Obama takes on the Constitution

Chrysler and the Rule of Law, by Todd J. Zywiki on one of the dangers of government bailouts.

Against Education

Learning by Osmosis by David Greusel

In light of which, check out Daily-Routines blog

Do your part to fix the Economy: Have a baby!

After the Panic Button has been Pushed, by Jonathan Wellum

Now, you can throw that far…

Kiva is a great micro-lending facilitator that connects you directly with individual entrepreneurs in the developing world. Worth the time to look into.

Humans did this

Auschwitz through the lens of the SS: Photos of Nazi leadership at the camp

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has posted a number of photos from an album which shows not the horrors of the life of the prisoners at Auschwitz, but the life of relative ease and civility enjoyed by the SS staff of the camp.

Preferring the Back of the bus to the Front

[C]apitalism and communism are based upon the same materialist errors and are related more as parent and offspring, or warring siblings, rather than diametrically opposed systems. In this light it is easy to understand why a number of the Agrarians…lobbied for the title of their manifest being “Tracts Against Communism”…insofar as they saw communism as the inevitable outcome of a system that concentrated wealth and industry…Andrew Lytle summed up: “[T]he defense of agrarianism was, itself, an attack on Communism”

- John Sharpe “Introduction” Beyond Capitalism and Socialism, xviii.

The Mammon Twins

But the reforms of communism are wrong, because they are inspired by the very errors they combat. Communism begins with the liberal and capitalistic error that man is economic, and, instead of correcting it, merely intensifies it until man becomes a robot in a vast economic machine. There is a closer relation between communism and monopolistic capitalism than most minds suspect. They are agreed on the materialistic basis of civilization; they disagree only on who shall control that basis…Capitalistic economy is godless; communism makes economics God…Capitalism denies that economics is subject to a higher moral order. Communism says that economics is morality [emphasis mine].

- Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1948) 79-81.

Still Fighting the Cold War

Many of these old “cold warriors” – along with the post-Cold War world they inhabit – no doubt make the mistake (we are being charitable) of reading into the mutual opposition to Soviet expansionism and atheism of both the Church and the modern, materialist West the unconditional support by the former of the social and philosophical system of the latter. From such a viewpoint, any “third way” beyond capitalism and communism would seem a futile, if not dangerous, compromise between the forces of evil and the forces of evident good.

- John Sharpe “Introduction,” Beyond Capitalism and Socialism (Norfolk, Virginia: LTD Publications, 2008) xviii.

Freedom

…[H]e only is a free man who owns and administers his own land, craft, trade, art or profession and is able, at necessity, to maintain himself and his family therefrom.

- Ralph Adams Cram, “What Is a Free Man?,” Catholic Rural Life Objectives (St. Paul, Minn: National Catholic Rural Life Conference, 1937) 36-7.

“[T]he individual [gets] his sustenance from property which bears his imprint and assimilation…” Indeed, it was not security he was after with such a scheme, which would only mean “being taken care of, or freedom from want and fear – which would reduce man to an invertebrate – [but rather] stability, which gives nothing for nothing but which maintains a constant between effort and reward.”

- John Sharpe, “Introduction,” Beyond Capitalism and Socialism (Norfolk, Virginia: LTD Publications, 2008) xv.

If I can accept a divine Commandment, it’s this one: ‘Thou shalt preserve the species.’ The life of an individual must not be set at too high a price. If the individual were important in the eyes of nature, nature would take care to preserve him.”

- Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941-1945 (New York: Tarred, Straus, and Young, 1953) 116.

Preservation is tied to the iron law of necessity and the right of victory of the best and the strongest…Whoever wants to live, must struggle, and whoever will not fight in this world of eternal struggle does not deserve to live…Even if this is harsh – it is simply the way it is.”

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Munich: NSDAP, 1943) 316-317.

[An evolutionist] can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or seem to him the best one.”

- Charles Darwin, Autobiography (New York: Norton, 1969) 94.

The Calumny for all Occasions

In short, “fascist” is a modern word for “heretic,” branding an individual worthy of excommunication from the body politic. The left uses other words – “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobe,” “christianist” – for similar purposes, but these words have less elastic meanings. Fascism, however, is the gift that keeps on giving. George Orwell noted this tendency as early as 1946 in his famous essay “Politics and the English Language”: “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ’something not desirable.’ “

- Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism (New York: Doubleday, 2007) 4.