The history of the left in this country is a history of division. Whatever conflict was current -- labor vs. management, class vs. class, race vs. race -- there you'd find the left, stirring things up in order to derive as much political benefit as possible. A workable democratic system demands a willingness to seek consensus and engage in compromise. The left prefers Balkanization and permanent conflict.
Unfortunately, after Oct. 31 of this year, there may be no commercially available antivenom (antivenin) left. That's the expiration date on existing vials of Micrurus fulvius, the only antivenom approved by the Food and Drug Administration for coral snake bites.
The Climate Bill came out today, er.. I mean cap-and-trade, er..I mean 'The American Power Act'.
Tonight, Glenn exposes more of Crime, INC and shows us who and what is really behind this attempt to further transform our country and lead us down the path to global governance.
Dr. Helen Smith talks the perils of the Cuban blogosphere with the Babalublog bloggers. How does free speech get out from under tyrannical rule? When will Castro's grip on Cuba end? What can be done with those idiots in Che Guevara shirts?
When, one day, the left exits from history's stage, its epitaph will read: "Those who do not understand evil will not understand good."
The tragedy of Judah is the tragedy of people today. That is why this book of Jeremiah, though written thousands of years ago, is still as relevant and up-to-date and pertinent to our day as it was when first written. The tragedy is that when people forsake God they lose the sense of their own worth. This is what always happens. When someone starts turning from God he also loses himself. That is the inevitable tragedy which occurs in any life. When these people turned from the living fountain of God they became like animals, Jeremiah said. They began to act like animals and to think of themselves in that way. They began to act brutishly. They began to dislike and hate themselves. This is always the consequence of a heart which rejects or turns from the living God. When you lose God, you no longer can love yourself. And if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love your neighbor. That reflects the wisdom of the great commandment Jesus gave us: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you have no sense of who you are as a person, then you will not look at any one else as a person, either. So the tragedy of this nation was that it had begun to lose its sense of God, and thus had begun to lose its sense of self.
--Ray C. Stedman, My Struggle with God
It’s like assuming because someone is against rape, they’re against sex.
--Frank J.
If only Dr. Hasan's gun had jammed at Fort Hood, that could have been another huge foreign policy success for Obama.
What are your most embarrassing moments? You don’t want to admit them. And if you do admit them, you certainly won’t add to your shame by inventing embarrassing moments about yourself to make you look even worse. Who’s going to lie to make himself look bad? People will lie to make themselves look good (especially politicians), but no one will lie to make himself look bad.
But Saturday's failed terrorist bomb in the Times Square tourist hot spot has provided the authorities with a new argument for expanding a sometimes controversial security blanket of cameras, sensors and analytical software.
I always thought the most humane way to enforce our border would be a wall of fire. A wall of fire is highly visible, so no one could claim they didn’t see the border. You can’t climb a wall of fire, because flames are a plasma and don’t support people’s weight. Also, it would just be cool looking.
I suggest we drill in the Grand Canyon. That way if we spill, it’s already in this big container so no big whoop.
Anyway, my conclusion is thus: If you think a place is just like Nazi Germany, don’t try to sneak in there.
A man identified as a US citizen of Pakistani origin was arrested in connection with an attempted car bombing in New York's Times Square, news media reported Tuesday.
MSNBC television identified the man as Shahzad Faisal, a Pakistani-American, and said he was arrested on Long Island, New York.
If U.S. officials had followed up on a 1994 response plan for a major Gulf oil spill, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land.
The problem: The federal government did not have a single fire boom on hand.
At federal officials' behest, the company began calling customers in other countries and asking if the U.S. government could borrow their fire booms for a few days,
BP vowed on Monday to pay "all necessary and appropriate clean-up costs" from the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as the Obama administration called on the energy giant to clarify how it plans to do so.
