Propaganda Revisited

In this column, I want to establish that the mature Christian mind is best protected against propaganda.

Last year, as I watched in disgust as so many Americans were mesmerized by Obama's frighteningly dark drivel, I read Jacques Ellul's 'Propaganda'.  Much rang true, but I didn't have much background to question his evidence.

As I've mulled over how people choose to believe what they believe, I was reminded of some passages in his book.  He describes modern man as such:

Above all he is a victim of emptiness-he is a man devoid of meaning.  He is very busy, but he is emotionally empty, open to all entreaties and in search of only one thing - something to fill his inner void.

The main point to my four part series on rationality was that people choose to believe the most emotionally satisfying answers.  Furthermore, I believe that our ability to ascertain the true nature of reality is when we have little emotional stake in the answer.  If we emotionally need an answer to be true we will rationalize and even lie to ourselves to satisfy those emotional needs.  In general, if we are emotionally needy people, our ability to adhere to reality is diminished.

What I propose, and it will be left unproved until later posts, is that Christianity provides the ultimate path to emotional satisfaction because it prescribes optimal human behavior.  This optimal human behavior is what I call morality.  Reality, as described by Christianity, I will call the Truth.

If one rejects the Truth, one must be accepting a disreality, a non-truth, or more simply, a set of lies.  By pursuing a path that is suboptimal, one will inevitably suffer.  The pain we suffer because we have chosen to believe a disreality while living in reality wounds us emotionally.  The inevitability of pursuing a disreality is emotional emptiness.  This emptiness, as Ellul points out, leads one to believe more lies and more propaganda.

Empty people will fall prey to propaganda.  Inevitably they will be ruled by the propagandizers.  The emptier they are, the more brutal the rule over them will be.  They will be imprisoned by the lies they have told themselves to assuage their emptiness.  It truly is a hell of their own making. 

Only the emotionally satisfied mind can see reality as it is.  And, as I propose, only the Christian mind can be fully emotionally satisfied.

Obama's Poll Numbers Tanking Again

When the poll analysts for the Democrats claimed that passing the Health Care expansion would help them in November I thought they were crazy. Well, I was wrong, and they were mostly wrong. Right after the Health bill passed, support amongst Democrats increased. Support amongst Republicans went nowhere. However, that boost that Obama received for a few weeks seems to have evaporated in recent days. The Rasmussen Presidential Index shows a rapidly widening gap between strongly disapprove and strongly approve. My guess for the drop off in strong support is due in part to both the BP oil fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico and the turbelent economic conditions of the last couple weeks.

Best Column Yet Written on Obama

Victor Davis Hanson of Pajamas Media nails it.  Titled the Postmodern Presidency

It's brilliant.  No snippets.  Every paragraph is worth the time.

Why We Fear Obama and the Left

From Stan Isaacs at the Philadelphia Inquirer today, speaking on Obama:

He should forget bipartisanship and work with congressional Democrats to name three new justices to the court to meet the challenges he faces.

The whole piece is dedicated to justifying Obama naming three new Supreme Court justices, to lift the total to 12.  Does this man not smell the brimstone on his own breath?  Isaacs even thinks that FDR got a raw deal when public opinion turned against him while trying to pack the court in the 1930's.  This is Hugo Chavez style thinking.  Checks and balances be damned, we need to pass our agenda.

Why are we afraid of Obama and the Left?  Is he a socialist, maybe not.  Is he a communist, maybe not.  The problem with the Left, though, is that they have no logical barriers between themselves and totalitarianism.  Hayek's  Road to Serfdom is the logical flow of their beliefs.

Towards Liberty

Over the last year I’ve become more and more persuaded by the likes of Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Post-Modernists that there is no ultimate truth. All presuppositions are fallible and subject to doubt. This affected my zeal for politics, and left me without a strong anchor for my political inclinations. My time adrift, though, is over.

No free society can be achieved because those who desire power will slowly undermine the logical presuppositions that liberty rests upon. Of course, tyranny too must rest on logical presuppositions. It is a battle of ideas and presuppositions between those who want power and those who want liberty. It is a battle that will never end, and I suspect will always ebb and flow.

