize that some people have a philosophical objection to government run medical care. Just as you have a philosophical attachment to it. This whole “liberal pretends to be pragmatist moderate” thing is really, really, really old. The idea that medical care is something people are entitled to, and that you can steal from some to give it to others is a radical philosophical position. You don’t get to just skip over the moral and ideological arguments for it. You are begging the question, assuming something you have not proved.

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As for whether Obama’s a “Marxist,” maybe he is. But I can’t imagine that Marx would have promoted a plan that forced people to buy something from a private entity. How can you say that this bill is “Marxist” and then simultaneously attack it for making citizens buy something from a private company? Those two seem pretty diametrically opposed to me.
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Marxism, distilled down to it’s basic principles, states that economic activity is best regulated and controlled by the state. The assumption Marx made is that wealth is not created by individuals, but by massive forces pushing on everyone, beyond anyone’s control. The Marxist view of the world is fundamentally a religious one, replacing God with History.

When liberals say “Society wants ____” they are using Marxist assumptions and phrasing. When liberals say “History is calling for ____”, it’s the same thing.

As for your belief that anything involving private companies cannot also involve Marx, well….it’s very very complicated. Marx died quite a long time ago, and his assumptions and basic vision are much more important, and have a much bigger impact then the nuts and bolts of his philosophy. The fact is though, the Dems realized the American people would not have stood for a direct gov medical system. This law will destroy the private insurance industry, it is designed to this. Then ten years from now the Dems will step forward and claim that the market has failed, much the same way a horse dies when you chop off three of its legs. 

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2109-Health-Care-Arbitrage-Obama-And-The-Dems.html

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And you don’t think that comparing the passage of a healthcare bill to all the myriad horrors of the Soviet Union “shows a fundamental inability of some people to grasp historical magnitudes”?

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Sigh….

This is America. It is a fundamentally different country then the USSR. Problem is what makes America different is that the government is supposed to not have power over us. They do now. The arbitrary power that comes with control over your health will allow them to force you into compliance with new regulations in the name of cost savings. See, when you were a child your parents made decisions for you, because they were supporting you. Once the government assumes power over healthcare they assume power over your whole life.

During the Brezhnev era of the USSR, the State got a lot smarter about its repression. They cut back on the camps and torture. Because the whole country was a prison. So if you were a dissident….you wouldn’t get your ration book in the mail that month. Or your medical quota would be curtailed. Or you’d be moved to a smaller apartment. You think that can’t happen here? You’re wrong.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/23/obamas-seced-manipulated-school-lists-to-favor-powerful/

Right now healthcare is rationed according to price in a mostly free market. That has its flaws, and no one denies that. Utopia means “no place”. Government healthcare leads to less health care, at a higher cost, and with a lower quality, and how good it is depends on bribing doctors and who you know. This happens in England, it happens in Japan, it happens everywhere there is government run healthcare.

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No, what we’ve got here is the biggest mandate of forced capitalism in American history. The government didn’t take over the private sector, they’re forcing people to patronize the private sector. That’s quite a bit different.

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You don’t know what capitalism is Nick. You’re using words you don’t know the meaning of. A free market economy is based on people choosing to conduct economic transactions. The biggest corporation in the world has no power other then run ads. They must get your consent to take your money. The government has no power other then to kill you, imprison you, or steal your wealth. Everything it does involves at least one of these acts, which when an individual does them are called murder, kidnapping, and robbery. The government is now going to force people, on pain of fines and imprisonment, and death if you dare to resist, to purchase things from businesses.

Businesses woo the girl, governments rape the girl. Now government is going to hold the girl down. The left often cries about monopolies and corporate power, but no monopoly ever existed without the government sponsoring it, and corporations have no power to coerce until the government backs them up.

It’s not Marxist, not really. It’s fascism, which is kind of like a bastard stepchild of Marxist socialism. Fruit of the poisoned tree.

