The Founding Fathers were Against Redistribution of Wealth

Via Bill Costello at The American Thinker: The ‘Your Money Is Not Yours’ Crowd

An excerpt:

Because your money is not yours, the government feels free to take it from you and redistribute it to others. President Obama expressed this belief when he said, “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

However, those in government did not always support redistribution of wealth. The Founding Fathers were against it.

Thomas Jefferson observed:

To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

And James Madison:

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.

And Samuel Adams:

The Utopian schemes of leveling, and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical, as those which vest all property in the Crown, are arbitrary, despotic, and in our government unconstitutional.

The Founders would have supported the popular bumper sticker that says, “Spread my work ethic, not my wealth.” They believed that “[t]he proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things,” according to The 5000 Year Leap, a publication of the National Center for Constitutional Studies.

Despite the intent of the Founders, those in government have been perpetuating the Ponzi scheme of transferring wealth from the productive class to everyone else. That the scheme is unsustainable is evidenced by the collapse of the modern European welfare state.

If Liberals Really Want to Improve the Political Debate, Here are Some Suggestions on Rhetoric that can be Toned Down

I have been too infuriated with the MF-ing media, the Left, the Democrat Party and Obama himself using the mass murder of people in Arizona to their political advantage to smear conservatives, that I have not been able to start writing anything on the subject without going off on an angry rant. Thankfully, Rush has been expressing on his show everything that has been going through my mind on the subject this past week. Here’s an example:

Commentators right and left — make that left and far left, actually — are telling us that toning down the political rhetoric will improve our national body politic. Let’s take that premise. If liberals really want to improve the political debate, I have some suggestions on rhetoric that can be toned down. I would first ask the media and President Obama and the Democrat Party, to tone down all this class envy rhetoric. I’d stop with all the lies about the evil rich getting richer on the backs of the poor and about the rich who pay most of the taxes in this country not paying their fair share. If I were the far left, I would stop all this talk that is pitting one economic group of people against another. I’d get rid of it. It is creating a climate of distrust and anger and resentment. I would also ask the left and the Democrats to tone down the anti-business rhetoric. Try to acknowledge for once we have the best environmental track record in the history of the world, that we have the highest living standard thanks to American innovators.

All of this talk about Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Plastic, Big Retail as being the enemies of the American people, stop it. What are you gonna do, require Target to change their brand name? How many Target stores are there with their logo and icon all over the store and their printed materials? You gonna take after them next? And along the same lines, those of you on the left, I would tone down all the anti-capitalist rhetoric. Acknowledge that free enterprise has brought more prosperity to the world than any other economic system. Tone down all the anti-doctor rhetoric. The president of the United States accuses American doctors of doing unnecessary surgeries for personal profit in the midst of the health care debate. And again, all the rhetoric against Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Oil, Big Plastic, Big Retail, big everything, Big Profit. It is the left that has an enemies list, and it is every high profile success story having to do with capitalism in America.

I would also say, those of you in the civil rights industry, how about toning down your rhetoric? What is it that gives you license to call everybody who disagrees with you on anything, from affirmative action to illegal immigration, racists? In fact, those of you on the left, you’ve gotta stop something else. Every time somebody disagrees with you, you call it hate speech. You gotta stop that. You’re creating a climate here that is unstable. You’re creating frustration and anger. Notice how the left gets a pass on all this, every time this entire topic comes up. The left, harmless little angels out there just trying to make sure all the bad guys don’t get away with it. What about Reverend Wright’s rhetoric? Obama said he could no more disown Reverend Wright for what he said than he could disown his own white grandmother. There’s some pure hate in Obama’s church that he heard for 20 years.

And then after you leftists start toning down your rhetoric, start toning down your policies that rob Americans of their freedom and their prosperity, if you do all of that, if you leftists take my advice, the political climate in this country will improve beyond measure, the happiness quotient will improve beyond measure, economic prosperity will once again become the order of the day. Happiness will spread far and wide throughout the country. But then that doesn’t help advance your agenda, does it? You need chaos. You need people feeling displaced and aimless. You need people feeling worried about the future so you can set yourselves up as the saviors and the solution. Yeah, it’s pretty offensive. Pretty offensive to listen to the architects of all that’s wrong with this country blame people who have literally nothing to do with anything they’re being accused of doing.