In this battle, both sides are using the flawed techniques of social science and utilitarianism. Both suffer inescapably from the impossibility of calculation, and the perversion of status seeking agendas. Without spending countless hours of study and analysis, how can we resist the “science” of tyranny and thwart it with the “science” of liberty?

We don’t have to.

Then how can we help our fellow man avoid propaganda and the manipulation of self-serving reason? Without looking at the reasoning, we can merely look at the conclusions. Do the conclusions of their arguments gather more power into the hands of a small set of individuals? If so, then their argument is likely false and motivated by the “will to power”.

Recall, though, how I explained how an academic can be corrupted by secondhand status. That is, those with power reward the academic because his arguments give them power. The academic can maintain the pretense of disinterested research because he appears not to directly benefit from his conclusions. His mind has been bent to reinforce the status he has achieved. He will doggedly defend his “science”.

Am I immune to the desire for status? Not at all. I am, however, humble enough to realize that I will not be one of the select few who get to rule. My best alternative is to undermine the power lust of others. To avoid tyranny, I must pursue liberty, and not just for myself, but for everyone. The accumulation of power anywhere is a threat to me.

We must be skeptics. Our liberty depends on it.

Pragmatism is the Vessel of Propaganda, Thankfully Obama is an Idealogue

Jonah Goldberg writes a nice column mocking Obama's pragmatic above-the-fray arrogance.  He also elucidates the virtues of ideology.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in 1909 that if everyone becomes a pragmatist, then "ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth." Russell's point was that there's nothing within pragmatism to delineate the proper and just limits of pragmatism. We must look outside pragmatism for that.


Our values, customs, traditions and principles provide the insulation against the corrosive acid of undiluted pragmatism. When you bundle these things together, it's often called an ideology, and there's no reason to apologize for having one.

Also recall from an old post of mine on propaganda:

...the educated, and especially the intellectual, are most susceptible to propaganda. Once you realize that people with little education tend to just follow what their parents and community tell them, you realize that only the educated are truly open to new ideas, many of which are poorly supported.


A President must be a jack-of-all-trades.  His biases will lead him to listen to "experts" with those biases.  A pragmatic mind is one that is most easily shaped by the limited voices he hears, and thus is the most susceptable to propaganda.  However, this President appears to be unwavering in his ideas, agenda set in stone, unshaped by public opinion.  Ironically, as Goldberg points out, the President's claims of pragmatism are just the self-delusioned arrogance of a blatant ideologue.

Debra Medina Rising

A few weeks ago, Debra Medina, my choice for Texas Governor was at 4% of the Republican primary vote.  Then, it was 12%, and now it's 16% according to RasmussenReports.

Raw Political Power

Several days ago I endorsed Debra Medina for Governor of Texas.  I also exercised my enormous political clout and shot an e-mail over to Robert Wenzel, blogger of EconomicPolicyJournal extolling her virtues.  He gets about a thousand times as many hits as I do every day, and he told me he would keep an eye on her campaign.  Lo and behold, he links to an article on her today extolling her virtues.

Now that I'm drunk on power, I'll have to start ordering you little people around.  Someone get me some coffee!

Debra Medina for Governor of Texas

I have been a fan of my Texas Governor Rick Perry for a long time.  I have voted for him every time, and do not regret any of those votes.  In this coming primary election, I was planning to vote for him again, because Kay Bailey Hutchison has never impressed me beyond having a likeable personality.

However, I looked up Debra Medina, a lesser known candidate, last night after seeing a Rasmussen poll giving her 12%.  I looked at the Issues tab on her website and swooned.  She quotes Frederick Bastiat!  Beyond the self apparent awesomeness of that, it means she reads real books.

In her bio I find that she was a leader in the Ron Paul for President campaign in Texas, and she was also one of those early home school rebels.  That means she's got chutzpah (that means "cajones" to you English speakers).

I'm down with Debra Medina.

Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night

"I got a feelin'.  That tonight's gonna be a big big night." -- Black Eyed Peas

I predicted on my facebook page Sunday that Scott Brown would win against Martha Coakley by 7 points in the Senate Race in Massachusetts.  With more polling data coming out on Monday showing Brown up by 9 or 10 points, I am pretty confident that Brown's margin of victory will be large.

