THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE

Keeper of the Flame of the Enlightenment

THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE

Janus v. AFSCME

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Janus v. AFSCME is one of the most important cases the Supreme Court has ever heard. It challenges the power of unions to force payment of union dues. The vast portion of union dues is allocated to the support of union power and the spread of marxist ideology. This is a clear infringement of our rights of free association and free speech. Of course, the usual suspects, Justices Kagan, Breyer, and Sotomayor, are concerned only with the decision’s impact on union power, rather than its impact on our Constitutional rights. Let’s hope the majority of justices come down on the side of the Republic.

As it is, workers in union-heavy industries are typically under incredible pressure to join—in my experience, there are few bullies bigger than the union boss in everyday American life. Yet general union membership continues to crater. Those who resist these efforts are often accused of being “free riders,” because they purportedly benefit from collective bargaining but refuse to pay in. This is an exceptionally peculiar argument coming from organizations for which the central mission, as far as I can tell, is to ensure that the least effective workers are protected at the expense of the most effective workers.

More than that, though, the entire case against Janus not only rests on coercion, but on a debatable, if not dubious, notion. John Doe must join a union, because he already benefits from collective bargaining negotiations, union advocates argue. Does he? Even if we concede that collective bargaining negotiations might raise the average salary of teachers, it may very well depress his salary. It is just as easy to argue that collective bargaining hurts the good teacher. Public-sector unions are not only arguing that workers must join a collective and subvert their individual rights, but that they must accept an ideological contention.

In many states, public-sector unions don’t have collective bargaining rights. Yet, as I write this, every school in all 55 counties of one of those states—West Virginia, where the average teachers’ salary is a bit higher than the average worker’s—are now closed due to an illegal teacher’s strike. Most of those average workers in West Virginia have no choice when it comes to their children’s educations.
Yet nearly every story about this situation focuses on the plight of poor teachers rather than powerless parents. On one hand, we hear that teachers unions are vital to the economy because teachers would make far less in the private sector. In the next breath, we hear them argue that teachers are substantially underpaid compared to what others earn in the private sector. So there’s a simple way to find out how much public-sector employees are worth individually, and that’s breaking the union’s monopoly.

If Americans want to join organizations that undercut initiative and achievement to slide employees into safe, pre-determined slots regardless of ability or work ethic, that’s their business. If they want to break the law and blackmail entire communities who have no choice but to walk away, they should be fired. If they want to force co-workers to pay for their political activities, they should be stopped. And if they claim that most teachers want to willingly participate in union efforts, the only way to find out is by giving those public employees a choice.

Is Secession Legal? | An Open Letter to Attorney General Sessions

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No, Mr. Attorney-General, secession and nullification are not settled law.  Laws against nullification and secession are the illegitimate offspring of the Civil War.

The Founders were secessionists, no Mr. Sessions?  Were you asleep during your 6th grade history class as much you are today?  Every government that exceeds its constitutionally mandated powers is illegitimate.  As such, the states are free to go.  Haven’t you noticed that the federal government has completely trashed the Tenth Amendment guaranteeing the states and the people the power of authority over those powers not granted the federal government under Article 1, Section 8?  When you assert that federal law is the supreme law of the land, are you declaring in essence that the Tenth Amendment is null and void?  If so, you are a feckless traitor.
I would under ordinary and legitimate circumstances agree with your position on California’s “sanctuary state” laws and its openly impeding the enforcement of federal immigration laws.  The Constitution is quite clear that immigration is an authorized power of the federal government under Article 1, Section 8.
But given the fact that the federal government has exceeded the powers authorized by USC Article 1, Section 8, so egregiously, so flagrantly and in so many ways over so many years, and all but ignored our sacred Tenth Amendment, it is clear that our government is illigimate, and that under the circumstances, I cannot support your stance.
I suggest you read the attached essay.  You might learn something.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-secession-legal/

Capitalism Gets No Respect and No Thanks (von Mises)

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It’s so true. In today’s world a pedophile gets more respect than a capitalist. Everything we have, including the money to support government at every level, is made possible by capitalism. Government cannot create wealth; it can only redistribute it or destroy it. Every dime the government has has been generated by the private ( i.e. capitalist) sector. So if you’re getting food stamps, or welfare in any other form, you have capitalism to thank for it.

Capitalism, it turns out, is the ultimate form of social justice.   But, you’ll never hear this from the lame-stream media, or even the most ardent conservative/libertarian politicians. Nor will you hear it in any of the hallowed halls of academia. Should anyone dare challenge the prevailing campus ideology, they risk ostracism, threats to persons and property, loss of employment, administrative disciplinary action, or even bodily harm.

