Notable Thinkers

 

Notable Thinkers

 Conservatives believe in personal responsibility, limited government, free markets, individual liberty, traditional American values and a strong national defense. Conservatives believe the role of government should be to provide people the freedom necessary to pursue their own goals. Conservative policies generally emphasize empowerment of the individual to solve problems.

 Liberals believe in government action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all. It is the duty of the government to alleviate social ills and to protect civil liberties and individual and human rights. Liberals believe that the role of the government should be to guarantee that no one is in need. Liberal policies generally emphasize the need for the government to solve problems.

 Libertarians are consistent advocates of free-market capitalism, minimal government, and social tolerance (thus distinguishing libertarians from conservatives). Their motto might be “Keep government out of the boardroom and the bedroom.”

Both modern liberals and conservatives can trace their early beginnings back to thinkers like Aristotle and Machiavelli, and thence to 17^th century thinker John Locke of England, and to 18^th century thinkers Adam Smith of Scotland, Edmund Burke of Ireland and Charles de Montesquieu of France.  Without overcomplicating, the path toward modern conservatism tracks though Aristotle, Machiavelli John Locke, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, John, John Quincy, Henry and Brooks Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, Alexis de Tocqueville, Auguste Comte, Benjamin Disraeli, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Mark Twain (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), Irving Babbitt, Martin Buber, Milton Friedman, Friedrich A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Paul Elmer More, George Santayana, C.S. Lewis, Ayn Rand, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Warren Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Russel Kirk, William H. Buckley, Whitaker Chambers, Phyllis Schlafly, Thomas Sowell, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, George Will, Victor Davis Hanson, Dinesh, D’Souza, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and many others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_conservatives

 Modern liberals track through John Locke, Adam Smith, Charles de Montesquieu. Erasmus, Thomas Hobbes, David Ricardo, Spinoza, Rousseau, Voltaire, Maximilien Robespierre, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, to Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine.  More recent notables are Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Jean Paul Sartre, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. Hayek, Ayn Rand, Karl Popper, Noam Chomsky, John Maynard Keynes, William Jennings Bryan, Herbert Croly, John Dewey, Herbert Marcuse, Reinhold Niebuhr, Woodrow Wilson, John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, John, Robert and Ted Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Barrack Obama, Joe Biden, most of our present mainstream media and many others 

https://justawordfromtheleft.wordpress.com/modern-liberal-thinkers-and-leaders-in-the-united-states/

 Libertarians:

John Locke (1632–1704), William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), H. L. Mencken (1880–1956), Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand (1905–1982), Milton Friedman (1912–2006), Murray Rothbard (1926–1995), Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Thomas Sowell, John Stossel, Charles Koch, David Koch, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Steve Forbes, Steve Moore, Larry Elder, Clint Eastwood, Charles Murray, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Glenn Beck, P.J. O’Rourke, Niall Ferguson, Tom Selleck, Charlie Gasparino, Vince Vaughn 

https://www.newsmax.com/BestLists/libertarians-newsmax-freedomfest/2017/06/01/id/793510/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_libertarian_thinkers

 Ray Gruszecki

July 22, 2022

Decline of Our Democracy

                             Decline of Our Democracy

 We could be living in communist Russia in the 1950’s.

 Marxism and Marxist principles have increasingly supplanted those of the enlightenment instituted by our founding fathers. The Constitution is used as a living document” and calls to “take to the streets” are heard when the judiciary refers back to it, as in the case of abortion and gun rights.

 Our press and media predominantly reflect the slanted propaganda of the current federal government, and not the truth. The constant drumbeat has convinced the uninitiated public that up is down, black is white, Donald Trump is a racist, and that trillions of dollars more spending is the way to curb inflation. 9% inflation, $5.00 gasoline and a president that cannot get anything right is finally starting to get through to much of the American public.

 Party leaders and backers are immune to the law, racking up massive fortunes by using privileged government information for financial gains. Election aberrations and other illicit activities by those in government or close to it, are “swept under the rug”, never to see the light of day.

 Party hacks caught breaking the law are treated with kid gloves and released without penalty, while party opponents are shackled and thrown into the meanest of lockups.