As many of you are well aware this could mean the death of Obamacare.  Brown has pledged that he will join a Republican filibuster against that bill when it comes out of the reconciliation committee.

However, libertarian economist Bob Murphy had this to say in the comments at EPJ.

I don't mean to be a party pooper, but I would caution everyone about getting real excited for Republicans to step up to the plate and defend our liberties.  I still cringe when I remember staying up late election night 2000 because I was so so worried that that "socialist Al Gore" would wreck the US economy...

I respectfully disagree, but not because I have faith in Republican leaders.  The incentives for Congressmen to spend money and expand government are still there, so they won't change that much.  However, what can change is the ideological mix of the country.

History is written in simple narratives, and this election tonight will be part of that narrative.  President Obama is a symbol.  He is big government writ large.  He is Keynesianism writ large.  He is elitist arrogance.  We don't need him to be defeated and humiliated as a person, but we need it as a symbol.  We need this brand of soft-socialism to become a punchline; a mythology of errors so engrained in our collective consciousness that economic intervention will be conflated with disaster.

The White House has already decided what their strategy will be after defeat.  According to Politico:

President Barack Obama plans a combative response if, as White House aides fear, Democrats lose Tuesday’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, close advisers say.

He's doubling down.  Like Pharoah after the plagues he plans to be even more provocative.

Did the Hebrews in Egypt recognize the importance of symbolism and historical narratives?

Exodus 9:13 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, 'This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, 14 or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. 15 For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. 16 But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

Not to put word's in God's mouth or assume he has an opinion on this election, but if we value freedom for ourselves and for our fellow Americans, we should be giddy about a likely victory tonight.  Never in my lifetime has an opportunity for big government to be so thoroughly disgraced as it is right now.

Great Column

This column by David Limbaugh iterates the things I loathe most about President Obama. His overuse of straw man arguments and other blatant distortions that stretch my ability to consider him something short of pathological.

An excerpt:

I'm sorry, but I believe Obama calculatingly employs this approach mainly as a smoke screen to hide his real agenda, which resides anywhere but on common ground. He specializes in paying superficial respect to his opponents' arguments while proceeding to bury them. The examples are endless.

He calls forced union membership "free choice." He masquerades as a fiscal disciplinarian while authoring nationally bankrupting budgets in perpetuity.

He endorses capitalism as a superior economic system while undermining it with other words and actions. He condemns it as "unfair" and decries achievers as "selfish" and "greedy." He's set on restructuring our economy away from the free market and toward government control, from taking over private businesses to setting executive salaries to subsidizing mortgages to nationalizing health care. But he knows better than to condemn capitalism outright, because if he did, the American people finally would wise up to his endgame.

On the Origins of Political Bias

I am not an anthropologist, but I’ve been mulling over some thoughts that came to me after watching a show on gorilla behavior. It has changed my thinking about society rather dramatically.

I have thought for a number of years that proper education and enlightenment would lead to the inevitable adoption of free market principles. If we are truly rational beings, how could society, over time, not accept what is true and beneficial. In chemistry, physics, and biology, we seem to be progressing all the time. However, I have now come to reject this concept as it applies to politics and propose that we are in never-ending oscillations between shades of freedom and tyranny.

Underlying many of our motivations, as is the case for gorillas, is the desire for status. It is not just a desire to be rich, but to be richer than our friends and neighbors. Wealth and status can be gained through virtuous means like hard work, through immoral ways such as theft and murder, but also through manipulation. The homeless man on the street is not stealing from passersby, he is merely manipulating people to give him money.

This manipulation is a constant force around us. A pretty girl will get a boy to do favors for her. A slick salesman will sell an item for far more than the going market rate. A politician will tell tear jerking stories to get votes. For those who seek power, but live in a civil society, manipulation is the most powerful tool at their disposal because violence is rarely tolerated.

At given points in time, societies around the world endeavor to pursue a new course. Much like England and it’s Magna Carta, and the U.S. with it’s Constitution, weak societies decide to try something different that improves on previous frameworks that don’t seem to be working anymore. If these new frameworks are truly better, the society will flourish and thrive. Clearly, America’s framework has worked spectacularly by growing a small group of colonies into a singular world power.