U.S. officials are pressing BP to explain how the company will cover what it's calling "legitimate and objectively verifiable" claims. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said reimbursement for individuals and state and federal government will be on the agenda when she and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar meet with BP's top executives in Washington later Monday.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that the administration will put its "boot on the throat of BP" to ensure that they're doing "all that is necessary" to contain the oil spill and minimize harmful effects on the Gulf's fragile coastline.
This country's "leaders" have gone stark raving insane.
Now, to the facts. The Arizona law, SB 1070, merely makes a state crime what is already a federal crime. For example, the requirement that legal aliens carry their documentation on their person is already in federal law. All of the provisions of the law were crafted carefully to avoid any conflict with federal law. It specifically prohibits stopping anyone based solely on race or ethnicity. The Arizona law does not attempt to create any new immigration law; it simply gives state law enforcement agencies the power to enforce existing laws and arrest persons who are in the country unlawfully.
The lie about border security was actually exposed on March 27 when Arizona rancher Rob Krentz was murdered by a Mexican drug smuggler whose tracks were followed back to the border. Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano had spoken only one day earlier in Arizona about the great progress in border security.
But the murder of Rob Krentz was only the last straw for Arizona citizens who have been under siege for a decade. No one in Arizona thinks the border is secure, and now that Arizona has served notice to the federal government about the condition of their borders, all America knows that ugly truth.
The truth about the dismal state of border security is a story that has been kept off the front pages – until Arizona said "enough!" That’s the real reason the amnesty lobby is so frantic and furious in its attack on the Arizona law. What the critics really want is for Americans to forget about the border-region chaos, forget about the drop houses, the kidnappings, the gang wars, the highway carnage.
But Arizona will not let us forget, and for that message, all American ought to be grateful.
The fundamental issue in the breakdown of law starts in the heart of the individual as we either conform to or reject the laws of God as given us through His creation and his revealed, written word. I always find it tragically humorous that the same religious, non-religious and anti-religious liberals who weep and gnash their teeth over enforcing immigration laws demand that we strictly adhere to the "law of the land" in allowing the slaughter of 50 million unborn children.
It's really not hypocrisy. They are simply amoral, without any moral foundation or frame of reference to base their beliefs, allowing them to engage in such double standards to serve their lawless purpose. Lawlessness breeds anarchy, which allows for tyranny to control both.
In 1849, Speaker of the House Robert Winthrop (direct descendent of colonial leader John Winthrop) stated:
… Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet. …
Some people felt literally the bigger the mess we could make the better. That is whatever it cost, whatever destructive activity we could do against the U.S. government the better.
~ Bill Ayers (President Obama's Leon Trotsky)
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. --Ephesians 6:12
Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. -- Ephesians 6:13
The Church of Global Warming is not really concerned about how well the environment at all. (sic) The obsession is with controlling individual human behavior. Liberated man is the enemy of Warmers, and human liberty is the hated object of these Warmers. Their goal, in the simplest terms, is raw political power, whatever harm this power may cause the rest of us. They must paint man as a creature which must be regulated, licensed, and taxed into regimented slavery in a vast empire of pseudo-science. The truth – that nature is enormous and we are puny - would lead us to conquer what we can to make our lives safer, richer, and happier.
The arithmetic of poverty and unemployment is simple, and merciless. Free people multiply. The all-powerful State is only good at division.
I am disturbed by the ease with which many seek to use the Lord Jesus as a Savior to save them from going to hell when they die, but they have no intention of allowing Him to govern their lives while they live. But here the story of Noah is very clear. It was not merely the fact that God brought Noah into the ark that saved him; it was that Noah was obedient to a new arrangement for living. Noah obeyed God.
This is what saved Noah, and this is what saves us. It is not the fact that we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, thus agreeing that we belong to Him and will be saved when we die. It is the fact that we have received Him as Lord. We recognize His rights over us, His right to rule, His right to regulate, His right to command us and for us to obey. The heart is to respond immediately in obedience to all that God commands, as Noah did here. That acknowledgment of lordship is the basis of salvation. That is the basis on which we not only will survive the disaster that hangs imminently over our age, threatening to strike at any moment, but also the individual disasters of every life that can cut the ground out from beneath the house of life and demolish it, washing away the sands upon which we build.
