Thomas Hobbes Versus John Locke

In history, there is a classic debate about the foundation of government. Here it is.

1. Physical force - Thomas Hobbes pointed out that government rests on the capacity to inflict pain and death, physical force. It is as simple as a gunfight in the Old West. Whoever shoots fastest, straightest is in charge.

2. Reason - John Locke argues in fact government is the result of reasonable agreements among humans to create governments to proect their lives, property, pursuit of happiness, etc. The result is our U.S. Constitution, a legal contract, and it reflects the impact of lawyers who come in swarms with commercial societies that need contracts to do business.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. He was a lawyer. However, it was George Washington who fought the war, applied the force, to make independence for our country concrete. Gettysburg is another example of how the view of Hobbes, in the final analysis, settles affairs and provides the foundation for governments.

Both Hobbes and Locke lived at the time of the English Civil War, 1641-1648. Hobbes observed brute force in the process. Locke saw struggle for contractual government in the process.

I have seen the writings of Hobbes literally under glass in the British National Museum in London. He is not popular today, because we do not like to face his scenario of what we are.

However, when our police, courts, and prisons refuse to put fear into the predators on the rest of us through measures like capital punishment, good and hard, surely and swiftly, we are going to pay the price of following John Locke's line of thinking. At some point, we will get tough or we shall surely collapse. Hobbes by the way restates the Roman view of things too.

History Repeats - Good and Hard

The Maple Leaf Forever – Paul Rux, Ph.D.

Ramsay Cook, a professor of Canadian history at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, gave a series of guest lectures at Harvard University on Canadian-American relations.

Cook, in fact, argued for American empire, because as long as America is fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. it has little time and energy left to mess with Canada!

While the American cat is away the Canadian mouse can play!

Cook argues when America reaches the limits of its capacity to mess with other countries, it will start to return its focus homeward, which will make America dangerous to Canada, for it is on our doorstep.

Cook pointed out how the Romans reached limits of expansion when they ran into German tribes along the Rhine River. Cook believes America is going to reach such limits to expansion, also, good and hard.

Your professor by the way earned a M.A. in Canadian History from the University of Toronto; this has provided him with a unique perspective on America. It helps him to step outside our media bubbles and to gain perspectives from a "distance."

I share Ramsay Cook because he provides a highly creative insight into our American history as it may impact his country. He also draws comparisons with Rome, which seem to fit.

His lectures at Harvard subsequently appeared in a book entitled "The Maple Leaf Forever."

- Dr. Rux

Outsourcing = No Skills + No Work Ethic in USA

Henry, welcome to our course, and, yes, Happy New Year! I look forward to working with you. Here are some thoughts about outsourcing.

Last fall, I heard the VP of Johnson Controls at a conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He said, "We locate production where we can find a quality workforce, which has hard skills and a work ethic." He did not say his company located production because of taxes, wages, benefits, infrastructure like roads, or finances. He said his company locates production because of the workforce, its quality as measured in terms of "hard skills" and an equally "hard" work ethic.

As Peter F. Drucker argued, "Plan the people first, and the people will plan the business." In the Knowledge Economy, people, not physical plant, drive enterprises. To have a winning business you must have winning people.

Sadly, as Peter Drucker points out in his last book, 2004, the U.S. now requires business to spend 25% of its budget for management on affirmative action compliance. Other countries do not impose the cost of "social engineering" on its businesses; this reduces their operational costs.

Moreover, they do not hire on the basis of "diversity" or some other quota. Instead, they hire people who have hard skills and an equally hard work ethic.

In short, nobody talks about the poor quality of the American workforce today. We like to think low wages drive economic decisions. Hard skills and an equally hard work ethic drive economic decisions today; nobody is willing to explore this in detail.

In other words, if you want to stop outsourcing, look at yourself. Are you worth what you think you are in the marketplace? How do we restore standards to education, yes, this is a matter of education, that demand hard skills and a hard work ethic?

The time for letting psycho-babble run our K-12 school systems and "social promotion" at all levels for tuition is coming to an end.

Outsourcing in fact is a mirror on American education, top to bottom.

You may not be popular if you pursue this topic; it is begging for somebody to research it "good and hard."

Camille Paglia Sums up American Education

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them.

Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning?

Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible.

The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue.

The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.

When More Means Less

Would you like to have some fun? Here's how. The next time you meet a legislator ask him or her the following question: "What are you prepared to cut?"

As a rule, he or she will stand there, mute, with vacant eyes, like a duck hit in the head with a hammer. It has never, ever dawned on our political class with "power of the purse" that we could - and are - reading a point when there is no longer."more". In fact, there is going to be whole lot less.

However, when you routinely spend the money of other people to buy votes and legislative perks for yourself, the concept of "less" has no value. Enter "more, and more, and more, and more."

We think of legislators and other members of the political class as glib. They are never at a loss for words until you ask them: "What are you prepared to cut?" This question puts them on the old "spot." It is fun to watch them squirm. It is also pathetic.

A newsman once asked Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), an early American labor leader, what unions wanted. "More!" was his emphatic answer. This "mantra of more" now drives our political class and our public business, or what is left of it. It is also driving us over an economic cliff to disaster.