What works for societies are limits on individual power. There is no mistaking the strong correlation between free markets and high growth/high incomes around the world. Individual freedom to calculate one’s own actions leads to the best outcomes. However, this framework of individual freedom does not allow for the kind of power that certain individuals wish to wield. Manipulation is the pathway back to that power.

When one individual is able to successfully manipulate others to give them power, still others who desire power or status will adopt these techniques and employ it themselves. The manipulators, over time, must destroy the logic and tenets of the framework of individual freedom. Slowly, but surely, these manipulations begin to weave together a narrative that does reject freedom and offers some “more perfect” alternative. Successful manipulators use these narratives to get elected to office in a democracy.

Young and old, smart and dull, all start to fall sway to the romance and the Utopian possibilities promised in the narrative. A whole army of intellectuals will dutifully build a "science" around it, unknowing that they are greater victims of manipulation than the dullards they pity. The masses begin to reject old traditions and the fundamentals of individual liberty. The manipulators compete endlessly to perfect the power of the narrative and raise their status.

Finally, the day arrives when the old ways appear to fail (usually because it has been corrupted by a weaker narrative) and the new way is given a chance. It’s not that the narrative is invincible, but all that needs to happen is the appearance that it “works.” Under Mussolini, the crippling strikes by communist labor organizations ended and things “worked” much better. Under Hitler, the hyperinflation and sky-high unemployment of the Weimar Republic ended and things “worked” again. Under Hugo Chavez, oil prices soared and more than mitigated the horrible economic policies he has instituted.

The narrative that gave credence to government power does fail eventually because an oversized government is the downfall of a civilization. Communism failed. Monarchies failed. Jimmy Carter’s Statism failed. All led the pendulum to swing back to something different, and often times the manipulators got their just desserts.

Hopefully, our current leaders get stuck holding the bag when the music stops.

I Will Never Buy a GM or Chrysler Again

Today, Chrysler announced a deal with the U.S. Treasury to avoid bankruptcy. The deal gives the United Auto Workers' union 55% ownership of the firm. The federal government would own 10%, and Fiat would take 35%.

What does this mean? The UAW and the federal government will run the firm....into the ground. Chrysler, which has almost zero chance of being profitable now that they are run by two organizations that hold profitability last on their list of priorities, will be a function of the government. The UAW is too interconnected with the White House and the Democratic party and will owe its allegiance to them. Make no mistake, you and I will now have to subsidize Chrysler for years to come. These taxpayer dollars will then be turned around in the form of multi-million dollar donations to the Democratic Party.

General Motors is also on the same path. They are now entertaining a deal with the government that Larry Kudlow details this way: (HT EPJ)

What is going on in this country? The government is about to take over GM in a plan that completely screws private bondholders and favors the unions. Get this: The GM bondholders own $27 billion and they’re getting 10 percent of the common stock in an expected exchange. And the UAW owns $10 billion of the bonds and they’re getting 40 percent of the stock. Huh? Did I miss something here? And Uncle Sam will have a controlling share of the stock with something close to 50 percent ownership. And no bankruptcy judge. So this is a political restructuring run by the White House, not a rule-of-law bankruptcy-court reorganization.

That's right. The U.S. Federal Government will own 50% of the company. The UAW will own 40%. Political interference by the White House, the Democratic congress, and the UAW will prevent GM from ever becoming profitable again without government subsidies. Billions of your tax dollars will go to a company that will turn right around and give tens of millions to Democratic party candidates and our current President to help them stay in power.

If you believe in a truly free America you will do the same. Never buy any of their cars ever again.

There is Something Terribly Wrong in this Article

An Article from the New York Post entitled "CEO Stressed Out" opens with this sentence:

Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit's job security is increasingly in jeopardy as momentum grows in Washington to oust him.

I love how someone like Tim Geithner who has never worked for, much less run, a private firm in his professional life now chooses CEOs for major American companies.

There's also a word for this kind of government behavior: Fascism.

Update on My Paranoia Front

Before I took my two week break, I wrote a post about my increasing concerns that the Left was trying to build a case to demonize the non-Left.

