Happy New Year
From everyone at CallingJohnGalt!
Dangerous definitions
If I am locked in a room with cobra, calling it a caterpiller isn’t going to dissolve the danger.
If there is any good to come from the Bernie Madoff swindle, it’s that it made enough of a splash to bring the word ‘Ponzi’ back into common use. Once you get people thinking about the elements of a Ponzi, you can get them to see the potential for abuse by a government entitlement that cannot ever equate. I’m not the only one calling out Social Security as being nothing more than a government-sanctioned Ponzi – I just didn’t expect there to be people who would rush to defend Social Security by tweaking the definition:
To begin with, if the fund runs short, the federal government covers the shortfall. How? By raising taxes on those who are current and future participants. Since “government” is us, there is no third party.
Attorney Algonquin J. Calhoun would explain it this way, “You see, Kingfish, we, the people, is the Ponzeyes and we is also the Ponzees.”
In contrast, Ponzi schemes have no way to balance the books because the guy who’s “Ponzi” has no intention of covering his clients’ losses, and every intent of convincing them that they are making a profit while they are contemporaneously losing their Palm Beach high rises and Harry Winston diamonds.
Who says there must be a “third party?” And more importantly, Bill Cherry ignores the “third party” that is aggreived: tjhe incoming generation that will pay but not cash any checks from SSI – my kids, and his grandkids. The Social Security equation of entitlement is not sustainable.
Others have played with the definition as well, including – big surprise here – the Social Security Administration. If you scour the Social Security Administration site today, you’ll find only four references to the word “ponzi.” One is a transcript from a hearing in the 1980s, which clearly defines that at some point, there was recognition we’d have a problem:
PROFESSOR ROSEN: I did not mean to imply there is deception. I think the question that Dutch and I second is the control of political pressures. So it’s an agency problem; that’s what we’re really talking about. How does the public transfer its votes to politicians?
MR. BURTLESS: Well, you’re the one who mentioned the word Ponzi. There’s some sense in which one generation or one group is left holding the bag and that is not –
PROFESSOR ROSEN: It’s this generation; it’s this young generation.
PROFESSOR LEONARD: No, but Jerry I mean, I agree with everything you said what people understand about this system. They understand that the money goes in now and that it isn’t waiting there for them. That doesn’t change their perception that there is a set of benefits that also ought to be waiting for them, as a result of the fact that they’ve paid into that system. I am not talking about a feeling of righteous entitlement at the age of 28. I’m talking about the feeling of righteous entitlement at the age of 65.
They’re right. Okay, they did pay into the system over a long period of time. They did support it and it is — they are deserving of having some of it — something come back to them. I know it’s a problem of politics about a fraud. I am looking at the politics of that and saying “boy that is a locomotive that I wouldn’t want to try to stand in front of!”
MR. BURTLESS: But the political support among 28 year-olds for the system cannot arise on the fact that they believe that they’re going to get benefits, because if you ask them, they don’t think they will.
Language got a little more nuanced in 1998, a year which will live in liguistic parsing infamy. This from findings of the White House Conference on Social Security (p 43):
For those public employers that have elected to have their employees covered by Social Security, a key area of concern is the seemingly never ending confidence crisis being faced. As we encourage our participants to plan for their financial futures through personal savings, employer sponsored pension plans, and Social Security, we frequently hear from those participants (particularly the younger ones) that Social Security is nothing other than a 1930’s ponzi scheme that for them will be a financial burden rather than a financial blessing. To a certain extent, this is understandable in light of the frequency with which the rules seem to change and the continual bombardment of negative press. Rule changes in such areas as eligibility age, benefit levels, COLA’s and contribution amounts make it virtually impossible for even the strongest advocates of financial planning to develop viable long term arrangements.
So there’s an “understanding” that we might have a perception problem. But that’s not the one they’re worried about! Look at the very next sentence:
With regard to negative press, there are those who believe that the dire predictions of failure simply set the stage for the demise of the Social Security system to be a self fulfilling prophesy.