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Final thoughts.

We’re pissed off because these entitlement programs don’t go away. We’re pissed off because once again the Democrats have come up with an pyramid scheme that is doomed to collapse, like Social Security and Medicare. You have no idea of how to fix it, you just ignore it and throw more straws on the camel’s back.

Nick, 30% of this country does not pay taxes. Why do they get to vote themselves the wealth of others? Why must the productive support the unproductive?

You have some reading to do Nick. You’re woefully ignorant, which isn’t your fault, because the American educational system exists to turn out socialist automatons, not to produce rational thinkers.

Go read the following

Locke’s Second Treatise of Government
The Declaration of Independence
The Constitution
The Federalist Papers
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek
Modern Times by Paul Johnson

You should then read Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg.

Nick is a regular poster in my comments. He’s a decent guy who means well, a college student who (like many college students) thinks he gets “the big picture” that most of us are too dumb to, and is always ready to point out the hypocrisy of me or my readers. 

He responded to my post about how we’re screwed by Health Control. Sadly, I think Nick’s comments are a good indicator of how a good portion of the American people have been completely snowed.

Well, this time he missed the boat entirely. So Nick, it’s nothing personal, but now I have to destroy you. 

Nick is in italics.

Nick, on March 22, 2010 at 8:33 pm Said: Edit Comment

When I left the house this morning I thought it was just another day, but I’d forgotten that the healthcare bill had passed. I called a guy who posted a classified ad about a shotgun; turns out he was an agent of the Obama Thought Police (established, of course, by a little-known line item in the healthcare bill) and had orders to haul me away to the reeducation camp. Luckily, I produced my ACLU membership and my copy of the Communist Manifesto, and assured him that not only do I hate Jesus and love Lenin, but I follow pregnant women around telling them to abort their babies. He let me off with a warning.

I’m just gonna let that paragraph sit there, so all of you can read it and grasp the idea that Nick thinks he’s both clever and funny.   What he’s done there is called a Straw Man Argument. From Wikipedia: “To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. “

Now when I do this in my blog, it is okay, because I bring the funny, and that’s why you guys pay me the Big Bucks.

Nick, on March 23, 2010 at 6:17 am Said: Edit Comment

Scott: What part of the Constitution, exactly, does this bill “shred”?  Thank goodness you’re smarter than 30 Attorney Generals! Even the Nebraska Attorney General who’s planning to file suit hasn’t said on what grounds the law should be declared unconstitutional. Let me help you. Utah’s Attorney General, who I’ve worked with and who is a very intelligent man is suing on the grounds that the commerce clause can’t be used to force people to purchase something they don’t want, and then fine or imprison them if they don’t comply.

 

Congress has the power to tax and spend (“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States”) didn’t see health care and general welfare ain’t it  and to regulate interstate commerce, and the necessary and proper clause gives them pretty broad powers to decide exactly what that entails.

Pretty broad as currently defined meaning anything on Earth or in space, that has or might have or could possibly exist in this plane of reality, ever.

By that reasoning, basically the government can do whatever they feel like and justify it as interstate commerce. If that is the case, why then do we even have a Constitution, if that one line about regulating interstate commerce justifies anything?

I really don’t understand the hysteria here.  Perhaps you aren’t as smart as you think you are then?

Nick, people a lot smarter than you are truly freaked out about this bill. I know you think you know everything, but we’ve been fighting this thing for over a year. It is the size of a phone book. Democrats legislators have been bribed and arm twisted into doing something unprecedented, even though it is political suicide. This bill is so very important to our president that they’ll do anything to get it through, even if it means losing their majorities.

Have you stopped to consider why? 

Conservatives didn’t like Clinton’s health care bill either, but generally speaking their arguments were based around spending and bureaucratic inefficiencies, This one makes the Clinton plan look like a well oiled machine  not around this widely spread notion that it was somehow the first step in creating “reeducation camps” Straw Man and a Socialist Thought Police Straw Man.

