My Political Views

My Political Views

We operate according to our beliefs. We support what we believe is true. This includes our views of who we are and why we’re here. Based on what we believe, we either endorse it, refute it, or dig to find the truth. My beliefs were formed by my family, but more importantly by my reactions to what I experience and learn.

I am a product of a Catholic education with emphasis on human behavior and physical science. St Louis University required minors in philosophy and theology; my elected minor was English and major was psychology emphasizing Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and other contemporary business consultants. This prepared me to enter Personnel / Industrial Relations / Human Resources. I graduated in 3 ½ years and went to work. It was many years later when I completed a Fellowship in Strategic Studies.

My family voted Republican and disliked Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. They disliked Socialism, Communism, Unions, Organized Crime, Liberals and Atheism. They liked freedom, independence, self reliance, industriousness, perseverance and the joy of work. They prayed regularly and believed confidently that God had given them life and we were here to do God’s Will. My parents and grandparents had lived through World War I, the Great Depression and World War II. I was born during World War II and grew up during the Korean War and the Cold War.

In school, I read War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov, and saw the damage intellectuals could do. In Brideshead Revisited is saw the declining English Aristocracy’s lack of ambition.. Emerson and Ayn Rand wrote about self reliance. Thomas Aquinas explained the nature of man. Newton and others explained physics. Ethics explained the circumstances and conditions of responsibility. I learned more human behavior in good novels and plays than I learned in most Psychology courses.

Political campaigns were not burdened by the expense of TV advertising and the bar to entry was not too high when I was going to school in the 1960s. The battle lines between Democrats and Republicans had been drawn. Democrats would gain the support of the poor by supporting unions, socialism and government welfare programs and would gain the support of atheists and liberals by taking actions that diminish religion and allow abortion and genocide.

In the 1950s, Senator Joe McCarthy led the Congressional hearings aimed to root out Communists from the government and other sectors. The Liberal Progressives were forced underground, but they did not go away. They began to infiltrate the universities and the government. Law schools began to teach that the words in the Constitution should be ignored and that creative interpretations were called for. They struck a retaliatory blow in the 1960s.

In 1962, the Catholic Church opened the Vatican II Counsel. In the years that followed, thousands of nuns and priests quit. Catholic hospitals were sold and for-profit companies bought them. The sexual revolution of the 1960 would further alienate young people from their churches. Buddhists, Hindu and Moslem religions became the fad, along with the popularization of illegal drugs. Churches fell error to Liberation Theology and enabled several Communist revolutionary movements that would break out in South America in the 1970s.

In 1963 the ACLU filed suit and the Supreme Court banned prayer in public schools, followed by abortion on demand. The media and the courts sided with the Democrats and expanded “free speech” to include everything except hollering “fire” in a crowded theater. That’s when ”special interests” hijacked our political campaigns and were able to make campaign contributions to anybody to exercise their “free speech”. Starting in the 1950s pornography was allowed as “free speech” and by the 1980s pornography was common on TV and continues to dominate the “popular culture”. Feminist Liberal groups became active to promote their cause of equal rights in hopes to become a protected group along with racial minorities. They supported abortion on demand consistent with their Progressive, Margaret Sanger political roots.

In 1964 the Federal Government passed the Civil Rights Act, the birth control pill was put on the market and the Supreme Court approved legal abortion of the unborn as a women’s rights issue. Also, in 1964, the Vietnam War was becoming a major war and President Lyndon Johnson announced his War on Poverty, a major wealth redistribution bill supported by the Left. The debt created by the combination of the Vietnam War and the War on Poverty was eventually paid by debasing the dollar, creating a crescendo of 6% to 13% annual inflation rates, starting in the late 1960s and culminating in the 1970s with Stagflation, high inflation and high unemployment. Also, in the 1960s, large corporations were busy establishing operations in Europe and across the globe. The 1960s established the contentious laws and conditions we continue to fight about today.

