Latest Radio (Sept. 7, 2017)

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Here’s the

audio clip     
from yesterday’s appearance on the Bill Meyer Show (KMED) in Oregon.

We talked about the slimy automated car safety exemption just passed by Congress.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Every film that takes place in a “future” that relegates the majority of the public to automated transportation, is also, not coincidentally, about a distopian society being abused and terrorized by a tyrannical government.
    Do people not make the connection??? Big money has been spent, not just to entertain, but inform and warn the general public of what IS in the process of being instituted by our own bureaucrats. Anyone ever seen “Minority Report”, “Aeon Flux”, “Equilibrium”, “Total Recall”, “Freejack”, Jesus do all these people think that these films (and countless other) are about how wonderful the future will be thanks to dependency on technology and and our “glorious leaders”?????
    I’m beginning to believe that the only way to wake up these “sleepwalkers” is going to be with an electric cattle prod up their asses!

    • It goes way back… The earliest such film I know well is HG Wells’ “Things to Come”. It was a sales pitch for it in the 1930s.

      We’re on a plan that the so-called elites put the world on and have been working towards for over a century now. And no, people can’t see it. They are conditioned to accept it.

  2. The fundamental principle of group life and of governance as an ideal

    Man is intended by nature to form a society. The group life is necessary, for if left to himself in an isolated state, an individual would be deprived of the materials, the intellectual guidance, and moral support necessary for the attainment of happiness. The group life is necessary precisely and only because of this insufficiency of the individual for his own needs.

    In this way, then, we justify the fundamental principle of life in society, which we may enunciate as follows: “The collectivity exists for the sake of the individual, and not the individual for the collectivity.” Similarly, the well-being of a group will not differ in kind from that of the individuals which compose it.

    The principle is a general one, and applies to domestic groups, political (village, city, state), religious (parish, abbey, diocese, Christendom), and economic ones (e.g., trade union or guild). It is based upon general ethics, which emphasizes the value of human personality, and this moral individualism, itself one of the most striking achievements of the civilization of the Middle Ages, is in turn linked to metaphysics, which recognizes no other existent, substantial reality than the individual, in the particular sphere in question.

    The Unity of the group and the inalienable rights of its members

    The collectivity itself does not exist, the very notion of ‘a collective person’ is contradictory. The unity of the phyle is not the internal unity which belongs to a natural substance, and which ensures coherence within it, but rather an external unity.

    Each member of a group retains his value as a person, but his activities are united or rather coordinated with those of others. This should be especially true of a healthy State, which ideally comprises many persons, whose varied activities combine to produce its well-being.

    The unity of a social group or of the State is a “unity of functions” exercised by the different members. The only difference between natural groups such as the family or the State and artificial ones such as a club or a political party is that the working in common is necessary in the first case and not in the second.

    Since the group exists for the sake of the members, it cannot take away or modify those inalienable rights which are expressions of the personality, i.e., which belong to the individual as possessing a rational nature.

    An individual has the right to preserve his life, to marry and to bring up children, to develop his intelligence, to be instructed, to hold to the truth, to live in Society however he shall choose.

    The family

    The family forms the cell of the social organism. The father is the head of this group. Although the wife belongs in a sense to the husband and is said to be some part of the husband, her independence relative to her husband is greater than that of children relative to their father. The subordination of a child until capable of self-supporting to his father is complete.

    Origin of authority in the State

    Whether great or small, a State consists of a group of families under the authority or power of one or several person willingly delegated to hold power.

    Government should always be an officium or duty

    The raison d’être of government determines its nature: it is utilitarian, an officium, ‘office’ or duty.

    One must go to great length in order to put up with an unjust ruler, but if the regime becomes quite unsupportable, then one must have recourse to that power of deposing the ruling sovereigns which is the corollary of the right to choose one.

    This doctrine holds good whatever be the nature of government, — monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy. This brings us to the question of the depository of power.

    The Sovereign People and its Representatives

    Where is the seat of sovereignty in any case, what is the most perfect form of government?