--Ray Stedman
When it comes my turn to die – and it will come – I hope that God will give me the grace to die well. I know I will fear it, for I already do, but I am not sure what I fear. It is not just the pain, because death doesn’t hurt. It is living that hurts. Even though dying can be painful, we endure most of our pain while trying to stay alive. Surgery and chemotherapy are not inflicted on us by the disease, but by the doctor.
The body has no malice. Pain is not a penalty imposed on us by the body. The body hurts to tell us something is wrong. It asks us to take action to make things right again. When you grab hold of a hot pan, the body screams at you to let go. We call the scream "pain."
Like any other sane person, I fear pain, but that is not why I am afraid to die, for I will endure great pain and suffering to keep on living. I will go through surgery, not once, but a dozen times. I will endure days and weeks in agony, if necessary, just to stay alive. I will grit my teeth and endure suffering worthy of a medieval torture chamber in the hopes that my life might be prolonged.
When we were children, we understood little of death. We may have prayed the little child's prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take," but we didn't really go to bed in fear of death.
Nevertheless, children do hate to go to bed--mainly because they are afraid they will miss something. A child will even risk the pain of a spanking just to stay awake and stay involved. I can't help wondering if there is a little of that fear that stays with us all our lives. Even those of us who look forward to the resurrection still dread death. It may not be a lack of faith at all. It may be closer to a child’s response to going to bed--whatever is going on, we want to be in on it.
Solomon thought of death in much the same way: "A living dog is better than a dead lion," he said, "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 9:4-6).
As I get older, I find myself hating to go to bed. There is so much fun to be had, so much living to do, so much work to be done, and a lot of that work is work for God.
Yet I know that "if I should die before I wake," my time will come to live again. Meanwhile, others will do what has to be done. I have no contribution to make that God cannot make through someone else. I dread death because I want to be there--I want to be involved.
If I were to become terminally ill, I would surely want the brethren to pray for me. I suppose I would want an announcement made in church. And yet, I don't want to have to explain every day how I feel. I would like to spare my friends and loved ones the inevitable roller coaster of emotion that comes when we pray for one who is dying. "How is he today?" they ask. "Oh, he is much better. The doctor says it was a miracle the way he came through surgery." But then he gets worse, much worse. Then there is another reprieve, another miracle. And then one day the call comes ... and it's over.
No one can understand what this does to family and friends. Whatever courage it takes to die well, it is worth it for their sakes.
But in truth, it is not so much courage I want, it is style. It is not only bad faith, it is bad form to pray and then check your pulse every five minutes. It seems to me that it is better form and better faith to pray and then get on with living--and then when God is through with you, to pass from the scene gracefully--with style. After all, can’t I say as Paul did, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing."
There is yet one more reason to die well. Too many seem to die before they are dead. They become hostage to their disease. They quit living and start dying much too soon. I don’t want to be asked to describe my tumor or display my scars. Every moment I spend describing the disease is given to the disease. It has already taken too much. Why should I give it any more?
I know people inquire because they care, but I should care enough not to burden them. There might be some value in it if, in the process of burdening them, I unburdened myself, but I don’t. I only increase my own burden.
I knew a man who, after a short struggle with cancer, was told by the doctor that he had two months to live. He declined chemotherapy. The doctor offered it, but his heart wasn’t in it.
A lot of people knew about his plight, and a lot of people prayed for him. I presume he prayed for himself--he never said. When friends and relatives would call and ask him how he was, the answer was always the same: "I'm just fine," he would say, and then he would change the subject. I suppose “just fine” is all in the definition, because he had a racking cough, was losing weight, and his face was lined with pain.