In the 1970s, to prepare to ship manufacturing jobs to other countries, the media promoted stories of bored, union auto manufacturing employees, drawing the conclusion that these were unattractive jobs. The inflation of the 1960s and 1970s changed American families; all moms went to work to help pay the bills. The Federal Government and the Federal Reserve redoubled their efforts to hide the fact that they planned to continue to debase the dollar by 4% a year. But now, they knew not to allow inflation above that amount to be felt or detected by the voters. Voters, working moms and families were angry and ready for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Again the Progressives, called free-spending Democrats, went underground, but continued to run the House and Senate.

The 1980s brought the end of the Cold War and the computer revolution with increases in productivity included as its byproduct. Reagan cut taxes and reduced the size of government. Just like the economic expansion of the 1950s paid off the World War II debt, the increase in free market revenues of the 1980s produced enough additional tax revenue to pay off Lyndon Johnson’s Debt. Reagan won the Cold War and George H.W. Bush took the helm and won the Gulf War. Throughout the 1980s, I saw a barrage of laws aimed at Human Resource departments. Just when we learned to avoid the unions, the Democratic Congress reached us with more regulations.

In 1994, Newt Gingrich led the Republican victory, winning control of both Houses. Government balanced the budget. Manufacturing jobs were still being shipped off-shore and the media announced we were entering the information age….what they didn’t admit to was that the information was not good. When you lose all your manufacturing jobs, you cease to create real wealth. The economic realities however would be realized and when the financial analyses were completed, almost everybody moved their manufacturing overseas.
On September 11, 2001, we experienced a dramatic terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York and we went to war in Afghanistan and later Iraq. Using our military to hunt down and defeat these terrorists proved to be a very expensive proposition and our Debt grew from $3 trillion to $10 trillion.

Cheap interest rates benefitted the government as their debt rose and also allowed housing prices to rise. In the meantime, the time-bomb left by the Democrats was ticking. The 1993 Community Reinvestment Act and HUD anti-discrimination rules directed lenders to give mortgages to un-creditworthy buyers. Lending rules loosened and over time, 30% of all mortgages were set to fail.

At the same time, Fannie and Freddy and Wall Street bundled those mortgages together and sold them to unsuspecting customers. In 2008, these toxic assets failed, and together with the newly imposed mark-to-market FASB rule made credit markets freeze up. The Federal Reserve ensured to the replacement of trillions of dollars of “lost” equity and bailed out the perpetrators.

Having presided over a $1 trillion war and a $30 trillion meltdown, refusal to secure the borders and failure to drill domestic oil and gas, the Republicans were toast. The Democrats selected the most Liberal Senator they had and Barack Obama became President in 2009. He immediately added $1 trillion to the already $2.7 trillion annual federal budget and announced a return to redistribution of wealth. The Democrats had a ready arsenal of bills they had been saving for just such an occasion. With control of both Houses plus the Executive, what would stop them ? We now have a health insurance law that requires everyone to buy health insurance. Next up may be an Illegal Alien’s Amnesty Bill, in the midst of 20% real unemployment, followed by a Carbon Tax Bill, based on the Climate Change hoax, that would double our electric bills every few years, followed by the Card Check Bill that would allow unions to organize any organization they choose.

The 2010 elections could result in Republicans taking back both Houses, but much damage will have been done. A majority of voters disapprove of virtually all of the Bills pushed by the Democrats, so it’s a safe bet that we will have a Republican Congress in 2011. It is also likely that Barack Obama will be a one term President.

For me, having our Federal Government is like being married to a drug addicted cocktail waitress who sleeps around. We continually see Congress pass laws we disagree with. These laws benefit special interests, both corporate and ideological. Special interest groups pick the candidates and we get to vote for one of them, just like Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

I would prefer that only individual registered voter be allowed to contribute to political campaigns. They could give only to candidates who appear on their ballot. They could not contribute to any out-of-state campaigns. Special interest groups would be banned from making any contributions to any candidate. They can express their free speech by taking out their own ads. All politicians really need is a website, some yard signs and some gas money. Maybe then politicians could work for us. Maybe then they would read the Bills.