 Historically, world empires last for somewhere around 200-300 years. Outliers are the Roman Empire, 500 years, Ottoman Empire, 600+ years and the Han Dynasty, 400+ years. The United States is 246 years old as this is written, and for all intents and purposes, appears to be dying.

 All semblance of the common sense that is necessary for an effective and efficacious government has ended or is being eroded. Criminal rights have become more important than the law. Elevation of the rights of miniscule fringe groups have become more important than the rights of the majority of citizens. The southern border is not observed, and millions of unvetted aliens pour into the country, including fentanyl, sex traffic and terrorists.

 Our major party-run cities are garbage pits of drugs, crime and anarchy. DA’s and judges funded by Marxists like George Soros practice “catch and release”, perpetuating continuing crime and homelessness.

 Unfortunately, there is little hope unless we turn things around not only in Washington, but also at the local level. We can have a strong, well-run, patriotic federal government in Washington DC, but if we still have Soros-funded mayors and other functionaries at the local level, our cities will never escape their present dire circumstances.

 Ray Gruszecki

July 22, 2022

 

Friedman versus Keynes

 

Friedman versus Keynes

I am not an economist, but I studied Economics at University in Boston a long time ago.   I pulled out my old textbook and find that My Economics courses were Keynesian economics from a text book by Paul Samuelson who was a professor at MIT across the river in Cambridge at the time.  Even back then, I felt that manipulating the economy through government spending was not right.

This is a quick comparison between Keynesian and Friedman economics.  High inflation, which we are now suffering has nearly always been associated with Keynesian economics. 

Apparently, the people running Washington these days don’t have much more background in economics than I had some 65 years ago.  Probably less, since they want to spend more trillions of dollars in the middle of inflation on the way to a recession.

  

“Keynes and Friedman are the most influential economists of the 20th century.

Keynes vs Friedman

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was a British economist and is considered one of the founders of modern macroeconomics. Keynsian economics show that in the short run, especially during recessions, economic output is strongly influenced by total spending in the economy. Keynes' theories were extremely influential from the Great Depression to the oil shocks in the 1970s. Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was an American economist and statistician who led the famous Chicago School of economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman challenged some of the Keynesian theories proposing an alternative macroeconomic policy known as "monetarism" which advices focusing on controlling monetary supply. Friedman's theories have strongly influenced policy contributing to a change of paradigm away from Keynesian economics. Nonetheless, the advent of the recent global financial crisis has led to a resurgence of Keynesian ideas.

Keynesian economics

Main contributions by John Maynard Keynes:

• Keynes challenged the prevailing paradigm according to which free markets would automatically provide full employment, and underlined the important role of government spending in achieving economic growth.
• He demonstrated that the aggregated demand (household, business and government spending) is the most important driving force in an economy.
•  Keynes showed that wages and prices respond slowly to changes in demand and supply
• Keynes argued that free markets had no self-balancing mechanisms, which justifies government intervention to achieve stability and full employment.
• Keynes defended expansionary fiscal policy (increases in net public spending) as driver of economic growth and criticized excessive saving.

 

Friedman's monetarism

Milton Friedman's core arguments:

• Friedman challenged the dominance of Keynesian economics by suggesting money supply and prices are more important for economic prosperity than government spending.
• Friedman explained the dangers of collectivism and defended the virtues of free-markets and capitalism.
• For him, the main functions governments should play in the economy would be: controlling the money supply and keeping inflation in check.
• Friedman warned of the dangers of deflationary spirals in the case central banks are unable to supply enough money during a liquidity cruch.
• Milton Friedman also opposed the gold standard and his ideas contributed to its replacement. 

It is undeniable that both of these economists have left strong legacies in social science research; their ideas have shaped economic policies for many decades all over the world.”

 Ray Gruszecki

July 18, 2022

Delco Lighting Generator

 Delco Lighting Generator

 When I was a little kid growing up in the Berkshires during the Second World War, we had no electrical power from the grid until about 1946 after the war ended. For part of this time we used kerosene lamps for light, and I can remember doing my homework by kerosene lamp light when I first started elementary school.