Offensive is an understatement. Sarah Palin was spot-on when she called it a “blood libel“.

Michelle Malkin is also spot-on to point out that we are being lectured on civility by people whose words and actions for the past decade have been the epitome of vitriolic hatred and incitement to violence and murder: The Progressive “Climate of Hate”: An Illustrated Primer, 2000-2010

The Tucson massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.

They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.

Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.

And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.

They want to play tu quo que in the middle of a national tragedy? They asked for it. They got it.

***

The progressive climate of hate: A comprehensive illustrated primer in 8 parts:

I. PALIN HATE
II. BUSH HATE
III. MISC. TEA PARTY/GOP/ANTI-TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE HATE
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists, & unions
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
VIII. HATE: CRIMES — the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection

Also see: Blame Righty: A Condensed History

LOST in a Dream of You

[I just went back to read my previous post I made when I had a dream similar to this one and I noticed that it is dated JAN 07, 2007. This new dream, that I just had, happened the morning of JAN 07, 2011. Weird symmetry... assuming that I wrote that post the day of the dream, which I believe that I did.]

The older I get, the more amazed I am regarding how the mind and subconscious work. Or at least how my mind and subconscious work.

All my life, I’ve always had pretty vivid and imaginative dreams, even when I was a child. I’ve had recurring nightmares and even recurring good dreams. I’ve had recurring themes in my dreams, such as tornadoes, being late to class, being lost trying to find a class or exam I need to take, flying or floating on air and even seeing whom I thought to be my “one true love”.

Lately, over the last couple months or so, I have been having dreams with the recurring theme of being back in college and either being late to class or not being able to find a class or exam. Recently, it changed slightly to where I actually had apparently found the class, but the subject matter was much more difficult than I had anticipated and I was worried. I’m guessing that this had a lot to do with my worries regarding my unemployment situation. The more that I had been fretting about my future, it was probably sending my subconscious into overdrive, leaving me with dreams galore.

But this past Friday morning, I had the most intense dream regarding my “one true love” that I can even remember having. It was so intense that when I awoke, I was still literally shedding tears of joy and happiness from what was occurring in the dream. Needless to say, I was more disappointed than I have ever been that my alarm had woken me from this dream and I had to get up and get ready for work.

Now, I’ve had dreams with a romantic theme before, including some regarding my first girlfriend. I was having them so frequently after our breakup, and they were still so vivid in my mind after waking up from them, that I decided to write them down into a poem. They ended up becoming my poem “Dreaming of You…” More recently, I had an intense emotional dream about a girl whom I just assumed was my “one true love”, but at the very least was a serious emotional, romantic interest. My vivid memory of that dream I turned in to my post “Only in My Dreams“. At the time, that had been my most intense emotional dream regarding my “one true love”. Until this past week…

Now, some of the dream I’m about to describe I think I can attribute to things that I had been thinking about during the week or earlier that day. For instance, in the beginning of the dream, I remember that I was in Hawai’i, apparently on vacation. This I think I can attribute to reading about my younger brother planning his R&R from his deployment in Hawai’i. Also in the dream, I had what I can only describe as a sort of “LOST” moment. Recall in the final season when everyone was in the “alternate” reality and meeting up with one another as “strangers”. They didn’t know each other, but at the same time, they would look at one another and think “do I know you from somewhere?” Then they would either touch each other in some way or a certain turn of phrase would ignite a flood of memories of their past lives together to rush through their mind and they would be overcome with emotion of recalling their relationship with this person. Well, that’s exactly what happened to me in this dream… and to say I was overcome with emotion is a major understatement…

So, the dream…

I remember being there with friends and we’re apparently discussing what we next plan to do while we are there in Hawai’i. I then look out the window of whatever building in which we find ourselves and look out to see smoldering dormant volcanoes. They are not about to erupt or anything, but are just beautiful and majestic in the distance. Someone mentions that there is going to be some tour of the area. I comment about how amazing and cool they look and someone suggests that we go check them out. I then say ‘Sure, why not, let’s do that! We didn’t have it planned for today, but let’s do it, it will probably be fun. Heck, I didn’t even plan to come here (Hawai’i) and look how great it’s turned out!’