In any corner of the world, you’ll find few, if any, open supporters of capitalism or free enterprise.  It’s just too risky to your life and livelihood.

We all owe a debt of the gratitude to the late economist/philosopher, Ludwig von Mises (29 September 1881 – 10 October 1973).  Von Mises, along with Carl Menger and Friedrich Hayek, is one of the founding fathers of the Austrian School of Economics. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism. He is best known for his work on praxeology, a study of human choice and action.

His masterpiece,  Human Action, is considered the very best economics text by lovers of liberty everywhere.  His crowning achievement was his induction into the Artful Dilettante Hall of Fame in 2016.  He was among the original inductees.

Capitalism Gets No Respect and No Thanks (von Mises)

Is English Deteriorating?

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The grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling in our country are nothing less than dreadful.  And our youth don’t have a monopoly on this.  It includes major media figures, political leaders, public spokespersons of major corporations, organizations, and the clergy.  Examples:

*  Its a beautiful thing.  Sorry—IT’S A BEAUTIFUL THING.

*  We visited many country’s.  Sorry—WE VISITED MANY COUNTRIES.  Simple plural, no need for a possessive or apostrophe.

*  Attorney-Generals.   Sorry—it’s ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, just like MOTHERS-IN-LAW.

*  We’re going to visit the Stewart’s.  Sorry—WE’RE GOING TO VISIT THE STEWARTS.

This is but a small smattering of the grammatical errors I see and hear everyday in both print and spoken media.  The other night, a screen bullet on the Tucker Carlson Show, read “warrents” instead of “warrants.”  Tucker bears the ultimate responsibility for this.

I understand that our schools have for all intents and purposes dropped traditional English from their curricula.  The explanations given include, “There’s no point in wasting precious classtime on memorizing a bunch of “subjective human constructs.”  But of course, there’s plenty of time to waste on climate change, racism, misogyny, and transgender bathrooms.

Another common explanation is that English is “racist and serves to advance and undergird white privilege.”  Try telling that to Bill Cosby who, despite his alleged crimes and character flaws, had much to say about “black English,” including, “I cannot understand what these kids are saying.”  I’ll take it a step further, “I can’t understand what any of our kids are saying.”

And this isn’t a current development.  Twenty-five years ago, my wife and I hosted a German exchange student for an academic year.  He became a tutor in his English class !  Can you effing believe that?

The public school system is our national disgrace.  The taxpayers are paying $15,000 a pop to educate each of our kids.  The teachers’ unions should be horsewhipped.  And get this–so should the parents.  The schools are supposed to augment what our kids are taught at home by their parents and elder siblings.  My parents worked with me every evening, sometimes unpleasantly so, on my multiplication and division tables, flash cards (anyone remember them), reading, spelling, and so forth.  Our kids would be better off watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune every night than going to school.

Everyone has dropped the ball on this.  Take matters into your own hands.  Don’t wait for the government to educate you children.  They can’t find the doorknob or pour piss from a boot.

I understand we have far more pressing problems in this country than periods and commas.  But the deterioration of English and grammar is just another example of the overall breakdown of discipline in our country.  —Artful Dilettante

FAMOUS LAST WORDS: THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE CRISIS

All quotes from Famous Last Words: The American Language Crisis ReconAllsidered, Harvey A. Daniels.

1.  The common language is disappearing. It is slowly being crushed to death under the weight of verbal conglomerate, a pseudospeech at once both pretentious and feeble, that is created daily by millions of blunders and inaccuracies in grammar, syntax, idiom, metaphor, logic, and common sense…. In the history of modern English there is no period in which such victory over thought-in-speech has been so widespread. Nor in the past has the general idiom, on which we depend for our very understanding of vital matters, been so seriously distorted.Recent graduates, including those with university degrees, seem to have no mastery of the language at all. They cannot construct a simple declarative sentence, either orally or in writing. They cannot spell common, everyday words. Punctuation is apparently no longer taught. Grammar is a complete mystery to almost all recent graduates.

2.  From every college in the country goes up the cry, “Our freshmen can’t spell, can’t punctuate.” Every high school is in disrepair because its pupils are so ignorant of the merest rudiments.

3.  The vocabularies of the majority of high-school pupils are amazingly small. I always try to use simple English, and yet I have talked to classes when quite a minority of the pupils did not comprehend more than half of what I said.

