Sic Semper Tyrannis

11/2/21 

Did you notice last night, on whatever channel you watch the news, the emblem of Virginia? Sic Semper Tyrannis - "This way end all tyrants" (under the image is of young maiden standing on the throat of the tyrant). Well it could have not happened in a better place. The anti-woke revolt may have started.

As one of the anchors said "Let's go Brandon" - BTW if the expression means nothing to you, get hip and read the meaning and funny origin here. (ingenuity of American crowds and media).

Like all revolutions, it took time and a lucky accident (and blessings from above) to get the needed steam, but the optimist that I am, I can see the Cultural Revolution that I fear starting to fade away (maybe). A friend in France told me yesterday "America seems to be on the razor's edge, will it come back before it's lost?". Maybe. 

Sic Semper Tyrannis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/virginia/

von Mises saw it coming

 This post is a 2018 reprint by the Mises Institute of a speech given by the economist Ludvig Von Mises in 1950 in NYC

His forecast of what was to come is simply amazing and frightening. 

Were it not for the short interlude of the Regan and Thatcher administrations the US and UK would be where the rest of Europe and much of the world are today, but judging from current economic policy proposals we seem to be on track to follow after all.

The case is made so simply and clearly that a child could get it. It would seem that naivete, wishful thinking and/or the propensity to appropriate someone else's wealth are too strong for most humans to resist.

Pass this on in case we can still change enough minds before our children are abandoned to a future of a Chinese-style existence.

https://mises.org/library/middle-road-leads-socialism

The Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism

• LEE ESTO EN ESPAÑOL

TAGS Socialism

01/11/2018Ludwig von Mises

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middle_of_the_road_leads_to_socialism_mises.pdf

 middle_of_the_road_leads_to_socialism_mises.pdf

The fundamental dogma of all brands of socialism and communism is that the market economy or capitalism is a system that hurts the vital interests of the immense majority of people for the sole benefit of a small minority of rugged individualists. It condemns the masses to progressing impoverishment. It brings about misery, slavery, oppression, degradation and exploitation of the working men, while it enriches a class of idle and useless parasites.

This doctrine was not the work of Karl Marx. It had been developed long before Marx entered the scene. Its most successful propagators were not the Marxian authors, but such men as Carlyle and Ruskin, the British Fabians, the German professors, and the American Institutionalists. And it is a very significant fact that the correctness of this dogma was contested only by a few economists who were very soon silenced and barred from access to the universities, the press, the leadership of political parties and, first of all, public office. Public opinion by and large accepted the condemnation of capitalism without any reservation.

Perspective from my 70th birthday

 Yesterday I turned 70. The world could care less. A few dear friends did and threw me a party in case I do not make it to 71. Fingers crossed.

Today the world is different: America is legitimately embarrassed by the incompetence of our leaders - watch Suday 8/15/21 videos of people falling off airplanes escaping from Kabul. How could we come to this? Some would say: Simple. History repeats itself: elect an incompetent like Carter (Biden) as a knee-jerk reaction to a personally objectable President like Nixon (Trump) and your fate is sealed. History is not kind to amateurs and incompetents.  Carter should have stuck to Habitat charities, Biden to credit card lobbying.  As with Carter (a real nice person but unfit), we are set for inflation, recession, "malaise" and geopolitical embarrassment (Iran then, Afganistan now), energy dependence (Biden just begged OPEC for help - to his credit Carter knew better than that). Our chief general Millie (Gen. Woke, also the mastermind of Afgan Army and Police training since 2003) was more concerned with promoting LGBTQ and gender studies in our military than in winning strategies and limiting losses getting out of Afghanistan.

I see the world through an old and odd lens foreign to today's younger crowd: 

I grew up in an Italy rebuilding after WWII destruction, I saw the power of a free economy destroyed by socialism and communism in 68-75, - yes, Italy, it has the largest communist party in non-USSR western Europe countries and to this day the highest unemployment outside of Greece in the EU. When I came to the US (legally) in 1970 I saw Black Panther riots in the US and the Student for Democratic Society and associated terrorism, I applauded the welcome sacking of Nixon, the catastrophic electoral response electing Carter. After immigrating legally a second time, I saw the recovery of America with Regan (the "Regan recession" was most painful to me personally, but it worked for the country. I believe that the Regan/Thatcher economic policies are the reason for the difference in today's economies and standards of living of US-UK vs. the rest of Europe). Then I witnessed the corruption of national finances and character brought by Clinton, then Bush's disastrous extension of the Afgan War and the conning of the country to go to war in Iraq, on and on.

From those experiences, I conclude that history is a sequence of ups and downs. Biden has just shown us one of the most costly downs in recent history. Incompetence does not come close to describe it, but should have been expected. The criteria for a person's selection to a task are no longer competence, just woke-fitness. So we, Americans, pay the financial cost (interest on Afganistan and Iraq wars is estimated at 6.5 trillion by 2050 - the kids will pay for it). Afghans will pay a personal price and in the geopolitical future untold numbers will see their world upended.

It is not what I had hoped to enter the end of my days

Logotherapy - Part Psychiatry Part Philosophy

In my continuing search for answers to the riddle of life, I took the online course Introduction to Logotherapy a subject that has held my curiosity for years since reading Victor Frankl's  Man's Search For Meaning. The course is taught by Batya Yaniger PsyD at the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy in Israel. The course has been an awesome experience.

As it is my habit to really learn anything I read, I developed a mindmap of the main concepts in each chapter of the second part of the book - Logotherapy In A Nutshell, my crumbs trail to go back and search through.  Search away, I hope you find half of the answers I found.

Another presentation of Logotherapy is by Dean Theophilos, MA, LCPC, CRADC, LPCC, LADC, NCC -Licensed Therapist - The Mansio Center, Inc.499 Anthony St. Glen Ellyn, IL 60137