That was three years ago. And he’s still "just fine." He just kept on living his life. To this day, he has never given the disease a minute. Whatever it gets from him, it will have to take.
Right now, I am in great health. I don’t have the terrible spectre of disease hanging over my head. So it seemed like a good time to think about the most precious liberty our savior has given us--the freedom from the fear of death: "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, [Jesus] Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14).
None of this is to say that we should not fight for our lives. But when we have prayed, when we have put our illness in the nail-scarred hands of Jesus Christ, we have given enough of our time to it. If worse comes to worse, let the doctors fight the disease--let them dwell on it, think about it, examine it, and worry about it--while we occupy ourselves with the business of living and the joy of loving.
--Ronald L. Dart
In Auburn, New York, the city is threatening to invoke eminent domain to seize private property for a private hotel conference center, saying the public good outweighs the private property rights of some citizens.
"Iceland names their volcanoes by repeatedly smashing their palm into a keyboard."
Frank J.
The Khmer Rouge declared revolutionary Year Zero thirty-five years ago today, on April 17, 1975, the day Communist guerrillas in black pajamas and truck-tire sandals marched victoriously through the streets of Phnom Penh. An indication of the regime's brutality came within 24 hours, when the Khmer Rouge ordered the two million residents of Phnom Penh, including hospital patients, to evacuate the city.
Their reign of three years, eight months left Cambodia devastated, with the better part of an entire generation -- approximately 1.7 million Cambodians out of a population of 7.9 million -- annihilated by bullet, axe, shovel blow to the back of the head, plastic bag suffocation, unspeakable torture, or by starvation caused by ruinous economic policies.
The Pol Pot clique set out to create history's most pure form of Communism in a single bound, striving to surpass even Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward. Their success was Cambodia's failure. Despite the legacy of another horror-filled Marxist experiment, the lessons of the Khmer Rouge remain shrouded in equivocation and myth.
Every time it has been tried, Marxism leads to the charnel house, turning subject countries into giant concentration camps, each a "vast Belsen," as Robert Conquest described Stalin's Soviet Union. Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Che Guevara, Abimael Guzman, Mengistu, Kim Jung Il are among history's most accomplished butchers. To argue that the Communist ideology that motivated them is incidental to their crimes devalues the deaths of the 100 million murdered by Communism in the 20th century.
"I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes," the president said, noting the numerous tax cuts pushed by his administration. "You would think they'd be saying thank you."
And now I see that that progressivism is simply children acting out, thumbing their noses at Mommy and Daddy and God Himself. This explains the perpetual temper tantrums and the lost, vacant looks.
"He went into convulsions for a while and was finally still," gloats Che Guevara in his diaries, describing the death agonies of a bound Cuban peasant he had just shot in the temple with his pistol. "Now his belongings were mine." (Unwittingly, here Che Guevara gives us communism in a nutshell: cowardly murder and theft.)
His hubris and malignant sense of destiny, so often repeated throughout history, can only result in more instability and possible warfare particularly in the Middle-East. Our current and potential adversaries are emboldened and openly laughing at this man and the United States. As Hitler did after the Munich summit in 1938, they are boldly planning their next moves assured in their attitude that no one has the will to stop their grandiose plans for conquest.
But according to the Daveys they have nothing to be thankful for.
'It doesn't bother me that taxpayers are paying for me to have a large family,' added Mrs Davey.
'We couldn't afford to care for our children without benefits, but as long as they have everything they need, I don't think I'm selfish.
'Most of the parents at our kids' school are on benefits.'
She added: 'I don't feel bad about being subsidised by people who are working. I'm just working with the system that's there.
'If the government wants to give me money, I'm happy to take it. We get what we're entitled to.
Not only did the people not understand that the king was going to rip them off and oppress them, they actually thought the king was going to fight their battles for them.
Opponents of the fiscally conservative tea party movement say they plan to infiltrate and dismantle the political group by trying to make its members appear to be racist, homophobic and moronic.
