Where's the nation going? Why are we in this handbasket?

The Supreme Court has been handing down some interesting decisions lately. One decision came down yesterday that was a 7-2 vote that made it impossible to sue a police department for not enforcing a restraining order. What I heard on the radio yesterday was that during the hearing a Supreme Court justice directly asked the legal council for the police department what an officer’s duty was if they saw a man being beat up by five other men. The response was a bone chilling nothing. That's right, police duties have been reduced to protect their jobs and serve them more donuts. The blue canaries really are not there to protect anyone or to enforce the laws, not unless they feel like it.
The court has been accused of being too conservative or too liberal; I am going to accuse them of something else, being far too pro-government. The Constitution is no longer regarded as a limit on government and instead the legal system is being used to shackle the American people. Government can now do pretty well what it wants to. These non-elected, non-representative officials have tilted the balance of power squarely into the hands of the government. I feel like Obi-Wan yelling at Darth Vader: "You were supposed to bring balance to the Constitution. You were supposed to defeat the nannyists, not become one!!!"
I will offer one piece of advice to the courts and the government in general. Not that I expect any of them to listen. Consider what you are taking away from the American people, because in addition to the rights you are taking away you are also taking away hope. When the people believe they have no hope left they will hand down a decision of their own: secession.

Got Freedom?

Rush Limbaugh has a saying: "Freedom has worked every time it has been tried." Of course he likes to trot that saying out in defense of our efforts in Iraq, but what about here, at home? If you equate freedom with the maximum absence of government then our freedom is in a hurting state of affairs right now. As Limbaugh himself has stated that our federal budget only grows. What politicians call cuts are only cuts in projected growth rates, not actual cuts into any department’s budget. Now we have the Supreme Court deciding that the commerce clause of the Constitution can be projected to include federal prosecution of marijuana users who grow their own plants and never cross state lines. The interstate commerce clause had already been bent out of recognition, now it is totally broken. We have a sitting President who has made his administrations policy one of pre-emptive warfare. If anyone cares about national sovereignty it should be the US, yet our policy is now to INITIATE hostilities towards other sovereign nations. I agree that freedom needs to find its way into every corner of this world but modern nations need to establish means that agree with the intended ends. How do you say we want you to enjoy freedom so we are going to attack your country? There we have it, the trifecta. Our congress is ignoring the constitution, our judicial is breaking the constitution to meet their needs, and the executive branch is invading other countries. You can try to rationalize any of these actions however you would like but you cannot dismiss the underlying truth that the government is ignoring the ground rules this nation was founded on. For the record, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in essence an agreement between the government of this country and the people. It establishes the rights of the people and the limits of the government, not the other way around. The ground rules established by these two documents only protect the people if the people enforce the rules. Americans have taken the path of least resistance and allowed their freedoms to slip away from them. The fight to regain those freedoms will be difficult and needs to start soon before the Great Experiment becomes a footnote in the history books of the socialist future.

Triumph for the weird.

I know everyone and their dog will be chiming in on the Michael Jackson verdict today. However, that will not stop me from throwing in my two cents worth. The way I see it the verdict was a triumph for the weird. People can still stand there and talk all they want to about how an older man shouldn't have young boys in his bed but that is simply a moral judgment and what we saw yesterday was justice. Society has had a hard time distinguishing between the two lately. Too many moral crusaders have used the power of concentrated interests to put into place laws based on morality not justice. After this verdict I don't have a doubt that there will be ugly bills drafted all across our beautiful nation that will specifically say that what Michael Jackson did is a criminal act, not that Jackson would be caught dead living in most of those places. For that matter, I would be surprised if he stuck around the US at all. Given the toll this trial took on his health I can't say that he should feel all that welcome here when his own government tried to take him to task on charges that could not stand up to a trial by his peers. Ten counts, that is how many laws the prosecutor felt he could convict Jackson of violating. Not a meager amount of work involved there. He must have felt he really had the law on his side, didn't he? Or did he simply jump into the arrest and trial of a man he knew he would have a hard time convicting simply because he as an individual felt outrage over Jackson's moral indiscretions? My vote is for the latter. In my opinion, the prosecutor needs to have his decision reviewed by his peers on the bar and if they feel he did not press the charges with the intent of getting an actual conviction, then he needs to be disbarred. This is all assuming that the legal community has the courage required to police their own. We have enough moral crusaders writing the laws, we don't need more of them enforcing the law. The jury found Jackson innocent on all counts, but the peanut gallery of moral crusaders never will because they have, and will continue to confuse morality with justice.