Wow. Who knew that Social Security was going to be brought down by all of the poor young people who sent it bogus downer Karma, and not by the fact that such a system could never work in perpetuity. Apparently, this was admitted just a couple of years earlier, by the Social Security Advisory Council:
…we believe the proposal to increase the payroll tax rate by 1.60 percent—employee and employer rates combined—in 2045 is grossly unfair to a whole generation of citizens who cannot possibly defend their own political interests. This proposal amounts to nothing more than imposing a tax that we are not willing to pay ourselves on our grandchildren who have not yet been born. While we do not agree with many of the characterizations of Social Security as nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, we can understand why some citizens might resort to such characterizations when they see proposals of this sort.
You can understand that? Really?
Apparently, it was understood well enough that the SSA website had a nice page explaining just why it is not running a government-sanctioned Ponzi scheme. At some point it was taken down, but here is an internet archive page from 2001 that makes for interesting reading. It tries to define away the difference, calling Social Security a “pay-as-you-go” mechanism. After you’ve read that, you might come to the same conclusions I did below.
SSA Fallacy #1: We’re not a Ponzi because we don’t require a “doubling” of participants to continue. (Um, yes you do. You sustain rates and payments and eligibility age only when the demographics were in your favor. Now the tide is shifting, and so is your definition.)
SSA Fallacy #2: We’re not a Pyramid, so we’re not a Ponzi (after spending paragraphs explaining the difference between the two.)
SSA Fallacy #3: We’re a pay-as-you-go “pipeline” (ask Bernie Madoff how lucrative it can be to act as the conduit between the new investors and the old ones.)
SSA Fallacy #4: SSA defines Ponzi as “perpetrator tries to skedaddle before anyone can collect.” (That might be the case, but since the organism known as the Federal Government has the power to force citizens into participating, there’s no need to skip town. Why isn’t this classified as violence against the unborn?)
There are too many labyrinthine twists of logic required to duck the definition of a Ponzi. Like it or not, we’re stuck in the room with that cobra. And sadly, too many of us are giddy with joy, waiting for the moment that cobra will spin himself into a cocoon and transform into a majestic butterfly.
Step In The Right Direction
Rumors are circulating that the Obama administration may legalize marijuana. This would be a step in the right direction. Currently, one in seven prisoners is there due to marijuana related offenses.
We, as free adults should have the ability to decide what is good for them and what isn’t. Why are alcohol and tabacco permitted, but marijuana isn’t? Time to scrap these arcane and ineffective laws.
Is the Market Anticipating a Liberal Government
It has always been difficult to start a business. Not only do entrepreneurs have to come up with an idea, but they have to get suppliers, sell to customers, manage a competent team, and much, much more. With all of that, will it get even harder with a liberal President and a liberal Congress?
If so, what does that portend for the businesses in this country? As regulations increase, the government arbitrarily allocates capital to underperforming verticals and markets. It gets difficult to fire people, which can make or break any business. Employment with any company is not a right, for any employee, whether it be the founder or the guy in the mail room.
Lets free up our entrepreneurs to do what they are good at. Building businesses, creating value, and hiring (and firing) people.
Sad
Iraq, Syria and Iran were the cradle of civilization. Now someone throwing his shoes is idolized?
The irony that has been lost on them is the fact that in the entire Arab world, only in Bushified Iraq could such an act of protest be possible.
NYTimes Starts to Rewrite History
As is to be expected, the NY Times begins the process of rewriting history. Saying simply that the US financial crises was his own making:
There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.
But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.
As you can see from an earlier post on CallingJohnGalt, we have a full history from Reason TV that illustrates the culpability of the entire system, going all the way back to 1993.
According to the NY Times, that would simply be impossible. How would it be possible for a Democrat to be held accountable? Especially, when that Democrat is a Clinton. President Bush has a lot of responsibility for what has occurred. However, the responsibility goes much deeper and further than that.
Fair and Balanced
Or anything but… A good friend of mine continues to argue that there simply isn’t any bias in the media. No matter what I share with him, he just doesn’t see it. So, here is one more stab at it.
Obama’s positive press sets record
It’s a record-setting press honeymoon.
President-elect Barack Obama has received the most positive campaign news coverage on the main network news shows in the 20-year history of such studies by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA).
Mr. Obama received 68 percent positive evaluations from the four major networks, according to the study released Friday.
“Obama’s positive press is the strongest showing CMPA has ever recorded for a presidential candidate since we began monitoring election news in 1988,” said Robert Lichter, director of the nonpartisan research group affiliated with George Mason University.
By contrast, his Republican rival almost set the record for hostile press coverage.