 Sometime roundabout 1943 or so, my father installed a gasoline driven, 32-volt DC, Delco generator to provide light and minimal electrical power. I recently found a link describing the type of unit we had. I can still remember the tremendous noise it made when it was run to charge the batteries. It scared the bejesus out of my mother.

 My father built our house in Savoy, Massachusetts in 1939-40 with the help of trade aware friends, and they wired the house for electricity, when it became available.

 The house and land now belong to my nephew Jeff and his family who have modernized the house and brought it up to modern standards.

 http://www.delcolight.com/index.html

 Ray Gruszecki

July 18, 2022

 

 

Short History of the Recent Rise and Fall of the U.S.

 

Short History of the Recent Rise and Fall of the U.S.

 My career job was in the international oil industry with Caltex Petroleum which was headquartered in midtown Manhattan until 1982, Dallas until 1999, when they moved to Singapore.  I retired from Caltex in 1988 in Dallas, before they became part of Chevron.  Officially, I am a Chevron retiree, although I worked for myself and for JP Morgan Chase in Dallas until 2008.

 During the periods that I lived and worked in New York City I was not a big fan of Donald Trump.  I was peripherally aware of his flamboyant life style, his marriages and his reality shows.  I was more aware of the Trump name plastered all over my city.  Also, I believe that Trump was a democrat or a political mongrel at the time.  He made the front pages of the New York tabloids occasionally, so I couldn’t avoid knowing something about him, but I really had no further interest back then, prior to his presidential run.

 My interest picked up when Trump announced his underdog candidacy for president on that escalator in 2015.  He talked like a libertarian/conservative and opposed Hillary’s canned tax and spend democrat party politics.  He was outspoken and “in your face” during the campaign reflecting his rough and tumble Bronx, Queens and Manhattan real estate business background.  He told it like it was.  He did not pull any punches.  He sometimes overdid it and pissed people off.  It was Trump being Trump.

 Against all odds, Trump won the presidency! He was not a politician.  He was a business executive and reality TV host.  What did he know about running a country?  So, it took him a while to stabilize.  (Some say he never did stabilize, but that’s another story).

 Trump was hounded mercilessly from the first moments on that escalator in 2015, by the Marxist oriented leftist opposition and their mainstream media collaborators.  And not being one to take any crap from anyone, he gave back as good as he got, exacerbating the ongoing disputes with his enemies, who impeached him twice for imputed infractions that the democrats flaunt regularly with impunity.

 For all of his foibles, tweets and sometimes preposterous statements, the country’s economy thrived, a southern border was being stabilized, as was law and order, and a sense of pride and patriotism pervaded most of the country, at least away from the left-wing coastal cities and hotspots that continued to berate Trump, good economy and patriotism notwithstanding.

 In foreign policy, Trump projected strength and managed to keep enemies at bay, while convincing friends to contribute their share for their defense.  The Abrahamic accords stabilized the Middle East for the first time in decades.  North Korea stopped shooting rockets over Japan.  China and Russia acknowledged U.S. strength and stayed relatively quiet. 

 Life was good, except for the drum beat of constant anti-Trump media propaganda that painted him as racist, xenophobic and the greatest villain of all time.  Some gullible Americans swallowed the kool-aid.  Many other Americans enjoyed the prosperous times that Trump’s business-like policies were bringing to the country.  We were energy-independent.  We had a relatively stable southern border, We had low crime rates.  We were proud to be Americans.

 Then came the 2018 mid-terms, which flipped the house and resulted in Trump’s arch enemy, Nancy Pelosi being made speaker and managing the first impeachment of Trump in 2019 over a phone call with Zelenskyy of Ukraine.  Trump was not convicted of the ridiculous house impeachment charge and it sort of “rolled off his back”.

 This was soon followed by the Covid-19 Corona virus pandemic which first hit in early 2020.  With no precedents, and acting upon the medical and scientific advice of the experts in CDC, FDA and NIH, Trump seemingly had no recourse but to lock down the country into quarantine.  This may have saved lives, as it was hoped, but it also sent the country into economic recession. Trump fumbled at first with the disparate advice that he was getting.  However, he immediately started big pharma working on vaccines, which they accomplished at Trump’s prodding in an unheard of nine months.