Why is it so different this time around?  Nick, you don’t know shit about history, do you? How old were you when we fought Clinton care? Five?

We defeated Clinton care, the same way America shot down government controlled health care proposals from LBJ, FDR, Wilson, and TR.  Maybe, just maybe, all the smart people that fought then understood something that you’re too dense to grasp now.  Government controlled healthcare is a disastrous evil.  And yes, I use the word evil. That is not hyperbole. It is capital E –ville.

Conservatives rightly called out liberals for making ridiculous comparisons between Bush and Hitler, but they seem to have no qualms about making comparisons between Stalin (a man who killed more people than Hitler) and Obama, based solely on the grounds that he’s supported a bill mandating universal insurance. ONLY? Like that’s the only socialist thing he’s done?  So taking over industry, business, banking, finance, and insurance doesn’t count?  Government control of over half of our business, and brutal regulation of the other half doesn’t count? Surrounding himself with actual card carrying communists and Maoists doesn’t count? Any of this ringing a bell?

I’ve put this challenge out there a bunch of times. Nobody has ever taken it yet. So here it goes again. If Obama is not a Marxist, can you name five things that he has supported or pushed that Karl Marx himself would not have approved of?

So, Bush and the Hitler comparisons fail because they were based on trying to make Abu Grab the same as the Holocaust, which just showed a fundamental inability of some people to grasp historical magnitudes.  Plus, Hitler was a socialist. (remember that National Socialist thing?) Socialist. Similar to Joseph Stalin’s communism or Barack Obama’s progressivism.  

I don’t think I’ve ever said Obama was the same as Stalin that I can recall. Stalin would make Obama look like a complete pansy on his best day. But hey, as far as total control over people’s lives goes, even Stalin had to start somewhere!

No. We must only think Obama’s a socialist because of health control. It is ONLY because of health control.  That’s got to be the only possible reason.

Seems kind of hypocritical It would only be hypocritical if I gave Bush a pass and only dissed Obama, but my dislike of Bush’s big government policies was clear.  Big Government = BAD. That’s not hypocritical. That’s common sense.   And what we’ve got here is the biggest government take over of the private sector in American history.

Nick, on March 23, 2010 at 7:48 am Said: Edit Comment

Wait, so I’m “promoting socialist bullshit” Yes. By denying that this plan is fundamental Marxism is to lend it credibility. because I don’t care for hyperbole but you sure love you some Straw Men! and I don’t think that the term “unconstitutional” If the shoe fits… should go the way of “judicial activism,” where it basically means “anything I don’t agree with”? How about anything John Adams disagrees with then? Or Jefferson? Or Franklin? I’m pretty certain where they would have fell, and I think they probably know more about the Constitution than you do, since they wrote it.  

The Constitution should be respected, and an accusation that lawmakers have violated that document is not something to throw around lightly anytime you dislike a piece of legislation.  Throw around lightly?  Nick, dude, the government is going to force every single American to purchase something, even if it against their will. It is the largest expansion of federal power in US history.

Lightly?

This is real life. This bill effects every single American at the level of their most basic fundamental needs. This bill effects every single business, every entrepreneur, every company, every man, woman, and child, and you have the audacity to lecture a bunch of people who’ve experienced far more than you have in your sheltered little life about how we’re overreacting… 

Grow the hell up, you petulant child.

There are legitimate arguments against the healthcare bill; consitutionality is not one of them

As pointed out above, bullshit.

http://www.dansrealm.com/Dans_Realm/Home/Entries/2010/3/19_Magic_Encounters_of_the_Hard_Kind.html

Dan Willis is a Utah fantasy author and all around good guy.  I sent him the first draft of The Grimnoir Chronicles: Hard Magic. Apparently it is as good as I keep telling you guys it is.  🙂

TGC:HM will be out from Baen in 2011.