At that moment, I notice the presence of a beautiful woman in the room with me. She seems to be off to the side of the room, which seems to be a lobby or open restaurant area where there are numerous tables where we people may sit without needing to order, but just relax and admire the view. She has a friendly, almost knowing smile and comments about our plans. She says something in a sort of playful, joking manner about how my plans turn out well.

I share a friendly smile with her and the next thing I know I am sitting down at a table to relax, where I am on the booth side and there seems to be chairs on the other side of the table. My suave friend comes in the room and starts hitting on the beautiful girl that has now sat down beside me at the table. She politely smiles back in response to his flirting advances, but then I chime in that “you know, man, she’s actually sitting down next to me, so you can probably stop your efforts, since it seems she’s more interested in me. heh” I say that only mostly as a polite flirt, but realize only in my dreams would a girl like this be interested in me.

But, at that moment, I turn to her and realize she has comfortably cozied up to my side and she seems so familiar. I look at her and I just get lost in her the beauty and comfort of her eyes and smile. It is here that I have my first “LOST” moment… I ask her if I know her from somewhere as she seems so familiar. It is then that she gives me this knowing smile as though she has recognized me all along, but has just been waiting for me to recognize her. It is that knowing smile that then triggers the first flood of memories. They hit me and are just overwhelming. I’m overcome with emotion and our faces are now close to one another, her soft, knowing, patient smile and eyes gazing at me. After this first emotional memory burst, she’s holding me and I tell her “I remember you… I just don’t remember us…”. I then look up into her eyes and I remember someone saying “You’re better off without your stuff…” And then it happens…

I have my full-on “LOST” moment. All the memories of ‘us’ flood into my mind, as if my life is flashing before my eyes. I see us together, doing things together, out on dates, out on a boat and the feelings and emotions and romance and love and bond just all flow into me at once and I am overcome.

The best way I can describe how I felt is by referencing the “‘LOST’ moment” that occurred between Sawyer and Juliet in the TV show “LOST”. I don’t know about anyone else, but they were my favorite couple on “LOST”. I got SO emotionally invested in their romance and relationship. Seeing them together was wonderful. Seeing Sawyer finally fall in love and trust someone and see how happy they made one another… it just got me. I was so invested in their relationship on the show that I cried when Sawyer lost Juliet down the drilling shaft when they were trying to set off the nuclear weapon. When he’s holding onto her for dear life, crying, straining, promising her that he won’t let go of her, Juliet crying out to him that he loves him, Sawyer telling her the same but saying he’s not letting her go and then… she’s pulled down the shaft… Juliet screams and cries on the way down and Sawyer’s face fills with anguish, grief and terror as he loses his ‘one true love’. I just completely lost it and am not ashamed to say that tears were streaming down my eyes during that scene.

The same thing happened when Sawyer finds her at the bottom of the shaft and she’s still alive. He holds her in his arms and they make plans to get coffee, but she’s dying and her last words to him are “It worked”.

Well, in the “alternate” reality, Juliet is a doctor in a hospital to which Sawyer goes (for a reason I can’t remember at the moment). I believe he crossed paths with Juliet in the hall and they exchanged a curious glance as if they both felt they had possibly known each other before, but then just keep walking by as they are both busy. But, as Sawyer is trying to get his candy from the machine, something happens and it won’t come out. If I remember the scene correctly, Juliet suggests that Sawyer unplug the machine and plug it back in and it will work. I think Juliet helps him find where the plug is and he is able to complete that process. And, sure enough, it works as she suggested. As Juliet gets his candy for him, she says “it worked” and hands him the candy. As Sawyer goes to take it from her, their hands touch and immediately they are both hit with the “‘LOST’ moment”, where they see scenes of their past romantic life together. Juliet comes to the realization before Sawyer and tells him “we should get coffee sometime” to try to trigger his memory of when they said that in their past life. And then they touch hands and all the memories flood back for both of them. They are both overcome with emotion. Here is the scene for better reference:

Oh man, just watching that again, I’m teary-eyed again. Now more than ever, since that is exactly what happened with me in my dream. All the memories flood back to me and I open my eyes and realize this girl next to me is my ‘one true love’. We both have tears in our eyes and embrace lovingly and then I give her the most passionate kiss I have ever given.