Just 33 percent of the stories on Sen. John McCain were positive in nature — “the worst showing” since former President George H.W. Bush received only 29 percent positive press in 1988, Mr. Lichter said.
The study analyzed 1,197 election stories from Aug. 23 to Nov. 4 on “ABC World News Tonight,” “NBC Nightly News,” “CBS Evening News” and the first half-hour of “Fox Special Report.”
The findings counter previous CMPA research trends somewhat. On average in the last 20 years, Democratic presidential hopefuls received coverage that was fairly balanced: about half positive and half negative. However, over the same period, Republicans received 34 percent positive and 66 percent negative press.
Mr. Obama also trumped coverage garnered by former presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry. The Massachusetts Democrat received 59 percent favorable press in a similar study conducted during the 2004 election.
NBC was the most Obama-friendly of the four networks, with 73 percent of the coverage being favorable. Fox News was the sole network to mix it up with Mr. Obama, with only 37 percent of the stories on him positive in tone, although that was only slightly less favorable than the 41 percent favorability of the network’s McCain coverage.
Fox also took him to task for some lofty trappings.
“President-elect Barack Obama is looking very presidential these days. When he makes an announcement, he is ringed by American flags and stands behind a lectern that has a very presidential-looking placard announcing ‘The Office of the President-Elect.’ But the props are merely that. Under the Constitution, there is no such thing as the Office of the President-Elect,” a recent Fox News op-ed piece said.
Not only was criticism of Mr. Obama not typical at the other networks, but some journalists seemed to wax rhapsodic about Mr. Obama — framing his campaign in dramatic terms.
In recent days, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell called him a “rock star,” while ABC’s Terry Moran noted, “You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope — how they surge toward him.” CBS’ Tracy Smith described Mr. Obama’s “stoic elegance,” adding, “even some political commentators who’ve seen it all can’t help but gush.”
It was all too much for the Media Research Center, a Virginia-based conservative watchdog group that has assembled a roster of “Obama’s Media Groupies.”
Other research has revealed an Obama-centric press.
A Pew Research Center survey released in late October found, for example, that 70 percent of voters agreed that journalists “wanted” Mr. Obama to win the White House; the figure was 62 percent even among Democratic respondents.
A Harvard University analysis in early November revealed that 77 percent of Americans say the press is politically biased; of that group, 5 percent said it skewed conservative. Even The Washington Post’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, offered evidence of an “Obama tilt” in her own newspaper in a recent op-ed piece.
The Color Of News: How Different Media Have Covered the General Election
When it comes to coverage of the campaign for president 2008, where one goes for news makes a difference, according to a new study.
In cable, the evidence firmly suggests there now really is an ideological divide between two of the three channels, at least in their coverage of the campaign.
Things look much better for Barack Obama–and much worse for John McCain–on MSNBC than in most other news outlets. On the Fox News Channel, the coverage of the presidential candidates is something of a mirror image of that seen on MSNBC.
The tone of CNN’s coverage, meanwhile, lies somewhere in the middle of the cable spectrum, and is generally more negative than the press overall.
On the evening newscasts of the three traditional networks, in contrast, there is no such ideological split. Indeed, on the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC, coverage tends to be more neutral and generally less negative than elsewhere. On the network morning shows, Sarah Palin is a bigger story than she is in the media generally.
And on NBC News programs, there is no reflection of the tendency of its cable sibling MSNBC toward more favorable coverage of Democrats and more negative of Republicans than the norm.
Online, meanwhile, polling tends to drive the news. And on the front pages of newspapers, which often feature the day-after story, things look tougher for John McCain than they tend to in the media overall.
These are some of the findings of the study, which examined 2,412 stories from 48 outlets during the time period from September 8 to October 16.1 The report is a companion to a study released October 22 about the tone of coverage overall. This new report breaks down the coverage of tone by specific media sectors–print, cable news, network television and online.
Among the findings:
- MSNBC stood out for having less negative coverage of Obama than the press generally (14% of stories vs. 29% in the press overall) and for having more negative stories about McCain (73% of its coverage vs. 57% in the press overall).
- On Fox News, in contrast, coverage of Obama was more negative than the norm (40% of stories vs. 29% overall) and less positive (25% of stories vs. 36% generally). For McCain, the news channel was somewhat more positive (22% vs. 14% in the press overall) and substantially less negative (40% vs. 57% in the press overall). Yet even here, his negative stories outweighed positive ones by almost 2 to 1.