By the people, for the people, where?

Being a child of the seventies I have never known a nation not belittled by the childish antics of modern politics. Men and women who are elected by a system that seems like but somehow is not democratic or even representative. I know there are people out there that say that if you vote that your vote counts and that the representative elected are your representatives. Why do I not buy that? Oh yeah, because the power brokers in the two main parties do their level best to quash any third party candidate. They have the market pretty well cornered on fundraising because who ever heard of a serious third party candidate. Since they are our elected representatives they get to write laws about how the elections are held, who can contribute to whom and who gets to be included in the debates. The media in this country also plays a part in this two party monopoly of power. Who is going to vote for a person who you have never heard of? How do you hear about people? From the media. I have hope however. With the advent of the World Wide Web and the blogosphere the word is getting out that there are viable alternatives to the status quo in Washington. I was raised by my mother who is in the Democrat camp in just about every area except gun control. Then I went off to college and learned something about economics. I was converted to conservatism, but not entirely. I backed Perot the two times he ran. When 2000 came around I had just graduated from the Colorado School of Mines, and with the limited number of choices available to a conservative in that election I voted for W. I had not discovered the Libertarian movement at that time and was hell bent on not voting for a Democrat who was set on prying into my wallet after I finally had some money in it. To my great surprise however, I had not voted for a fiscal conservative, just a social conservative, I had screwed myself in the worst possible way. W has no problems with a “be thy brothers keeper” state of affairs. He has allowed the Democrats to continue their spending spree on social engineering programs that in reality only benefit the government employees who administer the programs. Then 9-11 happened. The politicians went into full "we have to do something!" mode. Viola! The Patriot Act was born and that on top of years of deterioration of our civil liberties pretty well sealed the deal. Now you are saying, "You're writing this blog right now so you still have all of your civil liberties, what are you complaining about?" I'm complaining that the paving is being laid for the superhighway to Hell. Do you think the Germans still thought they were in good shape after Hitler got a firearms registration passed. Some of them may have been nervous but it wasn't until the government started using those registration rolls to start gathering firearms that people started to realize they weren't in control anymore. Thomas Jefferson said that "the price for liberty is constant vigilance." Without exaggerating, this literally is a mandate for paranoia when it comes to everything our government does. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are just a listing of the base rules our government is supposed to follow. These two documents do not protect our civil liberties they merely define them. Defending our civil liberties falls squarely on the shoulders of those who would not live without them. H.G. Wells once said that "History is a race between education and catastrophe." I wonder if he understood how deeply true that quote is. Most people today just equate education with reading, writing, arithmetic, and science. I would say that the race more specifically applies to civil education. Without a thorough understanding of the civil liberties our founders meant for us to have, we have no idea what we have lost. We have no appreciation for how important it is to stop the government from encroaching on the liberties that make the people free and make the country great. People need to be taught a fundamental truth. Our country was founded with the idea that each person is endowed with certain inalienable rights. Inalienable means cannot be taken or SURRENDERED. The concept of living in a free country must include the idea that you have to be free to do anything that does not infringe on the rights of another citizen. Another basic tenet of living in a free country if that the economic system must be based on voluntary interactions between buyers and sellers. We currently live in a country where inalienable rights might be confused with alien rights and being an alien anything will get you arrested. The economy is hardly voluntary with all of the government controls there for your "safety".

Communism = Evil

Why is communism evil? Evil, isn't that a bit harsh? Not at all, communism is in fact anti-freedom. It is not as people would have you believe, a way to control corporate greed, it is the complete lack of freedom. The basis for this is the fact that communism allows for NO personal property rights. If you don't have the right to your property or the product of your labors, what rights do you have. You can count them on one hand without using any fingers. That's right, zip, zero, nada. To use an extreme example, in the pre-Civil War south whites owned black slaves. While not all slave were treated well, they were still property and the slave owners had a stake in taking care of them because they were property. Contrast that slavery to the institutional slavery represented by communism. In that system you aren't even property you are merely a resource at the governments disposal. Take a resource like wood. You can build a house out of wood for shelter or you can burn the wood for heat. Either use of the resource gains benefits for you. As a resource to the government, you could be valued for your use as a doctor maintaining the health of other people or you could be worked to death in a mine. Both gain benefits to the government. Being a resource isn’t a nice prospect. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. That is the essence of the Communist Manifesto. It completely ignored the most basic human nature. If you don’t have to work for something but still get it, you don't work. Even better, if you can force someone to make something for you, you will do it. Needs easily become wants. Citizens who cry out the loudest gain the most value from that system and the most able people are worked to death. There is no incentive to be a good worker. People who advocate communism, socialism, or fascism are pushing the outright destruction of the most basic right you have, the right to the product of your labor.