After the kiss, still embracing her, still with tears in our eyes, still overcome with emotion, I struggle to try to understand why this is happening, why we were ever apart and I then whisper the words “why did I ever leave you?” And it’s then that…

My alarm goes off.

Yeah. UGH.

As I said, when I woke up in my bed, I was still overcome with all this emotion, my eyes were teary and I’m dealing with this feeling that I have found my ‘one true love’ after all this time apart and can now be with her. But, after a few moments of being awake, I realize that none of it is real and it was all just a dream.

Again… UGH.

But my gosh, what an intense feeling. What an intense and emotional dream. And I’m an emotional person as it is, but this just hit me with a million times more force than usual.

And it was probably because I really hadn’t allowed myself to feel anything regarding romantic feelings or emotions for years now. I had given up on women, given up on dating, given up on ever having a chance to find my ‘one true love’ and get married, given up on ever finding happiness ever in my life… and just shut down that part of me inside.

Well, apparently, it was easier to do that when I was so stressed out from unemployment and my financial situation and I guess now that I have some of that stress partly relieved after getting back to work at a new job, it allowed that part of me that I had buried and suppressed for so long to come rushing out into my subconscious.

Who knows. All I know is that I did NOT want to wake from that dream. *sigh* …

Also interesting, is that I actually woke up about 20 minutes prior to this. I have my alarm set for 4:45am and I woke up out of the blue about 4:25am. I checked the alarm clock, saw I had about 20 more minutes to sleep and laid back down and fell asleep. It was during this time that I had the entire dream. Pretty amazing how that works.

One last thing is that I remember lyrics to a song towards the end of the dream. Two songs it seems, as I heard the melody of another song later. First, I heard what seemed to be an older woman singing these lyrics:

The touch, the feel,
The fabric of our lives

And then I can’t remember the other full lyric line, but it went something like…

(something here ending in -and)
And then Lucas touched my hand

The first lyrics are obviously from the Cotton commercial song, Fabric of Our Lives, so I thought maybe I just heard that coming from my alarm clock radio when it went off to wake me up. I don’t know for certain, because I can’t remember what was on the radio when I awoke. But the second set of lyrics were not from the song, as far as I know. And the melody that I heard later was, I think, the melody to Come on Eileen, the first part of the song before the lyrics even start.

Just odd. Well, I looked up the lyrics to Fabric of Our Lives:

They said it was only a dream
And dreaming was only for fools
But let me tell you the secret
Dreams are alive just like me and you
Dreams can be real if you let them

Oh the feel, The fabric of our lives, (This is the fabric of our lives)
the touch the feel of cotton
The fabric of my life
Da doo do

I was a small town girl, with big dreams
Big things were always on my mind
I knew if I believed whatever I wished would come in time.
I never had a doubt, but people doubted my possibilities
But the only one that’s in control of my future is me

My dreams are real ‘cuz I let them
The touch the feel, the fabric of our lives
The touch the feel of cotton, the fabric of my life

I’m here because of a dream
I’m here ‘cuz I believe
And I never gave up, and it’s inside of all of us
And dreams can be real if you let them

The touch the feel, the fabric of our lives
The touch, the feel of cotton, the fabric of my life
The touch the feel, the fabric of my life.
The touch the feel of cotton, the fabric of my life

Okay, well, reading those lyrics (and apparently there are different versions, like this one by Leona Lewis, with lyrics HERE), and putting them into context with my dream, it seems to fit the theme: “never give up, dreams can be real if you let them”.