As the subject of Werner Herzog’s brilliant documentary "Grizzly Man" was to grizzlies, President Obama is to radical Islamic terrorists
--Dennis Miller
One of my favorite lines from the New Testament appears in Corinthians II, Chapter 13, verse 11: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, but when I became a man, I put aside childish things.”
It is hard to shake the notion that Americans have voted a lot of children to serve in Congress and the greatest child of all, Barack Obama, to be our president. Who else but children would continue to enact new programs that "entitle" Americans to receive all manner of services for which there is no money?
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist
Chris Christie is turning out to the most pleasant political surprise in years. He’s taken a wrecking ball to special interests in the state. Now things have gotten such that even New Jersey Democrats are starting to get on board his program, by distancing themselves from greedy public sector unions
Measured just by the number of victims, there is no close second place to government as the biggest lawbreaker. Measured in terms of impact, government lawbreaking is disabling our entire society.
When an individual or collection of individuals (such as a business) violates the law, there are victims who are harmed directly, and the law provides remedies. The law also recognizes that lawbreakers create harm to society as a whole, since the costs of lawbreaking are borne by society as well as by the direct victims. The law therefore exacts civil or criminal punishments on lawbreakers.
When government breaks the law, not just individuals, but entire industries are often the direct victims. Government lawbreakers, however, are not subject to the same standards as are individuals. Government lawbreakers have become arrogant, and government lawbreaking has therefore proliferated. If government were held to the same standards of legal sanctions for individuals, the weight of those punishments would actually crush government.
Whenever I come across a statistic that suggests it costs about $11,000 to keep a child in school for a year, I find myself thinking that, aside from the 535 members of the House and Senate, the biggest thieves in America are all members of the education swindle -- school teachers, administrators and union officials. They should all be kept after school and made to write on the blackboard a thousand times: I will never again say it’s all for the kids.
About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability.
Big Government is a parasite that is more than willing to kill its host. Ordinary people are beginning to see it for what it is. They understand that something is terribly wrong with their government. Now is the time to explain the origins of this leviathan, and put ObamaCare in its proper context… as the final, absurd contortions of a philosophy that acts in complete ignorance, and sometimes outright contempt, for what free people can achieve. Behold the toxic wonder of a bill that forces people to buy a product that it will also cause a shortage of.
In its final years, the Left can only communicate with the thundering stallions of American prosperity using curses and whips. It will answer every problem caused by the taxes and regulations of ObamaCare with more taxes and regulations, until the stallions of progress die beneath the lash, with the last impotent curses of angry and frightened liberals ringing in their ears.
Republicans, you know how this story ends. You’ve seen its miserable ending all over the world, from the ruins of Russia to the sick old men of Europe, dying from the fever of unsustainable entitlements and the chills of terminal demography… and too weak to protest as the shroud of fascism is drawn slowly over them.
The trademark suit sported by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is now in fashion worldwide thanks to his greatness, Pyongyang's official website said Wednesday.
Sadly, in Landskrona the other day, an elderly couple parking their car made the mistake of attracting the attention of a young man of a certain, only vaguely hinted at, religion-of-peacey persuasion. He beat the 71-year old man brutally, and the 78-year old woman to death.
The killing has shocked the town. The leaders of four local Muslim associations held a press conference to deplore the "accident" and warn that it could "cause xenophobia". Indeed. That's the real news angle here:
Sweden: Muslim Community Fears Violence After Attack On Elderly Couple
That's the ticket: A purely hypothetical outbreak of violent attacks on Muslims always trumps actual violent attacks on non-Muslims. In a Tim Blair reader's note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline after the 2005 London Tube bombings:
British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing
But, alas, this is a world beyond parody.
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-- George Orwell
This is what gives me hope. For we are not yet a people apt to acquiesce in dictates handed down by our lords and masters. When Britain and Canada drifted into socialism, there were no tea parties spontaneously formed by ordinary citizens to buck the trend. The British and the Canadians lacked the spirit of resistance – though, to be fair, it lived on in the likes of Margaret Thatcher.
