Socialism and Exorcism

I've read that the United States Postal Service may run out of money and go out of business by the end of the year. No doubt that's hyperbole, but it wouldn't bother me.

I stood in line for more than an hour yesterday at the main Post Office in Detroit, and I've come to a conclusion. Every kid who thinks they might like socialism ought to be made to wait in line at the Post Office every day for a week. If that doesn't affect their minds properly, there's always exorcism. 

It wouldn't be so bad if this weren't typical. Yet most of the time when I go to the USPS, I wait. And wait. And wait. But when I take my packages to the United Parcel Service, I'm out of there before my grandchildren graduate high school. Kidding aside, at the UPS center I use when I can I've been done in ten or fifteen minutes when there's been a line out the door. Say what you want about big business, and like all human endeavors it has its flaws, response time generally isn't one of them.

One cashier was at the desk yesterday while the line was nearly twenty at its highest. To be sure, several employees wandered in and out. And I mean wander: you'd think they were on a walk in the park. But no extra help was forthcoming.

This is why I pay nearly all my bills online. Although that, to be fair, merits a rant at another time.

Properly Said

I know that it rings when thought of as literature. I know that it's firmly part of the American lexicon. I know that I'm playing with alternate history even. But I wish Thomas Jefferson hadn't said that our inalienable rights were 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. I wish he'd stuck with the original terminology.

The philosopher John Locke coined the phrase 'Life, Liberty, and Property' which Jefferson supposedly adapted for use in the Declaration of Independence. Locke's point? That life and liberty can't mean much if you can't own. You have no real control of your life and freedom of movement and thought if you cannot say about your home, your land, hell, even the shirt on your back, 'This is mine'. You must be able to control what is near and dear to you for freedom to be possible. You can't do that if society owns all.

I doubt that you can pursue happiness either. But softening the language gives folks such as, oh, socialists, a wrench to take property away. The US isn't founded on that, it's founded on happiness, they may say, and then proceed to instruct you on what manner of happiness you may pursue, dependent of course on what they like at the moment. If that means your business or farm, c'est la vie.

Only the person can make a better world. Only a person who can control what is within his grasp can learn the responsibility of stewardship. Change the world? You want to make the world a better place? Then clean your room, Jordan Petersen remarked quite profoundly. But you have to own it to appreciate responsibility for it.

Basic morality requires the 'rugged' individual over the 'warm' collective, Mr. Mamdani. Ye speak with forked tongue.

A Moment of Inspiration

An old buddy of mine, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, once took a few courses at the local university. He wanted to see if college might offer anything to him.

One night he was stuck in a political science class and the discussion became tedious. What would you expect when the subject is politics? 

The group was talking about capitalists and socialists and all kinds of ists. Somewhere along the line someone asked, "What is a socialist really?" A voice at the back of the room responded, "A socialist is someone who likes to spend someone else's money."

Cloyce leaped up and yelled, "My wife is a socialist!"

Cloyce drives a truck because he flunked out of college.

Apparently I'm Scary

Yesterday I was called by a progressive friend, 'scary'. This after being told, when another friend heard I was voting in the recent Michigan Republican primary, that 'You people scare me'.

What's up with that? They've each known me for years, and to be fair to them I don't expect my relationships with either to change. They are each better than their recent speech, and I know it. I know too that there are (as in any group) Republicans and conservatives who might be labeled scary. But I would have thought that decency and charity would have prevented these friends from insulting me so directly.

It leads me ask, why should American conservatism seem scary? We right wingers are not the ones attempting to completely run the lives of others. As I've said before, outside of a handful of critical issues the right, by and large, is live and let live. It's the left who would not allow you to cut down a tree on your own property, to turn into boards to fix your own steps. It is the left who will not allow you the full use of your property if some part of it holds, to them, an environmental value. It is the left who wants to force you onto public transport because they feel it proper, and who want you to send your kids to inadequate public (read that government) schools or join a union merely because they see such things as laudable. Such attitudes do not support true human rights. At least when a Republican argues against abortion, there is arguably an actual human life at stake. To the left it's simply a matter of save the whales, but human beings don't have human children.

In short, I think they have more to fear from the progressives and socialists than from a truly conservative government. At that, I would never have told either that they scared me. But when your rival is a straw man and your goals of good intention, I suppose almost anything else will frighten you.