Now, I’d like to think that, I really would. If I could be sure that if I opened myself up again to the possibility of dating again and getting into a relationship again and finding my ‘one true love’… wow… just wow.

But I just don’t know if I can do that again. I’ve opened myself up to nothing but heartache in the past and I never want to go through that again.

I just wish I knew whether or not I’ll only be seeing my ‘one true love’ in dreams for the rest of my life or if I’ll ever meet her in real life.

*SIGH*

I’ll end this with a recent song I heard in the previews for the movie “Country Strong”, as it summarizes the mood I seem to be in now: Give Into Me

(Hedlund)
I’m gonna wear you down
I’m gonna make you see
I’m gonna get to you
You’re gonna give into me

I’m gonna start a fire
You’re gonna feel the heat
I’m gonna burn for you
You’re gonna melt for me

(Hedlund & Meester)
Come on, come on
Into my arms
Come on, come on
Give into me

(Meester)
You’re gonna take my hand
Whisper the sweetest words
And if you’re ever sad
I’ll make you laugh
I’ll chase the hurt

(Hedlund & Meester)
My heart is set on you
I don’t want no one else
And if you don’t want me
I guess I’ll be all by myself

Come on, come on
Into my arms
Come on, come on
Give into me

(Meester)
I’ll use my eyes to draw you in
Until I’m under your skin
I’ll use my lips, I’ll use my arms
Come on, come on, come on
Give into me

(Hedlund & Meester)
Give into me
Give into me

My Suggestion for a True NCAA Football National Championship Playoff

So I was discussing this on Facebook tonight…

Way to go, TCU! I’m a Big Ten guy, but was rooting for TCU to win, because I hate the BS BCS & Bowl systems. There is no “national champ” without a playoff. And for the “Big Conferences” to be so condescendingly arrogant & asinine to reject a playoff, screw them. Until they setup a playoff, they have no “national champ”. Hopefully seeing a “little school” beat a “big school” will get us closer to ending this BS BCS.

I then got some feedback and went on to discuss a possible setup for a playoff system using the current Bowl system:

Thank you. But to add to that, along with a playoff system, you’ve got to have home field advantage, which I’ve been calling for for years. It truly is bs that all the northern colleges, to play in big bowl games, have to go down to the south to play southern schools. You know I think that weather is a huge factor, and attribute NFL teams like the Bears, Packers, Patriots, Giants, Jets, and Bills playoff success partially to teams from the south playing them up north in the snow and cold during winter. On top of that, all of the southern cities get huge boosts of monetary influx from coverage and people coming in and spending money. Why can the basketball and hockey programs figure out a huge playoff month with tons of tv viewership but the football program can’t?

———-

I was thinking about this while watching some of the games. I need to go look at how many Bowl games they play.

If we had 32 teams in a tournament, that would require 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 31 Bowl games. If we had 64 teams in a tournament, that would require 32 + 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 63 Bowl games.

I just checked and I believe they currently have a setup for 35 Bowl games. So things are already setup for 32-team tournament.

Now, I don’t know how many “power” conferences there are, but they could fill up the tournament the same way the NCAA Basketball does it: automatic bids by winning your conference and then at-large bids. If they wanted to, they could use the BSC standings to determine at-large bids.

The tournament would perfectly setup for 5 weekends. This year it would have been DEC 4, DEC 11, DEC 18, DEC 25 and JAN 1 for the Championship game.

I guess the only problem there is that teams would end up playing 5 extra games in addition to their regular season and Conference Championship games. Right now I think teams play 12 games + Conference Championship = 13. So 13 + 5 = 18 games total. But, that wouldn’t be much different from the NFL, which currently has 16 + 4 max (for any wild card that makes it to Super Bowl) = 20 games total.

I’m not too concerned about home field advantage, especially since the NCAA would never go for that setup, since that would completely change the Bowl System and $$$ going to those venues.

While it would be ideal to do that, I say just keep the current bowls how they are, but set them up for a tournament, instead of these matchups that no one cares about.