- CNN fell distinctly in the middle of the three cable channels when it came to tone. In general, the tone of its coverage was closer than any other cable news channel to the press overall, though also somewhat more negative than the media overall.
- The distinct tone of MSNBC–more positive toward Democrats and more negative toward Republicans–was not reflected in the coverage of its broadcast sibling, NBC News. Even though it has correspondents appear on their cable shows and even anchor some MSNBC programs, the broadcast channel showed no such ideological tilt. Indeed, NBC’s coverage of Palin was the most positive of any TV organization studied, including Fox News.
- At night, the newscasts of the three traditional broadcast networks stood out for being more neutral — and also less negative — than most other news outlets. The morning shows of the networks, by contrast, more closely resembled the media generally in tone. That might surprise some who imagined those morning programs were somehow easier on political figures. Overall, 44% of the morning show stories were clearly negative, compared with 34% on the nightly news and 42% in the press overall.
These findings augment what was learned from a broader report on campaign media coverage released a week earlier entitled “Winning the Media Campaign: How the How the Press Reported the 2008 General Election.” That study found that in the media overall — a sample of 43 outlets studied in the six weeks following the conventions through the last debate — Barack Obama’s coverage was somewhat more positive than negative (36% vs. 29%), while John McCain’s, in contrast, was substantially negative (57% vs. 14% positive). The report concluded that this, in significant part, reflected and magnified the horse race and direction of the polls.
Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist
While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.
These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.
“I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican,” said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study’s lead author. “But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.”
“Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left,” said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.
The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.
Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker’s support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where “100″ is the most liberal and “0″ is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.
Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.
Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo’s method assigned both a similar ADA score.
“A media person would have never done this study,” said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. “It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don’t think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches.”
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Only Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.
The most centrist outlet proved to be the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were a close second and third.
“Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill,” Groseclose said. “If these newscasters weren’t centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators.”
The fourth most centrist outlet was “Special Report With Brit Hume” on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “Nightly News” to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.
“If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox’s ‘Special Report’ as ABC’s ‘World News’ and NBC’s ‘Nightly News,’ then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news,” said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Five news outlets — “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown,” Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.
An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS’ “Evening News” and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.
Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC’s “World News Tonight,” NBC’s “Nightly News,” USA Today, NBC’s “Today Show,” Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR’s “Morning Edition,” CBS’ “Early Show” and The Washington Post.
Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.
Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.
“One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites,” said Groseclose. “Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media.”
Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.
“By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet,” Groseclose said. “Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post’s. If anything, government‑funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8).”
The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.
“No matter the results, we feared our findings would’ve been suspect if we’d received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided,” Groseclose said.
The results break new ground.
“Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers,” Groseclose said. “Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians.”
Lost in the Christmas Haze
As President-Elect releases his internal report detailing his staff’s dealings with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich this week. Their hope is that it will be lost amongst the Christmas celebrations. We must not let that happen.
Personally, I don’t see any major scandal on behalf of Obama or his staff, but that doesn’t lessen the requirement that we hold all politicians accountable. It is common practice to release information that the releasee wants forgotten over a weekend or before the holidays. We have the ability to keep the focus on them and have the responsibility to do so as well.
A Cautionary Tale pt 2
Sunrise at Coffin Rock (cont. from part I)
Part 2
by Raymond K. Paden
Thomas sat alone upon the cold stone, shivering slightly in the chilly pre-dawn air of this April morning. The flashlight was turned off, resting beside him on the bare granite of Coffin Rock, and involuntarily he strained his eyes in the gray non-light of the false dawn, trying to make out the shapes of the trees, and the mountains across the river. Below, he could hear the chuckling of the water as it crossed the polished stones. How many times had he fished there, his grandfather beside him. He tried to shrug away the memories, but why else had he come here except to remember. Perhaps to escape the inevitable confrontation with his mother. She would have to be told sooner or later, but Thomas infinitely preferred later.