 People dying from the pandemic was laid on Trump by the ever antagonistic and false mainstream media.  “It’s all Trump’s fault” was the continuing mantra of big media, big tech and big entertainment. These groups all worked to ensure that “the fix was in” for the 2020 elections, to guarantee that Trump would not win the presidency again.

 The democrats chose Joe Biden, a senile empty vessel and party hack to run for president, and painted him as a moderate “uncle Joe”, and as a contrast to the flamboyant Trump.  Then they twisted the voting rules in the swing states using Covid as an excuse, and withheld news that would have exposed the Biden crime family prior to the election and ensured a Trump win. 

 After five years of trying, two impeachments, a fake Russia collusion hoax, the leftists finally got him, and installed the absolutely worst president since James Buchanan.  Jimmy Carter was an awful president, but Jimmy Carter was a nice guy.  There is nothing nice about Biden.  He is an arrogant, egotistical, incompetent hack, who started ruining the country his first day in office, and has never stopped ruining the country.

 After buying, perverting and fixing the election, Trump’s avowed enemies, led again by arch-enemy Nancy Pelosi, impeached Trump a second time for a speech on January 6 at the ellipse, after he protested the aberrations and illegalities during the election, and in fact after he had left office.  Again, he was acquitted in the senate.

 In addition, these same leftist forces formed a “kangaroo court”, a partisan committee comprised of Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked minions to further politicize the January 6 demonstrations at the capitol, complete with professionally produced multi-media presentations,with no adversarial testimony permitted.  Forgotten in these one-sided actions against Trump, were Trump’s reported requests for National Guard troops to ensure a peaceful demonstration, and his appeals to “march peacefully to the capitol”.

 To any fair-minded person, what was done by the democrats to Donald Trump as president of this country is truly unconscionable.  They have made him into some caricature of a racist, xenophobic bully, which with all his foibles, he does not deserve.  But unfortunately with the constant propaganda barrage against him, and with his combative ripostes, half the country believes the lies.

 That’s not to say that President Trump was some paragon of virtue and good behavior.  He stirred the pot with his controversial, provocative midnight tweets and off the cuff pronouncements. He would have been better off if he had kept his mouth shut a little more, and had been more discreet in his pronouncements.  He was too egotistical and narcissistic for that.

 But for a non-politician, Trump did remarkable things for this country before the Corona Virus required locking it down.  He certainly was not perfect during the Covid crisis, but did OK once he “got his feet”.  He was bringing the country out of the Covid recession when Joe Biden and the extreme left-wing cheated their way to the presidency and began their Marxist inspired ruination of the country.

 Pity our poor country and the economic and social woes foisted upon it by a buffoon of a president, and his equally incompetent and irresponsible handlers and advisors.

 Ray Gruszecki

July 11, 2022

Why are We Killing Each Other?

 

Why are We Killing Each Other?

 Why are we Americans shooting and killing each other in such massive numbers?  We can’t even get past the country’s birthday on July 4^th without 30 people being shot, with 6 killed in a Chicago suburb.

 One obvious answer is because there are a lot of guns in the country. so, a lot of shootings will take place.  This is the mantra of the anti-gun, anti-second amendment activists.  When a mass shooting takes place, “the guns did it”.  But this is like saying, there are a lot of knives or cars in the country, so a lot of people will get cut or run over.  The anti-gunners forget that guns are just tools like any other tools.  It takes a human being to operate them.

 So, the question becomes, “why are, (primarily), young men picking up a legal or illegal firearm, and embarking on a normally suicidal effort to kill masses of schoolchildren, church goers, parade-watchers, or other innocent, “soft” targets?  Instant fame and notoriety?  Because its like a video game?  Why then?

 There are estimated to be somewhere around 430 million firearms in the U.S., in a population of nearly 335 million people. 20 million of these are AR-15 style semi-automatic weapons. There are two facts that one cannot deny.  Firstly, that with that many guns in the country, it is relatively easy for just about anyone to get their hands on a gun. This is so in spite of the virtue-signaling red flag and age laws recently passed by congress.  And secondly, with that many guns in the country, there is a “snowball’s chance in hell” of reducing or curtailing firearms by legislation or confiscation.