What about now?

We need a new "religion". One that stresses the here and now. One that proclaims the greatness of mans ability and mans potential. The religion that is dominant today is one that encourages obedience, humility, and a focus on the hereafter. They claim that faith is required. I don't want faith in an unknown. I don't want to focus on the hereafter. I want people to be true to themselves. I want people to understand that faith in your abilities will be rewarded in this lifetime and that your personal integrity is the true currency in life. Be amazed at the world around you not because you cannot understand why it exists but because you can appreciate it and strive to understand its unlimited complexity. I want followers who rejoice in mans ability to create a flowing river of knowledge that does not yield to stubborn thinkers but carves its way down through ignorance to the shining sea of the truth. The journey is not quick and it is not easy but it is inevitable. The truth is powerful not because it is obvious but because it is unmovable. You can see many layers of dirt on top of the truth and the shape the dirt takes may resemble the truth. People may pronounce that the image they see is the truth but when someone else wipes away some of the dirt to reveal the truth no one can honestly look at the truth and deny it. You may ask how will we know when we have seen the real truth and the answer is that after numerous other people have tried to dig further and found only the unmovable face of the truth will it be know to all. I want a "religion" that understands not only the potential of mankind but also the necessary journey that each person must take to realize their own potential. People must be free to follow their own path. Freedom requires obedience to freedom. You cannot talk about freedom with boundaries other than where another’s freedom begins. The state is not an individual and cannot be given freedom. The state cannot stand in for an individual and take freedom. The state can only recognize that each person is free and protect that freedom when it is violated by others. This is the only way people can live with freedom. There is only one economy that is compatible with freedom and that is capitalism. Only when people are free to deal with whom ever they feel like are they free. Any alteration to a market is an alteration to who you can deal with or what can be exchanged.

To Protect and Serve? Protect who?

I hate the American pre-occupation with the idea that police keep you safe. It's called the justice system because it provides justice not safety. What's the difference you ask. If someone commits a violent crime and is tried and punished, that is justice. If someone is doing something that you don't approve of and you have the police arrest that person in the name of public safety, that is tyranny. Police are a based on a quaint notion that you can put some citizens in government uniforms and supposedly give them powers that normal citizens don't have. The idea that this is a government by the people, of the people and for the people implies that it operates through the consent of the governed. You cannot give through consent a power you do not have. You cannot preemptively stop a crime from happening. If you saw a crime about to happen and ran and tackled the guy it would be you being charged with assault. So why should we think that the police would be enabled with a power normal citizens do not possess? Police ony ''protect" the populace by apprehending criminals, which by definition means they must have already committed a crime. Why does it take a police force to do this? Couldn't this function of the justice system be handled by private detectives and bounty hunters working towards collecting a fee. Why is it more fair to have a civil servant perform the task of a glorified go-fer? The common task performed by today’s police is mainly social control tasks based on moralistic laws not actual justice. Is breaking the speed limit really a crime? What about smoking a joint and then eating 4 Twinkies. Yes, that must be a crime against say, good taste? No, these are not actions that violate another citizens rights and are not crimes. The state should not be given the assumptive power to claim a violation against the public good. The public is a straw man that is comprised of individuals. Only individuals have rights. Certainly, post suggested speeds for roads and if someone is driving in a reckless manner and causes an accident, THEN you can hit them with a book as thick as you can get it. That's the line in the sand. Once they have committed an actual crime by violating a citizens rights the justice system needs to be there and fully enabled to deal with societies undesirables. But please, let’s do away with the notion that police can actually protect society from the very individuals that comprise it.

Electile Dysfunction.