    The best regime will be realized in that city or state, in which one alone commands all the others by reason of his virtue, where some subordinate rulers command according to their merit, but where nevertheless power belongs to all, either because all are eligible as rulers, or simply because all are electors.

    Now this is the case in a government which consists of a happy combination of only a royalty class, inasmuch as there is only one head, of aristocracy inasmuch as many collaborate in the work of government, according to their virtue, and of democracy or popular power inasmuch as the rulers may be chosen from among the people, and it belongs to the people to elect their rulers.

    Where possible there should be universal suffrage, the right of the lowest of men to be raised to power, the appreciation of personal value and virtue, the domination of reason in those who govern.

    An ‘enlightened government,’ an elective system giving the means of choosing those most worthy, and the necessity of the political education of the people.

    The duties of the Sovereign, and the Legislative Power

    The ruler is charged with a threefold duty: he must establish the well-being of the whole, conserve it, and improve it.

    First he must establish the common weal by preserving peace among the citizens (sometimes peace is referred to as convenientia voluntatum, — agreement of wills), by encouraging the citizens to lead a moral life, and providing a sufficient abundance of the material things which are necessary to it.

    The public weal once established, the next duty is to conserve it. This is accomplished by assuring the appointment of sufficient and capable agents of administration, by repressing disorder, by encouraging morality through a system of rewards and punishments, and by protecting the state against the attacks of external enemies.

    Finally the government is charged with a third mission, which is vague, more elastic: to rectify abuses, to make up for defects, to work for progress.

    The means par excellence by which a Government is enabled to fulfill its threefold task is the power of making laws, i.e., of commanding.

    This is a system of positive law, in its double form of jus gentium, law of the nations, common to all states, and jus civile, civil law, proper to individual states.

    Always the individual is protected against the State, for “in the measure that positive law is in disagreement with the natural law, it is no longer a law, but a corruption of law”

    In this way the arbitrary element is banished from positive law, which is accordingly defined as “a rational injunction, made in view of the common good, and promulgated by the one having charge of the community”.

    Positive law adapts to concrete circumstances the immediate prescriptions of the natural law, which in their abstract form belong to the law of nations. For instance, the law of nations enjoins that malefactors are to be punished.

    Positive law determines whether the punishment is to be by fine, imprisonment, etc. Positive law is therefore at once fixed and variable. It changes with circumstances, and it belongs to a government to modify it if necessary, always on condition that it bears in mind that every modification of a law lessens its force and majesty.

    Social Justice and the Commonwealth

    The common good is the result of good government and the reign of social justice.

    A compensation is due to each individual for whatever benefit accrues from his acts, and right is simply the requirement that this equal adjustment be made. To render to each one his due is to do justice. When the act benefits an entire community, social justice arises.

    Hence, social justice demands two elements:

    The actions of the individual citizen or of the several members of a group be conducted in such a way that the community, i.e., its members, shall be benefited thereby;

    That, in return, the individual should receive from the community an adequate compensation.

    Social justice thus understood rests upon a solemn affirmation of solidarity and mutual assistance.

    Every human action, inasmuch as it is performed in a community, has its reaction upon that community, and benefits or harms it more or less, in some way. The soldier who fights, the laborer who works, and the scholar who studies are engaged in social activities which, being such, do good to the whole community.

    Even the outbursts of individual passions admit of being referred to social justice, and “can be regulated with a view to the common good”, since these outbursts intensity action, and every action has its echo in society.

    Who ensures this convergence of individual activities? An individual citizen is obviously without the qualifications necessary for this task. It therefore belongs to the ruler to orient all good acts towards the common good of all.

    He is the custos justi, the justum animatum, — the guardian of right, the living embodiment of justice. He is the architectonic chief. Just as the master builder of the cathedral supervises the stonecutters, the carpenters, the sculptors, the painters, so that they may be ready at the proper time and place, so the master builder of social justice oversees all the diverse social activities and takes account of their relative importance in the community.

    ~ Thomas Aquinas.

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