We Americans are made of sterner stuff. During the Cold War, we defended the Free World. In our absence, I am convinced, everyone else would have given way.
...we have not yet entirely lost the American spirit. What happened at the town halls in August, what took place in Virginia, in New Jersey, and, most dramatically, in Massachusetts proves the contrary. Barack Obama and his minions are indeed persuaded that public sentiment does not matter. They could not care less that the citizens do not consent, and they believe that what they have done cannot be undone. "Yes, we can," they chant. But the truth is they can’t, for they are wrong.
Never, in the history of the United States, has a political party dared, in the face of public opinion fully formed and fiercely adverse, to carry so ambitious a bill without a modicum of cover from the opposition. What the Democrats have done is a breathtaking expression of contempt not just for public sentiment as revealed in the polling data but also for the verdict handed down by the people of Massachusetts at the polls in January. What they have done would never have been attempted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had a healthy respect for public opinion. What Barack Obama calls the audacity of hope is reckless in the extreme.
This is how they do. This is what they do. First successful campaign -- Barry Goldwater. In the battle space of ideas, they offer nothing but destruction and slander. They never engage in debate. They destroy.
They destroyed the greatest country in the history of the world.
They use the word extremism as a club, when in fact it is a measurement. It is not good or bad. What does tea party "extremism" consist of -- that they will not compromise on the principles of freedom, that in political issues they defend individual rights?
The left revolutionaries/weathermen were anti-American extremists, anti-capitalism and individual rights extremists. Ayn Rand said, "And then the 'extremism' of a believer in dictatorship would consist in his taking every possible action to enslave people and to violate rights."
Would it be logical to say that he and I are equally to be condemned, merely because we each take an extreme, uncompromising stand in our particular views? Obviously the term has no meaning. No one could say that in political action you must never take an extreme position. It is the nature of your position, not your consistency in advocating it, that warrants support or condemnation. But the term 'extremism' implies the opposite. It is an attack on consistency -- on any consistency. Yet can you really consider consistency per se immoral?" (Objectively Speaking, page 25)
Today they have equated patriotism with the terrorism of the sixties -- the revolution that destroyed this country. The evil forces triumphed in the sixties and won (without enormous bloodshed). I pray we too can win without a shot. This time for the good.
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
After 14 months of committing 100% to health care reform, the day after the signing of the Health Care bill was to mark the Democratic Party’s new primary concern: destroy the uprising, annihilate by all means necessary, the Tea Party movement.
But that's what the Democratic Party has been reduced to - faking hate crimes as pathetically as any lonely, mentally ill college student.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
"...a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles...is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty and keep a government free."
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
"Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature."
"This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins."
Different Americans have different and often intense preferences for all kinds of goods and services. Some of us have strong preferences for beer and distaste for wine while others have the opposite preference -- strong preferences for wine and distaste for beer. Some of us hate three-piece suits and love blue jeans while others love three-piece suits and hate blue jeans. When's the last time you heard of beer drinkers in conflict with wine drinkers, or three-piece suit lovers in conflict with lovers of blue jeans? It seldom if ever happens because beer and blue jean lovers get what they want. Wine and three-piece suit lovers get what they want and they all can live in peace with one another.
It would be easy to create conflict among these people. Instead of free choice and private decision-making, clothing and beverage decisions could be made in the political arena. In other words, have a democratic majority-rule process to decide what drinks and clothing would be allowed. Then we would see wine lovers organized against beer lovers, and blue jean lovers organized against three-piece suit lovers. Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political arena. Why? The prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum game. One person's gain is of necessity another person's loss. That is if wine lovers won, beer lovers lose. As such, political decision-making and allocation of resources is conflict enhancing, while market decision-making and allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater the potential for conflict.