Tomorrow is election day. I have already voted thanks to Colorado being an early voting state. My brother was telling me that last weeks South Park forced Stan to choose between a douche bag and a turd. That pretty well sums up this election season. The two major parties keep hammering on people that they live in a two party system and if you don't vote for the turd or the douche bag that you are throwing your vote away. Well, I threw my vote as far away from their stink-fest as I could get. It used to be that you could count on the Republicans hold up against socialist tendencies, well not with Dubyah in office. That turd thinks that his religion encourages people to be their brothers keeper. Blinded by his religion he will skip merrily down the path to socialism. Kerry on the other hand doesn’t want to hide any of his socialist tendencies and has wheeled out a medical care program guaranteed to trash our medical system and our economy. Two birds with one stone, the guy has ambition. How are we as Americans going to fight socialism if our two major parties have signed on with the bad guys. Fighting back needs to start with the idea that you don't have to vote for the douche bag or the turd just because people tell you that they are the only ones that can win. Even if a third party candidate cannot win, they can hurt a major party candidates election odds and will get the attention of the major candidates when they lose the election because their supporters have defected to a third party that supports their issues. Politicians may not have enough sense to see the dangers of socialism on their own but if they lose enough of their support they may be throttled back to reality.

When do YOU need to be punished?

Ayn Rand had it right. You hear people quote Tacitus saying "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." Then they end things there. Rand took it further and hit the nail on the head. Yes corrupt states do have more laws. The why is where life gets spooky. The goverrnment has a monopoly on the use of force. The monopoly is codified in the rule of law. No one is supposed to use force on one another, if you do the government has the right and responsibility to use force to stop you. The insidious nature of this is shown when the laws extend beyond people using force against each other. If someone violates another persons rights but does not use force then the civil courts can help that person with their greivances. But the laws Tacitus speaks of give the government the ability to use force against more people that are classified as criminals. The state really only has power over criminals. So, if the government decides it needs more power, it creates laws that create more criminals. We now have traffic laws and drug laws, which is were most citizens will encounter the tyranny of our ever expanding government. They are not using force to harm someone else. There is merely a behavior that MAY lead to someone else being hurt. While some may say that the government needs to stop these individuals to keep people safe. The folly in this is that the government outlined in the constitution is only supposed to protect our rights not to provide for our safety. The reason why the government was not tasked with keeping us safe is because it is a never ending task that by definition will completely destroy our liberties because liberty includes the right to make bad decisions. You may hurt yourself through your actions and the Constitution is OK with that. You may hurt someone else through your actions, then the Constitution says that you will be held responsible for violating someone elses rights. There is nothing in the Constitution that says you need to be stopped before you violate someones rights, just that you will be held responsible.

Why can't we all just get along?

One word. Rules. In a world with such a large population it becomes increasingly difficult to keep everyone playing nice with one another. This is not to say that you need a new law for every thing you think someone may do to someone else. It does mean that everyone needs to play by the same rules. This is made simpler by keeping the rules simple. People instinctively adapt to whatever system they are placed in. If you create rules that promote fair-play, then you will get fair-play. If you create a system that benefits one group to the detriment of another, then the people benefiting will defend the system and the people oppressed by the system will first try to limit how much the other group benefits from the system and then try to dismantle the system entirely. Right now we have a system where the government has grown beyond its intended limits.

The Dismal Science in action

I have always wondered why economics is called 'the dismal science'. I know that my beginning economics course in college was taught by a man who had all the charisma of a polyester leisure suit. When I took a macroeconomics course at a community college it was taught by a retired Marine officer and more often than not the lectures sounded like a hellfire and brimstone sermen. At that younger age I enjoyed the lectures but did not fully appreciate that the instructor was passionate about economics because of the overwhelming effect it has on everyones lives. I would liken it to any other science, just because you never learned about gravity in school does not give you the ability (a la Bugs Bunny) to walk off of a cliff with no ill effects. Likewise, just because 'the dismal science' bored you to tears in school (if you toook the course at all) does not give you the ability to ignore the market forces that economics study. I would especially like to point this out to anyone who thinks that companies are their just to employ people. Companies are there for just one reason, to make a profit. Your employment is a favorable side effect of your companies success, but it is NOT the reason for your companies existance. In Colorado we have a looming grocery workers strike. Why? Because the union workers in the big chain stores are demanding insurance benefits and the stores are not willing to put them on the bargaining table. Why are the stores not willing to provide their workers with company paid insurance. The reason is called Wal-Mart. This huge 'evil' non-union shop does not pay for insurance for their employees or even pay union wages to its workers. By doing this Wal-Mart is able to gain a significant competitive advantage over the chain stores. The thing that makes this possible is because the labor market will support Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has no problem hiring workers with little or no skills and offering them jobs that do not provide insurance benefits. The chain stores are hiring out of the same labor pool and if they are required to provide their union employees with insurance benefits they will suffer another competitive disadvantage to Wal-Mart. The unions have adopted the idea that companies are their to provide workers with jobs and in pursuit of this idea they may destroy the companies that provide their union members with jobs because they are attempting to ignore a basic law of a market economy. The companies are there to make a profit and by taking on too many comparitive disadvantages the companies will not make a profit because their customers will have gone to Wal-Mart and the company will have to close up shop. There are some sectors of our economy where the unions can and do control the labor pool and can call their own shots but grocery stores workers are not one of those labor pools and the unions are dancing dangerously close to destroying the companies their workers depend on.