Here is a reality check. There is nomore. There is going to a lot less. Our legislators need to get used to this reality and act accordingly. Otherwise, they will totally destroy what's left of our economy.

The late American philospher Russell Kirk (1918-1994) defined the difference between Conservative and Liberal mindsets. The Conservative believes in limits. The Liberal rejects limits. The Conservative is willing to say no to more and more when ti becomes destructive. However, the Liberal floats along with or pushes for more, regardless of limits, reason. We are living the result of more crashing down on us.

The bloom is coming off the rose.

Recently the History Channel carried a program about the fall of Rome.

It posed the following questions: Who at the time clearly saw the "bloom" was coming off the "rose?" When did they notice it? How did they announce it?

Fast forward. Apply the above questions to the U.S.A. today as the "bloom" is coming off its "rose." When did it start? Who started it? How did it start? Here are some plausible answers.

The Vietnam War laid the foundation for the coming institutional failure of the U.S.A. It began the destruction of the confidence of the American people in their government, which continues.

LBJ campaigned for election on a peace platform and promptly took the country to war - without a congressional declaration of war required by the Constitution of the U.S.A. He inflated the currency (printed fake money) to pay for it, rather than tax the country, to avoid "blow-back." However, the "blow-back" came in the form of soaring oil prices and economic dislocation .

The current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue the erosion. It is now the "same tune, second verse" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond. Undeclared overseas wars are no longer the exception to the rule. They are the rule. The American people are powerless to challenge, stop this slow bleeding to death.

Ronald Reagan, a recycled second-rate movie actor, preyed on the human desire to "want something for nothing." The American upper classes would get tax cuts without having to pare back government services. The result was a huge "budget hole," which subsequent regimes have continued to expand. To plug this "hole," the gangsters print more and more "fake money." The result is rising oil prices, loss of jobs, and the collapse of the American middle class.

The vampire banksters on Wall Street, and their gangster allies in Washington, also steal resources from what is left of the middle class through their looting of financial institutions. Their systematic theft of capital is a form of economic terrorism. The result is a growing loss of jobs, productive capacity and infrastructure, health care, and competitive edge.

Meanwhile, the ruling regime provides its version of "bread and circuses," again at the expense of what is left of the middle class. A growing under-class siphons resources from what is left of the middle class in the form of welfare payments and provides a rising crime rate in return.

Yet, ironically, the dying American middle class believes it is free because it now has unfettered access to pornography and gambling. It is, as Aldous Huxley predicted, a "false freedom."

It is interesting to note that exactly when the middle class began to die the ruling class relaxed access to pornography and gambling. They are "opiates of the people." They create a false sense of freedom. They distract people from the ongoing destruction of their standard of living - and basic freedoms.

Yet, Americans somehow are free because they can look at dirty pictures and pull levers on slot machines.

The next step, of course, will be the relaxation of drug laws. Oh boy, we Americans are really free because we can get "stoned out of our minds" whenever we want! If people cannot "think straight" now, imagine how little objective thinking will occur when opium dens flourish.

It is interesting to note that when the Communists took power in China in 1948 one of their first actions was to destroy the drug trade in China.

If you are doped out of your mind you cannot work and you cannot shoot straight. A society needs to feed and defend itself. These are the first orders of business. You cannot do this with "stoned" people.

The USA is too far gone now to "reverse engines." People who are not in touch with objective reality are no threat to the vampire ruling class. Look for more drug use and abuse. It serves the vampire ruling class.

Meanwhile, our manufacturing base is disappearing, crime rates are soaring, health care costs are skyrocketing, more and more people are lucky if they can find minimum -wage jobs.

The "bloom is coming off the rose" again. The sad part is nobody seems to care any longer.

History repeats. The second time, of course, it repeats as farce, because if we studied history we ought to know better than to repeat it.

If anything survives, perhaps some History Channel in the distant future will do a program on the U.S.A. similar to the one on Rome.

Manners - A Basic Choice for Civilized Life

I once heard a table talk at the University of Wisconsin - Madison (my alma mater). A professor, his name was Salter, was an expert on China. I shall never forget his after-dinner talk.

1) Asian culture "rounds" persons through emphasis on good manners in human relations. When two circles collide they bounce off each other. Manners, the "rounding" of a person, in short, mutes conflict, frition between and among people. Of course, the population densities in Asia enhance the need for manners to help people to get along with each other at close quarters.

2) The Western person in contrast is a "square." More and more, our society lacks manners. In fact, our society celebrates vulgarity, the lack of manners, as an achievement. What happens when two squares collide? They do not bounce of glance off each other. Instead they lack, clash.

As we eliminate basic manners from our society, more and more we shall find it hard to get along with other people. It will be "make my day." Because of our wide-open spaces in North America, it has been always easy to run away, escape from other people. Today, our organizational life inhibits this historic escape valve for tension among people.

3) People with manners will be able to work with Asians. At the rate the USA is collapsing, all of us will need to measure up to Asian standards of manners if we want to do business, have a future. Yet, our schools do not teach or onsist on manners any longer. It is the Titanic again.