4. Unless the present progress of change [is] arrested…there can be no doubt that, in another century, the dialect of the Americans will become utterly unintelligible to an Englishman. Our language is degenerating very fast.

 

Where are the Sons of Liberty when we Need Them ?

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Where’s the conservative/libertarian organized opposition to anything?  The cultural marxists, as Rahm Emanuel would say, “never let a crisis go to waste,” while the opposition sits idly by with their thumbs up their asses.  The Left responds almost immediately to any catalytic event, especially tragedy.  The Left is proactive, always stirring up trouble, several steps ahead of the opposition.  They exploit every issue, every weakness.  They leave no stones unturned.  The conservative opposition is reactive at best, but invisible and limp most of the time.
The conservative/libertarian opposition is meek, timid, disorganized and uncoordinated; they are always left holding the bag.  They’re all hat and no cattle; they talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. They are winning the battle of words, but all but absent from the battle of the streets.
Within minutes of the Parkland tragedy, the Left was fully mobilized to attack President Trump, the GOP, and the 2nd Amendment. They recruited politically ignorant, naive, and brainwashed student-survivors and crisis actors like David Hogg as political props and stooges, ready to do their bidding.  Where was the conservative counterpart to David Hogg ?   How much airtime would David Hogg be getting if he were a zealous supporter of the Second Amendment ?
The Left is milking the sorrow of the victims’ families to advance their sick statist agenda.  Where is the conservative opposition pointing this out?  Likely in their gamerooms.  They are too polite, too gentlemanly, too nice, to defend liberty or win the day.  The Left plays to win, by any means.
No matter the issue, the conservative/libertarian opposition moves like a sloth, or not a all.  And if there is no issue, the Left makes one up.  Conservatives are never proactive.  A week ago or so the Left launched a short-lived phony campaign to impeach Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  I cannot recall any opposition campaign to oust the marxist Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Let’s take conservative/libertarian speakers on college campuses who are systematically silenced by Campus Snowflakes and their well-heeled financial backers.  I guarantee you, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty would have responded to these people in an ugly way.  Fearlessly and efficiently.  They didn’t concern themselves with PC or being rounded up by their British occupiers.
 So, where are today’s Sons of Liberty?  Where’s our Million-Man March for a Balanced Budget ?  Where’s our Million-Man March for a return to the Gold Standard ?  Where’s our Million-Man March to end the Welfare State ?  Where’s our Million-Man March to end the Federal Reserve System ?  Where’s our Million-Man March to end public education ?  Hmmm ?
Unfortunately, nowhere to be found.  At every turn, they allow these statists to run roughshod over them while they sit in front of their warm fireplaces posting pithy commentaries to FreeRepublic.  I admit, I’m a fully-credentialed member of the Pajamas Media.  But I’m far too old to organize a counter-revolution.
 The pen is mightier than the sword, so they say, but the Founders, especially Samuel Adams, deftly combined both to win the day.  And they all had real day jobs.  The Sons of Liberty tarred and feathered their opponents and marched them to the town square in their birthday suits.  Imagine today’s Pajama Boy libertarians having the stones to do that.
 The Sons of Liberty were among our earliest community organizers.  To be fair, many of today’s conservative/libertarians just don’t have the time to be community organizers.  A community organizer is just a nice sounding term for someone who isn’t gainfully employed.  In addition to being employed, conservatives are far more likely to be married, have children, own a home, be responsible and functional. The cultural marxists and their unwitting dupes are on an eight-year tour of duty at a college or university on the taxpayers’ dime, living at home with mom and dad, playing video games, and/or bussing tables.
 Nevertheless, the conservative/libertarians are virtually invisible and silent when it comes to speedy organized action.  Oh sure, a few turn up to heckle to Nancy Pelosi or some congressman at the townhall gathering.  But by and large, unlike their ideological opponents, they refrain from organized action, preferring to stay at home and deferring mobilized action their opponents.
 It takes far more than election victories to win and maintain power.  You cannot win playing defense.  You must control the ball and win by whatever means necessary.  As Thomas Jefferson said,  “The Tree of Liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

Benjamin Franklin on the Welfare State

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“I fear the giving mankind a dependence on anything for support in age or sickness, besides industry and frugality during youth and health, tends to flatter our natural indolence, to encourage idleness and prodigality, and thereby to promote and increase poverty, the very evil it was intended to cure.”

— Ben Franklin, quoted in Benjamin Franklin: An American Life  by Walter Isaacson