Free Stolen Money?

There is a guy out there who is pissing me off. This twerp is shouting in TV and radio ads about 'Free Government Money'! He rattles off a list of things that you can get government money for. I am going to do a little editing for all of you that may not understand the economic reality of this idiots raving. Here we go: "The government can help you steal other peoples' money so you can go back to school with legally stolen money, or start a coffee shop with legally stolen money, or work on your invention with LEGALLY STOLEN MONEY! Just buy my book where I will outline how you can get money that the overzealous government has stolen from hard working citizens. You just need my book and the right government forms to outline the hardships that you have had to endure in your miserable life that entitles you to get in line for the money that the government has stolen for you." This idea that people should just give you money because you mean to be better and all you need is a chance is ludicrous. You need to earn that money. If you don't earn that money you have no idea how hard it was to make it and you will piss it away. If you want proof, here is a piece of information for you, the ONLY successful income transfer program the government has ever hatched is the G.I. Bill. Why was it successful? Because the G.I.s that took advantage of it weren't exactly given the money, they had to sign up for military service and put their asses on the line. They had to go through what many like to call 'The School of Hard Knocks.' Then they were allowed to go to real schools on the governments dime with the full appreciation of what life is without an education. So before you go and send your money off to this con-man, just consider if you do manage to succeed in life after you get your PhD with money the government stole for you, how are you going to like the government stealing from you?

Walter E. Williams, the great American.

As Americans we should all seriously consider the implications of letting our politicians lead us all down the road to socialism that they currently have us on. Walter Williams has written several lucid columns on this subject that I will not try to duplicate but rather I would encourage everyone to read how Socialism is Evil. (and Part II)

Convenient child care has a price too.

I understood that with campaign finance reform there would be special interest groups lining up to support their candidates even without being directly associated with that candidate. What I did not expect is that these special interest groups would get to do all of the mudslinging for their chosen candidate. Now we have a commercial on the air that blasts Pete Coors for wanting to lower the drinking age and talks up the other candidate for the Colorado Senate seat (I won't mention his name here because he would want me to). The commercial states that by lowering the drinking age that Coors would be endangering our children. Come on people! If you would spend enough time raising your kid to be a responsible citizen, Coors raising the drinking age is not going to present a problem to you or your kid. Instead the Conservative Voters of Colorado would prefer to hide behind the government on the drinking age the same way they like to have the government out there telling kids that drugs are illegal because they are illegal. That's very convenient for the Conservatives, but since when did our government become the moral equivalent of 7-11? Remember that convenience comes at a price. 7-11 is on the corner, waiting for your urgent business at midnight, but that Twinkie you so desperately need (we won’t go into why you need it) is going to cost you significantly more than it would in the grocery store that closed at 8pm. The same thing goes for the moral convenience of letting the government help you avoid tough issues with your child. Instead of talking at great lengths with your child about what drugs are and what drugs are not (yes, alcohol is also a drug) so they can make well informed decisions, you get to conveniently tell your youngster that you just can't do something because that would be ILLEGAL. The cost may eventually make it back to you but the person that will really pay for your convenient decision will be your child. They will not have the benefit of growing up with wine at the dinner table and a couple of beers at the family gathering. They will not get to hear about harmless sleep overs where someone had too much to drink and passed out in the back yard because not only was no one allowed to leave because it was a parent sanctioned sleep over but because they were 13, so they couldn't even drive. If you want your child to learn how to be responsible you have to teach it to them at home just like you do with every other moral decision you expect them to make. You should send you children to school to learn math and writing, and science, and logic. Not to be taught morality! That needs to come from the home. I know that it is tough and you would rather have someone else burdened with this heavy responsibility, but whose child is this? The answer is not that the child belongs to society or the government, the child is yours. So when your child self-destructs at 21 when they are finally allowed legally drink I do not want you to be allowed to go on living with a clean conscience because you have bought the idea that the government or society failed your child, YOU DID. That is the final price you will pay for the buying a bill of goods from a moral 7-11.