I’m gonna go see what my tournament would be based on Conference Champs and BCS standings…

———-

Yeah, I was going to say, 32 teams would be pretty much ideal, because most of those games would happen during the winter break, maybe with a week off for finals and recovery, so it ends on Jan 8-ish, which is still during the break. And again, I am concerned about home field advantage. If you’re going to do it tourney style, you can’t have poor teams with practically home field vs. good teams, throws out the whole point of being a better team during the regular season. Basketball can kind of get away with that being as they can play multiple games at one venue in a single day, really infeasible with football. Even then, their “neutral sites” rotate all the time, so MSU may end up playing at home every so often, instead of always being hosted at the Rose Bowl. I’m not so sure that the ncaa wouldn’t go for that. If they’re going to scrap the bowls and $$$ to those revenues anyway with a tourney, I see no reason to not go through all logical steps and make it a true tourney instead of a mock tourney. Do what’s right for the sport, reward good teams by pitting them against worse teams, and reward them with home field. I mean it’s not like those stadiums are suddenly not fit for a football game because of the weather.

I then came up with the following Playoff system. I used the Conference Champions to determine the top Seeds, Seeded them based on their BCS ranking, then took the next 21 teams based on their BCS ranking. If they did not have a BCS ranking, then I used the AP rankings. In the future, in order to account for this, we’ll simply have BCS rankings for 32 teams.

Okay, here is what I came up with based on Conference Champions, BCS standings and using AP standings for the final at-large bids I needed to fill 32 teams:

ACC — Va Tech (6)
Big 12 — Oklahoma (5)
Big East — UConn (9)
Big 10 — Ohio State (4)
Conference USA — UCF (8)
MAC — Miami (OH) (10)
Mountain West — TCU (3)
PAC 10 — Oregon (2)
SEC — Auburn (1)
Sun Belt — FIU (11)
WAC — Nevada (7)

SEEDINGS:

(1) Auburn
(2) Oregon
(3) TCU
(4) Ohio State
(5) Oklahoma
(6) VA Tech
(7) Nevada
(8) UCF
(9) UConn
(10) Miami (OH)
(11) FIU

(12) Stanford
(13) Wisconsin
(14) Arkansas
(15) Mich State
(16) Boise State
(17) LSU
(18) Missouri
(19) OK State
(20) Alabama
(21) Texas A&M
(22) Nebraska
(23) Utah
(24) South Carolina
(25) Miss State
(26) West VA
(27) Florida State
(28) Hawaii
(29) Northern Illinois
(30) Maryland
(31) Tulsa
(32) Navy

ROUND 1:

(1) Auburn vs (32) Navy
(2) Oregon vs (31) Tulsa
(3) TCU vs (30) Maryland
(4) Ohio State vs (29) Northern Illinois
(5) Oklahoma vs (28) Hawaii
(6) VA Tech vs (27) Florida State
(7) Nevada vs (26) West VA
(8) UCF vs (25) Miss State
(9) UConn vs (24) South Carolina
(10) Miami (OH) vs (23) Utah
(11) FIU vs (22) Nebraska
(12) Stanford vs (21) Texas A&M
(13) Wisconsin vs (20) Alabama
(14) Arkansas vs (19) OK State
(15) Michigan ST vs (18) Missouri
(16) Boise State vs (17) LSU

ROUND 2:

(1) Auburn vs (16) Boise ST
(2) Oregon vs (15) Michigan ST
(3) TCU vs (14) Arkansas
(4) Ohio ST vs (13) Wisconsin
(5) Oklahoma vs (12) Stanford
(6) VA Tech vs (11) FIU
(7) Nevada vs (10) Miami (OH)
(8) UCF vs (9) UConn

ROUND 3:

(1) Auburn vs (8) UCF
(2) Oregon vs (7) Nevada
(3) TCU vs (6) VA Tech
(4) Ohio ST vs (5) Oklahoma

SEMIFINALS:

(1) Auburn vs (4) Ohio ST
(2) Oregon vs (3) TCU

CHAMPIONSHIP GAME:

(1) Auburn vs (2) Oregon