I wrote about this post where the young man in Pittsburg, PA, shot to death three police officers. I predicted it would show up in op-eds as further "proof" that those opposing Obama were dangerous. Refreshingly, it didn't reach any of the major papers that I peruse. It did however reach some left wing bloggers. Such as author David Neiwert who tries to link the shooter to conservative commentator Glenn Beck and also FoxNews.

This guy is a nobody, but I started reading the now infamous assessment from the Department of Homeland Security, where they list people who are pro-life, anti gun control, military veterans, and those who are generally anti big government as potential terrorists.

This is what it says on page 3:

A recent example of the potential violence associated with a rise in right wing extremism may be found in the shooting deaths of three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 4 April 2009.

So much for "weaving a narrative" to demonize, now it is explicitly linked by official government documents.

Bad News

Two articles from Saturday have raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

First, is the incident of three police officers being shot in Pittsburgh. The piece of information headlined at Drudgereport added that he, the gunman, "feared the Obama administration was posed to ban guns. "

I wrote here, that I was beginning to feel that the Left was beginning to weave a narrative to demonize conservatives and anyone not supporting Obama. Robert Reich's freightening mischaracterazation was this:

Make no mistake: Angry right-wing populism lurks just below the surface of the terrible American economy, ready to be launched not only at Obama but also at liberals, intellectuals, gays, blacks, Jews, the mainstream media, coastal elites, crypto socialists, and any other potential target of paranoid opportunity.

This story just broke on Saturday night. If someone doesn't write an op-ed linking these killings to a demonization this coming week, I'll be surprised. If you see one, let me know. Not on this blog, but privately I have expressed some concern to friends that a mass shooting or domestic terrorist event commited by a crazed anti-government type will lead to a broad demonization of the non-Left in the U.S.

Second, is this one at the WSJ:

I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn't much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street's black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?

My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.

That's right. The government is not allowing banks to pay back the TARP money. The firm grip that Obama and his Congress have on Wall Street is not going to be relinquished.

The author, who is English goes on:

After 35 years in America, I never thought I would see this. I still can't quite believe we will sit by as this crisis is used to hand control of our economy over to government. But here we are, on the brink. Clearly, I have been naive.

How To Cure a Leftist

Much to my chagrin, many Americans have become so besotted with pragmatism that the ability to decipher between freedom and socialism has been dulled by an ignorance of principles that would otherwise expose the ugly brutishness that is the logical end of even quaint collectivisms. Of course, there is no cure for an ardent leftist, or an ardent adherent to almost any ideology, much as a Red Sox fan who has tattooed “Yankees Suck” to his chest is beyond repair. The hope lies in inoculating those in the muddled middle whose personal philosophies are a grab bag of cliché’s and just-so’s.

In my attempts to persuade, I have come to realize is that if you present a principle or axiom with which someone cannot break down they will likely adopt it. Mind you, not everyone immediately cleaves from logical contradictions flowing from other assumptions they hold, but it allows a partial conversion. An added convenience is that my experience has been that people are usually open to a conversation about principles in the abstract. Instead of debating with them the most recent political headline, burrowing down to the underlying principles can avoid some hostility due to party allegiances and other sentiments attached to politics.

Another angle is to cast doubt on their assumptions. I have started to listen more intently during discussions to see if they state some imperative or “it is just so” comments. Questioning these comments can be more fruitful towards changing minds.

Don’t be confused that these are easy targets. First, you have to know what these assumptions are to hear them spoken in conversation. Secondly, you have to know how to deconstruct these arguments. And finally, be aware that people can be as passionate about certain principles as they are about politics.

Over the coming weeks I plan to detail some conversations that I have with people who will remain anonymous, but should help shed some light on what I perceive is going on in their heads when they say what they say.

Note – As you read my posts you will eventually notice that I almost never use the term “liberal” when referring to those on the Left. There is little that is liberal about the Left, and I will not confer such an exaggeration to them.

Maybe House Republicans are Starting to Get It

The stimulus passed the House, but...

From Bloomberg:

Obama had traveled to Capitol Hill earlier this week to personally lobby for Republican support for the stimulus bill, an effort that included a private session with the party’s House members. He failed to win any converts. In yesterday’s vote, all of the 244 “yes” votes came from Democrats. Voting “no” were 177 Republicans and 11 Democrats.

Not a single Republican voted for the stimulus. Good job guys!