 Unfortunately, rather than mitigating the number of guns in the country, when a major shooting event occurs, rhetoric or actions by left-wing anti-gunners, prompts more people to rush to the gun stores and arm themselves, for fear that their legal rights might be diminished.  This, of course, increases the total number of guns in the country

 The right to self-arm is embedded in our constitution for a reason.  It’s so that no government can abrogate the other freedoms that constitute our republic, and enslave us.  We have lived with an armed citizenry since the Revolutionary War, and always knew how to properly use our firearms tools in the past.  We seem to have forgotten the intended purpose of guns as tools, and now stamp our feet and point guns at each other when something displeases us and we get angry.

 But anger is not the only driving force behind mass shootings.  The statistics of size and increasing complexity of the U.S. is a factor.  These numbers illustrate:  In the 1940’s our population was about 130 million people, and mass shooting deaths were 26.  In the 1960’s, our population was 185 million people, and mass shooting deaths were 43. In 1980’s, 230 million population, 198 deaths.  And in the 2010’s, 310 million population, 529 deaths.  So, expectedly, as our population increased, the number of mass shooting deaths also increased.

 At least four other major societal factors lead to the negative, nihilistic mind set necessary to kill fellow human beings.  I identify these as psychiatry, fantasy, polarization and secularization.

 First, psychiatry:  A study published in the journal Psychiatric Services estimates 3.4 percent of Americans - more than 12 million people - suffer from serious psychological problems.  Other studies show even higher rates of severe mental illness amongst Americans.  In the past, many people were “warehoused” in increasingly gruesome state facilities until the 1980’s when many inmates were released to homelessness, in hopes that newly developed psychotropic drugs would stabilize them and provide a decent quality of life.  Some worked.  Many did not.  And as a result, we have an ever-present group of unstable homeless people that are unbalanced enough to go on a shooting or other killing spree.

 Second, fantasy:  A kid who is alienated at school and in the playground for any reason, many times immerses themselves in video games and the cyber world.  At an advanced stage, their reality can consist of a red splotch on the video screen that eliminates an antagonist to the “atta-boys” of the game vocal.  Not hard to extrapolate to a rifle on a rooftop with real red splotches.

 Polarization: The current political environment is such that people are just “pissed off”.  This is exacerbated by inflation, high prices and a lying government in Washington, DC that thinks that we are all idiots.  Both the extreme left and right hold views that approach religion in nature, and support violence as a means of getting what they want.  The left is steeped in Marxist ideology promoted by groups like Black Lives Matter, Antifa and others.  The right counters with extremist “militias” and such.  These violent ideologies can’t fail to make an impression on gullible minds, and, of course, firearms make the ideological mix dangerous.

 Secularization: Young people drift away from main stream religious affiliation as soon as they hit the increasingly godless, Marxist oriented universities.  Even many of those raised in a religious environment seem to lose their spiritual trappings in college.  As adults, they contribute to a materialistic secularization bereft of morality and ethics inherent in religions, and contribute to the worst of the lies and corruption on society.  With little or no spiritual foundation, even assassinations are not out of the question.  Again, large numbers of people, and large numbers of guns, and very little spirituality, make for a volatile and dangerous mix.

 What can be done? 

 Religious people say that God will fix it, and that’s comforting, until the next maniac with a gun or car or knife kills multiple innocent strangers.

 The present crop of political leaders seems inept and incompetent to accomplish anything other than “talking at it”.  Even if they could agree to do something, they cannot legislate behavior unless they impose some sort of dictatorship.  And a major point is that they don’t have the numbers to do anything.

 The long-term answer has to be a charismatic leader and equally dedicated staff that will apply existing laws to curtail these mass shootings, and that will pass proactive laws that truly address the issues rather than just offering political lip service.  Someone like President Trump could get the job done by being a hard-ass leader, but he is divisive and hated by half the country, and he is combative.  We need someone as strong as Trump, but a smooth talker.  Ron DeSantis, maybe, or Greg Abbott?  Someone that will reinstitute law and order, institute some control over crazies acquiring guns, and make it palatable to even people like the squad and the Marxists.  A tall order, I know, but not impossible with the right people.

 Ray Gruszecki

July 4, 2022