“Mom, I’ve been expelled from the university, he said aloud in a conversational tone. Some small night animal, startled by the sudden sound, scurried away to the right. “I know this means you won’t get that upgrade to C-3, and they’ll probably turn you down for that surgery now. Gee, Mom, I’m sorry.” It sounded so stupid. “Why?” she would ask. “How?” How could he explain that? The endless arguments. The whispered warnings. The subtle threats. Dennis had told him to expect this. Dennis had lost his parents back in the First Purge back in 2004, and his bitter hatred of the State’s iron rule had failed to ruin him only because of his unique and accomplished abilities as an actor. Only with Thomas did he open up. Only with Thomas did he relate the things he had earned while in the Youth Reeducation Camp near Charleston. Thomas shuddered. It was his own fault, he knew. He should have kept his mouth shut like Dennis told him. All of his friends had come and shook his hand and pounded him on the back. “That’s telling them, Adams!” they said. But their voices were hushed and they glanced over their shoulders as they congratulated him. And later, when the “volunteers” of the Green Ribbon Squad kicked his ass all over the shower room, they had stood by in nervous silence, their faces turned away, their eyes averted, and their tremulous voices silent. He sighed. Could he blame them. He’d been afraid too, when the squad walked up and surrounded him, and if he could have taken back those proud words he would have. Anyone is afraid when they can’t fight back, he’d discovered. So they taught him a lesson, and he had expected it to end there. But then yesterday had come the call to Dr. Morton’s office, and the brief hearing that had ended his career at the university. “Thomas,” Morton had intoned, “You owe everything to the State.” Thomas snorted. The light was growing now. He could see the pale, rain-washed granite in the grayness as if it glowed. Coffin Rock was now a knob, a raised promontory that jutted up from a wide, unbroken arm of the mountain’s stony roots, its cover of soil pushed away. There were deep gouges scraped across the surface of the rock where the backhoe had tried, vainly, to force the mountain to reveal its secrets. He was too old to cry now, but Thomas Adams closed his eyes tightly as he relived those moments that had forever changed his life. The shouts and angry accusations as the agents found no secret arms cache still seemed to ring in his ears. They had threatened him with arrest, and once he had thought the government agent named Goodwin wouId actually strike him. At last, though, they had accepted defeat and turned down the mountain, following the gashed trail of the back-hoe as it rumbled ahead through the woods. At home, he had found his mother and father standing, ashen faced, in the doorway.
“They took your grandpa,” his father said in disbelief. “Just after you left, they put him in a van and took him.”
“But they said they wouldn’t!” Thomas had shouted. He ran across the yard to the old man’s cottage. The door was standing open and he wandered from room to room calling for the grandfather he would never see alive again. It was his heart, they said. Two days after they had taken him, someone called and tersely announced that the old man had died at the indigent clinic a few hours after his arrest “Sorry,” the faceless voice had muttered. Thomas had wept at the funeral, but it was only in later years that he had come to understand the greatest tragedy of that day-that the old man had died alone, knowing that his own grandson had betrayed him. That grandson was Thomas Adams, and he was now too old to cry but in the growing light of the cold mountain dawn, he did anyway.
Thomas was certain that his father’s de-certification six months later was due to the debacle in the forest. As much as anyone did these days, they had “owned” their home, but the Certification Board would still have evicted them except for the intervention of Cousin Lou, who worked for the State Supervisor. As it was, they lost all privileges and, when his father came down with pneumonia the next autumn, medical treatment was denied. He had died three days after the first anniversary of Grandpa’s death. Thomas had been sure that he would be turned down at the University, but once again his cousin had intervened and a slot had “opened” for him. But now that’s finished he reflected He would be unable to obtain any certification other than manual laborer. “Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut” he asked the morning stillness. In a tree behind him, a mockingbird began to sing its ageless song, and as if in answer, the forest below began to twitter and chirp with the voices of other birds, greeting the new day. No, what he had said had been the truth and nothing could change that. The State was wrong. It was evil. It was unnatural for men to be slaves of their government, always skulking, always holding their tongues lest they anger The State. But there is no “State,” Thomas considered. There are only evil men, holding power over other men. And anyone who speaks out, who dares to challenge that power, is crushed. If only there was a way to fight back!