The Office of Non-Descript Control Policy (ONDCP)

I heard another of those patronizing ONDCP (The Office of National Drug Control Policy) ads on the radio this morning. The ads are nothing but propaganda. The government has been given its marching orders by politicians that think they know how to live your life better than you do. Now they have extended their fight into your home. Not only do they want to make sure your kids know that "drugs are bad, m`kay" (think of South Park's Mr. Mackey here) but they want you to tell your kids that. Whether or not you have personally tried drugs is going to have a big impact on whether or not you have this little government sponsored talk with your kid. If you haven’t even tried drugs you are much more likely to have "the Talk" because you have probably already signed on with the "drug are bad, m`kay" crowd. For those of you that have tried drugs and it didn’t trash your life, the ONDCP has ads for you too that will tell you that even though you survived a brief encounter with the "evil world of drug use" and lived to tell the tale that drugs are still bad and that you REALLY need to have that talk with your kid. The talk they want you to have with your kid is not one that includes how to be responsible citizens and limit the drugs you take or how to be safe and use the proper paraphernalia or even how to identify drugs that could kill them because they are impure. No, the talk the government wants you to have with your child is to tell them that the government knows what is best for them and that they should only do what the government wants them to. Oh, and if they could rat out any of their friends that are "evil drug users" that would be great, yeah (Way to go Lumberg!). To tell you the truth, I want you to have "the Talk" with your kids too. Except my version would include you introducing your kid to your dealer and showing him what really good stuff looks like. Hell, light up a bowl with the ankle biter and for once relax and enjoy the kid you are trying so damn hard to raise right in this world. A world where you and your wife have to work full time jobs to pay for all of the taxes that help fund the moral crusaders at the ONDCP. No, drugs aren’t for everyone. I know that as an addictive personality I need to stay away from drugs, but I was able to make that choice for myself, and I needed more information than "drugs are bad, m`kay". There is still a huge black market out there in the US that is preying on our youth everyday because all the information our kids are getting is "drugs are bad, m`kay". If we want our kids to grow up to be productive citizens in this country, I think the adults need to do a bit of growing up themselves first and take this issue seriously enough to stop saying "drugs are bad, m`kay" and give the children of this nation the information they need to protect themselves from the "evil world of drug use."

Are horse rescues really for horses?

There are two items I think the horse welfare advocacy groups need to consider. The first item is the need for self-regulation of horse rescues. It is a wonderful thing that there are people in this world that understand that horses depend on humans for humane treatment. Unfortunately, good intentions with poor execution can land horses in conditions as bad and in some extreme cases, worse conditions than they would have faced had nothing been done. Just because someone has owned a horse before, or even several horses before, does not mean that that person can care for a dozen or several dozen horses at once. In the best interests of the horses and the good name of horse rescues that are doing things right, there are some rescues that need to be shut down. Who else understands the difficulty of running a horse rescue than other horse rescues? Additionally, horse rescues that are doing things right do not need the added burden of dealing with the bad publicity that is generated by inhumane horse rescues. It is in their best interests to be self-regulating and prevent the operation of inhumane rescues. This can be accomplished through a voluntary certification program that would provide operational audits and in some cases guidance towards substantial compliance. The public interest would be better served because they could easily identify humane rescues through the display of their voluntary certification. The certification group could also provide outreach to trouble groups and help them achieve certification or if necessary as identified through careful investigation help local authorities bring animal cruelty charges against inhumane rescues. Self-regulation of rescues now could help the horse rescue community avoid draconian measures that could result from legislative action in response to a severe neglect case.
The second action that would benefit horse welfare would be another voluntary program that breeders would be encouraged to participate in. The certification would require that the breeder institute a number of administrative controls. The first would be to clearly identify horses in their inventory that are their breeding stock. Any other horse kept or sold by the breeder would not be allowed into a breeding program. The males would be gelded and females would be sold with contracts specifying that the mare is not to be bred. The contract would reserve the right of the breeder of ownership of any offspring of the mare and that any unauthorized offspring will be destroyed after being weaned from the mare. Breeding controls of this nature would reduce the number of 'excess' horses in the country which would increase the value of horses at the margin and increase costs to the slaughterhouses. If costs are driven high enough overseas markets would be forced to look to local markets or abandon the practice altogether. Wouldn't that be nice?

Washington a Red Coat?

There are some people who will tell you that the founding fathers only meant the right to keep and bear arms to apply to an organized militia unit. Then they will tell you that the militia in its modern form is the Reserves or National Guard. That might even make sense. Now ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a portrait of George Washington, John Hancock, or Thomas Jefferson in the red coat of the British Army? Think real hard. The answer is: NEVER! None of our founding fathers were in any part of the British Military. George Washington was a farmer and an architect. John Hancock was a merchant and one of America's founding fathers of rum running. Thomas Jefferson was a tobacco farmer. When Americans rose up and formed militias to overthrow the British rule of the American colonies they were the farthest thing from being part of a military force organized by the government. Now ask yourself, what had the founding fathers had to do to be able to write the Constitution or the Bill of Rights? That's right, they had to take up arms (that’s military weaponry for all of you people from the Ivy League) and overthrow the government they had been under for over a century. Now do you think they meant that the right to keep and bear arms in order to maintain an organized militia meant the National Guard or the Reserves? I should hope not because the founding fathers themselves wrote long and hard about the need to keep arms (yes, still military weapons) in the hands of the people (please read: average citizens).

Be the Porcupine!

If you haven't viewed my home page lately I have added an ad for Mike Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate for President. He is also a fellow Porcupine (Free State Project).

Make Europe eat their own

Here is a question I think most horse advocates don't like to answer: Why not eat horses? I work at a horse rescue and have heard a lot of arguments against horses being slaughtered for human consumption. Some of the arguments are the same as why we don't eat dog in this country, because they are our pets. There are also arguments because the way horses are killed for human consumption is inhuman or just disgusting to anyone that loves these beautiful creatures. The other side of the argument could be that we eat cows in this country and if we are so concerned about animal rights why aren’t we listening to the Indians who worship cows and not eat them. What about the people in Korea and China that raise dogs for food? Why don't you see American dog shelters killing dogs to be exported to Asia as food? I would like to address all of those arguments. The reason why people eat horses is because their culture accepts it. Why do we eat cattle with no issues, because our culture accepts it. The argument that Indians worship cattle, so we shouldn't eat them is not equivalent because we don't wait for Indians to raise cattle and treat them like pets until they have no use for them and then buy those cattle for meat. We raise our own herds for our own consumption. Why don’t animal shelters in America kill dogs for human consumption in Asia, because dogs are small and it would not be economic to do so. So why do we allow horses to be bred in America for use as companion animals and pets and then when some of these animals lose their usefulness they are sold at auction and purchased for slaughter and consumption in oversees markets? Why, because they are large animals with a significant amount of meat that has an economic market price. That's it, there is your answer. The market is allowed to function regardless of moral objections by individuals in the horse community. I understand that placing a restriction on the market through the use of the government goes against the core of my beliefs that restricting government is the best thing for a free society. That said, I would argue that horses in this country are not bred for food and that raising them as companion animals constitutes a contract between the people in this countries equine community and the horses raised here, that are expected to work with humans and humans are expected to treat them humanely. If other countries want to eat horses, they need to breed them for their own food. The horses in this country should be protected from inhuman treatment because the citizens of the US that are part of the equine community have a commitment to the horses they breed as companion animals.

The government wants you to be a criminal

For a long time I have attributed many different motivations to our government and the people who affect its policies. I have called them self-interested, moral busybodies, money-grubbers, and just plain ignorant. Recently I have read and seen some things that have changed this perception of government. Ask yourself something, how does government have control over someone? The answer is, when that person has violated a law and become a criminal. Now, all of the laws that I had previously attributed innocent motivations to look different to me. They are not that innocent. The people who write laws understand all too well what it takes to give government power over its people. It has to make them into criminals. These people have to find ways to make their fellow citizens into criminals and still assign seemingly innocent reasons to them so it will be palatable to those very citizens. We need to open our eyes to this and stop allowing ourselves to be fooled into thinking that these people are innocently expanding the reach of government or that they are naive to implications of their laws. Look at every law that is passed through the filter that asks, 'who will this make into a criminal?' That should change how you look at our ever expanding government.