Thomas shifted on the stone, hanging his feet off the downhill side. His feet had almost touched the grass that day, but now, although his legs were certainly longer, it was at least ten inches to the scarred rock surface below. As he kicked his heels back and forth, he could almost hear h is grandfather speaking to him from long ago… “One day, America will come to her senses. Our men will need those guns and they’ll be ready. We cleaned them and sealed them up good’ they’ll last for years. Maybe it won’t be in your lifetime, Thomas. Maybe one day you’ll be sitting here with your son or grandson. Tell him about me, boy. Tell him about the way I said America used to be. “You see the way this stone points.” the old man was saying. “You follow that line one hundred feet…” Thomas’ heels were suddenly still. For many minutes he did not move, playing those words over and over in his mind. “…Follow that line…” What hidden place in his brain had concealed those words all of these years. How could the threats have failed to dislodge it. He stood upon shaky legs and climbed down from Coffin Rock. In his mind’s eye, he could see the old man pointing and he walked down the hill and through a clinging briar patch, counting off the paces. The round stone did seem solidly buried, but he scratched around near the base and found that the rock ended just an inch or so beneath the surface. “One man with a good bar can lift it,” Grandfather had said. Thomas forced his fingers beneath the stone and, with all the strength in his 21-year-old body, he lifted. The stone came up, and he slid it off to one side. Cool air drifted up from the dark opening in the mountain. Thomas looked to the right where the scars of the State’s frustration ended, only 15 or 20 feet away. They had been that close. He squatted and stared into the darkness and then remembered his flashlight. In a moment, he was back with it, probing into the darkness with the yellow beam. There was a small patch of moisture just inside, but then the tunnel climbed upwards toward the ridge. On hands and knees, he entered. It was uncomfortably close for the first 20 feet or so, then the cavern opened up around him. The men who had built this place, he saw, had taken a natural crevice in the granite rock, sealed it with masses of poured concrete, and then covered it with earth.
The main chamber was bigger than the living room of a house, and they had left an opening up near the peak of the vaulted roof where fresh air and a faint, filtered light entered. Wooden boxes and crates were stacked everywhere on concrete blocks, up off of the floor, stenciled with legends like, RIFLE, CAL. 30 M1, 9MM PARA, M193 BALL, 7.62 x 39MM, and 5.56MM. He pushed between them and crawled to the wall where he found cardboard boxes wrapped with plastic sheeting. They were imprinted with strange names like CCI, OLIN, WW748, BULLSEYE, and RL 550B. He did not know what the crates and boxes contained, and was afraid to break the seals, but near the center of the room he found a plastic-wrapped carton labeled, OPEN THIS FIRST. With his penknife, he slit the heavy plastic wrapping. It contained books, he saw with some disappointment. But he studied the titles and found that they were manuals on weapons and how to repair them, how to clean them, how to fire them, and ammunition…how to store it, and how to reload it. And here was something unusual’ A History of the United States. He lifted it from the carton and crawled back to the open air. Leaning against a stone, he tore open the heavy vinyl bag that enclosed the book and began to read at random, flipping the pages every few moments. On each page, something new met his eye, contradicting everything he had ever been taught. Freedom is not won, he learned, by proud words and declarations.
He remembered a quotation taught at the University’ “Blood alone moves the wheels of history.” An Italian dictator named Mussolini had said that, but now he read of a man named Patrick C Henry who said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Mao was required reading at the University, too, and he now recalled that this man called a “hero” by The State – had once said, “Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.” Freedom is never granted, it is won. Won by men who are willing to die, willing to lose everything so that others may have the greatest possession of all: liberty.
Mentally, he began to list those he could trust. Men who had been arrested for speaking out. Women whose husbands had been arrested and never returned. Friends who had been denied certification because of their fathers’ military records. The countryside seethed with anger and frustration. These were people who longed to be free, but who had no means to resist… until now. Thomas laid the book aside and then worked the stone back into position, carefully placing leaves and moss around the base to hide any evidence that it had been disturbed. He tucked the book under his arm and started for home with the rays of the rising sun warming his back. He imagined his grandfather’s touch in the heat. A forgiving touch. A long, hard struggle was coming, and he knew with a certainty that defied explanation that he would not live to see the day America would once again be free. His blood and that of many patriots and tyrants would be spilled, but perhaps America’s tree of Liberty would live and flourish again. There is a long line stretching through the history of this world a line of those who valued freedom more than their lives. Thomas Adams now took his place at the end of that column as he determined that he would have liberty, or death. He would be in good company.
Who Gives The Most
Most: Religous Conservatives
Least: Secular Conservatives
The worst based upon income are liberals. You know, the ones that “care” about the poor and needy. It is easy when it is others people money. Your own however…